Jackie’s Baby Shower!

I thought about delaying this blog post until I edited shower pictures, but then I realized that that would mean I wouldn’t be writing it until a month after it happened, which is not nearly as fun! Plus, I had A LOT of help from other people to make this weekend possible, so I feel like I need to go ahead and let the world know how wonderful they are! With that in mind, please don’t judge the quality of the baby shower pictures? Thanks. I knew I could count on you.

SO, I got the greatest news from my friend Jackie about 5 monthsish ago! I totally was going to write a celebratory blog post, but then I got some good news from some other friends, so I thought I might just do a blog post of All the Good News…but then some friends weren’t ready to let the internets know about their good news, which I can understand…and time got away from me, so, well, here we are!

Anyway, all that goes to say that Jackie and Eric are having their first BABY in April! Which is super exciting because Jackie has been loving on all of OUR babies for so long, patiently waiting on her own! Of course, it makes it even sadder that she is 4 hours away.

Fortunately, Jackie was willing to travel so that we could have a shower for her and her actually be at the shower, which is a lot more fun then having a shower and taking pictures of it to send her! Eric was even a trooper and came with her, driving her through the monsoon that was north Florida on Friday night.

We had planned to do their maternity pictures on Saturday morning, and I became very, very concerned about the weather. FORTUNATELY, there was a break in the weather on Saturday morning, and we were able to do the pictures! (I may have said, on the completion of breakfast, “It’s not raining now. GO GET READY. NOW.” I think that’s why moms make good photographers.)

We walked to the bike trail close to my house for their pictures. I expressed excitement that we were able to shoot there, because typically no one is interested in driving down to my little community for pictures. Jackie gave me permission to claim that they had driven 4 hours JUST to have their picture taken on the bike trail. So there you have it, folks, it’s a hot place for pictures!

I don’t typically show my work on my personal blog because, believe it or not, I am fond of BOUNDARIES. But this is one of my besties that we are talking about, so I have to show her off a little bit!

Isn’t she just the definition of darlin’???

Unfortunately, the weather did not continue to hold out, so when Liz and I arrived at Mary An’s house to prepare for the shower that afternoon, it was a veritable monsoon outside. But we were going to have fun no matter what!

The shower was monkey theme so we decorated accordingly! Jackie loves monkeys and I had only been waiting a sweet forever to throw her a monkey baby shower!

In the foyer we had a table for people to decorate diapers for Jackie to enjoy at those special, stinky moments.

Mary An made this adorable diaper cake that was displayed on the piano!

We found all of the monkey related garments we could at the thrift store to hang as decor!

Melanie made this adorable backdrop to go behind our onesie-decorating table.

In the dining room, we had these guys hanging from a vine…

…and a “Go Bananas” banner in homage of our banana split table!

Liz made these adorable monkey cupcakes!

The banana split table was ready for ice cream, which Tiffany provided!

Mary An’s husband, Mike, whipped up this amazing monkey picture for us!

Our guests arrived! We had a great dinner and then got to crafting our shirts and diapers.

Cynthia made a great green punch to go with our jungle theme!

We played a game to see who could draw the best baby monkey – Jackie’s pick!

And of course there were presents!

I gave Jackie Big Mama’s new book! I read it last week and it’s perfect for a new mom!

And of course there were lots of monkeys…and clothes and practical things, too!

Group shot!

Mary An’s husband came home so we could get a group shot with me in it!

Of course, I insisted that everyone get individual shots with Jackie, as well. For some reason we decided we should all get shots posing like high schoolers in addition to our “normal” poses.

A BIG thanks to Mary An, Liz, Melanie, Cynthia, and Tiffany for making the party possible – strength really does come in numbers! I’m so glad Jackie could come up and celebrate with us! And of course I can’t wait to get my hands on Baby Coyle!!!

Valentines 2013 – DOCUMENTED.

