I just thought I'd say...

You know everyone gives me a hard time to send or post pics of the boys and where we've been etc... but um, did you all KNOW that I've not gotten ONE SINGLE photo from anyone back home? Wait, scratch that, I got A, as in singular, picture of Ben with Santa. ONE.
I better not hear anymore complaining until I start getting something back here people!!!!
I'm sure that Ben is 5 feet tall, Heather has a dark tan and Ally has gone bleached blonde. Ash is probably a brunette now, Renfro has a beard, Shea is driving and Bodie a red-headed stunt man. I wouldn't really know.
A lot happens in little time with young 'uns you know.
EIGHT MONTHS people! EIGHT!!!!!
Totally unfair.

Yes. It really took me ages to let this sink in and y'day I thought, "HEY! Wait a damn minute!!!!!".
SO fess it up.

NOt sure how to share with us w/out using snail mail? Or with bogging up your email???
Oh well of course I know TONS of ways! :)

Download Picasa 3 and you can add me as a friend, when I add photos (which btw are automatically loaded whenever I open the program, it finds whatever is on my computer) I can share with you and voila. Same for you!
So there's that.
Flickr. I have an account there, it's free unless you want a pro acct. Make an acct. add me, voila.
Sams Club has album sharing, which I do use frequently btw b/c I can load an album you can view, order and pick up in an hour. I can also order from yours and have them shipped to me.
Wal Mart (shudder, sams has WAY better lab just so you know).
Kodak.
Snapfish.
I could go on and on. You could go on and on and on if you happened to do a search on google. So, in other words, the possibilities are endless. Get busy!

Oh, and just another little something.... I thought of the other day too. I know that there were a couple of videos taken at our wedding (you two know who you are!) well, its now 5 years later and we've yet to ever see them! hahaha!
So if by chance, you are bored (hahahahahahahaha! funny I am) it'd be great to get those sometime. I remember what it was like to look like a bobble head and Mike could see his manly freedoms flying out the window (okay well we know that's not true at all actually). So ya know, hey at least it'd be great to have by our sixth anniversary, which isn't until NOvember, so I"m giving plenty of time.



Okay. Public Service Announcement of the day is over.
I'm busy working on grad. invites for a couple of lovely gals! :)

Have a Fabulous Friday!

So before I get dis-owned and all...

Yes I knew it'd been awhile, I've been informed precisely down to the day how long it's been since I blogged. So here goes. A quickie at that I think. Why? Precious Kade is more stubborn than me today and won't give into a nap. I didn't have enough gas to keep on driving, so...quick will just have to do.
Captions etc...??? Uh, maybe later! ha! All the time it took just to load these pics, now I've got to run! I'm working on getting the laptop live again so at least I can keep up with blogging better!

Green vs. Blue

This marks my 100th post. If I were like a professional blogger and had some sponsors or something, I could like...give away a prize or something. Instead, I'm a not right now working photographer living on dollars in a british pound world. So hug yourself and make that your prize. hahaha
Well, a hug from yourself IS a good thing sometimes you know. :)

Just a quickie. I know. Unheard of when it comes to me and talking, typing etc...

The boys have their favorite colors. Even though, from within the womb I was certain Cody's favorite color was always going to be green. Even though I color coded all their things. Blue for Kade and Green for Cody, they decided that ACTUALLY, Kade loves green and Cody loves blue.
Well...at least they kept it simple so I didn't have to toss all my color coding. I didn't have to go buy plum with orange specks or something.

Today in the car Kade said that his favorite color is green, as he tells me just about every single day. He said that green was his favorite color and Cody loves blue, to which Cody enthusiastically agreed.
He said that he loves the green grass. The grass is green like his favorite color, so the grass is his. His green grass. Then he said that Cody loves the blue sky because the sky is blue, and that is Cody's favorite color.
"So the green, green grass is mine Mommy and the blue, blue sky is Cody's".

For whatever reason, that struck me as incredibly sweet and innocent. At four years old, you can imagine every single blade of grass in the world belonging solely to you because it bears your favorite color and every morning as the sun rises, the sky chooses to turn a brilliant shade of blue because it is the color your little brother loves best. It turned his favorite color that day just because it is Co's favorite, so therefore, it must simply belong to him only.

