Merry Christmas to you and yours From the Ingram family

I am sitting here on the Monday after Christmas trying to figure out exactly what to do with our last week of Christmas vacay. Options are limitless...unfortunately, thanks to Christmas shopping, money is quite the opposite ;-) So since blogging free, we'll start there, shall we?

We had an absolutely fantastic Christmas. Not only was my brother NOT deployed, and we had not JUST moved into a house, but it snowed for the first time in...well..I am not sure. But no one in Polk or Floyd county that I know can recall ever having a white Christmas and so this was very exciting to these folks in this area of the country. In every Christmas movie you see there is now on the ground, right? Yet, we've never seen that. In fact, I can recall many Christmas' when I wore flip flops and only a light jacket because it was 65° outside. And I can recall many years when our Easter Sunday was colder than Christmas morning. Georgia weather is just goofy. Anyway, it was indeed very cold this year and it snowed...a lot. If you know me, you know that I am not a fan of being cold. I don't even really like snow because it's...well, it's cold, and it's also messy. It was however, very beautiful falling on Christmas day.

 I would post pictures...but you've all seen them on facebook or flickr anyway. if not, you can see them all here

 

Now, if I could just find something to do with this last week of 2010? I'm sure we'll get into something! 

One year ago Wednesday - Happy 7th Birthday Eve Catie Bug!

I took this picture one year ago on December 22nd 2010. This was part of Cate's 6 year portraits. 

Now, I can tell you what I was doing exactly 7 years ago this very minute. I was 3 days shy of my due date and helping my mother-in-law decorate her Christmas tree. I was secretly timing contractions and had been doing so since lunchtime. I had been doing this pretty much every single night for the past week and the next morning they were always gone. Bummer. I didn't think this night would be any different so I didn't tell anyone at first. I knew that these were different contractions because I had been enduring the worst backache all day and they progressively got worse as the day and evening wore on. I think by the time we left my in-laws, I had mentioned it to them but downplayed it thinking that I was certainly going to give birth to this child on January 1st at exactly 12:00am, which would of course mean that we couldn't claim her on our 2003 taxes. Around 11:00pm, however, I was starting to hurt. I took a shower just in case and about 30 minutes later, I felt like I should really tell the boss "it's time". Oh "It's time" those magic 2 words that I had dreamed about saying for the past nine months. I had assumed that the boss would react like the dads in the movies. Getting all excited and anxious and he'd scatter around grabbing bags and gently guide me out the door as I moaned and practiced breathing techniques. Well, the reality was more like "Are you sure? How do you know? Can it wait until morning? You know they'll just send us back home. It's awfully cold out there." and I was perfectly able to walk to the car myself with no assistance. It was exciting for us both though. 

24 hours later, we were in the recovery room holding our darling little Catie bug and just starring at her. Well, ok, I was. Seth was trying to sleep because he had a cold and he doesn't do hospitals very well. But he has starred at her enough since then to more than make up for that!

Tonight Cate is spending her birthday eve at Grandma's with her cousins Bonnie & Rosemary having some much needed girl time. It's going to be strange to wake up tomorrow, on her birthday, with her not here but this is what she wanted and I guess she old enough to decide for herself now. Now that she's a big girl and able to decide how she wants to spend her birthday eve. I don't mind. Not much. I mean, we'll see her tomorrow sometime. 

whahhaaaahhaa!

*sniff* I'm good. Here some favorite snap shots of my little princess
Catherine Elisabeth
December 23rd, 2003
8lbs 6oz 21in

Ingram Family Christmas Part 1

I(and by I, yes I do mean us, I just feel like I was the only one caring about it) hosted a dinner and gift exchange with the Ingram family. Now, you long-time followers are wondering what's going on. Not to worry, the Ingram's will still be gathering on Christmas morning at Papa Bill and Mama Cat's house for Christmas brunch. No, we did this because we are all so infatuated with my brother-in-law Jonathan's girlfriend, Lisa, that we wanted to include her in our Christmas celebration. Lisa will be traveling over the Christmas holiday to spend time with her family so we wanted to make sure that we got some time with her as well :-)

So, I volunteered to host. I admit that. It was not a burden put on my shoulders by anyone. It was my fault. "Oh, I'll host! I'd LOVE to host!" Ha! Yeah, ok...hey you know what, we ate and hung out and it was great. But I am telling you right now...next time I offer to host a damn dinner I am just gonna order some Chinese food.

