The Misadventures of a Photo Shoot

*Disclaimer* I will be mentioning others in this blog.  To protect their identity I will refer to my niece and nephew as Red and Bubba and the photographers son as Mini Muffin.  Her fiance I will simply call her Handsome Assistant.

On this installment of my misadventures, Little Miss and Mr. Man A.K.A. the wonder kids, get their photo taken.  I should first inform you all that from time to time, my misadventures will include a shameless plug.  Hey if a service or in this case a photographer is that damn good, I'm gonna open my loud mouth and tell the world about it!

For years my best friend, and Godmother to my daughter, Lou and I have been talking about getting our kids photos done together.  My kids call her auntie and her kids call me auntie and they call cowboy uncle.  So getting a photo of all of the "cousins" is something we have always wanted to do.  Life however, as it always seems to do(damn that no good thing called life!) often pops up when you don't want it too and either she or I were not in a financial situation to afford photos or we just couldn't find the time to schedule a session.  This is where my new personal photographer comes in.  I shouldn't really call her my personal photographer since anyone can hire her services once she gets everything in order and officially goes into business in June.  However if I didn't have to share her services and could keep her talent all to myself I surly would and I'm not just saying that because I happen to have known her since Kindergarten with our first meeting in life involving her informing me that a bee stung her on the butt.  She truly is that talented and took the time to nurture her talent and perfecting it before sharing it.

Her business name and slogan reads "LIFEography by Brandie, capturing the magic of life's everyday moments"  and boy does she ever!  I already knew I had some good looking children but those photos she took of them make the wonder kids look nothing less than beautiful.  I imagine the only other time I will see my kids look as handsome and beautiful is on each of their wedding days, though I am sure having her take their picture every year they will always look spectacular!   When she says the best and favorite photos she likes to take are the unposed ones, she means it and she captures those unposed opportunities perfectly!  You know a photographer is good when the sneak preview she posts on Facebook drums up a new client.  When I met with her this past weekend to view the photo, we discussed her doing a photo shoot of Cowboy and I seeing as we only have one photo of us as a couple.  She may not have noticed it but their was a look of ease on his face when she described how the session would simply involve her with her camera observing us in a location of our choosing(she gave the scenario of Cowboy and I sitting on a park bench talking)and capturing us just being us.  Those of you reading this that know me have seen the one couple photo of us and know that Cowboy does not do well in posed photo's.  

The location for the shoot was perfect.  A place called The Dutch Oven, where Lou and I used to hang out in high school, had recently been rebuilt and we thought what better way to bring life full circle than to have the kids photo's done there.  In true preteen manor, Little Miss and my niece Red acted as if having their photo taken would plummet their popularity stock, while Mr. Man and Bubba kept wanting to pose wielding sticks in samurai sword style.  My photographers Handsome assistant was kept on his toes by their son Mini Muffin who kept trying to run towards the woods.  There was lots of chaos and our photographer had to do plenty of coaxing to get some sibling photos  but all in all it went great.  Knowing us for so long meant she wouldn't run screaming from the location after being frightened by our wild bunch.  I could go type forever about this misadventure but instead I would rather show you just how much fun we had!

Little Miss

Mr. Man

Sibling love Cardinal Clan style!

Bubba

Red

Sibling love Red Bubba style

BFF's and Cousins for life

All the kids together

BFF's for life!

Ode To The Preteen and everyones favorite "The Mom Song"!!

I would like share with you all if I may, a small I have written dedicated to the preteen in my life.  Some of you may be also suffering from this affliction known as the preteen so I am sure these words will ring true for you also.  This song will be sung in 4 part anger, 5 part annoyance and 6 part frustration.  Throughout the song I would like you to note how the anger's section is very similar to the annoyances section.  Also take note at how much stronger the volume of the frustration section is compared to the other sections.


First a brief warm up... "Grr, Ugh, AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!


O loverly preteen
you are the light of my soul
now please please tell me
Why must you frustrate me so?
I beg and I plead but no completed homework or chores do I see
I beg of you to release my sanity
You defiance is great
and your attitude much severe
If you don't cut it out you are going to force me to runaway from here!
Thank you


I hope you all like that little song.  I try to make life as a mom as creative as I can.  

Now I would like to share with you all, a little something that I had the pleasure of viewing when it was posted on my online mom's group. This comedian who also happens to be a mom decided to take everything a mom would say to her children and put it to the music of the William Tell Overture.  I hope you all get a kick out of it as much as I did the first time I heard it!