I shall explain in more depth at my next posting as I'm being bellowed at from downstairs, but there have been some changes going on with me and frankly, I'm damn happy and it is about damn time. An immense difference and starting to feel so much like my old self again, I really hope so I think the world deserves the old Aimee back, it's been such a damn mess w/out her really. hahaha!

Love to all.

Our hearts and prayers go out to a fellow airman today as he received some very tragic news from home and had to leave his wife and children here to go tend to this awful awful situation. Something we cannot imagine and well, there just are not words to say that could ever say enough how sorry we are for the loss and the circumstance in which it came about.

my favorite quote

the movie "the guardian" is a great movie anyway but i think this one quote made it 100x better. it is by far my fave ever and i might have it tattooed on my ass.
luckily, my ass is just wide enough for it.

Hell, I've always been old. Ya' know what though, I don't mind. I mean if my muscles ache, it's because I've used 'em. It's hard for me to walk up them steps now, its 'cuz I walked up 'em every night to lay next to a man who loved me. I got a few wrinkles here and there, but I've layed under thousands of skies with sunny days. I look and feel this way, well cuz I drank and I smoked. I lived and I loved, danced, sang, sweat and screwed my way thorough a pretty damn good life if you ask me. Getting old ain't bad. Getting old, that's earned.

what do you say - when the cleverness is all gone for the day?

i'm fresh out of clever.
kade would say i need to gas my brain i guess. if only it were so simple. i can only imagine what oil tycoon and government taxing would do for brain fuel. let us not give them any ideas.
oh well.
no one wants to read my mind. i'll post some of those previously mentioned photos real fast. more to come.



now i put these two next to each other b/c i wonder who can pick out the difference here. kade yes has a pen in his hand in each photo. he was really drawing in each also, notice anything odd? apparently i've passed on yet another trait to him.

spongebob by: kade

my new FAVORITE picture of my oldest baby boy

that's the best i was gonna get out of him. see, the harder i try to get photos for everyone back home, the worst they are going to be b/c the less cooperative my children are. argh!

just so you know, as much as mike talks smack about my lack of green thumb. i've had these flowers, and the other two next to them, alive for nearly SEVEN months. this particular bunch is actually still in its original container inside that pitcher too. ha!

so neener neener MIKE!

if all else fails, i think i'll take up beer photography. think that's like an actual title i can take on? "OFFICIAL BEER PHOTOGRAPHER"???

i am hooked on colored bottles. mmm...too bad i have not found anything beyond green. i could scream. i really could.

wild hair

wilder hair

what the bloody hell is going on????

I always wonder if my titles get anyone's attention or if no one really cares a lot b/c it is just me and who knows when I'm ever serious or not?
Anyway - here's what's been going on.
Oh yeah it's been awhile yet again. I know. Well...I suppose part of it is good, meaning my addiction to the computer is lulling right? Doesn't help keep anyone up to date on a damn thing though. Especially since I loathe talking on the phone so much, add in the time difference, forgetfulness and simply passing out - doesn't leave a whole lot of room for the passing on of information.
I'm being multi-faceted at the moment, and converting some photos on the other computer while I blog over here. SO don't think that I'm giving up my recent oath to almost hardly ever post without photos also. I need to get some video up as well. I just lost the charger to my small camera for the 100th time and it's soooooo much trouble to upload from the video camera. I suppose I will have to break down and buy a digital camcorder or something instead of my good ol' 8mm (which is technically digital actually but anyway). That or I can get some work or win the lottery and buy a 5d Mii and have it ALL in one spot. Man, wouldn't THAT be grand? Someday baby...someday.
A few little tidbits I suppose. Mike just had his birthday on the 2nd. You know how you get older and older and then get REALLY old like him, you don't want to go out of your way to make too big of a deal out of it. Even though, a lot of times I think we secretly want to, just to feel like a kid again. Maybe next year we'll rent a blow up castle and a hire a clown just in case he does want that but won't say it!
I think it was a pretty nice day though. Other than him doing the laundry for me while the boys were at school and I had a Dr. appt. He didn't mind, he offered and then argued to do it. Don't have to twist my arm buddy.
The boys were really excited to make daddy's cake this year. They were really cute. They picked red velvet cake and of course white icing but then Kade insisted on purple icing, so food coloring out and then we ended up with purple, green, blue and orange covered red cupcakes. Yeah that was cool.
I couldn't bring myself to drop the kind of money on a pair of golf shoes like he wanted when honestly *I* (the one he calls high maintenance!) could buy like 10 pair or more of shoes for what one cost. Yeah, high maintenance my ass. I ought to go high maintenance someday to show him that, actually, I'm nowhere near it. I wish some of you coach purse, aveda hair salon, laser hair removal (not that I wouldn't LOVE that), never wear the same outfit twice gals would chip in here and inform him, I'm just not that kind of gal. I suppose it is my own fault, I set the standard too low way too long ago.
Well, it seems the older I get though, the more girlie I seem to come, much to my dismay. I've even recently decided I might like handbags. No, not the $5 clearance bag that no one else on earth would touch with a 10 foot pole from Old Navy. Actual handbags. That are cute and stylish. Now, I must say that Coach is NOT m thing. Mostly I think 99.9% of them are hideous much less worth $900. I'd rather picket out in front of the store with signs informing people how many less fortunate they could help with the money they spend on that purse that will be out of style in a month and is truly butt ass ugly to begin with. Feed a family of 12 in Somalia for what like a year? Six months at least. Save a whale, rescue a squirrel...I mean the possibilities are endless. NOt to mention the camera lenses that could be purchased. Geez.
So I actually BOUGHT one. No. Not a coach which there is ONE, just ONE that I like but I'd never in a BILLION years buy it. I bought a Jessica Simpson bag. Sorry but I had no clue she had a line of stuff out now, and other than her obsessive usage of gold, brass whatever that is...I dig. Girl needs to look into silver a bit more but other than that, not bad.
HOwever, it took me less than 4 hours to decide it was just a bad idea to have spent that much (which is honestly NOTHING compared to coach bags) on a freakin purse. So I took it back and still have my previous most expensive handbag ever with the burn on the bottom thanks to Cody. Eh. It's got character. :)
I love shoes. Always have though. Mike thinks my 8 pair of shoes is excessive, 6 of those being flip flops which are obviously not really conducive to winter time in England. *smirk*