Well, we all know I never claimed to be the best cook, housekeeper, or hostess in the history of ever...but one thing you can always count on me to do is to make sure that everything is properly documented. Yeah, so what, my homemade yeast bread that I worked on for 5 hours wasn't completely done and was all doughy and distgusting on bottom...*gag* *fighting back a tear* and I was 25 minutes late getting the food on the table(if you know my paw-in-law, you know that this is totally unacceptable)...at least I have my camera's....

I'll ask you this...did anyone else bring a camera or video camera? Yeah, I think not. I'm important! I can't host an amazingly perfect dinner like my maw-in-law, but I can do somethings right!

(these pictures are SOC, I'll edit them later! Like in January when I have nothing else to do!)

You remember me telling you that Lisa makes pottery right? Ok, well, she made me this beautiful serving platter for Christmas. I was so excited. I love these colors! Isn't it awesome?

But wait, I turn it over...and there is a friggin stick family on back! How cute is this?

And remember the kids making clay bowls back in October? Yeah...she glazed them :-)

Liam didn't make a piece with the other kids, so Lisa made him this ornament :-) *love*

Oh crap! The Ingram's done broke out da karaoke machine again!

The Ingram Family Christmas Tradition & a special birthday gift

We Ingram's are big on tradition. We have lots of them. The kids annual group picture, Sunday dinner, the yearly photobook for Mama Cathy, scrabble, New Years Day peas and greens, Mama Cathy injuring herself in some way or another in late summer, etc. Yeah, some traditions are better than others we keep them all. One tradition that we have actually been trying to break for years is the Christmas Crud Curse. No, we don't really call it that, but that's what I am calling it from now on...errr..or until I can find a name that has more of a ring to it. We get sick at Christmas and typically stay thata way until New Years. I can trace this tradition back to at least 2006. And every year since then, there has been something going around during the week before and after Christmas. It's fun. Not really. 

On Saturday morning, 2 of my 3 kids were running a fever. I knew immediately what it was since my 2 nephews who had been with us a lot the previous week had JUST been diagnosed with Strep Throat. But I was going shopping with my mom and sister-in-law(a Brown family tradition) and left the kids with the boss while I headed off. When I got home, they all seemed better but I was concerned(ok, highly annoyed) that he's taken them off to play with their cousins(of the Ingram sort) that afternoon while I was gone. We had company in from out of town and I quickly got into relax by the fire, drink wine, and visit mode. It was lovely! Sunday morning, yeah not so lovely. I woke up hearing Simon screaming and between wails I could hear him telling me that his head and ears hurt. Before I could get him some tylenol, he was running to the bathroom to throw up. Ooookay, so I guess that means no Mass for me! Within an hour they were all 3 running a fever again. Blech! 

So we are sick and I was supposed to be hosted a dinner party for the Ingram tomorrow night that we'd all been really looking forward to. I have one last shot at hosting. Get antibiotics for everyone by lunch time and disinfect the house! We'll see how it all goes, but either way, we should be on the mend by Christmas. Off to urgent care we go this morning! Whoohoo!

Now, part of what stunk so bad about yesterday was that Cate missed her birthday celebration at my moms house.If you remember, some months back, Cate's DS went missing. The DS was more than just another toy for Cate. She had worked hard for nearly a year to save enough to buy one. She really took care of it and it was her favorite material possession. She wasn't obsessed with it, and didn't spend all day playing it, but she did love and enjoy that thing. It was a long 2 months after it disappeared and after searching everywhere, we determined that it must have been stolen from our car in the wal-mart parking lot. In the back of my mind, I still held out hope that someday it would turn up. It never did. 

