Life at Shutterspeed

Monday, May 9, 2011

Cabin 2011

Amy, Aaron, Meg, Scary Bear Nick, Hose, Jen, Allison, Mike, Mike, Chris & Susan pretty sure we might want to submit this photo to awkward Family photos!

Crawfish Boil

A fundraiser for Ben's school or an excuse for a bunch of parents to sit around and tell crazy stories?

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Mother's Day 2011

The card that Ben made me reads:

My mother's name is Jen.

She is 35 years old. (I'm actually 36)

She is 20 feet tall. (actually 5'6")

She weighs 30 (we are going to go ahead and go with that)

Her hair is Brown (lets just say the husband raised an eyebrow at that one)

Her favorite thing to eat is left overs. (ummm I very rarely eat left overs in fact we get made fun of as a family for NOT eating left overs)

Her favorite drink is water. (I'm very happy he didn't say Red Wine)

Her favorite TV show is "dancing and the star's"

For fun my mom likes to "play with me"

I love you too, BEN! VERY VERY VERY MUCH - and I think your favorite food is Mac N Cheese! And your favorite drink is chocolate milk, and your favorite TV show is Phineas and Ferb. And for fun you like to play Pokemon. And I think you weigh 58 pounds!

Mother's Day 2011 - Farmers Market and Brunch at Faces Mears Park

Super fun time with cousins.

Zero minutes spent in emergency room!

Husband and his Mother

I love my kids and I LOVE LOVE LOVE that Emily can not keep a secret if her life depended on it! I loved my bird house that Ben made for me this year, and my potted plant the Emily made painted purple and gold (Vikings colors) because she thought that was my favorite. (Not to mention that Ben thought my favorite food was "Left overs") In a moment of clarity, Emily remembered my favorite color was PINK. So while I was out on a Sunday afternoon run, Dad and kids concocted a plan to go to the grocery store for Milk (the gallong in the fridge only expired 4 days ago) and chips but really it was a diversion to buy Mom PINK flowers. The minute I walked into the house from my run, Emily says, "Mom! Dad and I are going to the store to get you a REPRISE!" And I hear Ben yell from the other room, "Well EMILY you just ruined it, I guess you get NOTHING MOM!" Love you two! You are my special kids! I hope I never use the word SURPRISE AGAIN because REPRISE is so much better! Thanks for a LOVELY DAY and thanks for being the best kids I could ever dream of! (and Ben a really special thanks for not dropping any stools on your head!"

Monday, September 28, 2009

A plague on both your houses!

Bee invasion and basement flooding all in the same week, same day actually. SERIOUSLY!!!

See the 3 tiny holes in the metal plate not covered by stucco? That is where the bees would fly in to their giant nest in our wall, from there they got in the house.

Bees in the house you say? Why yes. Isn't that totally normal? You mean you don't typically find 4-6 dead bees in your house when you come back from a weekend away? We thought that was normal.

When we started finding live bees in the house however we got suspicious. After weeks of speculating where the bees were coming from we finally figured it out. After hiring someone to come and kill our bees we ended up with over 100 bees in our house! By spraying from the outside it forced them all inside! The kids were getting quite good at bee spotting! All in all, I would say we had about 150 bees in our house over a course of 3 days!

To top that all off a pipe burst in the basement causing some major basement flooding. In the picture above you see the current state of our basement. We are doing some research to determine what we need to do to keep all future water out of our basement a believe a sub pump and drain tile system are in order.

As if we didn't already think there was a curse on our house, last night when we got home there was a giant branch that had fallen on Mike's car! I thought for sure there would be a dent in the car but there wasn't. It is a fairly large branch though!