A Tale Of False Advertisement

In todays misadventures, the Cardinal house was in true Monday form.  Children and parents alike coming down from the weekend.  Monday night bedtime is particularly a fun time.  That is when the epic battles of trying to get a 7 year old and a preteen to take a bath occur.  A word to the wise, never tell a preteen girl that she needs to take a bath because she stinks.  Trust be you don't want to know what the outcome of that will be! 


In typical Cardinal children fashion, Little Miss and Mr. Man were playing ruler of the bathroom sink also known as fighting over who would get to brush their teeth first.  I tried to do what any normal stay at home mom whose husband works nights does.  I promptly turned up the volume on the TV and ignored the chaos going.  I figure they were both still alive so I didn't need to intervene.  Besides all the "experts" say it's good for kids to work things out amongst themselves and being the good mom that I am, I chose to follow the "experts".  


Let me tell you there is nothing the like sound of a crash and a screaming child to make you wanna smack the "experts" with very books they have written!  It was very apparent that it was kung fu mama time and I needed to whip some young grasshoppers into bedtime shape!  Why is it that when the kids see mom approaching they both need to speak all at once or on the rare occasions they do let each other get a word in, they speak faster than an auctioneer?  Parents of only children will know all about this last one.  I being an only child for all of my childhood and most of my adult life, remember speaking that fast when trouble was amiss.


Children were screeching at me and of course the dog picks that moment to need to go outside and the two fatty cats start yowling for more water.  So I closed my eyes, clicked my heels 3 times for good measure and cried out rather loudly as only I could, that one simple phrase that mom's have been calling out for years.  Not "Lord Jesus Help Me!"  though looking back, calling for him would have been more reliable.  "CALGON TAKE ME AWAY"  amazingly a brief moment of stillness came over me.  I opened my eyes and realized that I had merely yelled loud enough to drown out the sounds of my children's tirade.


After promptly marching Frick and Frack up to bed I sat down at my computer I wanted to find the creators of Calgon and berate them for the false hope they bring to mothers daily.  I watched an old Calgon commercial on Youtube.  I saw how the tired and frazzled housewife  found herself in a luxurious bath after Crying out for Calgon to rescue her from the chaos.  I am sure when that first commercial hit, mother across the nation were cheering in delight that there was finally an instant escape to the pressures of life that are bestowed upon us daily.  What a let down it must have been for those mothers that viewed those first commercials.


So now here I sit blogging to you all in blog reader land with a letter ready to send to Calgon saved on my computer.  Do I dare send it and create another misadventure for myself?


What do you think?

And On The Seventh Day, She Didn't Rest...

This installment involves a collection of misadventures starting with an unmedicated Mr. Man upset that his sister didn't tell him good job to the eye roll of a preteen after hearing something she deemed annoying coming from my lips. It says in the bible that on the seventh day God rested. No where in that great book does it say when us mothers rested.

Misadventure #1 involved a very unusual alarm clock...

My family is one strange bunch so it's no surprise that we have had a Homer Simpson alarm clock or the fact that my cell phone alarm clock plays a cheesy 50's sounding good morning song sounds like it belongs as the theme song of a morning news program. This morning however my alarm was rather strange. I say strange because I wasn't supposed to have an alarm go off.

The weekends are a day that Homer is kept quiet and my cell phone is on silent. This morning however the blood curdling screams of my son jerked me out of bed and in Samurai mom stance, until I heard the oh so loud yell of Cowboy screaming "What the hell is going on in there!?"

I gathered what little senses I had available this fine morning and stormed down the stairs to investigate the chaos that for once I was not in charge of. Mr. Man came running up to me with a very tear stained face. He and Little Miss had been playing just dance on the Wii and he broke his record on one of his favorite songs for this game. He looked to his sister for the praise and glory he was sure was to come and got nothing but a typical preteen uninterested in life expression.

After inquiring if she was gonna say anything, he got a response but it wasn't the one he was hoping for. Some how an "Oh yaay!" spoken in a sarcastic and very monotone voice just doesn't scream encouragement the way an enthusiastic "Awesome!" would.

Misadventure #2 will is best put in one name only ... "Miss Betty"

Thats right, for the umpteenth time of the umpteenth day of the umpteenth week, Miss Betty was making her daily visit to my home. She makes being the good Christian that I am striving to be, extremely hard. I'd like to tell her just once that today is not a good day to visit but then her whole sad sordid life story of betrayal replays in my head and for some odd reason I hear my bff Tanita's stepfather Jeff's voice in my head calling out "Thats the Devil in you!" Which I always take to mean just let the poor unfortunate woman thru the door.

