Photos from the past week. Out of order Christmas fun with the family, like my sweet little sister, Katie.
We celebrated Kevin's 29th birthday with an ice cream cake (two, actually).
Here are the said treats. Mom sent us a kit to make them:
Not as pretty as the picture on the box, but fun. Caleb and I had a good time with it. When we finished the white chocolate before we finished the final snowman, Caleb decided we could just use red. I didn't think anything about until we pulled him out of the mold. Oops, look like Frosty needs to go to the emergency room.
Last Thursday I brought my boys over Natalie's and I tried to take pictures of her precious baby girls and then a few of the baby boy she cares for during the day. It was pretty insane having the 5 kids there and trying to work. The toddlers were not interested in sitting still and looking at me, much less smiling. I am seriously considering getting a clown costume and an inflatable hammer that squeaks when I hit myself in the head with it. I should probably just calm down and not worry so much about getting the "grip and grin" shot. That's what the Sears Portrait Studio is for, and it's just not my style. Sears has a great setup and is pretty cheap, so I'm not knocking it, it's just different. I need to let go of the idea of having a 2 year old sit pretty, gaze into my lens, and smile her heart out. Anyways, here are a few from that crazy day. Natalie's house has never looked so junked out as when we left. Sorry Nat! My boys are truly a whirlwind.
And here's the baby:
And my best Sears impersonation:
Just to prove that Kevin and I are not the only weird family in the world, here some photos I took for the Fine-Bradleys Christmas card. They keep three egg-laying chickens in their backyard and wanted to have the birds in their photo. Robin made little hats for Nuggett, Fritter, and Pot Pie. Caleb and Joshua ate a belly-full of bread while we tried to orchestrate the appearance of a natural-looking family by the fire. It was a bit of a production, but it was fun. And then it got a little crazy (see the picture progression below). 
I took photos of Emmy yesterday and I just didn't like enough of the portraits, so I got to try again today. Thanks to Natalie and Michelle for letting us invade their houses, and for helping with my kids while I tried to catch a fleeting smile on this funny little girl's face.
Natalie was really good at making Em laugh, and helped me not feel so silly acting the fool trying to get Em's attention. She even humored the kids and blew bubbles in the house. The other kids loved it, too.
Ellie's turning three on Sunday. I have loved watching her grow up. Strange to think of the first time I saw her, just few weeks old with a round face and crazy blonde hair. She looked like "little Riley" then. How fast she has grown into a little girl. She's two months older than Caleb, so it's been fun to see what she's learning and knowing what's up next for my baby. She is incredibly smart and independent. I have no doubt she has great things coming in life.
I took family pictures of the Rileys last weekend. You can see a few of them at my photo blog at: http://kristentothphotography.blogspot.com/.
I should be cleaning, or working on photos, but I heard this story on NPR this morning about toxic toys and had to share this website.
I've had a thing about toys since the boys were babes, but it was always a "crazy mom" bent. It's just, if they make thousands of toys in Europe that pass really stringent safety tests (physical as well as chemical) why can't we have similar standards here? It doesn't seem that hard. I know it has to do with our governmental system and my husband would say for the govt. to stay out of it and let the free market dictate how our toys are made. But I say that's retarded and unless there is a tag attached to each toy stating it's toxicity level, the lack of information provided to the average consumer will keep her/him from knowing what to buy.
All that to say, there's this website, healthytoys.org, that is really helpful. If you are buying Christmas gifts to kids this year, it's worth a gander. How else will you be able to choose which gift to give baby this year? Mercury or Lead? Arsenic or a chunk of chlorine to chew on?
It also takes less than 2 minutes to send a quick note to your congressional rep via the healthytoys homepage. If I could sign a petition twice, it would be that one.
Also, they have a search engine where you can look up exact toys that were tested for chemicals. It just ate up 20 minutes of my time, but I feel a lot better about letting Joshua gnaw on that puzzle piece.
Here's a few of the surprising toys I found on their worst toys list:
Wii
Leapster/Wall.E
Alex Crayons
I hope that didn't come off preachy. I'm just sad that the FDA or some other regulartory commission doesn't have standards for what our babes put in their mouths. I sweep my floors so Joshua won't eat that suspicious dirt clump, why wouldn't I want to make sure that their toys are hyped up on bromine?
So despite a yucky nauseous stomach at 5 am on Thanksgiving morning, I ran the half-marathon. Kevin was kind enough to take me to the race even though he didn't get to run. (There was some debacle at work. An 11 mile run was scheduled for Tuesday for the officers in the Battalion, so Kevin didn't register for the half, then his OPD run was canceled, and he was too late to register. Sad.) At 6:45, Kevin made me get out of the car even though I was groaning that I didn't want to run. And I'm glad that I did.
I ran a new Personal Record time of 1:45:52. Of course I had two goals, one out there, and one secret one. The first goal was to beat my previous half-marathon best time (1:49:45), which I did. The secret goal was to break 1:45, which I didn't do, but so close. If I were paying more attention to my watch, I would have realized that I wasn't going to get there in time. But instead, I'd been looking at my pace on my GPS. At mile 10 I had an average pace of 8:06. I figured, "Easy. I can make up 7 seconds in pace in three miles," and get my overall pace down to below 8:00, which would help me reach my goal of breaking 1:45. But I failed to consider the zigzagging I'd done down the road, getting around people and banking right for the water stops. So when I finished, my watch read a time of 1:46, with 13.37 miles, and a pace of 7:55. Too bad that's not what counts. I'll know next time to stop looking just at the pace window, and learn what splits I need to hit close to the end. I think I can break it next time. I keep getting better, so that's good. But it's also a little intimidating too, because next time, I'm going to have to run even faster and harder.
