Outside!

Today was the first day the sun has come out in ages! It snowed almost four inches at our place Saturday. By Sunday afternoon the snow had turn to rain and didn't stop until today. Many cities experienced flash flooding and power outages. With all the terrible weather we haven't left the house. Kinsley has been stir-crazy in our tiny condo. So today she was thrilled when we took a little trip to the mailbox after Shawn got home from work. Of course I couldn't resist the photo opportunity and am really pleased with the results. The lighting was perfect! These photo's have not cropped or edited at all. What a great afternoon for picture taking! I just love my camera, but more than that I love the smiles and the moments it seems to freeze in time.

To see more pics from outside visit:
http://picasaweb.google.com/thesorensenfam/Outside

Sleep 101

The human body requires a certain amount of rest each day to function normally. The average human adult does not get enough sleep. To compensate for the lack of adequate rest, some people ingest foods and beverages that contain chemicals known to increase alertness. Others, such as the subject seen in the photo above, multi-task by sleeping while babysitting a toddler who plays 'blocks' on his person. The ingesting of chemicals or the multi-tasking both have side effects.
One of the side effects of multitask sleeping is having your spouse sign you up for a medical study where wires are attached to various locations on your person and then you are monitored for a 24 hour period while you try to sleep and nap. On the Uncomfortable While Sleeping (UWS) scale, a toddler playing blocks on top of you is only a 4 while wires glued all over your body and a night vision camera tracking you is a 9.
The nurse who attached all of the wires on the test subject was a large islander from Guam. The next morning the nurse commented that he had never heard so loud of snoring come from such a tiny person.
These pictures come from my second visit to the Center for Sleep Disorders Clinic, which was November 23-24, 2007. My first visit was October 18-19, 2007.

Just Because

Shawn came home after work on Friday with these beautiful flowers! Why you ask? Just because! He's such a sweety. These are the kind of flowers I like receiving the best. They're the unexpected, the for no reason at all kind that really mean the most. I love my guy!

Picture Happy!

Just practicing with my camera. Taking pictures of Grant is so much easier than Kinsley. Grant just sits there and smiles at everything I do. Kinsley has to be totally coaxed to stay in one place. Even with a bribe all she do is pout for the pics. The first picture of her was taken under our kitchen table. She was under there hiding from me, the little stinker! I love the shot of her with her face buried in the corner. It describes in a nutshell how she feels about my most recent hobbies. Oh well she'll have to get used to it, I'll be doing it for years to come! I love photography! I don't know what the heck I'm doing yet, but what I've figured out thus far is really fun.

Picaso? No Kinsley!

Here's a short little video of Kinsley drawing. I recorded this about a month ago and have been meaning to upload it forever but I just couldn't get the thing to work! I realized after an hour of uploading this morning that I had chosen the wrong video. The other version is better but this will have to do! Anyway it's still really cool. She has taken to drawing faces recently and is improving daily. Ahh.... our little artist!

Boots

I bought Kinsley these cute new rain boots yesterday and she has been hooked ever since! From the moment we left the store she was shouting "I need my rain boots!" This morning when she woke up she put them on right over her pajamas, she looked so adorable. Later in the afternoon I decided to take her out to the parking lot and let her splash around. She had so much fun it took some major coaxing from me to get her back inside. While she was having a good ole' time getting wet (in the freezing cold I might add, why do children love this?) I was having fun taking pictures. I recently bought a Rebel XTI with some of my remaining Americorps money. I can't seem to put the camera down. Photography is fast becoming a hobby of mine. I better start saving my pennies because the equipment needed for great photography isn't cheap! It's totally addicting! That first good shot sucks you in, urging you to top that, then the next one, and the next......

To see more of these cute pics check out our web album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/thesorensenfam/NewBoots

Happy Halloween

A friend of mine helped me host a Halloween party at my place. We had so much fun preparing for the party and made some great food to go along with it. Kinsley and I were indians and Grant was a cowboy. Shawn went to work earlier in the day dressed as a nerd. After he took off the glasses the plaid shirt fit right in with our theme.



These were so yummy and so much fun to make!


