PHOTO BOOTH SIGHTING...ELLIE GIRL practicing her skills of getting around!

PHOTO BOOTH (VIDEO) THURSDAY

Ten ingredients for a lot of pictures in one sitting...

1. Cute kiddo

2. Natural light

3. Learning curve

4. Fancy camera

5. Other children playing happily

6. Just finished snack time

7. No one needs a nap yet

8. Lots of juice in the battery

9. No video recording the annoying "smile at the camera" sounds

10. THESE EYES!

Photobooth Thursday...My Love!!

Here is my man making breakfast for everyone. He was home this week because his mom has been here visiting. This is a display of his culinary craftiness...an egg in mid crack! He is a genius with breakfast food and he's easy on the eyes. 

Photo Booth Thursday 

This is the first photo in my photo booth queue. Here are our two oldest girls from over two years ago.

 My decorating sure has changed. Okay okay, maybe the only thing that hasn't changed in this picture is the size of Lola's eyes. I sure love those baby blues. I also love how the color is a very similar to her daddy's. She has big blue eyes that do a wonderful job of expressing her many emotions along with the help of her eyebrows. 

AND SO IT BEGINS...

She started crawling "officially" on Tuesday and tonight (Friday) she pulled herself up on me to her feet. 

She's not wasting any time growing up! Wow is all I got...Oh and yikes!

Photobooth Thursday 

(Oops on Friday)

I spy something with my eye....

I took these three pictures outside our home as the girls were playing. They aren't great pictures or anything special but as I was looking through and deleting pictures I noticed something.

Can you spot it?

Saturday Balloons on Tuesday...

Last week Sam had a really short day on Tuesday because he stayed at work all night Monday. It was so nice to have him home around 9am. We made use of the sun being out to run some errands and spend some time together as a family.

The air was fresh, the sun was bright, the girls were happy and the balloons were pink.

It couldn't have been better!

I'm calling it PHOTOBOOTH THURSDAY...

I wanted to post my fingers because I've keep them away from my teeth and I actually have something to show for all the work I put in.

I opened up photobooth to take a quick snap shot to post and an idea struck me as I glanced at a few pics. Here's the plan...every Thursday, if I can manage to keep it up and depending on the kind of response I get I will post a picture from our mac's photobooth. If any of you have played with Photobooth before you know there are some pretty wacky settings on there that make for some fun pictures!

I'll start with this Thursday's theme...
"Things that have changed...and boy am I glad."

Amelia's stitches have healed nicely!

Lola's hair is starting to calm down

I can set Ellie down

and last and by no means least...Sam shaved this thing off!!!

You might think...

this post is about the differences in these photos and the camera used to capture these images. 

One is much better quality and its pretty obvious.

Well I'm not comparing the camera or the quality of photo.

It's the subjects.

It's not just me...these girlies look so much alike.

Lola and Ellie at 6 months

And as much as Amelia doesn't look exactly like her sisters she still has a very strong resemblance to them.

DAY 4: A habit I wish I didn't have....





Well I already told you about my nail biting tendencies. You might like to know I'm working on that one and I've found that if I paint my nails a bright or dark color it helps me keep my fingers away from my teeth. Right now I've got jet black nails and it's working nicely.
I have a good sized walk in closet and lately my habit has been to throw my clothes on the floor and then every once in a while I'll go in and clean and hang the clean clothes up and put the dirty clothes in the hamper and the shoes away. I have a dresser in my closet as well as hanging space so all my clothes except for jackets belong somewhere in that closet unless they are on my body or in the dirty laundry.

After I clean it thoroughly I can keep it clean for a week or so but then my nasty habit kicks back in and I let it get messy again. I don't like it but I love that there is a door on the closet so I don't have to look at it. I can blame my kids on the mess because after a day of teaching, training, playing, cooking, cleaning and everything else that goes into being a mom that loves her kids, I don't have the energy to clean it up. I might have just enough energy to hang up a pair of pants and fold a shirt but no more so I let the pile continue to grow until I can't stand it any longer. I never said I like this habit but it is still something that I let happen. Okay I can't and don't blame my kids for the mess. Its all me and my lack of desire to keep it clean. I can pretend I don't have the time or the energy but truth be told I have time and energy to do things I want to do. I just don't want to keep this area up enough. So I'm working on it now.



Now that I'm blogging about this habit I decided to fix it (I am a determined kind of person). I have cleaned up the closet and took pics. It's been clean since last Wednesday and has stayed that way. I'm loving it! I wonder what took me so long?
The pics don't show it super well but it's clean and neat feeling! I guess I should blog about other messy areas of the house that I can't seem to conquer, how about my craft area? Hopefully that will be next. (Technically the craft area is my entire house.)

PS - Think I have enough black tops/sweaters?

Some puddle time with Millsey

This is Ellie's normal face

This girl loves to blow raspberries and stick her tongue out.

I can't stand all the cuteness!

Day 3: A picture of me as a child...

I don't know if this is my big-wheel or one of my sisters'. 

