“Mr. Elf” came to stay with us about a week ago. He will be here till Christmas, flying back to Santa at the North Pole each night to give a report on how the girls have been that day. Every morning we look for him and find him in various places. Here a few of the places we have found him:
Honestly, the whole thing is so much fun and I can see us doing it when they are teenagers! For more info, you can check out Elf on the Shelf.
I’ll leave you with a video of Kennedy ‘rocking’ over the weekend 
Well, Turkey day has come and gone (I hope yours was fabulous!) and Christmas is right around the corner! Yay! This time of year is always busy, for everyone. And for me that means not much blog time. My blog seems to take the back-burner this time of year. I absolutely love this season, even more so now that I have kids. (just seeing all the Christmas lights that decorate houses as we drive down the road is a huge excitement!) And while this may sound cliché, I am going to say it anyway… I honestly want to make an effort to simply be present and enjoy the season and all that comes with it. So, with that in mind, please forgive me if I get slack here in the blog world
Speaking of Christmas, and considering it is Miscellaneous Monday, I thought I’d share the fact that my cousin makes delicious cinnamon buns and yeast rolls, and, she is taking orders till December 15th! She sent me these pictures while making some the other day (just to make me drool I guess!) and so I decided to share them here…just in case you want some to help make your Christmas season a little extra special
If you do want to place an order here is some info:
They are available in singles, four packs, or any quantity you need. You can order them with cream cheese icing, pecans or raisins. They are $1.50 ea, or call her for pricing on large quantities. Yeast Rolls are also available by the dozen. Her name is Paulette.
Happy Monday ya’ll!
I had good intentions of getting a full post up today, a family shoot, but it just hasn’t worked out. I love this time of year, and I am about to get my hands into pie crust for apple pies, cookies dough, and a few other things. All for Thanksgiving tomorrow. Instead of sitting in front of the computer for too long, I have decided to say a quick Happy Thanksgiving to you all and then simply enjoy this day, this season.
I hope each of you has a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving… and Thank you my clients, my family, my friends, and my blog readers for your support and love. It is truly appreciated!
And as I always say…posts are better with pictures, so I pulled these out of some random files taken recently…
XoXo
In my opinion, taking pictures of my own kids is much harder than taking pictures of someone else’s kids. Not sure exactly why, but I just find it harder. Remember the cute pictures I took of Kennedy and posted on her Birthday? Well, I loved them, but they did not come easy! She is currently going through the ‘fake smile at the camera stage’ and I had to work extra hard just to get a real smile… Add in the chasing her around, talking, silly faces (which I do love, by the way!) and the negotiation on what shoes to wear (she wanted flip flops and I wanted ‘winter’ shoes, I won but then when our neighbor came over she took the chance to run in and change!) anyway, it was a challenge just to get some good pictures.
Check out the fake smiles:
that picture above, to the left, she was trying to tell me how she was going to pose, and her legs had to be just right If you want to see some of the ‘good’ shots from this shoot you can check ‘em out HERE.
I hope you have all had a fabulous Monday…since it is almost over now
Blue eyes, blond hair, these brothers are adorable! …..Silas and Canyon
Their Mom jumped in for a couple of shots…
in the left picture, Silas was ‘helping’ Canyon look my way! haha!
These last two are similar, but I loved them both, so decided to post both
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….
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! :)