Baby Noyes

I had a doctor's appointment today and we asked about a gender ultrasound. There was an opening so we decided to find out a few weeks early. I am 17 weeks along.

IT'S A BOY!

Here's the proof!

Foot

Halloween with the Hamiltons!

Apparently the lot has fallen to me this time to post on the blog. I guess I can understand that this would be the case. Sarah is a little occupied taking care of two kids and trying to maintain her sanity with a husband who is thirty going on three himself. Anyway, here is a brief update for everyone who is curious to discover what has been going on behind the closed doors of this branch of the Hamilton Clan.

Halloween was an interesting event around our house. Every year it seems that we have large plans that don't quite seem to pan out. This year seemed to be no special exception to the standard we have set in previous years. Our ward had a trunk or treat that we neglected to attend because, instead, we decided to attend a similar event hosted by my work. Our varsity football team was playing in a playoff game against Snake River and on of the local businesses offered to host a tail gate party and trunk or treat for the community. It was really quite fun. All of my students were excited to meet Laila, she was a week old and I had not really been to work since she was born, so the kids felt a little neglected. They were all very kind and gave Aiden and his little friend Heigan lots of candy. Here are a few pictures of the experience with some commentary.

Aiden and I are gutting the pumpkin. He refused to touch the insides because he said that they were "yucky."

Aiden decided early on that he wanted to be Captain America this year and Sarah worked really really hard on his costume. Getting him to keep the mask on was a bit is a struggle, but the costume came out remarkable good. Aiden demands that he wear it at least once a week and refers to it as his "Capn'merica jammies." Heigan, his little neighbor friend was Peter Pan. The two looked very very cute!

Here is the full outfit, shield and all. I made the shield; I was pretty proud of it.

Running around, Cap is about to take out the Pan. hehehehe

Aiden and Heigan painted pumpkins becuase they are too young to play with knives, hehe! Aiden took the painting to an extreme when finished his pumpkin he decided to paint a jack-o-lantern on his stomach.
This is our little military painter. hehehe!
The two boys getting down and dirty wiht the paints and the pumpkins.This is our little Picasso. He is very serious about his art and has decided that he loves to color, draw, paint, and play wiht Play-dough. He is very cute about it. Last week he came to work to visit me and spent the last two hours of the day drawing on my white boards with my students and educating them on what superheroes were which. They were all very impresed and suggested that we should send him to the Oprah show and Late Night with Letterman. I'm working on it hehehe!

Anyway, our Halloween was really fun, we spent it with friends and enjoyed the evening quite a bit. We hope that all of you had a good time handing out candy and trick or treating.

Cheers,
Sarah, Price, Aiden, and Laila

Life with Laila

It was great to have my mom come for a couple days to help out, make dinner and she even cleaned! I think my house was cleaner than it has been for a long time! Thanks mom! My sisters all came for a visit the first couple days after we got home, and it was fun to have them. Aiden sure loves them! My mom also took Aiden for a couple days the first week. I'm sure he had a blast; he went to a Halloween carnival and played with the cat, and cousin Logan while Price, Laila, and I rested.
She changed so fast, her chubby cheeks shrunk down to reveal a real chin :) She loves opening her eyes and be awake for long periods of time (for a baby). She is quite content to just look around, until she gets overtired and needs to be coaxed to sleep. Her eyes are so big! I am still getting used to them. Since she doesn't really look like Aiden, I feel like she is not familiar yet!
Daddy's belly is a good place to sleep. She is good about sleeping on her own, but at night her favorite place is right by mom.
She did NOT like her first bath. Aiden didn't either, but he loved every one after that, so we'll see how it goes!
All wrapped up after her bath.


Aiden has been really great with her. He hasn't been jealous at all, although sometimes he tells me "don't feed her, mom". He gives her soft kisses and loves, and always asks "what's baby doing?" On Friday while I was trying to get ready to go to Price's school, he was tormenting her a little in the bouncy chair, trying to 'help' I'm sure, but that has been the worst of it. He usually just plays on his own and checks in occasionally on Laila and mom.
It has been a good two weeks. A little hard, of course, adjusting, but luckily Laila has been a pretty good sleeper and eater. What more could you ask for in a newborn? We are not an any kind of a schedule, and I look forward to a little predictability. It's hard to know sometimes whether I should let her sleep or wake her up to feed her. (during the day, of course, I've learned about night!) At her one week doctor's appointment she had already gained 6 ounces!


She is definitely a girl. She makes a fuss if you disrupt her by changing her and when she is hungry there is no distracting her! She can't decide whether she likes the binky, but she hasn't found her fingers yet and seems to want SOMETHING!

