This Is Life

07/31/2009 02:55

07/24/2009 09:14

Oh my, our baby is 2. How did this happen? Where has the time gone? As I think back on the last 2 years with Anna in our life, I feel overwhelmed with love, joy and pride for this little girl. She is pure sunshine and giggles, love and snuggles, sass and smiles, I simply can’t imagine a time without her. Happy Birthday, Baby Girl.

Here are her 2 year pictures, taken by yours truly. Enjoy.

07/22/2009 02:09

There is nothing more exciting than when one of your best friends, who also happens to have an amazing husband and wonderful marriage, has a baby. On Saturday, we packed up the whole fam and went to visit Baby Eva in Columbus. I keep calling her “Baby Eva” because that’s what my girls call her. We say “Baby Eva” a lot in our house as the girls are a bit obsessed with her (and Emily) and constantly wanting to “be” Baby Eva. Needless to say they were super excited to meet her. Anyway, I was able to get a few pictures of this beautiful baby, some on her own, my mostly in the arms of her loving parents.

This one is my favorite. I just love how you can feel their love for this little girl. I love how even though Kevin
is only in a small portion of this picture, his presence as the protector of his 2 girls is consuming.
Uh! This little family is just so stinkin’ cute!!

07/20/2009 04:22

One of the (many) photography blogs that I visit is “I Heart Faces“. Each week, I look at all of the beautiful images that are posted, but never quite have the courage to post my own. But this week is different! This week the theme is “feet”, and if you know me, this theme seems the LEAST likely for me to enter. :0) But, last week I took my baby girl’s 2 year pictures and captured this adorable picture of her teeny little feet….anyway, I just had to enter! So….here is a sneak peek of our photo-shoot (MANY more pictures to come, check back!) and while I don’t know if it will be the “winner”, I’m feeling pretty proud about putting it out there anyway!

Click here to see all of the other beautiful entries.

07/14/2009 09:56

07/09/2009 09:22

Ahhhhhhh, the beach. We had such a great time building sandcastles, and knocking them down, taking walks, collecting shells and playing in the water. I only took my camera to the beach one day for two reasons. 1. I was terrified of something happening to my precious baby. 2. I was really just trying to enjoy the little moments instead of obsessing over the shot.

I’m telling you this because looking back over these beach pictures I found that while they “tell the story” of our beach time pretty well, they don’t totally remind me of the girls on the beach. In these pictures they are so clean! Typically, being clean lasted 0.2 seconds and then they were, head-to-toe, COVERED in sand. Anyway, clean or covered in sand, our little surfer girls sure are cute!

This one “tells the story” perfectly. Anna (above) splashing like a wild woman and Cate (below) looking at us like we’re crazy.

The girls played “car” a lot. They would line their chairs up, buckle their babies in, and take turns driving.

I call this one, “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean”. Cheesy? Yes. But true? Oh, yes.

Love this one.

Surfer girls.

07/07/2009 10:34

Look out everyone guest blogger here. I hope I don’t ruffle any feathers from Jaime’s faithful but there’s just too many pictures for one person to post. Jaime “thinks” she picked all the pictures so you will notice no regard for how many pictures of my bald head there are.

First this the our place named ‘Lovin Life’ taken from the beach dune entrance. The pool is just to the right.

Doesn’t Jaime look like she’s also ‘Lovin Life’ on the front deck of ‘Lovin Life’? (This picture was not approved but I like it)

Cate was really into the pool this year. After the first 10 minutes she was actually off on her own using only her water wings. She did still occasionally drink some pool water however.

Anna was also off and running pretty quick. She was feeling pretty comfortable in the ring and as always had to wear her shades.

I think Anna wanted to lean back and have a cocktail in this picture but I didn’t want to share.

Time to get in the pool Mommy!

07/06/2009 02:07

What a fun week we had in the Outer Banks! This year, it was just the 4 of us and we had a sweet little time! The girls were SOOOOO good the entire week. They loved the pool (we now have children old enough to say, “Can we go to the pool now?”) and had fun playing at the beach. I think I’ll be blogging the trip in a few installments, as you can imagine I have a few picts from the week.

So, here is the first…fun with a tripod! We took the tripod to the beach one night and had way too good of a time taking self-timer pictures. The girls thought it was so fun to run into place while the timer counted down.

Love this one…

Just as I ran into the picture, Anna leapt out of Corey’s arms and into mine.

Silly girls.

