Jack Franco Photography

Jack got a new camera for Christmas. One of those tough ones for kids that if he dropped it, kicked it, or gave it to the dog, it would still take some what crappy pictures. Within 24 hours of opening his camera he had taken 187 pictures. Of these, 35 were of our Christmas tree.

Christmas Day night he wanted to take it to bed. I allowed this as long as he took pictures while lying down. I wish I could see the house from across the street. The dark room with intermittent flashes of light every few seconds. Although I probably would have thought that I was apart of a new movie similar to Rear Window. He told me he took a picture of the neighbors house because they had pretty Christmas lights on it.

The best picture so far is his attempt to take a picture of himself. Classic!

I will probably be adding more posts as we go that include some of these master pieces. I love that all of the pictures are from a 4 foot level and most of them are of his feet.

This would be me getting coffee in the morning at my mom's house. It was cold.

These would be his toes...

A Christmas Story - The Franco Way

We have three families that we get to spend time with over the holidays. My mom, my dad, and Jason's family. Since there are only technically 2 days for christmas someone always gets screwed. Generally its my dad just because that is usually the last place I want to be. I could go into why... but that’s a whole other blog.

Last year we did what we normally do and spend Christmas Eve at my mom’s house and Christmas day at my in-laws house. I really like having our own Christmas morning at own house with Santa and all. Now that we have a family it just seems right that we be able to start our own Christmas morning just us. Anyway, I put my foot down this year and said we are having Christmas eve and Christmas morning at our house then we head out to my mom’s on Christmas day. We had a great time as we usually do. Our trip started off a little rocky though.

Christmas Day: I run back into the house for the 3rd time to get the one last thing that we forgot. Since we are planning on leaving Jack at the in-laws house for a few days after Christmas, he needs a lot of crap. We had spent at least 30 minutes backing up the car. And of course we were already 20 min late. As I unlock the door to the kitchen and step inside I hear Jason starting the car, or at least attempting to. The car doesn’t turn over until he tries it for the third time. The only think I could think of was damn, now I have to unpack that stupid car. He ended up getting it to start, I get in and sit down with the left behind rubber boots and he shuts the car off! “What are you doing?!” Maybe its just a girl thing, but I was happy to just get the damn thing started, no reason to test our luck at this point. He even looked at me like, so? He started it right back up again with no problem, so that was good.

We finally get on our way and I give my mom a call to let her know we will be a little late. I tell her about our car problems and she tells me she has a problem of her own. Their power had gone out a couple hours prior. Ideas of cooking the ham on the BBQ and burning Christmas presents to stay warm came to mind. Luckily the power came back on only a couple hours after arriving. We had a great time, opening presents in a civilized matter, ate a lovely dinner that we all helped with, played farkle, watched a stupid movie and went to bed.

Day After Christmas: We arrive in Stockton at the in-laws house and I have to pee like a race horse. I go to open the gate to their house and the damn thing won’t open. They have some weird wire contraption keeping the gate locked. We ring the doorbell 5 times while I’m standing there doing the pee-pee dance. They fiddle around with the dog trying to catch it while I practically pee my pants. This was the start of an awesome visit… As soon as Jason walked in the house they set him to work fixing their computers for the next 3 hours. The rest of the afternoon and into the evening contained the same characteristics of any Franco Family Christmas. Some of these are:

1. Dad listening to the television so incredibly loud the neighbors could hear it. We all had to yell to hear one another and we yelled to have him turn it down. He pretends to turn it down only to turn it up even louder ten minutes later.

2. There are at least twice as many presents under the tree for our niece then there are for Jack. Including one 5 foot stocking that was full of gifts. I took a picture... to be posted later. Its rediculous.

3. Present opening time is complete anarchy. Everyone is shoving presents upon you and everyone is opening them all at the same time.

4. Each present under the tree is labeled from Santa. I’m still unclear why, but it is a bit confusing. And each one of these has the price tag still attached. Apparently santa sucks at the details. He also uses the same wrapping paper that he has been using for the past 15 years. He must have stock piles of it in the attic.

5. Jason gets a gift, from santa, that was actually already owned by him. His parents like to save all of the boys’ things from when they were young and slowly give them back to them as they age. This year it was a book that he wrote when he was a boy.

6. Mom is screaming at the kids so that she can take a picture of them opening each present.

7. Garth Brooks and Kenny G blaring Christmas tunes on the oldest working stereo you ever saw. Although you can only hear it if you are in the same room, otherwise the music is drowned out by the tv.

8. Mom feeding my niece entirely more than she ever should. Regardless of the fact the she is already over weight and she’s only 5.

9. Dad starts pouting over something, its different every time. And he starts handing out guilt trips like they were candy.

10. Generally one if not all of the Franco men end up taking a nap. This Christmas was the first year that they didn’t. Perhaps the tv was too loud.

I so love the holidays and I hope this helps express why it is that I am SO glad they are over! Sorry if this turned into a rant.

Big words for a little person

So I'm wrapping a present yesterday and Jack notices that there are still 2 holes that clearly need to be filled so that Nana won't see whats inside. Once I folded up the ends where these 2 gaping holes were and taped everything up he said, "Oh! Now its better concealed." Really? Concealed? Dude, he's 4.

And last week when he was talking to Kym about his awesome trip to the science museum with Kasey and Devin he was discribing the penguins and busted out with "Enclosure".

These are pretty big words from someone who still can't write his own name and always forgets 17 while counting to 20. oh well, he'll get there.

Who knew reindeer could be this funny

So last week my great friend Kym came over. (You'll hear more about her later.) She had this craft that she had done with her girls a long time ago. It sounded pretty simple, just put some pipe cleaners on some candy canes with a couple eyes and a nose and viola! You've got yourself a pretty cute little reindeer. We started making the antlers pretty standard at first. But then we started getting pretty creative with them... Pretty soon we were trying to think of the most random hair styles from every era to duplicate on these poor little reindeer. The more retarded the better. You would have seriously thought that we were drunk by how hard we were laughing! Between the TV antenna antlers, the beehive, and the emo reindeer it was kind of hard to breath after a while.

So I take these awesomely crafty and hilarious creations to Jack's school this morning to give to each of his classmates. I was keeping them in cups so that they wouldn't get squished or broken during transport. While Jack is already sitting on his carpet square saying the pledge of allegiance I proceed to put each reindeer in all of his classmates cubbies. I have one cup ontop of the cubbies and the other in my hand. A mom comes up and stands next to me. (one that I am not friends with by the way) and she knocks the cup over onto the floor spilling all the reindeer all over the floor. With a half hearted "sorry" she proceeds to pick them up, shove them back into the cup with no care at all and calms me by saying, "oh its ok, none of them broke." Oh REALLY? Did you inspect each and every one? Because yeah, A LOT of them broke! Some had their noses fell off or their poor little googly eyes popped off and one broke completely in half! She apparently had no idea how long it took to make each of those. I will think about it the next time I see her. I won't actually say anything, because I'm a big wuss, but I'll think about giving her the stink eye!

Blog Attempt Numero Uno

Alright, so here it is. I swore off of blogs for so long and yet here I am. Hell, even MY MOM has a blog! Not that I expect anyone to read this but I figure hey, this way everyone can hear my long and drawn out stories even easier! I've been told that I have a story for everything, so here they are. The title says it all too. You really can't make this stuff up! Hopefully my life will be entertaining enough for you to come back for more. I'm not making any promises of course that I will keep at this regularly, but I'll try my best.