My former Pastor’s wife, Miss Lynette, gave me this sweater for Christmas. I was texting her a photo of what I looked like in it. I love that she is in her 60s and has an iPhone too.

Annabelle “reading.” We like hanging in her room after nap. This is the job I love.

We have this slide in our playroom and Roman crawled up it for the first time. Just as I was about to put it away until he got bigger.

Owen and Annabelle making “Snow” angels in the rocks. This is as close as they will get to making snow angels here in San Antonio.

Barb and I used our 50% coupon at Madhatters Tea from Restaurant.com. Seriously, a great breakfast menu. I also had Lemon Chamomille tea. Delicious!

This is what my mornings have looked like lately.  I feel like my decision to start consistent quiet times is very much like potty training. I just woke up one day and decided I was going to do it and it has been easy.

Morgan and Annabelle playing in puddles at church after MDO. It was really adorable how much fun they were having.

Roman is growing way too fast and will be walking in a few weeks. I have made no effort to help him learn. For some reason I am not ready for him to be walking yet!

Chocolate Chocolate cupcake from Kate’s Frosting in Monte Vista. Amazing.

Flowers at Kate’s Frosting.

Classic feet photo taken by Annabelle. I just want to eat her little feet. Love them.

UPS delivered two new books from HaperCollins Publishers for me to read and review. I got on their blog reviewer list a while back. I replied to their latest email, but I wasn’t sure if they were going to come. And they did! I now have a stack of books to get through. I can’t wait!

Annabelle loves taking pictures. I love it too, because she doesn’t try to use my camera anymore. I also like that she can drop this one on the tile all she wants.

It is really fun to see how she views the world through her camera. She is as tall as my hip and sometimes she doesn’t take very flattering pictures of me. She loves to go around and tell everyone, “Say Cheese!”  Here are some photos from Annabelle’s point of view.

In The Car

A Few of Her Favorite Things

A Visit With Morgan in the Car After Mother’s Day Out

A Visit With Anna, Michael, and Sarah Pena

Annabelle’s Favorite Subject – Her Family!

Finally, at Annabelle’s request I took a photo of her jumping.

I know I am going to treasure these photos, because she will be older before I know it and her favorite photo subjects will change.

This picture doesn’t do justice for the folks that showed up.

The worship team did a superb job.

And so did the choir (my mom’s on the front row )

Since the property is in the state it was left in after the last concert of 2008, we made due with the facilities available.  We thought this was a funny picture.  Why do preschoolers deserve the VIP Club?

The creative arts team had an impromptu art creation. The artist created the image in the duration of a song. Pastor Jason recited a reading about the traits of Christ, and the artist wrote them on the board. Then as the song played she did her thing. Breathtaking is an appropriate term for this.

We spent the rest of the day at my mom’s house grilling, chilling, and egg hunting.

30 pounds of meat. We don’t mess around.

Uncle Henry supervising the cooking.

Cooking up the sides.

Ace is getting the hang of the egg hunting thing. She did a great job this year…

Mostly with the help of Uncle Matt!

Poppy was able to leave his rehab hospital to spend the day with us and got to meet his great-grandson.

So, In case you didn’t know: my brother-in-law Matt is a major St. Louis Cardinals fan. On a recent trip to St. Louis, my mom got their family shirts, and of course there needed to be a photo session!

Isn’t this a great mom-daughter picture?

Annabelle is thinking of the words to describe her very first chocolate bunny.

At the end of the day both kids were pooped.

Although we have used Gallery for a while, we never warmed up to it as an application.  The default theme is ugly and it suffers from an excessive amount of features.  We don’t want every function plus the kitchen sink, just give us enough to get the job done and look good doing it.   Plus, the last gallery we had built using this application didn’t survive the server move, and that left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

We mulled over using one of the online photo sharing services, but even though they are feature-rich and have good integration into WordPress, I can’t get over the fact that someone else is in control of  my data.  I don’t have time to keep up with the EULA‘s of some web company that may or may not have my best interest in mind.  We had decided to use Flickr, but then came the “Microsoft buyout of Yahoo” brewhaha, and although that merger is still currently vaporware, it served to fuel my fire that I didn’t want my digital image(s) in the hands of another.  Plus, Microsoft doesn’t have a good record of leaving good things (programs, services, small animals) be.

After some searching Amanda happened upon ZenPhoto.  Their homepage says it all:

“Zenphoto is an answer to lots of calls for an online gallery solution that just makes sense. After years of bloated software that does everything and your dishes, zenphoto just shows your photos, simply.”

Eureka.  A clean, strong interface.  And a default theme that doesn’t make you blort.  Plus, it’s written in PHP, so if I don’t like something, I can change it.  Life is good.

The new gallery is a work in progress.  For all you scrapbookers out there, we’re currently organizing our pictures before the crop.  Everyday Annabelle will be moving soon (yes, Melia, comments will be available), but for now we’ve uploaded travel pics from Italy, China, Seattle, Chicago, and Hungary.  Enjoy!