Yesterday, my mom brought over Cate's gifts and her cupcakes since we wouldn't get to have our little family party. My mom is pretty much awesome..

Happy early birthday Catie Bug :-)

Bah Humbug!

The 1951 version of A Christmas Carol is my favorite of all time. I love it. It's just a classic old back and white film. I think it's crazy how men in black and white can look so transparent and true to their character and all the women always look so perfect...like little dainty porcelain dolls. This Christmas Carol is more than just black and white. I love how true to the book it really is. Anyone who really knows me knows that I am a HUGE Dickens fan. Yes, David Copperfield is a little hard to get through. I will admit that, but you have to admit that, if you get through it, it's a GREAT book! From The Pickwick papers to a Tale of Two Cities...I find his work fascinating and his dry sense of humor is what inspires me to write. I love his afterthoughts, and how he breaks in the middle of a thought to explain why he actually thinks something. I love Dickens. I first saw this film when I was about 10 years old. I found it fascinating, I loved how it was written and how Alastair Sim portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge, and how this movie didn't stray from the book much at all. In fact, it was pretty much word for word. Alistair Sim was funny and lovable even before his revelation. He felt like the uncle you had who you knew had some good in him somewhere...I don't know. I just loved him even as the stereotypical "Scrooge".

So I thought that since I didn't have anything worthy of posting today and I wasn't in the mind frame to create something to blog about, I would share this with you in case you had not yet watched this version of the film. I read A Christmas Carol every year. Some years I read it to my family, but I myself read it every year and I know every word. While watching this version, I see it all come to life as Charles himself was seeing it as he wrote it. So I thought that it might be good of me, a devoted Dickens fan, to share this with you today.

God Bless us, every one.

One year ago Wednesday

I can't narrow it down to just one. It was just a great day!

December 15th, 2009

This picture was taken outside West Theater in Cedartown. Cate and Luke's class to a trip there to watch "The Polar Express" and they wore jammies. The weird thing is...today was pajama day at school for Cate and they watched "The Polar Express"

 

Random April

- I'm a loser. No really, I lose things all the time. My purse, my keys, my phone, my coffee cup, an occasional kid...here and there. I am honestly the most scatterbrained woman you know(or don't know). I lost my keys twice in less than 24 hours. First on Friday night at my nieces piano recital. We found them eventually, so we made it home in our own car(minivan). Then again the next evening after I had returned home from shooting a wedding. Apparently unloading camera gear and bags and some random groceries you picked up on the way home is excusable enough to lose your keys and not have your husband yell at you. $60 later, on Monday morning, I had my keys which were, as we suspected, locked in the van. Nice. 

- Apparently having 3 kids was not annoying enough..we had to adopt a cat! Who got pregnant the week or so that we got her before we even had a chance to get her spade. And who also thinks she owns the joint.."Oh I'm sorry, was this your computer chair?" Yeah, cats are fun...(I do really like her, btw)

 

- There comes a point in every mothers life when you smell poop and convince yourself that the god-awful stench is coming from the garbage can....in the end, you still end up with your hands in a bunch of S***. As a mother of 3, I can tell you this: If they have sat in it for 5 minutes, their butt can handle 5 more while you finish what you are doing(and while you take a shot of something strong).

- Kids can say all sorts of funny things. But I think my kids can top it all with their dyslexic pronounciation of popcorn..they call it cop-porn. I secretly don't even want to correct them it's so funny. So I not so secretly do not correct them. I just say "you want copporn? Ok! *snicker*"

- My husband is really the sweetest man on the face of the planet. He knows when I am having one of  "those" days and he'll just give the kids a bath and clean up the supper dishes. And he notices when I have cleaned all day, he thanks me sometimes for doing his laundry, he kisses me goodbye every time he leaves the house, and he tells me that every meal I cook is the best I have ever made. When I say that my husband is awesome, I am telling you, I really mean it. I love my boss!

