time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life - brian andreas




Thursday, February 28, 2013

life in pictures

Here are 283904 more pictures (of very poor quality) that I took on my phone these last few weeks.
Enjoy.
Or if you hate minimally worded posts with a high volume of pictures (and a dash of sarcasm) then you should find some new reading material.
Stat.

my breakfast staple...baked oatmeal with fresh fruit
nuts.

ballerina in training.

I scoff at fast food most of the time, but do yourself a favor...
get in the car, drive to taco time, and get the crunchy shell taco
with no meat.
add so much hot sauce you might die.
you can thank me later.

the thing that gets me through most days.
my life is sad.

3 sick kids= 6 pillow pets, 5 blankets, and 46983 movies.

my guilty pleasure.
at 8:30am. 
health nut.

my new living room arrangement.
hello huge faces of my children.

I love craigslist Portland.
'classy boob light.'
yep, that's classy alright.

some days I have help doing my hair.
note to self: do makeup before posting a picture.

he fell asleep on the floor.
at 5pm.
there was no sleeping that night.
ps: I think he looks like dawson in this picture.

same seller. different ad.
still classy.

one day...the sun was shining.
so beckham and I drove.
and rocked out to good charlotte.

neon?
yes, please.

the kids are so happy to have their friend sophie back for
a few months. 
sleepover!

at the park.

last week I had a 'procedure' done (colonoscopy...tmi?  nope. we're all friends here.)
and while looking through my phone later, I realized I had taken
this picture of myself directly afterwards.
hospital juice in hand, and still high from the anesthesia.
obviously.
awesome.

on Saturdays I let the kids dress themselves.
against my better judgment.

7 years bad what?
also, get some windex.

after said 'procedure' my sweet friend laura (who also tended
my children ALL day) brought me dinner.
and the biggest box of jr. mints I've ever seen.
she's a saint.
ps: they are almost gone.

someone has a loose tooth.

a picture of 'mom' by beckham.

every now and then I have to tackle him and force him into a kiss.
to which he replies, 'ewwww. grossy.'
I hope he always thinks that about kissing.

are my children the only ones that trade in their full size pillow for one the size
of a square of toilet paper?
and then wear their socks on their hands to sleep?
yes?
thought so.

abbey has been going everywhere with us lately.

sometimes when the weather is awful, I get desperate.
and paint in my entryway.
don't tell my landlord.

safety first.
xo
-t


Thursday, February 14, 2013

hearts day

We celebrated today in style  with a pink breakfast, lots of sweets, and a candle lit dinner complete with heart shaped pizza. 



morning breakfast.
and a banner in the upper left corner that
REFUSED to stay up.

gotta love mini blinds.
classy.
i'm such a good photographer. 
always paying attention to details.

teacher gifts.
the kids made a list of their favorite things about their teachers.
some favorites?
-your pretty long white hair.
-when you don't be mad at me.
-the way your face looks when you smile.
-when you let me sit on your lap during story time.

yep, supposedly that is a heart.



i jump at any chance to use my crystal candlesticks
that were a wedding gift from
my great aunt.

And it wasn't just today that felt special and full of hearts and love.  I was spoiled this entire week with handmade cards from my 3 little sweeties. 
Just a portion of the cuteness, for your viewing pleasure:

first work of art by beckham hatfield.
'baby penguin.'
and one of my favorite gifts this year.

a watercolor dot to dot, dawson
 
happy valentine's day.  I love you.  from your lovely son,
dawson.
lovely? 
what the...

thumb print art, beckham

marker drawing of a flower, harper
 
'picture of mom,'
harper.

'my family,'
harper.
seriously, how cute is this??

...and in case you didn't think the last picture was cute enough,
in the 'my family' envelope was also this.
a picture of penelope, by harper.

date 13th feb
mom you will allways be ther for me win I need it.
I love you and happy valentins day.
you take me fun places.
I well allways remember you.
from your lovely son
dawson.
again, with the lovely?!
he is so sweet...I just love that kid.
 I hope they mean every single word in those misspelled little notes.

Also, a HUGE happy valentines day to this Charmer, who we missed so much today:

and by Charmer I mean the guy on the left.
aka: my arm candy.
The man who puts up with my obsessive furniture buying sprees and a garage full of half-finished projects. 
The saint who willingly gave up his half of the dresser (and the entire closet) for my outrageous collection of apparel.
One of the only men on earth who I find genuinely attractive, and gets better looking each time he goes out of his way to make me laugh....which is no easy feat people. Seriously, I don't laugh much.
The guy who works his buns off all week, comes home on the weekends and still musters up the energy to be Super Dad and Super Husband.
My best friend.  My favorite person ever.  My main squeeze.
He really is one of the good guys.