The hardest thing has been having a sick two-year-old! Last week Aiden got a cold and unfortunately passed it onto Laila. She has a stuffy nose and a cough. The past two days she has been throwing up, but doesn't have a fever. Yucky! It breaks my heart to not be able to do anything! Hopefully it will not last long...

Halloween Extravaganza '08

Star wars was the theme for Halloween 2008. For months Matt has been telling me about his Halloween memories. There was one family in his neighborhood that decorated the garage and made trick-or-treating an experience. Matt has spent months and months ordering supplies for the big event that include a fog machine, strobe light, black lights, posters, background, music, costumes, etc.

Here is the before picture....

We had more trick-or-treaters than we have ever had in years past. Matt was behind the streamers and when kids came up he turned on his light saber (you could only see a green light and most kids were very scared). Then Matt came out. With the hood over his head, it was kind of scary because he was in brown and black! I followed giving treats and mini light sabers. I also glowed with the black lights. We had many people ask if they could take our pictures alone, posing with their children and even posing with the adults. It was hysterical!!!! Austin, Macy, Paige and Abby loved dancing to the music, running through the streamers, and playing with the fog machine. They also had a lot of fun with the strobe light.
Here are a few pictures when it got dark.

Baby Laila and Company

playing with clay

So I picked up a bag of clay from the art teacher at the school where I teach. I have been feeling really stressed lately and I just needed to get some of that out of my system. I have always loved to play with clay and mold things, I just never felt that I was any good at it. Anyway, I took the block of clay and just decided to go for broke. I remembered a project that some of the art classes did when I was in high school that always looked really fun; they would take a lump of clay and shape it into the profile of a face, I'm sure that it has a technical term a relief or something fancy like that, but I can't remember. Anyway, this is what I came up with as I started to sculpt out a profile. I wanted it to be a bit of a caricature, and so far I am pretty pleased with what I have. I'm sure that most people will say that I looks like me, and maybe it does. If so, I guess this is how I see myself right now. What would Freud and Jung say about that? So, this is me ... playing with clay.

stage 1

stage 2

stage 3
These first three images show the progression of the piece so far. I'm not sure if you can see it very well, but in the first picture the eye is much farther forward in the face, and a bit smaller. I didn't like the way that it looked so I scraped off the first go and worked for a few hours to get the second version, a little bigger, and more true to where it should be on an actual face. It made the brow a little heavier than I wanted, but I think that the trade-off works. I think it simply looks better now. Also, I added the goatee and the sideburns. I think that I am going to turn him into a Elvis like character with a big pompadour hairdo.


close up on nose and mouth before the goatee

during the building process for the goatee, it ended out being much larger.

First attempt at the eye

Second attempt at the eye



just after finishing the ear, I liked the way it came out.

Just the ear

Aiden was helping me out as I was working on the face. He was busy with his play dough and while I was working he tried to run the face over stating the my face "needed tire marks too!"

He is too cute!

Cheers,
Price

Max

Thank you to those who were able to make it to Max's Blessing last month! And thank you, Mom, for all your "help" with his blessing outfit.

(By help i mean, of course, teaching me! And by teaching me i mean, of course, making it!)

Holga Images

I have been meaning to post these pictures for a while. Last May I picked up a new pinhole camera called a Holga. It shoots on 120 film and is really fun to play with. I am still getting used to judging distance with it, and figuring out how the focus ranges are best judged, but here are a few images from my first excursion with the camera.


I took this one while riding the Colossus roller coaster at Lagoon. I was a chaperon for the senior sneak last year and spent the day riding rides and avoiding kids. It was great!















This was the entry way to a ride. I was playing with double exposures. One cool thing about the Camera is that you control the film progression so if you want you can take several pictures all on the same film plate. Kind of cool!












Another double exposure experiment. I liked the way this one came out and the ghost
















This is Alex, he was one of the seniors that went on the sneak. I thought it was interesting how I got a bit of a light flare just over his left eye.
















This is an image of Aiden and his Cousin playing in a puddle by my parents house. Aren't they so cute!















This is a great image of my mom sitting one her porch swing with three of her grand kids. I though it was very cute.















This is a picture of some dude that I saw at Animal Kingdom one of the Disney theme parks in Florida. He was exactly what I imagined a Buffalo Soldier would look like on his free day. I loved his intensity and am hoping to write a character similar to him into one of the books I am working on. I also like the fact that I feel like where's waldo in this image. Can you find me?











Here are a few images from the beach in Florida. Holgas will do interesting things wiht colors because of the type of film that they are shooting on, and because they are pin hole cameras. One of my favorite features is the natural gradient that it throws around the edges of the image. They are shadows from the camera's apature. My favorite is the shadow self portrait. I am enjoying taking pictures of myself in interesting ways. Reflected in sunglasses, shadowed, as a pair of feet, Photography is too much fun!