- I have been missing my old house lately. It all started while I was looking through Cate's baby pictures on Sunday night. I had decided to make a slideshow of her past 7 years for her upcoming birthday. Looking through old pictures of my old house makes me very nostalgic and sentimental. It doesn't mean that I am unhappy or sad, but I think that it is totally healthy and natural to miss a house where you brought 4 children and 7 years of memories into your life. I loved my house, it was beautiful and precious and I will always feel like that was our first home as a family. It doesn't mean that I wish we hadn't have sold. I doesn't mean that I regret leaving, or that I don't love and adore my current house. On the contrary, I very much love and adore my current house. If we stay here 7 years(I hope and pray?) I have no doubt that I will feel the same way about this house if we leave. I think I may have given "some" folks the wrong impression by my comment on facebook that I am missing my old house. I don't want to go back. And if I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't do it any different. This was a necessary move in our life and I think it made us a stronger family all the way around. Just setting the record straight. 

I'm just another mom(Cate's Christmas Parade)

I have a some fairly good friends who also happen to be photographers. A couple of them have been in the business since I was in elementary school and have well established businesses. They are good at their job. "Job". One thing that perplexed me was that, while I knew they had access to very expensive and very good camera's and gear, usually what I saw of their family photos were just little snapshots taken with a point and shoot. Do-huh? Why? Why would someone with the knowledge and know-how to create professional-grade photographs of their family opt to just do what every other mom does? After just 3 years, I finally get it. There are just days when you are not in the mood to deal with "photography" and all you really want is to just take a picture.

See, sometimes I just want a visual representation, and I am totally and completely uninterested in it being "art". I take great pride in my photographs and always have. Over the past few years, it went from me taking pride in my pictures to me being prideful about my photography and beating myself up every time I did not live up to the expectations that others and sometimes I, myself, set for my photography. So what happens after a while is that you get really sick and tired of being expected to always be the photographer at every single party, get together, family function, and community/school event that you attend. You show up to a birthday party that you were invited to and hope to enjoy yourself and the second you get out of the car people start saying "Did you bring your camera? I was hoping you'd get some pictures!?" It suddenly becomes clear that this is the only reason you were invited(or at least, you feel that way at that moment). I set myself up for this. My pictures have never been just amazing or the best anyone has ever seen, but I do typically take a high volume of pictures at events that I attend and I enjoy working on them and sharing them. It's good advertisement :-) After a while, I guess people just kind of assumed that this was who I am. I am the girl taking the pictures. But you know what I am learning? I am learning that most of the time, most people completely and totally understand when I just want to be another guest at a birthday party, or a small part of the crowd at a play, or one of the countless moms standing on the street waving as her daughter rides by on a float in a Christmas parade. And tonight, I was just that. Just another proud mom.

Cate was an angel on the United Methodist Church float in the Cave Spring Christmas parade tonight. No, we are not Methodist, we are still very Catholic, I assure you ;-) Our good friends, the Burton's, however are Methodist and they invited Cate to come help work on the float today and to later ride with them. She was thrilled! I shot a wedding all afternoon and was dead tired when I got home at 4:45pm but mommy duty called. I took my camera along but as you probably guessed by my senseless ramblings above, I didn't get many pictures. Here is what we did get though :-)

(I did NOT get a picture of the float :-( I was actually changing my lenses out when Seth said "Oh look there goes Cate!" they were gone by the time I got myself situated :-( But you know what...I'm forgiving myself for even that!)

Cell phone picture of Cate from our friend Gola...thanks girl!

The Boss & Simon

Boys waiting for Santa

Santa came over and patted them on the head :-)

A picture of the boss that I am rather proud of. This is a great representation of Seth...wearing 5 different shades of puke-green, not caring that he is wearing 5 different shades of puke-green, and looking very sexy while doing it. Love that man!

Cate and friend Carolyn after the parade

That's all.