And an official happy valentines day to these three crazies....just in case the breakfast, décor, gifts, notes, kisses, and hugs weren't enough.

beckham seems to really be enjoying himself.
They love me even in my worst moments.  They celebrate the little things.  They challenge me every day and force me to look at things differently.
They are responsible for teaching me what love really means:
Love is taking a quiet moment with a little girl on a busy day.  It is ignoring the laundry, dishes, and cleaning to listen to slow stuttered readings of Dick and Jane.  It is running warm baths at 3:30am and washing feverish tear-stained cheeks.  It is being excited about loose teeth and putting band aids on the tiniest of cuts. 
Love is challenging, imperfect, and hard. 
It means putting others' needs first. 
And often times means forgetting our own needs altogether.

But realtruehonestgenuineforreal love...
is SO worth it. 
Especially if it's coming from these three.


Make that four.


happy hearts day, my loves!

xo,
tracy (aka: mom, sexy buns (yep, he really calls me that), babe, tracy lynn)

Fun Facts for Valentine's Day


Hi there, it is me again.  Remember me?  My name is Dylan and I am Tracy’s husband.  You might remember me because I tend to hijack Tracy’ blog every once in a while.  Well I am at it again.  I have hacked her blog and Facebook account and wanted to post a blog that I just wrote.  I wanted to do this for our anniversary a few months ago but I kind of missed the boat.  Valentine’s Day was my next best option.  These are a few fun facts that people don’t know about when Tracy and I dated.  We dated for a little over 6 months.  I hope you enjoy:

-3 months after my mission, I was walking into church with 5 or 6 of my closest friends and I was about to assume our normal arrangement in the back row of the room.  All of the sudden, I noticed Tracy sitting by herself on the other side of the room.  It had been about 3 years since I had seen her, so without thinking, I kept walking toward her and totally ditched all of my friends.  I sat next to her and we started talking and catching up.  We talked throughout the whole meeting.  By talking, I actually mean that I was trying to ask her out as subtly as I could.  She wasn’t interested.  We kept talking and about half hour into the next meeting (an hour and a half of asking her out), I somehow convinced her to go on a date with me, but it had to be labeled ‘a friendly date’.  How lame is that?  She was weird from day one.  Anyway, she agreed to go out with me.

-Right after aforementioned semi-rejection, Matt Simmons came up to Tracy and gave her a hug and said that she needed to go on a date with him.  I felt better by the fact that she told him no too.  She wasn’t just trying to reject me, she was rejecting everyone. 

-I never actually called Tracy after I asked her out.  Three days after church, I received a random text on my work phone.  At the time, I didn’t have text messaging (can you actually believe that?! How did we survive without text messaging?!) so I couldn’t tell who the message was from.  The text read, “Hey, how is your week? Tracy”.  Had she not put her name in the text, I would have had no idea who it was from and I couldn’t reply.  LUCKILY, I was able to tell it was from Tracy and I called her right then and made plans for the ‘friendly date’.  So, I guess you could technically say that if Tracy had not put her name in that text, she never would have scored me (my confidence was pretty shaky after the semi-rejection at church so who knows if I would have had the pelotas to actually call her?)! Yeah right! I would have been the one losing out. 

-Our first ‘friendly date’ was a double with Jake Root and some other chick that I have forgotten about.  We went to see ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’.  A few minutes before the movie ended, Tracy leaned over and put her head on my shoulder.  It was one of those, “she-touched-my-leg” moments.  Of course I didn’t think much of it because my rejection wound was still pretty fresh. 

-We ended up hanging out a few days later at Chance Hobbs’ house where we swam.  I remember that I went to pick Tracy up and dunk her under water and she freaked out because she didn’t want to get her hair wet.  That was my first indication that this chick was high maintenance.  She continued to explain to me that ‘chlorine is so bad for her color-treated hair and that she would need to use a ton of product to fix it’.  Okay, Tracy.  Weirdo.  
This was the first picture that we took of ourselves. It was taken on our way to Hobbs' house.

                                                             
-We then hung out a few days later when I asked her to go bowling with all my friends and I.  Of course, she shows up with her tiny lap rat in a purse.  Indication number two that this girl is probably more than I can handle.  We had a good time, despite the fact that I had to hold Princess Grace Kelly every time it was Tracy’s turn to bowl. 
Meet Grace Kelly. RIP. Seriously. We miss her.


-A few days later, we went boating with a bunch of my friends.  Tracy and I were sitting at the front of the boat and she proceeded to tell me that she didn’t want to get married until she was at least 30 years old.  Not that I was thinking that I wanted to marry this girl the next day, but it was interesting to hear that.  Just wait, it gets better. 
We had a lot of good times while boating.  I have always been really mature.

