Valentine Love

Happy Valentine's Day from the Frank family!  

Valentine's Day is a fun holiday for me, I really like holidays that don't take a whole lot of preparation in order to be fun and special.  Most years we call in a Me & Ed's heart shaped pizza and enjoy some candy and call it a day.  We didn't do that this year... it was a pretty crazy day.  Muffins with Mom, two class parties, and three hours of dance pretty much wore me out even for picking up a pizza and we decided to use a Groupon to a restaurant near to the girl's dance studio that was thankfully not busy at all.  

This year, the kids wanted to do their own Valentine cards... so I didn't come up with anything to crafty or over the top.  Hannah chose some Phineas and Ferb treats and Claire chose some gummy bracelets... Target choices: easy peasy.

I do have a tradition of taking a Valentine's day photo of the girls.  This year I was a bit lazy and almost decided against it.  There is something about a tradition though, it's hard to think about the future and know that there will be a gap if I don't do it again this year.  We went out for a little mini-session - I might try to share a few more from that later on.  

But for your viewing enjoyment, here are the previous four years worth of photos...

{2009}

{2010}

{2011}

{2012}

Christmas Photo Booth Project

I am "Room Mom" in Hannah's class this year.  Room Mom duties can really be as heavy or light as you or the teacher of the class would like them to be.  Basically, I am the point person when it comes to the four parties throughout the year, I am in charge of getting volunteers for the carnival (held in October) and I try to coordinate a gift for the teacher for both her birthday and 'Teacher Appreciation Day'.  Beyond that, as room parent I can do as little or as much extra stuff as I would like.

This year, I had an idea that I was excited about and when I shared the thought with Hannah's teacher she was pretty excited as well... so I went with it!

Photo-booths seem to be all the rage the past few years for weddings, parties, etc... especially the make-it-yourself variety... and thanks to some fabulous ideas found via Pintrest... I developed this idea for a 'parent gift' for each student to give their parents this year.

Each student was able to choose three props, I took their photos, edited them into photo strips, and had them printed at Costco.  To take it a step further, John cut plywood boards to size and drilled holes in the tops, then I painted them a Christmas-y red color and used Collage Pauge  to attach the photo strips to the boards.  (Ok- yes, it sounds super involved, but really once you do a sort-of assembly line, it wasn't too bad at all!)

And, voila!  The final product :-)

And here are the props I used!  All were cut using my Silhouette machine, and hot glued to skewer sticks.

Merry Christmas to the parents in Hannah's class this year!!

Concentration

A friend (thanks Kelly!)  reminded me of this photo the other day.  That iPhone sure does come in handy... and Instagram is my current obsession. 

Claire started gymnastics in January.  The beam is tough for her when compared to everything else, yet she still gives it her all. I'm so very proud of this girl.

I call this 'Concentration'...

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Goofball

Hipsta-love

A few random photos from John's iPhone over the summer....

My Favorite

I just LOVE this photo... John's iPhone

Blue Eyes and Warm Summer Light

The simple things that make me happy this summer.  Love this sweet girl.

Love=sweet girls+field+summer light

July|2011

Six months ago...

... I took these photos and sort of forgot that I had wanted to post them. 

These were from a little Valentine's inspired session I did with the girls.  How was Valentines Day six months ago?

Yosemite: Part Seven (& and last) - {iPhone style}

Well, here we (finally!) are.  The last of the Yosemite posts.  It was just too hard for me to choose just a few photos to post, so you got most of them :-)

John was having fun with the various apps he has on his iPhone, I think he had as many photos as I did. 

It was a fun and beautiful day in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and it is less than an hour from our house.  Why haven't we gone more often?

We will, but next time I won't make you sit through a full seven days worth of posts ;-)

Yosemite: Part six {Stuck}

Once we were done with the falls we decided to head down to Yosemite Valley to see some of the major sights... El Capitan and Half Dome. 

BIG Mistake.

It was such a busy weekend and apparently there is only one way in and one way out, so we sat in deadlock traffic for a good three hours.  Kind of a bummer, except that it was a little like being on a tram... move a little then take in the scenery... move a little and see something a bit different.  It could have totally been a much worse place to be stuck for three hours.  We didn't get out of the car because we needed to head home as soon as possible or we would have needed to stay for the night, we were getting so tired.

Here are a few photos from our time in traffic, and then the two at the end were of us at the lookout point on the way out. 

A good way to feel really, really small...

Yosemite: Part Three {Trees}

I don't know how exciting it is to see posts with photos of trees, but I fell in love with these and really wanted to post them somewhere.

These were all taken on our little hike in Mariposa Grove. 

Yosemite: Part One {Mariposa Grove and the Giant Sequoias}

I mentioned that last month we took a day trip to Yosemite to celebrate our 7th Anniversary and Father's Day... of course I took so many photos that I need to break up the posts! 

The first part of our little trip took us to Mariposa Grove and the Giant Sequoias.  We took a short little hike with the girls up to see the 'Grizzly Giant'.  I was trying so hard to capture the grandure of the trees on film, but it is truly something you have to see in person to fully comprehend.  It is amazing to just stand in awe of God's beautiful handiwork!

 The girls look so small compared to the trunk of this tree!

 The Girzzly Giant trail seemed like our cup of tea :-)

Can you see the other hikers at the bottom of this photo?  The word 'Giant' doesn't do these trees justice.

Almost there!!

Taking a stump break.

...and we have finally made it to the Grizzly Giant.  It was quite impressive!

I think Hannah was trying to be a Grizzly, but I can't be sure :-)