As most of you probably know, today is the one year anniversary of my father-in-law’s death. In Sean’s post today, you can read a little about the bittersweet time this is for him as he remembers his Dad. My sister-in-law has a great post as well. However, here at hobbsandbean, we are taking a straight-on happy approach to the memories…through goats.

Let me start with a bit of poetry…

The goat is still dead.

Being a wandering animal and being outside with the weather, gotchyer
was once again rain upon and got wet clear through to the goatee

We turn Gotchyer upside down to dry out but we were afraid that
the vulchers would come and devower poor Gotchyer.

- Dennis Higgins
(shared as originally typed)

Now that I have my nifty new camera, I am able to share with you the process of getting our nice family picture. In my experience, it has never been easy to get even two adults to look at the camera properly, so adding in two children is even more exciting. Especially when one of them is Calvin.

Here we have a couple shots that I took to get it set up before I joined the group…in this first one, Calvin is looking to see if he is able to kick Maggie in the head from his current location.


Here Calvin is using his patented ninja move to avoid sisterly affection.


And now we move into a set of pictures showing a variety of faces from Mags and Cal once the real picture taking started…I’m not sure what face this is from Maggie.


Or this one from Calvin.


Here Calvin has gotten distracted by his tie…which he strongly disliked. Maggie is getting wiggly.


Cal is not showing off his tie here, but attempting to rip it off. Maggie is being sweet.


And here, after realizing that the tie is not going to rip off, Calvin has decided to try chewing it off.


I think maybe this is an annoyed face because we made him stop chewing on his tie. Maggie has gotten tired of the picture taking and is hopping.


I have never seen Calvin make this face. I don’t know what it is.

By the way, for all of you that have been complaining about the lack of pictures of the entire family, HERE IS ONE. Enjoy it.

ears?



eye (and ear)?



nose (and, um, ear)?



mouth (and ear…still)?



hair (and NO ear)?



really dirty smiley face?



bad attitude after getting cleaned up?


Digital SLR camera : $900
CompactFlash cards : $60
Batteries : $20
Book for Complete Idiots : $15
Ability to take a series of pictures without wasting film : PRICELESS

I just got bunches of pictures developed (including a lost roll from the summer), and while I don’t have time to post any more than this, who could resist? Just consider it a teaser for the rest of the California pictures.

Dear Annie Grook,

Thanks for your letter. It was great to hear from you. I know what you mean about being busy. My gg and mama keep saying that I’m wearing them out with how busy I am. In fact, I’m so busy I haven’t even had time to learn more words than “dada” and “mama”. But I have gotten really good at signing “please” and “thank you”. And now I can even run, sort of. Basically it just makes me fall a lot faster and harder than I did before. But I like it. Speaking of things that involve my feet, I’ve got to tell you this: my feet are really cold. I snuck a look at your blog the other day and saw that I was getting socks…I was so excited. So I started counting the days until Valentine’s Day. I even threw away all of my other socks because I was so excited to get these fancy new ones. But I am glad that you were able to pursue some other knitting interests - I’d hate to keep you back from those. I just hope I can figure out a way to keep my poor little feets warm until you can send my socks. Thanks, Annie Grook.

Love,

Cal

P.S. My sissy says that her feet are cold too! Happy Valentine’s Day.

As Maggie was waving her magic wand at me in the Target parking lot today, she gave this helpful description of what was happening:

“My wand is wanding you around into a FROG!”

By the way, this is no ordinary magic wand…in it’s former life it was an integral piece of an orange-glo mopping system.