Last month as 2012 was winding down and I was enjoying some down time with my boys I began to reflect on what an amazing year I had – both personally and professionally!! I also felt a sense of dread with the coming year.  My husband will be deploying this year after being home for 2 years.  We all know it’s coming and put on our big girl panties and get ready for the hectic work up schedule of them going and coming, going a coming, and then finally going.  For a very long time.  Thanks to modern technology I will be able to email my husband daily once he’s gone and keep him updated on our daily happenings with 2 very active boys.  In an effort to keep him in the loop and not miss a beat of what goes on here, I contemplated a 365 project.  Kudos to those of you who have successfully complete one  – but I knew that would be more of a challenge than I could take on this year.  So I decided to start small.  I have been a big fan of Paint the Moon for a few years now.  I love Annie’s style and find everything she does very inspiring!! One night last week as I was mindlessly browsing Facebook I came across a post about her “This is Our Life” {a lets do 52Project}.  I immediately knew this is what I was searching for in a project for the year! Lifestyle photography is something I really love and  have been wanting to work harder at and get better at.  I take tons of photos of my precious sons and this just seemed to fit – both for growing my talent and something special to send to my husband on the ship! Yay!!! So I decided to join the group (a week late, but oh well!)

The theme for week 2 is “This Makes Me Laugh”.  All week I kept my ears and eyes open and tried to stay more in tune with what the boys were doing – things they were saying, making, playing.  Anyone who has small children is aware of all the little “surprises” they leave around your house.  Crayon marks on the wall, legos you step on in the middle of the night, or the occasional floater in the toilet (totally gross, I know! But it happens!).  Jacob, our youngest,  likes to sneak things into his pants pockets and I don’t realize it until I hear the clanking of a metal Hot Wheels car at some point during the wash cycle.  Since laundry isn’t something I like to linger with I am generally cramming the clothes in the washer as fast as possible because I have realized we have no more clean polar bear pj’s that he MUST wear every night and both of his Angry Birds shirts are dirty and we also need to be out the door in 2 seconds, so I rarely remember to check his pockets.  One morning this week as I was switching the clothes over I discovered this little giraff smiling up at me from the bottom of the washing machine – and I totally laughed out loud.  Realizing this was the assignment for the week, I quickly grabbed my camera and took of shot of the little smily giraff.  So here it is.  My first entry for my Project 52.  Thanks Jacob for brining joy to laundry day.

I hope that you’ll come back and check out what next week’s assignment will be and  keep coming back through the year as I capture our life on a regular basis – crazy, silly, sad, messy, whatever it may be!