06/25/2009 10:35

After the photography workshop I attended in May, I came to realize that I was ready for some new challenges in my photography. Well, thanks to my friends, Kristin and Brett, I got one! They invited me over to take a few pictures of their beautiful baby girl, Emma.
I had SO much fun taking these pictures and was SO thankful for the opportunity! Although it was difficult to pick a few, here are my favorites, hope you enjoy!

Love that squishy newborn back!

Kristin was so calm with Emma, they were just beautiful together.

Emma is the little sister of Abigail, who is also a sweetie!

06/22/2009 09:28

Wow. What a beautiful wedding and a fun filled weekend! There is nothing better than seeing one of
your best friends so in love and so happy. Congratulations, Larissa and Tim!

The entire wedding party was so much fun! Here’s one of the girls at the rehearsal dinner.

The bride and her parents.

Believe it or not, I don’t have a single picture of Riss in her dress! The day was so busy that there just wasn’t time! But let me tell you that Rissa was positevly gorgrous. I mean, take-your-breath-away-beautiful.

…me playing wedding photographer. (And stalk the wedding photographer, I did.)

So after watching my friend walk down the isle, I learned that my one of my other best friends had her baby that very day! Congratulations Emily and Kevin!!! Emily was supposed to be in the wedding but graciously bowed out when she learned that she was pregnant. And what a good decision that was! Corey and I were thrilled to be among some of the first to hold the sweet baby girl when we stopped at the hospital in Columbus on the way home.

So, two best friends, one weekend, one wedding and one baby…I think I was still smiling when I went to bed.

Grabbed this picture from Kevin’s FB.

Welcome, Eva Alexandra
8lbs. 3oz.

06/16/2009 10:14

My oldest and dearest friend, Julie, has been in town (from Texas) for the past week. We don’t get to see each other that often, but that never seems to matter. We always pick up right where we left off. Our friendship continues to grow as we discuss and exchange stories about motherhood, marriage, life…you know, girl stuff. I respect her as my friend and admire her as a mom, her boys are wonderful. I am so thankful for all of the time we’ve been able to spend her and the boys.

So, last night we had the whole gang over for a cook out and we got this picture of Julie, Myself, and all the kids. And while I’ve (obviously) known that its now Jaime and girls and Julie and boys, seeing this picture really made me see just how much we’ve grown. Look at all those kids!!

Now speaking of those wonderful boys… I just can’t say enough about them! They are kind, sweet, polite and funny!
The girls have had so much fun playing with them. And as you may have imagined, they loooove fussing over the baby boy.

Julie’s little boy is full of questions and energy and is so fun to be around.

Her big boy is full of knowledge and creativity and is so witty!
When he saw our minivan and said, “Is that your minivan? The front end looks just like a truck!”

The grandma’s were just oozing with joy. And now that I’m a mom, I can see why…happy daughters, wonderful families, great friends…I can only hope that my daughters will find a friendship as true and as lasting as I have found.

06/12/2009 04:07

On my quest to find chemical-free “safe” sunscreen that won’t make my kids break out in a rash, we drove 25 minutes out of town to the only CVS that carried said sunscreen. Here is the conversation in the car…

Cate: Mommy, where are we going?

Mommy: To get new sunscreen.

Cate: Why do we need new sunscreen?

Mommy: This sunscreen is going to be better for you.

Cate: Will it smell like chocolate?

Mommy: Well, no. But that would be better.

Cate: Will it smell like elephant skin?

Mommy: I don’t think so.

Cate: Will it smell like mustard?

Mommy: …just laughs…

Cate: Well, what will it smell like?!

Oh, my funny girl. In case you were wondering…the new sunscreen had no smell to it and although it was
“extra-gentle-organic-foofy-foo-sunscreen”….it gave the girls a rash worse than they’ve ever had! Uh! >:-(

Here’s one more of her enjoying using my hair-twisty-thing.

06/08/2009 11:43

So, I’m finally getting around to blogging the Party. I think it’s taken me two weeks to do so because it’s taken me that long to recover! We had an awesome time in Charleston. We did the beach, the bars, had some great food and a fantastic girls weekend!
Now…just 12 more days until the wedding!

The Girls…Night One

The Big Night!

Nice.

Whooo-whooooo!!

I just can’t say enough about my wonderful husband. He is always an amazing daddy, but he really handled my long weekend away beautifully. He even got the girls down to the lake, with their hair done and in matching outfits!!!
They had a great weekend together!