Ahh... I just loved Kinsley's costume. When asked what she was going to be for Halloween she would respond with "an indian princess". The funny part was once she actually got in the costume and someone asked "Kinsley what are you?" She replied with "I'm a costume."

We set up a carmel apple bar and umm it was delicious!


We played games like Gravediggers and Poison

The Watkins went as Napoleon, Deb and Pedro


A cowboy and his horse. The Swensens were dressed up in the western theme too. Brent made the cutest little horse


Poor Shawn! While we were all playing he had to sit on the couch and work on a paper for legal writing. His teacher set the deadline for 11:00pm that night. I bet she was a witch for Halloween ha, ha!

To see more pics from Halloween visit our web album at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/thesorensenfam/Halloween07

Pumpkin Patch '07

Yesterday we went to the Carelton Farm Pumpkin Patch with our playgroup. They have a small petting zoo,beautiful pumpkin patches, a children's maze, and many more activities.

Kinsley loved the petting zoo, she was fascinated by the goats and kept insisting on looking at them. We saw chickens, pigs, and turkey's too.

This goat had more personality than any I had ever seen. This shot was taken right after he scared me. I had my back facing him while I was talking to a friend. I heard someone behind me and turned around to this goat just six inches from my face, yikes! I jumped of course, the other moms thought my reaction was quite hilarious!

Kinsley was thrilled at the opportunity to look like a goat.

Just a cool little shack

Kinsley couldn't resist going in side for a peek.

I wasn't able to get too many shots of Grant as I spent most of my time chasing Kinsley around. He was a good sport about it! Ha, ha.

I love this picture of Kinsley sitting on the tractor. She's so serious!

The view here is spectacular!

Aren't they just adorable!

This is one of my favorite pics of the day. I'm a little ashamed however at how I got the shot. Kinsley had fallen down and was reaching up for me to help her. I just couldn't resist, and snapped a few pictures. Needless to say she was not very happy about me taking my sweet time!

What a great day!

To see more pics of our trip to the Pumpkin Patch visit our web album:

http://picasaweb.google.com/thesorensenfam/PumpkinPatch07

I'm sitting up!

Grant is six months old now and getting such a personality. Although more mellow than his vivacious sister Kinsley, Grant really knows how to entertain a crowd. He reached a milestone yesterday: sitting up! I am so excited he can keep himself busy for a lot longer. I'm still running over ever five minutes to sit him back up, but shortly I know he'll be pro! He's just such a cute kid! He's 18 lbs now and pretty tall. Oh yes, to Kinsley's great demise (okay she has no idea yet) he got the "Sorensen Lashes". Oh well she's got the curls, although there's still time yet for Grant. Anyway we're enjoying every minute with him.

Day at the EMP

A couple weekends ago some of the other moms and I got together for Free Museum Day and headed to the EMP (Experience Music Project). We were able to see so many great exhibits like the history of guitar making, the sound stage, the tower of guitars, etc. We were all excited to see the Jimmy Hendricks exhibit only to find out that after six years it had been removed just one month prior to our coming. Oh well, everything else was really great. They had a lot of hands on activities. We were able to play with electric guitars, keyboards, drums, vocals, and more. Shelly, Tiffany and I participated in a mock vocal recording session where we sang Nirvanas "Smells like Teen Spirit". Just the right song for a bunch of moms, don't you think? I guess the truth is out that we're really rock stars. Our band is called "Spit-up", cuz we can spit out the tunes yo, or maybe because we're covered in it all day. Okay could I be more cheezy? Really no rock group here, but it was fun to pretend for a few moments. The real rock star of the day was Kinsley. They have a children’s room set up were the kids can play with the drums, guitar, color, read and get in a rock star get-up (which explains the hot pink zebra coat Kinsley is wearing--come on you all know I have more taste than that!). While I got some cute shots of her fooling around with the instruments and the dress-up clothes, she spent most of her time reading. The Arthur series is Kinsley's favorite and the EMP just happened to have a book about Arthur forming a band. All in all it was a great day, and best of all it was free thanks to the Baugh’s and there deal savvy ways!

to see more pics from the EMP visit out web album :http://picasaweb.google.com/thesorensenfam/DayAtEMP