Every year, my sister-in-law comes over to
help us document our growing family.


Karsten at 2 1/2, Alrik at 6, Mikko at 10.


The boys just keep getting taller!


Digging.


Playing it cool.

UPDATE July 3: Photobucket keeps sending me autoresponses and demands for payment, so that's no help. BUT, I did find a viable workaround for myself, so I've updated what I'm doing at LaurenWayne.com.

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I try not to blog too much about blogging on here for fear of having it get too meta. However, there's a situation going down with my archive images that warrants a head's up. I explain it all over on LaurenWayne.com — here's an excerpt:

The pirate's sign that you must pay the ransom or forfeit your photos

A few days ago, without any advance warning, Photobucket sneakily changed its terms of service to disallow third-party hosting, or hotlinking, on nearly all of its plan tiers. Most people use Photobucket explicitly for the ability to link from images on Photobucket to other locations such as blogs and forums, so this seems like a baffling move.

Until you realize the scam that's afoot: The only way to get your images to show up again is to pay Photobucket $400, upfront, as an annual subscription to its most expensive plan.

Ah, I see. It's a ransom demand.

I'm livid. I'd been using Photobucket to host my images on my Blogger blogs for ten years. For several of those years, I paid Photobucket an annual subscription for the benefits of unlimited bandwidth and extra storage.

We visited my parents this month and stayed in my old bedroom, complete with its sheep wallpaper that my mom and I had hung and the dollhouse I had received as a Christmas present.

Karsten and Sam enjoyed an air mattress in my younger brother's old room. Mikko, Alrik, and I squished together on my old queen bed, handed down from my older brother before me, after both refused to endure an entire night on the floor mattress that had been set up. Too many spiders in my parents' house, so I don't blame them.

Alrik was fascinated with the historical sleeping arrangements.

"This was your room when you were a kid?" he asked. "Who did you sleep with?"

No one, just myself, I responded.

He was agog. "You slept by yourself when you were a kid?"

Yep.

He digested this for a bit. "Wow, you were brave."

It seems obvious to me that
all fathers should be as wonderful
as my kids' father.



Thank you for parenting and loving our kids, Sam.



We are so very blessed.