Beaches, Books and Ballet

I've had some busy weeks.  Hence the neglect of the blog.  Here's a few little nuggets of what we've been up to.

The kids started eating their cereal as it's intended- with milk.


Morgan's been driving this little car around the house every day.


The kids spent a few days at Grandma's house and then a few days at home with Grandmama while Mark and I went to FL for his work conference.


We knew it would be a busy week of meetings so we went a day early and drove to the beach.








Most of the week looked like this.

I worked tirelessly on my new website and business plan for my new photography business.  I figured it probably would have taken me a month to accomplish all that I did in those days of uninterrupted productivity.  It was fun, too!  And okay, I did take a day off to enjoy the hotel spa.

Taylor's been quite a big help lately.  Here she is helping Charlie get ready for T-Ball.






I love this home plate victory!


It was his last game so he got a little metal at the end of it.


Charlie designed his own board game.  It is called 'Mousetrap'. It may not look like much to the untrained eye, but it's actually a complex set of paths and traps.  We play buy moving our pieces (those small rectangular pieces of paper) and then he tells me what happens.  My favorite was when he said he was a dad now so he didn't have to listen to any rules.


The game gets little additions each day.


After spending one day home with my kids, I left again for the whole day to shoot Mark's Aunt and Uncle's family reunion.


Mark came with me to assist, but we were back in time for some cuddles before bedtime.


Taylor's breakfast companion:


We've had a house guest this week while my sister is on vacation with her big kids.  Addison has decided that I'm the closest thing to her mommy so she cries whenever I leave the room. She does seem to appreciate all the care Taylor has been giving her though.


Meanwhile, my baby is getting bigger and bigger by the minute! (She turns two tomorrow!!)  Here she is enjoying some pre-dinner entertainment.  I looked up from cooking to find her sitting at the table reading.  (That is not a real candle.  Grandmama bought those for us to use in our windows at Christmas time.  We enjoyed a few candle light dinners with them.)


Reading is a pretty big deal in our house.  The kids have inherited my and mark's love for books!


Even spiderman books.


Here's my big boy at the super market enjoying his treat from the bank.


Morgan's thumb is healed.  After 30 doses of antibiotics and many rolls of gauze and tape, her appendage has finally healed.  Her thumb sucking has decreased considerably as a result.  In fact, we went almost a week before I saw her sucking it.  Now she only does when she is extremely tired.


(I told her to make a mad face)


She's also been enjoying eating at the big table although she can't seem to stay on her bottom.


Taylor's been enjoying dance class.  I love the watch the huge smile that emerges during every class.


I've implemented a new rule (borrowed from a friend of mine from church).  When the kids fight, they must sit on this step and hold hands for 5 minutes.  Then they have to each say something nice.


Their nice comments?  Charlie: "hi"  Taylor "I like you a little."


I made them do it today in the car and it worked surprisingly well.  They do need to work on their nice comments though.  This time each just said 'sorry'.

Phew.  I'm glad I finally got those posted.  I'm longing for the day when my business is fully established as is my new routine.  I am being very conscientious about how much time I want to spend working at home as well as being sure to allot full days of just family time.  I'd also love to be able to spend time on my personal projects again.  I have not liked the way my personal photography has suffered lately, but I am now getting so close to a happy medium.  And soon, very soon, I will post a link to my new website!! Hang tight and I'll try to jump back here sooner rather than later!

Chuggin Along

Once again, too much times has passed between blog posts.  I guess it's pretty much the norm now.  I know I don't have many readers, but I do know that some of you check frequently to see if I've sprung into action yet and created a new post.  To those of you, I apologize.  However, rest assured, I am always shooting (thanks to my 365 project) and those photos will eventually make their way here.  Today's lot is not extraordinary.  We've just been hangin' out, doin our thing.  But I do feel like they capture the essence of our family this summer.  Enjoy.

Frequently, I find myself in the evening having not shot a photo for my 365 project so I'll whip out my camera and shoot whatever's occurring right then.  These have become some of my favorite photographs.  I love these ones of Charlie and Taylor hamming it up for me at dinner time.










I shot my first series of soccer photos last week.  It was so much work, but so rewarding.  Here's a test shot in my living room to see if I really needed to steam my backdrop.  Yes, I did.


Another quick shot to fulfill my project, but I so love the light in this one. It was late in the evening so there wasn't much light coming in the window and the fall off was quick.


Just some of my girls dressed up as is often the case around here.




Taylor really wanted me to take some more silhouette photos of her, but our yard is not a good place for that.  Still, she provided some gorgeous lines for me.






Taylor's been sleeping on the couch a lot lately because a)her room is as hot as a burnt marshmallow b)her bed is totally uncomfortable, like a board and c)morgan is a chatterbox.


The kids went to Vacation Bible School last week.  They loved it.  This year they were not in the same group, but both were blessed with crew leaders that adored them.  I volunteered each night and so enjoyed watching them from afar and admiring their independence and confidence.




All week at vacation bible school, they collected money to buy mosquito nets for children in Africa.  I took this as a good time to sort the children's money in their banks.  I let them divide them into 'spend', 'save' and 'donate' categories.  Charlie asked what was worth the most and initially put mostly quarters in his spend bag and 8 pennies in his donate bag.  However, I explained the importance of buying these nets for the children and we both agreed he should put three more handfuls of coins into his donation.



My favorite part was taking them to the store to let them spend some of their money.  At first, I felt like I was indulging them too much (each child ended up with $20 to spend), but then I saw what an education they were receiving.  They were forced to decide how best to spend their money, on one big item or several smaller items.  Taylor learned the value of finding items on sale.  Charlie opted for the larger item (an angry birds game) but reserved one dollar to buy his little sister a book.  Both children learned that toys cost money and when people give them toys it's because they decided to spend some of their own money on something they thought would make them happy.  In the end, it was a very nice experience.

(I've been enjoying taking photos of the kids sleeping lately!)



The girls painted Morgan's nails for the first time this week.




My step-father's family visited with us, too.  We had such a nice and relaxed time visiting at my mom's house.


Also, Addison celebrated her first birthday this week.  





We took advantage of everyone being together to snap some family photos.









(just a bad hair day)


I found myself here for the second time in two months.


My poor, sweet, thumb-sucking girl managed to infect her beloved thumb.


Since her pediatrician's office was closed, and her thumb  was almost twice its normal size, we headed to the ER where they drained it and dressed it.  She was not happy with us.





But managed to get sympathy from everyone at the store as we awaited her antibiotics.


She has since been managing with 9 fingers.  She still gets the bandage off almost every nap and night which is why we are heading back to the doctor tomorrow.





Well, that's it.  That was my choppy rendition of our last ten days.  The next week will be completely out of our norm, but you'll have to wait to read about that soon!