So being the photographer in the family, I am the one behind the camera the majority of the time. I have been dying to get some shots of me and my sweet boy, so tonight Rusty was the one behind the camera. =) ENJOY!…

Daddy here:

Every first Saturday of the month I get the pleasure of taking Maddie to Home Depot for their “Kids Workshop”.  Maddie gets to dress up in a cute little Home Depot apron & we get to make a fun little toy or trinket.  At the end they give her a pin & a certificate.  As of today, she now has 10 pins!!  How fun!  Anyway, Maddie still isn’t that coordinated, so I typically help her hammer & glue everything.  Today though I left a lot of the hammering up to her —- unfortunately though, because of the rain outside, we were inside, right next to the swings.  She has a strange obsession with the swings, so she kept getting distracted there.  See this video I took after Maddie had already hit my hand a good five billion times (or at least five times) – this time she missed!

For any dads out there, I highly recommend going to your local Home Depot – I am pretty sure they all do it – it’s free & a lot of fun. Maddie actually is starting to get to know the ladies that run it & giving them hugs.

Long title, huh? Well here’s the story that goes with it… Our next door neighbors just had their first baby, and having been blessed by meals when we had our little ones, we wanted to do the same for them. I have a really, really yummy recipe from Ina Garten for roasted chicken. I bought 2 whole fryer chickens at Costco 2 weeks ago and cooked one and froze the other. I took the frozen one out of the freezer and into the fridge to let it thaw for 2 days before cooking it. When it was time to prepare the chicken I was astonished to find that it was still quite frozen. What to do…with not a lot of time to spare??…I rinsed off the chicken and that seemed to help quite a bit. I got everything ready and popped the bird in the oven to cook for almost 2 hours. The chicken looked wonderful, the house smelled even better-all seemed to go as usual when using this recipe…until I cut into it and realized that it was still not done!…and it was getting closer to 6pm and our neighbors have not eaten a thing yet! As I was freaking out deciding what to do, Rusty calmly came in the kitchen and said he would take over while I fed Caleb. 15 minutes later a yummy angel hair pasta dish was piping hot and ready to be delivered to the new family of 3 who were probably starving by now! What a GREAT husband I have! AND…he has also taken on the amazing task of doing dinner every Sunday night to give me a break and be able to relax! I am SO blessed…and spoiled! =)

So I had a little fun yesterday afternoon after I realized the 4 of us each have a pair of Nike shoes and here’s the outcome… =)

“A son following in his father’s footsteps”

…How tiny they start out!