A family of five that is We are expecting baby #3 in May! I had a cute little idea for a ‘we are expecting’ picture, but I haven’t found the time to make it happen yet and at this point I will be doing good to concentrate on getting a Christmas picture for our Christmas cards!

We are so excited about baby #3!    In case you are wondering….

• I did feel yucky for awhile (which is part of the reason blogging has been slow. But I am feeling better these days and thankful for it!)
• Due date is May 3rd
• We are not finding out if we are having a boy or a girl (we did not find out with Kennedy and Bristol and loved not knowing!)
• Kennedy wants to name ‘her’ Rapunzel or Cinderella! Other days she says she wants a baby brother
• My sister will have a baby 4 months before me so I am so SO excited that our babies will be close!
• I have craved chili, pickles, grapes (among other things) and am currently loving/craving deli-style sandwiches with all the good stuff (pickles, banana peppers, lettuce, oil and vinegar, etc.)

There you go, a few pregnancy facts

Now, since a post is always better with pictures I’ll share a few more from our trip to TN. Again, I just randomly pulled these off my camera… We went to Cardboard Mountain and had a blast! It is just what it sounds like, a big hill that you slide down on cardboard! (or sleds, which really work good)

Stu decided to try ‘surfing’ down….and Russ quickly followed…

Sarah (my sister-in-law), not to be out-done, jumped right in on the surfing thing too. What I loved about her is she did not hesitate or use caution at all. She just jumped on..
…and quickly crashed! (confession, I laugh really hard when people fall, it is a terrible thing that I just can’t seem to help!)

My mother-in-law also gave it a shot, but with much more caution! She would simply jump off when she felt herself losing control…

Bailey had a good ride down!

The view from the top was so pretty…

There was a lot of crashing at the bottom…

Bristol lost her cardboard…but that didn’t stop her!

It was fun, to say the least!
I hope you all have a wonderful day…

Here it is, almost lunch time, and I actually remembered to throw some potatoes in the oven so I could eat a baked potato for lunch. (typically I think of this at lunch time and don’t want to wait for a potato to cook) so I am feeling really proud of myself till I realize I don’t have any sour cream. And really, what is a baked potato without sour cream?! So this is going to be a quickie post in hopes I can run get some sour cream before my potatoes are done…good thing my neighbors are also friends!

Last week I mentioned that I was crazy busy so I took a little blogging break. I did manage to get caught up on almost everything before we left for TN on Thursday morning. My husbands brother and his family live there so we went to spend a long weekend with them. Something we don’t do often enough!
Here is something I have learned, with kids, trips are always longer. Yes, it is a no-brainer, but still…I didn’t expect the drive to be that long. We have to stop and potty more often, get out and stretch little legs and arms that are tired of riding in carseats, eat, etc. We went through the mountains on the way, that is the route Stu prefers and the way we always go. Typically it takes us 5 1/2 hours. It took us 7+ hours this time! Whew! So, we decided to go through Atlanta on the way home. We were making great time, even stopped for a long lunch, and then just a couple of hours from home we ran into this:

(taken with my phone)
Yes. It was awful and we were in it for at least an hour and a half! We finally got to moving again, only to hit this, and were so close to home:

Ah, yes. 8 1/2 hours after leaving TN we made it home!  At one point while sitting still the song “Take a backroad” (by Rodney Atkins) came on and we just laughed, it fit the moment perfectly.

But we are finally home and getting back in the groove of things. I haven’t gone through my pictures from this weekend yet, but here are a couple I pulled off my camera…..
All the kids…

Owen and Bailey…

Owen was showing us some of his tricks on the trampoline….(notice Kennedy watching)

She decided to give it a shot

and made a pretty good effort!

I will (try to be) back tomorrow with a few more pictures, then I’ll blog some shoots later this week. Happy Monday! (I am off to find some sour cream!)

Okay friends, I am going to take an un-planned week off from blogging     This Monday morning finds me frantically working to finish up projects, get ahead on shoots and I will be out shooting more this week (thank you all who ask me to take your pictures! I may be crazy-busy, but I am so thankful!) Since I am taking the week off (from blogging), I am going to share a few shots from a few of the shoots I have done lately…choosen at random

And I am going to throw in a few snapshots of my girls from last week…first, they are dressed as pumpkins for Halloween:

Notice the head tilt? Big Sis thinks she has to do it, so little Sis watches her and then copies

Bristol woke up from her nap one day and was in a great mood, so I pulled my camera out and captured this…it is far from perfect but, oh! how I love it!

Happy Monday!

Kelly is a senior this year, and so we braved the bee’s (um, well, not really, my Aunt braved the bee while Kelly and I hopped around letting her take care of it..and it was only one bee!) anyway, after the bee was gone we got down to the business of taking some gorgeous pictures
(Kelly is my cousin, and her Mom came along on the shoot with us…Thanks Aunt Beverly for taking care of the bee!)

We squeezed in a few family shots at the very end…

Kelly, you were awesome!  Thanks to all of you for asking me to do these…

After 2 failed attempts at going to a local pumpkin patch, we finally made it last week – 3rd times the charm!      A friend met us there and it was so much fun! We went to Riverbend Farms, and of course I took my camera along….

Notice Canyon coming down on his belly in the picture above? That is how he typically slides and loves it…  At one point we looked up and saw this:

when it was obvious he couldn’t get on the slide by himself, Kennedy helped him out by picking him up, sitting him on his bottom and sending him down.  That is when Stephanie (his Mom) and I had one of those Mommy moments that you know you need to hold, soothe and comfort, but all we did was laugh. Hysterically. That  is all we could do! The look on his face was priceless. And as he crashed at the bottom (not hurt, just scared) we were both doubled over laughing.