Um, ok pointless tangent out of my system now.
The boys are doing really well. I changed their school schedule to half day everyday and while it does absolutely NOTHING for my errand running alone scheme, it seems to have made quite a difference in their behavior. I had one whacked out schedule for them before, but it was strictly to benefit me, but wasn't really doing any good for them. I'll have plenty of time to run errands alone soon enough I suppose. It's not a super busy class either, so in the event I need to get more accomplished, I can just ask for a full day...like tomorrow (woohoo!).
Their new teacher has made a lot of changes as well and I feel like it's making a difference. They do scrapbooks at school and we get to bring them home from time to time. So it is really cool to see photos of what they do at school and notations of their progress etc... I still can't believe how big my boys are! I also can't believe I send them to school with their hair looking like that so often! I really really really need some boy haircutting lessons and a pair of SILENT trimmers so I can start doing it on my own. It's sick enough that their eyelashes are a foot long, their hair growing an inch an hour is just really unfair though. I'll go broke on haircuts.
Anyway. You have to catch him at the right moment, but I was absolutely floored a week or so ago when I realized that as Cody was writing on some paper, he was spelling his own name. He spells it out loud as he writes it. He tries to write it as well as he can anyway and can actually make a decent c and o and the d is almost legible, you have to use your imagination on the y and well...they are not placed properly, one on one side of the page, then the other corner etc... but who cares? I was really astounded. I know he's very bright and picks up a LOT from Kade but did not expect that yet.
Kade is doing fabulously also. He is really learning a lot and is really turning out to be such a good care taker. He wiped Cody's hands for him at lunch yesterday and gives him a hug in the mornings and tells him that he loves him all the time. He's making really great marks in school and from what I understood, ahead of the game a bit. He's addicted to reading books now, so I love that as I had SUCH a battle for the longest time to even be able to read TO him, now we have to read him a story and then he reads it back to us in his own words. I love it.
Cody will suffer through the little kid stories, but his first love is always novels and catalogs. Oh well, truth be told, I love it when my kids are weird like that.

Okay my "multi-faceted" moment is over, so here I will close and finish the photos. Maybe I'll have those up soon.

For any family members/personal friends -- not sure if you get the updates on my photog blog as well but if not ---- I posted several photos of Ally and Ashley from their senior pics I did WAY back in July. Check them out!
www.aimeepaynephotograhy.blogspot.com

Hopefully be back shortly with pics, or at least tonight! (keep on nappin boys!).