I think it's possible though, because this course was all up hills from mile 7 on. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but not much. Of course that means miles 1 through 6 were probably downhill, but I'd rather it were the other way around. Also running down Peachtree Street in Atlanta is fun because you run though Buckhead then finish downtown, under the Olympic rings. But YUCK, it stunk. All of the restaurants on the route must have been dumping their used frying grease in the sewer because I just kept hitting aroma waves of stale french fries. That or the safety truck that drove up and down the course was burning vegetable oil. Didn't help my nausea.
I've done nothing physical since Thursday and I'm feeling a little bloated, so off I go to start CrossFit back up. Kevin left this morning for a 2 week trip and it was snowing this morning, so no outdoor runs with the boys until it warms up or he comes home.
I have no pics of the event. Sorry.
On Saturday, while Kevin was attending the CrossFit Level 1 Certification course, I took a few family pictures of a beautiful couple, Stacy and Charles. The hardest part of taking their picture was making it not look like a catalog shot. They really are pretty people and the puppy, Scooby is a sweetie. One more of the funny pup's tongue.
While I was doing that, our friends David and Robin kept the boys for me. Unfortunately their heater has been broken for about a week. Of course Saturday was one of the coldest days yet this season. When I dropped off the boys it was like 42 outside and maybe 50 in their house. The boys didn't seem to mind too much though, and I am grateful for such caring friends.
Robin and David have a few egg-producing chickens in their backyard. Joshua chased them around roaring like a lion. The hens were not as amused as I was.
Caleb liked jumping in the leaves with Mr. David, although Mr. David has the habit of finding the line between fun and scary for little Caleb. 
Miss "Courage Under Fire"
What the boys were up to while I was running.
I complain that we never have any photos of Kevin and I together. I jumped at the chance to have my dad snap a few before we left for Kevin's reunion. And by snap, I mean snap. I had to MAKE him take more than one. Maybe he's stuck in the "film is valuable" mindset. In these digital days, always take like 6...
Anyways, the reunion was, well, okay. Truthfully, I was dreading it. Kevin went to the other high school in Augusta (Evans) and I was only at Lakeside HS for my last two years. I knew 2 people there, and only by name. But it didn't last that long, and we had some interesting conversations with people doing some cool things. A guy named Kasey works at the swanky W Hotel in Times Square and had some funny celebrity stories. My shoes weren't terribly uncomfortable either, so that must have added to my congeniality towards these strangers.
Kevin was given two awards:
Most time served in the military, 6 years. (Though we're pretty sure he was the only one there that served...)
And Last to RSVP. Nice. He did so two days before the event. Could have been later, I say. As he said when receiving his award- Yay! I'm the most inconsiderate!
Also, a note to the dress that I wore. Kevin bought it for me in Philadelphia on his last trip from home. I love it. It fits me perfectly and I love that he picked it out, all by himself. Can't you just see him perusing the racks in Anthropologie? It's so funny, because when we go shopping together (which was like 5 months ago) he's always running off to a boy store, and out of the girl stores. But without me there, he spent his precious time finding me a dress. How sweet, and spot-on.
Those eyes make me smile.
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I know everyone thinks their kids are the cutest, but really those hats are too much. Kevin's mom gets all the credit here. She made these costumes in a few days. I got the idea to have them dress like garden gnomes. (Kevin has called them his gnomies a few times.) I found a cute, $50 costume and couldn't swing the 100 bucks for Halloween. So what did I do? Plead to the mother in law. She really came through here, don't you think? Amazing talent. The hats were perfect, stayed hilariously pointy all night and the boys love them. Tonight (Sunday) Joshua found his hat and tried putting it on his head and came grunting toward me, pleading for help. I put the hat on him, said "Nice hat, Joshua" and signed the word for hat. He was so pleased, he walked around signing "hat" for like 15 minutes with a huge grin on his face. Every time we made eye contact, I complimented him again and he giggled and ran away.
Back to trick or treating. After a late start, we made our way over to my friend Natalie's house. She was having friends (and kids) over and we stopped at a few houses along the way to say Trick or Treat. Okay, it was two houses. We did more last year, but Caleb got some candy, and really, does he ever need more than one handful of the stuff? Below is a shot of Joshua's first go at it. After Caleb modeled correct form, little J walked right up to the lady with his bag, and stared into her face. She put some hideously big piece of chocolate in his hand and he just stood there. Caleb remembered to say thank you, but he was most concerned about finding his friend Ellie.
The night was a little jumbled. We ended up hanging out at Nat's house for the evening, and leaving a bowl of candy on our driveway. Next year I'll be more organized: Costumes before the sun sets so we can get good pictures, a sign for the candy if we are to leave it, one lap around the block, and then some time handing out candy. Caleb loved that part last year and I feel like I deprived him this year. It was really fun hanging out at Nat's though- all of our husbands were there, which is a rarity, indeed. Here are some pics of the friends, including baby Meadow as Elvis.
Jen with her Emmie, and Jodi with her Peighton.
Caleb found a lollipop on the sidewalk yesterday and was concerned that it was Ellie's. I don't think he tried to eat it.
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