(I hope you are laughing now and not thinking we are horrible parents!)

 A few minutes later a couple came up with a 3 year old, as he climbed up the ramp to the slide, Stephanie warned them that it is fast and asked if he would be okay. The Mom was all “yeah, he loves slides!” well that kid came down at a rate of speed that sent the Mom (and us) into hysterics again! What is wrong with us?! I mean really…. just thinking about it makes me laugh all over again!

Happy Monday, oh, and Happy Halloween! :)

With her blond pigtails and blue eyes, she stole my heart, I loved having little Adah in front of my camera again!

Anna, thank you for asking me to do these for you! Can’t wait to see you all again!

Okay, forgive me if this post is lame, but I am doing it in a huge hurry and in ‘real’ time….no scheduling this one, I can’t get ahead enough to schedule a post these days!

My Monday morning started off fabulous with a call from my sister that Plum District had an offer for a $50.00 voucher for just $25.00 for Erin Condren products! (you may or may not remember me gushing about how I wanted the Life Planner by Erin Condren a couple of weeks back….) Still, as much as I love a great calendar, I will not spend $50.00 on it.  But, I managed to snag this one for just $20.00 because I had $5.00 Plum cash!
Now, Erin Condren has all kinds of awesome stuff on her site, not just calendars, so if your interested check it out…. and please use this link if you decide to purchase the voucher …. because it will help me out   Here it is: http://www.plumdistrict.com/three_for_free/e81933468d/click  (honestly, I am just so excited about this deal that I wanted to share it with you all!)

Now, moving on to a sweet moment between my girls… I went to shower the other night, leaving the girls watching one of their shows, and came back to find Bristol asleep on Kennedy’s lap. Of course I grabbed my camera and captured the moment. With only one lamp on the picture leaves a lot to be desired as far as light goes, but, I don’t care because it is the moment and I love it!

I think this will be a picture I will forever love. For the obvious reasons, but also for the not-so-obvious; the taggies and blankets that the girls adore are both in this shot, and a random sippy cup is also here. I feel like this image is full of memories already

Happy Monday everyone!

My girl turns three years old today… it seems that just a short time ago she was just a tiny newborn..

a sweet baby…

Today she is my ‘big’ three year old who prefers wearing dresses or skirts, no jeans… loves to have her hair down, no pony tails please… purple is her favorite color, and right now she does a little move that includes a leg kick and then a spin and that is what she calls her “ballet” (two weeks ago she was pretending she was in fashion shows!) She seems to be all girl, but she does love finding bugs and digging in the dirt…among other things

She is sweet, she is silly, and she is her Daddy’s girl

Kennedy Grace, I love you sweet girl!

Happy Birthday Kennedy, and Happy Friday to all!

I often look at power lines and think they look cool… one day I am going to do a photo shoot under some! But, till then, I’ll just pull off the road in random places and shoot them like I did last night on the way home from a photo shoot

And I can’t help but share this little cutie with you…he was part of the photo shoot last night…

He is only 6 months old but he seems to know what to do on that tractor!

And because it is Miscellaneous Monday, and that gives me a ‘reason’ to share random stuff with you, here is something random and useful: If you have those annoying little fruit flies in your house (like I do right now) mix up a small glass of white vinegar, a few drops of Dawn dish detergent (any kind of detergent might work) and then about a spoonful of sugar… leave it out on your counter and the annoying little guys will go right to it and then drown. Yes, this is gross but it does get them out of your house and off of your fruit!!

I still remember the first time I ever saw him. I had recently began working at a new office and we were having a big lunch. I saw him at a distance, standing in a group talking. He was wearing a baseball cap and he was laughing.  I remember thinking he is cute! I had just been asked out that same week by a guy that I didn’t know at all, and I wondered if this was him. I leaned over and asked one of the other girls “Is that the guy who asked me out?” She didn’t know but said she’d find out… she came back a few minutes later after asking someone else and said “Nope, his name is Stuart Brown and he recently moved here from Tennessee”…

Good thing I didn’t walk up and start talking about our upcoming date for that weekend ;)

Fast forward a few months. I was no longer dating the guy who had first asked me out, and I became increasingly interested in this Stuart-from-Tennessee-guy.  When he finally asked me out I was thrilled. But after the first date neither of us were really interested. Not exactly sure why, we just didn’t seem to click on that first date. But for several reasons, he asked me out again. And for several reasons, I went.

We spent the next five years getting to know each other. We started out as ‘just friends’ and then feel in love.

Four years ago today, on a perfect fall day, we got married. We celebrated with friends and family, and at the end of the day we drove off in a ’55 Chevy, then spent a week  in California. 

And that, was the beginning of our married life together.

Not to get too goo-goo-ga-ga on ya’ll…. but I cannot imagine living life with anyone else. I love you Babe! Happy Anniversary

All images taken by Kelley Clayton Photography

This shot is one of my favorites from our day… I love that Kelley captured this moment between Poppa and Stu right after the ceremony…to me, it speaks volumes.

This is another favorite… we were not posed at all, I didn’t even know Kelley had taken this picture at the time.  I can still remember the giddy feeling and the happiness as we talked and laughed.

Our get-away car, Stu helped his uncle re-build it…

Again, this is a favorite! 2007 seemed to be the year for weddings in our group of friends, and this is a shot of all the couples who got married that year. I.love.it.

Nothing like being pelted with bird seed!

Thanks for looking