OK, I really wanted to document our Valentines before it fell through the cracks like everything else we’ve done so far this year, but tne new Photobucket site has a little gliche. Namely, it won’t let me upload a single picture. So I am using Sky Drive, but doing it this way, I can’t actually see what the pictures are while I edit the post. So I’m going to do the best I can to narrate these pictures, but if things seem a little wonky (like if it’s a picture of a person and I’m all like, “Check out this picture of a heart!”), you know why.

I made puppy chow, mixed Valentines M&Ms in for color, and put it in Frappuccino bottles. These went to my mom’s group. It’s a combination of several ideas from Pinterest, of course.

The kids got to look at my Pinterest board and pick out which Valentines they would like to make this year. They picked this one (above) for our family friends and playdate friends.

Izzy chose the “Orange you glad you’re my ___________” bottle for his teacher and his Daddy!

Ava chose the “I really DIG you” shovel for her teachers.

Izzy chose the Lightsaber ones for his class. They looked awesome and were really easy to make because there is a printable.

Ava and Josh made these for her class. Hats off to him for seeing her through this project!

Instead of doing cards, I got the kids these little mailboxes from the Target dollar bin and put notes inside. I hope to hang them outside their rooms and leave notes for them throughout the year.

Izzy was pretty thrilled with his oversized Angry Birds coloring book! Hopefully that will save our printer some ink!

A few teachers from Izzy’s school hosted a breakfast for their kids and their parents. It was super sweet of them! At the same time, Ava and Josh had a “Donuts with Dad” breakfast at her school!

Super cute shot of Brad and Jack!

Jack and Izzy and their sweet teacher, Miss Raven! She’s going to have to get used to my camera because I’m shooting her engagement pics in a few weeks!

After breakfast, Egan and I headed to our mom’s group Valentines play date!

It was a great day, I love celebrating Valentines Day with my kids!

As far as celebrating with my Number 1 Valentine, our parents were super gracious and took our kids last weekend so that Josh and I could have ONE WHOLE DAY at our own house by ourselves. It seems like every time we get a babysitter, it’s because we have to go somewhere or do something and, although we enjoy any time we have together, we always end up exhausted! So my request was that we have a day that we didn’t have to do ANYTHING. And we did!!!

Josh had to work late on Thursday, so we took our annual family trip to Five Guys the next day. I’m OK with making celebrations last a while.

Because I still have kids.

I realize that my blogging has been…spotty…at best.

So I haven’t really put any good pictures of my kids up lately, and they are growing like crazy.

Let’s fix that, shall we?

The back story to these pictures: Long story short, after 3 years of shooting and saving, I got a new camera right before Christmas. However, first there was The Trip, and then there was The Flu, and then there was The Funeral, and then there was The Recovery. So it was almost mid-January before I even took the first shot with the thing.

It’s no secret that I am self-taught in this area (not to say that friends and YouTube haven’t helped me along the way,) but with the new camera, I really felt like I needed to continue my education a little more formally. Because, you know what they say, with great camera comes great responsibility. So I made a 3 hour drive to take a workshop under a photographer that I have a lot of respect for.

I am so thankful that I did. I came out of it no longer intimidated by my new equipment. In fact, I’m pretty excited about the possibilities!

We had the opportunity to do some hands on work with 3 sweet models (of the high school variety, not the pin-up.) However, the picture I have selected to share with you from the session should not surprise you:

My wedding band, shot with my 50mm lens in manual. (Yes, I realize that to get the detail shots I’m used to taking, I’m going to have to get some kind of macro lens. I have sticker shock already and I haven’t even priced any yet. The bright side? Olympus still has a job!)

So, ANYWAY, getting excited about my new camera and having new knowledge means I have been doing some practicing! And here is where my kids come in. Ava assisted me with a shoot the other day, and we got there early so I could use her as a test subject. I have tons of pictures of her making crazy faces. Here are some of my favorites:

Holding the reflector!

Not to leave her brothers out, I experimented, I mean practiced, with them the other day. It was between rain showers so a completely different light.

Oh, I love his crazy eyes!

Maybe not the best quality picture, but I felt the need to share this moment with the world! I can’t make this stuff up!

OK, after a loooooooong intro, I have finally posted some updated pictures of my kids!