Jennifer's First Birthday

It's been a little less than a year since I wrote a blog post about Baby Jennifer - my first time meeting her, a few weeks after her birth. 

And now, the sweet little girl is one year old and brings so much joy to her family!

I was going to take one year pictures of Jennifer until the weather cancelled our plans of going to Kansas City, so I got to take pictures of her birthday party -- equally as fun!! :)

Of course, little Nathan did the honors of blowing out the candle for her :)

She wasn't the type to really dig into the cake, but she humored us for quite a while by kind of playing with it. At this point we could all tell she was done, though ;)

It was quite chaotic to try to get all of them together... but at least one shot of them all looking in the general direction is worth it :)

-MarLeahJoy

Heirloom Seed Co.

Last night I suddenly remembered that I took a lot of pictures at the Heirloom Seed Co. earlier this month, and I haven't really done much with them. 

I decided to upload them to flickr instead of making a whole long post.

So you can hover over the image and click the right arrow to view what I took there at the farm.

We started out with a vegan meal at their restaurant, which was actually really good! Then we went down to another little building there in the "village" where they sold the best cinnamon rolls! We munched on those while we walked around and looked at the animals. After being in the seed store a while, I started to feel a little conspicuous with my camera when a worker made a comment to me (a nice one) and then asked if I had got any pictures of myself. "Well, no." So she took the picture of us three. Haha :) And when I realized that my mom and her friend were going to spending hours (literally) in the seed store I escaped outside to just walk around some more.

The very last panorama of these pictures was actually taken a little ways from Laura E. Wilder's house. Once again, my mom and her friend were doing something that really didn't interest me (going to the museum that was next to Laura's house). So I just took the car and drove the time away. :)

-MarLeahJoy

My Favorite

When it comes to children... no favorites are permitted, right?

No, I don't like that.

Let's just say if they are your OWN children you can't pick favorites ;)

Because I think I have a favorite.

It might be because she is my Aunt and Uncle's first grandchild so she is the central attention of every family gathering. Nonetheless, little Lacey is so sweet that who couldn't love her?

-MarLeah Joy

My Kinda Day!

I know that my blogging is so sporadic. Haha, my apologies. ;)

After about an hour of my parents agonizing about my safety, they decided that they would let me get out on the "icy" roads so I could go to the Holiday Fest at the Carver Park in Diamond.

It's actually an event for little children and we used to go to them all the time when I was young, but this time I was going to see a friend from college who volunteers there every time they have an event.

This is my friend and her mother who is an amazing seamstress and makes a new dress for Holly each event they have here. Her dress hem was lined with the most delicate beadwork. It was unbelievable! 

The little children at work with their crafts.

Museums and displays get fairly boring to me, but there is something about getting a glimpse back in time that I love... regardless if it looks like museum. Ha!

 When I saw these binoculars out on the deck, I had an idea to take a picture through them... and try to make it look like it does when you are actually looking through them.

So these are my attempts!

After the event was over, and most people left, I went on the little trail there.

I am such a sucker for trails -- it doesn't even have to be a spectacular trail.

Okay, I have to insert a few comments here:

First: That picture I took of myself was quite a painful process! It might look like a fun thing to do... blow snow out of your hands... Ha! but really my hands were soooo frozen and it hurt to even try to put my gloves on. Yeah, but it was worth it ;)

Second: I love to be all matchy-matchy with my Facebook profile and cover pictures and I realized that this picture matched my snowflake picture perfectly! That made me happy ;D

(there you go for all you non-Facebook users) :)

Just some ice and some macro ice.

I wished my family was there with me at this point so we could get a family picture here. 

But, alas! All I got was one of me trying to represent my whole family. ;)

{Umm... and it's a good thing there was no one else around or I would have felt really stupid setting up my camera and running up there to take a picture of myself. ;P }

Once I was completely cold, icy, freezing, numb, raw, rosie-cheeked, red-nosed, and chilled through-and-through, I hopped in my car and drove home a very happy girl. :)

-MarLeahJoy