Welcome to Dragonbard.com

Our snow is officially gone (except for the pile out by the driveway created by shoveling). It’s been raining all day today and the news says there will be record flooding in the valley. Doesn’t sound good for the other areas of the state, either. I’m glad that we live on a hill!

Because of the weather, we spent the day inside. 

Radio looked bored. Or thoughtful. It’s hard to tell with him.

CareBear danced in her padded swimsuit. It’s apparently pool party weather.

Meanwhile, the “puddle” at the end of our driveway convinced me that it was a good decision to stay in!

CareBear decided to take a few more pictures while I was getting LiliBee settled down for her afternoon nap. I always wondered what happened when I wasn’t in the room!

Extreme close-up!

The Dinosaurs use my computer?

Funny face.

 

Happy New Year!

It’s 2009. That’s crazy. I have no idea where 2008 went.

We had a very quiet New Year. The kids slept while Chris and I watched the fireworks at the Space Needle on TV. We’re such party animals. Lucy had a rough night with the fireworks going off around midnight (actually, they lasted over an hour and a half around here) and again on New Year’s day. They just scare the “big dog” right out of her.

This whole week was pretty mellow, making for a nice change from the hustle and bustle of the holidays. Chris worked so much at the beginning of the week that he had enough hours to take a long weekend. We didn’t even have to do any classes or shopping or errands!

CareBear was thrilled to wake up to more snow on Friday. She got all bundled up and headed out with Chris and the puppies to explore the backyard. It’s so much more interesting out there when there’s snow on the ground! She wanted to find some bugs to catch, but I convinced her that they’d all be sleeping during the winter. 

LiliBee learned to jump this week. She watched CareBear jump around their couch cushion playground and decided that it was time for her to try. It’s scary to watch, but she actually gets some air under her feet now instead of just flopping from cushion to cushion. LiliBee gets really mad when CareBear does something that she’s not big enough to do yet. They’re going to be partners in crime before too long.

I made a resolution this year to get my photos under control… you may have noticed that I take a lot of pictures. My goal is to figure out how to use the computer software to tag and organize the pictures so I can find them more easily. Also, I need to be more critical and delete the pictures that are out of focus or otherwise unfortunate. They’re just all so cute! In what seems counter-intuitive, I’ve also decided to participate in something called “project 365”. The idea behind it is that you take (and post) a picture a day. By the end of the year, you have a visual snapshot of your year. Watch for that to start up soon on our website (www.dragonbard.com).

The kids are having a tea party in their room right now… for which they apparently had to be naked. It’s going to be a fun evening!

Project 365 is totally something I could get into… I take pictures practically every day, anyway. The trick would be coming up with a good picture every day and trying to actually represent our life visually. Still, I think I’m going to try it!

I let CareBear take over my camera this morning… here’s a peek at what the world looks like when you’re a small child:

 Papa hard at work on the website.

An artistic look at Mama’s hula girls and fiesta ware.

The back of LiliBee’s head.

Some kind of self portrait.

CareBear is getting quite good at using the camera… her subjects are in focus and usually intentional these days!

It occurred to me that I could post videos to YouTube and then embed them here until I can figure out how to post them directly… so I made an account and gave it a try! 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr_QFLe8ULg[/youtube] A few seconds of LiliBee.

Hmmm… it’s ok, I guess, but I’ll be happier when I don’t have to go through YouTube. On the plus side, it’s forcing me to learn a little video editing with iMovie.

There’s a rumor that I should be able to post videos on our site… I tried for a couple of hours this morning, but was unable to get it to work. I think I need some kind of conversion of the file and Chris says I should be able to get it to work. Does anyone know how to convert a .mov from imovie into an .flv that will play on here?

I know, not a lot of techies (or maybe not a lot of people) read this, but it’s worth a shot! I think I’ll try asking this on LiveJournal, too.

In the meantime, something cute to look at from our trip to Seaside last June:

We woke up this morning to an inch or so of new snow! CareBear was thrilled, she was very sad when our previous snow started to melt. It’s unusual for us to have snow on the ground so soon after the last storm, but it’s fun! CareBear made Chris go out and play with her before we headed out for lunch with my folks. They had a great time… the puppies romped and the humans explored. 

And poor little LiliBee was stuck watching out the window yet again. She’ll have more fun once she’s a bit more stable walking and can actually play in the snow. As it is, she often has to wait inside until I’m ready to go out too.

Well, it’s 2009. We had a pretty boring New Year’s Eve… a little grocery shopping, a quick dinner, lots of jumping around on the part of the small children, lots of shaking and panicking on the part of the big dog. Lucy really doesn’t like fireworks, so 4th of July and New Year’s are particularly difficult for her.

The fireworks lasted from 11:30pm until 1am around here last night. I’m not sure why they had to go on so long, but it made it impossible for me to sleep. I just hate it when Lucy is so upset. Consequently, we all slept in a bit this morning and we’re planning on doing a lot of nothing today. Nowhere to go, nothing to do… a good way to ring in the New Year, eh? I figure it’s one of the few days of the year when we really don’t have to do much so we might as well enjoy it!

Here are the kids in January:

 

And here they are now:

 

It amazes me how much they’ve changed in (what seems like) such a short amount of time! I have no idea where this year went, but it’s been crazy and fun. 

Happy New Year!