Happy Thanksgiving 2009!

Hope everyone has a very blessed Thanksgiving. I hope whether you are able to be with family or not, that you are surrounded by love and peace. God bless you all!

Halloween party

Her cat impression

Playing the pumpkin bean bag toss

Ghost bowling

Donut on a string. She took this very seriously.

I was able to attend MJ's Halloween party at school. It was fun to see the kids and help with the activities. They played games, did crafts and enjoyed showing off their costumes.

Birthday fun

Just some silly shots of Emma and I hanging out.

For my birthday, Josh and Mackenzie went to town to get me dinner and presents. We enjoyed a very delicious Red velvet cake. It was a fun spending the evening with those closest to me. Love you guys! Thanks for making me feel special and appreciated!

Little Miss Mya

This sweet little babe got to come stay with us a few days while her babysitter was sick. Little girl, you can come hang with Aunt Maggie and cousins anytime!

Look how big J is compared to this bitsy thing!

E loved having another baby to snuggle. Don't worry Mom S, she didn't get too snuggly. :)

Halloween Fun

Yes, I said Halloween! Finally, I have edited these to post. The girls had a lot of fun Halloween night. We went to Trunk-or-Treat at our friend's church. It's our annual tradition. In case you can't tell the girls are cats and J was Winnie the Pooh as a pumpkin. Before I put him in his costume he was a BSU fan, along with his Dad. :)

The previous night I had taken the girls to the PTO's Halloween carnival. It was a little chaotic-tons of kids running around in costume-but the girls had a great time. Emma was pretty quiet at first, looking around and taking it all in. She's like that at first, cautious while she checks things out. But, she soon figured it out. They had all sorts of different game booths. Both the girls were excited to have their own tickets to hand to the ticket takers at each booth. There was even a cake walk and a engraving station. Both were things I remembered from the carnival I attended as a child. It brought back some fun memories.

Mackenzie had sold the most raffle tickets in her class so she got some extra tickets. She was pretty proud of herself. I was proud of her too, not that I'm competitive, but she was so uninhibited when it came to selling tickets. She took them to church, asked people in the community and hit up her family. I am just not a sales person so to see her be so brave about it was neat. I hope this sounds okay; I feel silly writing it. But, I think it's fun when you see your kid do something you may have insecurities about. I guess I just have that fear of rejection about asking people for things and so far she doesn't. It's also fun to see life from a kid's perspective: she still gets excited about little things like selling raffle tickets for her school.

All in all it was a Happy Halloween!

A Few of my Favorite Fall Things

Here are just a few of my favorite things right now: (in no particular order, just as they pop into my head)

-Pumpkin Spice Tea Yummy! I add milk and sugar and it's delicious!
-Scentsy (love Spiced Orange Harvest-very strong, but a perfect scent for fall)
-holding my baby boy as he falls asleep in my arms (can't get enough of that as he's growing too fast!)
-my three-year-old's laugh (I'd like to record it as it is just so cute!)
-hearing about my Kindergartener's day (She's always so excited about school.)
-fall colors (the trees look amazing here)
-editing new photo shoots (each one is so different; I love seeing the expressions I've captured)

Hope you are finding lots of favorites to love right now. Happy Day!

9 months ago

Today my baby is 9 months old! It's hard to think that last year at this time I was carrying this little boy in my womb and now he's a crawling, pulling up, babbling little guy. He happened to have his 9 month check up today. He weighed 19 lbs. 8 oz. and is 28 1/2 inches long. The doctor said everything looks great!

He's eating lots of table food now and just can't seem to get enough. On Sunday he was downstairs with Josh and crawled to the steps. He was to the third one before Josh could get behind him. He stayed there just in case, but J made it all the way up to the top by himself! We took him back downstairs and sure enough, he headed up again. Now there is a gate at the bottom to keep him down there.

He loves banging on the table and is starting to make more babbling noises, especially when sitting at the table. Teaching this guy manners might be interesting!

It's hard to think about what our life was life without him because he makes our family so complete. I know the next three months is just going to fly by, but I'm going to try to just hold on to the time as much as I can.