We're the Ihrie's - a spontaneous, fun having, fit-throwing, and cuddle loving family from Fort Wayne, Indiana. Thrifting, creating, baking, and DIY-ing is our sort of thing. Our ultimate dream is to renovate an old school bus or vintage camper and travel the country. We (Mom and Dad) own a rapidly growing photography business called Della Terra Photo. Photography is what we love to do, and it is so rad that we get to call that our "job". Capturing our life in images is so important to us, because we do try to go out of our way to do crazy and fun things with our children--we want them to remember that. In this post, you won't see anything spontaneous or exciting. This part is just us being "normal" - if that's ever a word that could be used to describe our family. Morning
Here's the hard part. Trying to get out of bed in the morning and only running on a few hours of sleep, because we (we being Tarah and Josh - aka Mom and Dad) have been up editing photographs all night. It's so hard to ignore the awesome sound of laughing kids--and then that inevitable scream of terror because "he/she is touching me." Usually it's because of "she."
Our morning's usually start out by Maxx (3-years-old) stealing someone's phone, or rolling over to him playing his online learning games on the computer. The kid loves technology.
Little miss Eila (2-years-old) usually starts and ends her day with a bath. Do not ask how it's possible to get that dirty--just accept that it is, in fact, possible. She loves to watch herself talk in the mirror. We don't know how this started, but it is literally the cutest thing ever.
Now comes the part where we chase Eila around for twenty minutes trying to get a diaper on her. Sometimes the floor gets the worst end of that...literally.
Art is something that we push very hard on our kids, and the awesome part is that they love it! It is amazing to watch them be so artistic and imaginative...even at such a young age, but then again, with weirdo parents like us, you kind of have to be.
Afternoon
We took a stroll downtown to grab some lunch. While on our way, we noticed a man taking a photo of the cityscape behind us and thought "there's nothing that interesting back there". We turned around and noticed a huge cloud of smoke and explosions (you can see it in the background of this image)...an old warehouse had caught on fire and the cars that was inside of it were exploding!
Pint & Slice is one our favorite spots to grab a bite to eat with the kids. Everyone knows us there - therefore, we don't have to worry about our ridiculously energetic kids running around like a pack of deranged hyenas.
This is the calmest you will ever see our kids in a public environment--and it lasted a whole thirty seconds.
To us, this is what makes up for all of those hard days and fights between our kids--seeing them love each other unconditionally. It is so incredible and heartwarming.
We're at the zoo! It is very convenient to live a few streets away from one of the best zoos in the country - we can't get enough of it!
Yuck! Goosebumps appear every time they must drink out of that god-forsaken 'lion.' Germs, germs, germs!
Night
The usual mad-dash to the grocery store before dinner which always results in someone breaking down. We try to feed our kids completely organic (and locally when we can). Oh, we forgot to mention that we are also vegetarian! Our kids have never consumed meat a day in their lives...even while in Mama's belly!
Frantically cooking enchiladas before our friends arrive for a combined family dinner! We are never on time.
Our great friend Jennifer helping us finish up our dinner setup. Eat your heart out Mexico!
Enjoying the great company of some great friends--otherwise heard as the guys talking about motorcycles and us moms yelling at the kids to sit down and eat their food.
Ah, bath time - savior of the day! Off to bed we go, and then up in the morning to do it all over again--but we would endure that kind of awesome chaos any day.
Written by regular contributor Tarah Ihrie