I remember riding big-wheels with my siblings.  I remember the terribly loud sound they make as their ridden over rocks and concrete. I remember how the "big-wheel" in the front gets worn down and then burns out on the concrete. I  remember the wheel getting cracked down the middle and getting my little fingers stuck in the crack. I remember riding my big-wheel in the warm Washington evenings when the sun still hadn't gone down even though it was almost bedtime. I remember being a kid. I loved being a kid. 

(I couldn't get my scanner to work with the mac so the next best thing I could do was take a picture of the picture.)

Amelia has gotten into the habit of asking for a snack in the middle of the night.  Somewhere between 2am and 6am she walks into our room and says "have bah-naw-naw please?" How can you say no when she is so polite and sweet. (She doesn't stay polite and sweet if you turn down her request. Lets just say Ellie gets a snack in the middle of the night when she cries because we don't want her to wake everyone else up and so does Amelia.
I had the video camera this particular morning (3am) and got her banana eating habit on camera. Even at 3am it's pretty cute. I would fall asleep on the couch while she's eating her banana if I wasn't so worried that she'd choke because she eats it so fast.
The best part of this video is the last 30 seconds. Note the ladylike positioning of her pinkies and the dainty bite she takes at the end.
Enjoy!

If you haven't already noticed I'm a very inconsistent blogger. I'm working on this issue and have committed to 30 days of blogging or 30 posts (because I may do more than one post a day and lets not kid ourselves, it maybe many days before I post again). I've just posted the first one this morning and now I'm onto the next post....


Day 2: The meaning behind your blog name...
Well this is a good question indeed. My blog address is jengreeninjapan and that was the address I chose when Sam and I were starting our life together as we were newly married and just moved to Japan. It has been my blog home for 5 years. I'm seriously considering changing my address and revamping my blog a bit. Maybe a different direction for my blog will give me the boost I need to be more consistent. Honestly, the reason I'm not as consistent as I would like to be is because there are other things in my life right now that are more important, there are four of them. Sam, Lola, Amelia and Ellie. These four "things" are my favorite and spending time with them and meeting their needs are number one on my priority list. 

My blog is now named "From Florida With Love" and that name doesn't really have much thought put into it. Honestly I've never liked the name and just kept it because I wasn't updating much. 
Pretty much what you see is what you get. We're here in Florida with Sam's job and we are trying to keep our families and friends updated on our lives. I'm really ready to change this name too. I am still in Florida and I am still are sending my "love" but it's really not working for me. I have been thinking about a lot of different things and I'm feeling inspired to put more effort into blogging and keeping this thing up to date. It just might be the creative outlet that I need. 
So there you have it. The name/s of my blog is hopefully going to change once I come up with something that suites me and the direction I want to take with this blog. I will keep you posted and hopefully I can get it together before my 30 days of posts are up. 


Extra - as I'm writing this post I am using an updated version of blogger and it is so much easier than it has been before. What in the world took me so long to get around to updating to this version. I can already tell this is going to be fun. 
Anya, do you like Ellie's shirt? I love it. She is my littlest monkey! 

Here are 15 "interesting" facts about me

and a recent picture

1. I have an unhealthy fear of rubber bands and squirrels.

2. I bite my nails and I HATE it!

3. That reminds me, I use exclamation points more than I should. I find myself writing a comment on a blog or facebook post and then delete it and start over because I used to many exclamation points. Is anyone else self conscious about their use of the exclamation point? I might not worry about it as much if I was someone who is always shouting. Trust me, I'm not, I just write like that. (I deleted about 3 exclamation points after the word "squirrels" in my first interesting fact. I'm pathetic.)

4. I rarely ever sneeze just once. The norm for me would be three sneezes in a row. They are quiet so they add up to be just like one big sneeze.

5. I HATE solitaire on the computer even more than I hate biting my nails.

6. I had really curly hair until I was 6 months pregnant with our 2nd daughter. I wish I would have been more grateful for the curls when I had them instead of complaining about it my entire life. I miss it.

7. I was "chubby" when I was in high school. Turns out it was from the inhaled steroid that I was taking for asthma. Nothing I can do about it now except burn my yearbooks.

8. The scariest moment of my life was when my oldest daughter was having a seizure. That was the worst! (I am completely confident in my choice to use the exclamation point for this fact.)

9. I love to knit. I could sit down and knit all day if I didn't have other things or children to take care of. I taught myself to knit using a book called "I can't believe I'm knitting." So now I can't believe I'm telling people I taught myself to knit when it was actually a book that I learned from.

10. I hated to read aloud when I was a kid. I'm not sure if I'm over that yet.

11. I can french braid my own hair. It looks best when I don't use a mirror.

12. Myers Briggs says I'm an introvert. I do too. ISFJ to be exact.

13. Sam and I would not have had more kids if we didn't have a baby swing when Amelia was a newborn. Amelia was a tolerable baby only because we had a swing to put her in. She tortured us. We're glad we didn't give up on her. She's so much fun (now).

14. I've been married twice to the same man.

15. When Sam was up for orders to his first duty station where we would live after we were married we thought we were going to Guam. I was okay with that, I verbalized that I'd go anywhere except Japan. Funny huh? Well we ended up going to Japan and I loved it. Three years and two babies later we left. We still miss it. Good thing I don't make the decisions.