-A few days later, a bunch of friends and I were swimming over at Mark Gardner’s house.  Seriously, my friends and I apparently swam a lot.  Anyways, at this point I was definitely getting the hots for this chick.  I was starting to look past all of the high maintenance issues I was learning about her.  Well, after a few hours of swimming, everyone else had left and Tracy and I were just talking in front of Mark’s house.  Hunger started to creep up and so we did what any two 21 year-olds would do…we hit up TB (Taco Bell, an acronym, get it?). So we both jumped on my motorcycle and headed down to TB.  This is where it gets interesting.  Somehow, anytime I wasn’t shifting gears with my left hand, I was holding her hand that was wrapped around my waist.  I kept asking myself, ‘are we holding hands here?’  So we continued down to TB and ate probably the most unhealthy meal in the world.  It was such a good time.  What in this world could be better than Taco Bell?!

I miss my bike.  I seriously think it made me cooler.

-After TB, we rode back up to Mark’s house where Tracy’s car was parked.  We sat out next to her car for a while just talking.  All of the sudden I slowly went in for a kiss.  Ballsy, I know.  Well, I didn’t have the courage to just go for it so I went in right to where our lips were about to touch and held it there.  It was a test.  If she slapped me or pushed me away, I was good because I didn’t actually ‘try’ to kiss her.  It turned out that she didn’t completely reject me (for the second time) and I went in for an actual kiss.  Yep, we kissed.  We proceeded to kiss for a long time (I won’t tell you how long, that is a secret that I will keep to just Tracy and I J).  Let’s just say that it was long enough for Grace Kelly to get a very quality nap in the front seat of Tracy’s car. 

-This is my personal favorite and I honestly don’t know if anyone in the world knows this next fact.  The next morning, after our first kiss, I received a phone call around 8:00 AM.   I still remember exactly where I was when my phone rang.  It was Tracy.  I was really excited to talk to her until she dropped this bomb on me…she requested that I not tell anyone that we kissed!!! OUCH!!! How was I supposed to interpret that?  She claimed that my friends had ‘big mouths and she wasn’t ready for them to find out’.  Shot to the heart!  I complied anyways.   I am not even sure when she gave me permission to start to tell people that we were dating, but I remember having to be sneaky about it. 

-Well, 4 days later I knew that I loved Tracy and that I wanted to marry her.  I just didn’t know exactly how to tell her that, since she didn’t want to get married for approximately another 9 years.  It was really hard telling her that I loved her but when I finally went for it, I said, “Tracy, I love you and I know that we are going to get married.”  That was not an easy thing to say after officially dating for 4 days!  Her response was, “I know.”  WTH?!  I know?!  I know?!  It was that easy for her?  I was sweating bullets and pitting out trying to get those words out my mouth and all she has to say is “I know”?  Whatev.  To this day she still tells me that she loved me before I loved her.  I tell her she just wasn’t bold enough to say it until I did (can’t blame the girl, I guess).

-We fell in love fast and wanted to get married like the next day but unfortunately my dad was in Iraq and I really wanted him to be at the wedding so we had to wait a few months.  I ended up proposing to Tracy a few months later.  I tried really hard to surprise her with the proposal.  Apparently I did, because when I dropped to my knee, she told me that ‘she almost threw up’.   WTH is wrong with this chick? I guess I will take that as a ‘good thing’.  She said yes despite the gag reflex that was sparked. 

Mesa Falls in Eastern Idaho.  This is the exact spot that Tracy almost threw up on me.

-Things were not always totally easy while we were dating.  One night we got into an argument and did not end on good terms when Tracy dropped me off at my mom’s house (where I was living, I was cool, I know).  I walked in my mom’s house and just started crying really hard. (I was a pretty emotional dude back then).  My mom climbed out of bed, it was around 12:30 AM mind you.  She saw that I was pretty upset and the first thing that comes out of her mouth was, “Dylan, is Tracy pregnant?”  HAHAHAHA That still makes me laugh to this day.  I will clear the air and let everyone know that she WAS NOT pregnant, and that we worked everything out.  Man, I am so glad we did. 
-While we were dating, Tracy told me that she hates two types of cars.  1). Blue cars.  2). Saturns.  It is pretty ironic now that we have had a blue Saturn for almost 4 years.  I think that she really lowered her standards for me. 
So let’s recap: Tracy told me no when I asked her out.  Our first official date was to Taco Bell.  Our courtship should have lasted ~9 years but actually it could have been as short as 4 days.  She asked me not to tell anyone about us kissing.  She almost threw up on me when I proposed.  And she did not get pregnant while we were dating.  Are some of you wondering about how lucky I was?  Believe me, I still do. 
Cascade Lake.  I had awesome hair.  I want you to notice something: Tracy looks the same that she does to this day.  Me on the other hand...Tracy has controlled my hair styles. 

See. Check out the hair...

This picture is perfect.  I took this of us while driving on the freeway at ~80 mph.  She didn't have any idea that I was about to lick her face.  I don't think she would have been smiling if she had known.  I am awesome.