Photo Booth or What my kids would look like if Elliott and I were brother and sister

Photo Booth. If you have a Macbook, you know what that is. It's a program that comes installed on the computer that lets you take pictures of yourself while you're in front of the computer. There's a little camera at the top of the monitor and when you open Photobooth, a screen opens up and there you are. You click the camera icon below the screen and you get a 3-2-1 countdown and the thing flashes and you have a picture of yourself. Just like a photo booth. Then comes the fun part. There are 2 pages of effects filters that alter the picture however you want. It can keep my kids amused for hours and it's a lot of fun at parties!

I was looking at all the pictures that we've saved and I thought I'd share some of them with you. Enjoy!


John started the whole thing with his comic strip evil villain pose.




Then he sucked Elliott into it. Now who's the evil villain? Mwaaaahahahahahah!




Speaking of Elliott, he's quite a catch don't ya think?!




This is a favorite pose of the kids. It always takes me back to high school slumber parties and zombie movies.





Here's some of those shallow gene pool shots I promised.








This effect is one of the kids favorites, but it's just too creepy for me.





It wouldn't be fair if I didn't include a weird one of me.




Most of the time we're just being sweet, though!

Our family recently acquired a cat. By acquired, I mean the kids found a cat on the back porch, fed it, played with it and now it's ours. We have since then taken her to the vet to get her shots and get her fixed. This is important because Elliott's aunt Jane has about 35 cats in her backyard and about a third of them are, how shall I put it...not quite right.

Anyway, I don't know where this cat came from but the kids named her Milo and I think she used to be a house cat. Everytime the door opens even a little bit, she comes bolting in like we'd locked her out and she finally got back in where she belongs. Of course she doesn't belong in the house. No animal belongs in the house, except for the occasional fish or turtle, until I eventually convince the kids that nature belongs outside....with nature.

Milo is a pretty smart cat. She figured out somehow where Elliott and I sleep and the exact window that our bed is under and sometimes, at 4 in the morning, she will sit on the window sill and meow until I go outside to replenish her food and water only to find that she has everything she needs. Except a place to sleep in our house.

Today, while I was fixing lunch for the kids, she started whining at the door. She usually does that at some point during the day, but this time, she wouldn't let up. It was like one constant meow. I started to think that maybe she was hurt or something so I walked over to the door and by this time she was hanging on to the bottom of the window that's in the door and looking in the window, I guess, to see if I was paying any attention to her. I opened the door and she just looked up at me. She didn't even try to bolt into the house. That's when I noticed what was on the door mat. A frail little gray and yellow bird. Dead, of course. I couldn't believe it. She wanted me to see what she had done and she was obviously very proud of herself. Elliott had warned me that he saw her stalking birds around the bird bath. I wasn't sure what to do because she acted like she wanted me to do something with it. I knew I couldn't be mad because that's what cats do...in nature. I bent down and with as much fake enthusiasm as I could muster, I patted her on the head and said, "Good girl, Milo. I'm so proud of you. Now take it somewhere else." With that, she picked the bird up in her teeth and took it to the other side of the porch where she promptly started to eat it. I checked back after a couple of minutes and there were only a few feathers left and she was apparently chasing the whole thing down with some dry cat food.

The whole experience was morbidly sweet. She's starting to grow on me. I think we'll keep her.

Becky, you're gonna love this!

Last week oprah did a special on the Youtube phenomena and this video is the most watched with over 64 million hits. The guy is some kind of conference speaker and he needed a demonstration for his talk about how quickly the world changes and how there are fads and trends that come and go. My son has been begging me to put this on my blog since he saw it last week. It's nostalgic and hilarious. I can't watch it without laughing out loud. I know it's 6 minutes long, but you won't be able to stop watching. My favorite parts are, of course Thriller and Ice Ice Baby. Enjoy!

Today I would like to give a shout out to a very special person, or should I say being, in our family. It's an angel, really. We'll call her the botulism angel. Her work goes largely unnoticed until I rearrange my kids rooms. Then I gasp and say, "oh my gosh, what is that. Thank you botulism angel for keeping this hidden!"

Come on girls, you know what I'm talking about. I can't tell you how many times I've found a bottle or sippy cup that should have been removed by HASMAT! Every so often, I go through the kids rooms and look under beds and behind dressers and in drawers and come back to the kitchen with an armload of cups.

You know, come to think of it, we have a lot of "detail" angels in our family. I'm remembering a time when John climbed on the roof at the age of three or four (catching angel), another time when I looked out the window to see John lapping water from a puddle in the yard while our dog drank from the other side of the puddle (that was probably the dysentary angel). There's the eyepatch angel, the bone angel, the floatie angel (for swimming) and let's not forget the fleet of angels that ride on top of our van whenever we go somewhere. "Elliott, April's car seat is not even buckled into the seat! How long has it been like this?"

Even while I type this, I can hear April screaming while Autie does something torturous to her. Which leads me to, I think, the most underappreciated angel of all, the sibling angel. Amy Yates told me that not too long ago, she went in to get Kate from her bassinet only to find that Landon had thrown some free weights in there and they landed perfectly on either side of her head. Now that's got sibling angel written all over it!

I think if I had to fill out an order form for all the angels I need for my family, I wouldn't even come close to the amount that God actually provides for us. And there's no charge for nights, weekends and overtime!

Thank you, Jesus for that not-so-little benefit of belonging to you!

Hey everyone! Don't worry, I'm still alive and not in Nashville. Even though I had a great time, I love my home and I'm glad to be back in the normal routine. That celebrity lifestyle is just sooooo exhausting! Give me sweats and toilet bowl brushes and macaroni and cheese please! (Just not all at once!) I'll blog about details of the second night when I feel more like writing. I haven't been in a very good mood lately and I'm tired of being emotional all the time. I have been flip-flopping between crying uncontrollably to being really pissed-off. And, yes, Erica, you can translate that as "I love you," but I'm so tired of this @#*! drama I'm ready for the curtain to come down already! I just wanted to get something up here before I'm hunted down and arrested by the blog police.

Oh, and one more thing...

Heaven is filled with absolute trust and confidence in God. Earth is filled with absolute mistrust and unbelief and you and I always reflect the world we are most aware of. Thanks to Bill Johnson for that.