Misadventure #3 turned out to be an extremely fun experience. Ever since our girls were little, My bff Lou and I have talked about getting our kids pictures done together. We have known each other since high school(about 17 years now!). She is my daughters god mother and her kids call me auntie and my kids call her auntie. Of course life always seems to happen when planning things like this and whenever we would decide to partake in this activity, something would come up for one of us that financially prevented us from doing so. This past Sunday we were finally able to make it happen. A friend of ours from high school is a semi pro photographer(she just has some loose ends to tie up to make things official) and is trying to build up her portfolio with more photo's of others outside her own kids and family. So we asked her to do a photo shoot for us. Everything went excellent. You can be sure that as soon as I get the photos in I will be telling you all in blog reader land all about it.

So there you have if folks. While most spend their seventh day in peace and solitude, I spend mine doing what I do best, having misadventures and loving every minute of it!

Being a real housewife... The incorrect way

Todays misadventure involves me coming to the realization that no matter how hard I try, I am just not doing this whole stay at home mom gig correctly....

Wednesday is lazy day for this head of house hold affairs and todays lazy activity involved watching the season finale of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills", The Season premiere of "The Real Housewives of Orange County", and watching the Ladies of the "The Housewives of Atlanta" round out their trip to South Africa. As they played the preview for next weeks Housewives of Orange County, I came to the realization that somewhere along the line I got the rules of being a housewife all mixed up.

All those years of volunteering at my kids school, never once did it occur to me that what I was really supposed to be doing was going out to dinner and other various gatherings with my girlfriends. When my bff comes over to visit with me while we await the return of our boys from school, we should be out getting manicures and pedicures while sipping wine and champagne, not sitting at my dining room table each of us going through the various paper work of our lives.

I called another dear friend that lives in a city north from me and demanded that she pack her bags and get ready for our trip to some exotic place, because after all we are real housewives and as such instead of dealing with our families, we needed to be in some foreign land dealing with which one of us gets to do the next body shot off of the hunky bartender or maybe it was deciding which one of us the hunky bartender does the body shot off of, or maybe it was if we should do one off of each other, I'm not really sure.

All I do know is that while all the other housewives in Beverly Hills, OC, New York, Atlanta, and even D.C. and Miami, are doing things the correct way, I in my Minnesota home, continue to do things incorrectly. You know, keeping my house clean without the help of a maid, cooking the family meals(no chefs for me!), and raising my kids without the use of a nanny.

I Truly Am Fat!!!

I just saw a recent picture of myself in a bathing suit. Let me just say it was yucky!!!! It's a good thing I am getting myself reacquainted with my SparkPeople account and have taken up exercising to the game "Just Dance", on the kids Nintendo Wii.

I will say this is a rather proud thing for me to write about because in the past when I have noticed how unappealing I have looked I would complain about it then go right back to warming the couch cushions with my ass.

Today was different. I really took notice of how not in shape I am and doing something about it. Though being round is a shape, just not a healthy one according to Little Miss...

Sorry For Party Rocking

If you haven't guessed by the title of todays installment, I will be delving into the mind of the group LMFAO. Their Party Rock Anthem has been the preferred song of Little Miss and Mr. Man as of late. I decided I had better get up off my lazy butt and do the good parenting thing of listening to the song and actually paying attention to the lyrics to ensure nothing inappropriate is being said, so I figure what better way to do so than to watch the video on Youtube. Not only will I be doing what I as a parent am supposed to but also be visually entertained(I hoped).

The song itself is very upbeat and danceable and nothing in the lyrics indicate that Bitches and Hoes in different area codes need to take their shirts of and spin them while dropping it like it's hot and shaking their money makers. Already I was liking the song!

Then it got to the part in the video where they call out "Everyday I'm Shuffling!" It was after that line that they proceeded to do engage in just about every dance move that I and my friends had ever done during our 4 years of high school! They were doing the Running Man and the Kid~n~Play The Watusi, and The Charleston. Granted the last two dances were not new to us but thanks to a cheesy move called swing kids, at least the Charleston became popular again.

I decide to play the video for little miss and explain to her that I can do all the dances the lead performers of the group did. After showing her just how well her mom can get down with my bad self, do you know what this child had the nerve to do? She let out and exasperated sigh while shaking her head, reached up and patted the top of mine and told me don't ever do that again! I was floored. I showed her the video again this time breaking down the dance moves and explaining to her what they were called in my day. Again came the exasperated sigh.

"Mom!" she exclaimed. "Those guys say everyday I'm shuffling, not every day I'm doing the Watusi, Charleston, Running Man and kid~n~Play!"

I asked why it was that those two guys as well as she and her friends were allowed to partake in those dances of my youth but I was banned from doing so. Again do you know what that Little Miss of mine had the nerve to say? Her exact words were...

"Well... #1 you're old!"

So there you have it folks. That was my misadventure in dancing and all I can say is sorry for Party Rocking...