good morning!

Wow, what a busy last week I had!
I ended up leaving town for the weekend and it was great. I did a little senior photo session with my sister in Oklahoma City. It was windy, but I think I was able to catch a few.
I had the pleasure of meeting up with the beautiful and extremely talented Kim Schmidt of Kim Schmidt Photography. She is a sweetie and a wonderful friend of mine whom I have 'known' through the internet realm for a couple of years now and just had the pleasure of 'meeting' in person! She taught me some good things and it was great to meet up.

I'm currently working on backing up my back up hard drive. I no longer work or save sessions to my laptop hard drive and operate exclusively on external hard drives. I got this gut feeling that today I needed to back up my external, so I am. Go with your gut :) You never, ever know when it'll save your hide :) So, I'm unable to post any pictures while I'm backing up.

Have a blessed day :)

I'm sitting here watching Macy Grace 'pretend' to eat some food out of an empty bowl. It's great. I hear her now saying 'all done'. It just cracks me up. I so wonder what goes on in their little minds, and I have a huge feeling it's more than we give them credit forsure!

PS: so she goes over to Jake and tries the invisible food bit on him too! Doesn't work. Now she's telling him 'all done'. She wants him to sign it. Sorry sweet pea, Jake doesn't sign!

I love her :)

10 on Tuesday...

Is it Tuesday? Gosh I'm tired!

Disclaimer: The pictures in this post are simply snapshots of day to day stuff. I realized I don't grab my camera as much as I should especially because it is something I love so much! So, these are blurry, choppy, unprocessed, but they are REAL!

1. J left for a lil business trip for a few days, so it's just Macy Gracie and I.
And Jake.

2. The weather was beautiful outside yesterday, we took a few pictures.





She had just said, "Bye Jake Bye". He wasn't invited!


She looks like a big girl here to me!




She wasn't upset, I just got her off guard!



3. We went to Oregon last week. Or wait, we left two weeks ago, and came back last week. Wow, it went fast. I have lots to share from that trip.

4. I have decided, and I will not budge, on cribs for Macy Grace and peanut. I will not even look at another crib. haha....I change my mind WAY too much.

5. I'm feeling peanut move so much more and that feel wonderful =) It is, without a doubt the best part of pregnancy =)

6. Here are a few of random pics of MG around the house

Mohawk day - I made that up myself, haha. Sorry it's blurry!


She has important business to tend to. Never fails, can't find my phone? I ask Macy for it!


For some reason, I just love this shot! Her lil eyes pokin through!






She loves to brush hair!


7. I'm thrilled it's spring. Happy Spring!!! Did you hear that weather? Winter? Snow? It's spring.....STAY away. Far far away!

8. I say that because on Saturday was the first day of spring and it has cold, and wet, and traces of snow. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

9. You cannot prove and I will not admit that I ate a whole bag of mini cadbury eggs last week....nope.

10. I think I gained 5 lbs at grandmas!! Yup. Sad thing.

Macy did fabulous just fabulous on the plane ride. She earned big bucks for her pig bank =) We flew out at 6:30am, and I woke her up around 5 hoping she would be excited and energetic by the time we got on the plane that she would stay awake til we got to Denver. Nope, didn't happen. She crashed the second the plane started moving and slept almost the entire way to Denver. I want to sleep so badly. I was exhausted, but just couldn't. We landed in Denver and didn't have much time to get to our next connection which was a 2hr 51min ride to Portland. And she was hyped up! I was planned and good thing =) She did really well though and just played with her books, had a snack and only fussed two times for about a minute to minute and a half wanting 'out' and 'down'! Towards the end of the flight I gave her her beloved apple (her most favorite thing eat!) and with about 20 minutes til landing she crashed while chomping on her apple. She was tired. The trip was great, but she could not adjust to the time difference. Meaning, she was up around 5:30 every morning, nap at 10 to 10:30 and crabby and ready for bed by 6:30 every night. Ah, it was exhausting.

On the way home, I ended up with an empty seat beside me (score!) and she fell asleep about 10 mins after take off, so I laid her next to me and she was out for about 2 hours. She woke up for the last 30 mins or so of the flight and had a snack. She did really well the rest of they way home and it seems true, she's still a great traveler =)

peanut's ultrasound!

I have a few pics to share and I have a video that I think is awesome, it's a recording of the entire ultrasound, but I can't figure out how to share it. I don't think it's on a rewriteable dvd, meaning I can't burn it to my hard drive. If I can figure out a way, I will and share it!

a senior!

This is Miss Becca and she's beautiful check her out!

squishy.

Tell me he's not the squishiest lil thing! I love him :)

new flash

Sorry for the interuption, but uh, I must say Macy Grace is being so cute right now. She's sitting beside me in her highchair eating cheerios and a banana. Kinda. She keeps yelling, "Chika, deea, ready, goa, jakea" (I understand her!) and then she throws a cheerio off her tray at Jake. And then she just laughs. She thinks it's great. And I looked down at her to tell her to quit throwing her food and before I could say it, she just looked up at my with those amazing brown eyes and her heartmelting smile and laughed, and I just couldn't tell her to stop. She's having so much fun! Thought I'd share.

wow, check this out!

I love her and we're best friends, she just doesn't know it. I'm telling you "Black Heels to Tractor Wheels" is the best story. I've encouraged you to go read it before, but now you have to. Okay, unless you prefer to read it in a book form! Yup, it's being published. I'll let her make the big announcements, head over and check her out :)

ashamed.

Here I am, 5:36am, blogging. Yes, early. However, I truly don't consider 5:36am all that early. I don't. I'm crazy I know. But it is early considering I couldn't sleep until after 11 last night and I don't have daycare today so I have ZERO reason to be up before Macy Gracie.

Except, I do. I'm behind. So far behind on everything my body knew I had to wake up. And after laying here for an hour, I thought this is ridiculous, I'm getting up.

I'm not a time waster. Although many folks would argue that, if they knew how many hours I log into my computer time. But it's not all play. It's work. It is. And creativity. And inspiration. So, I justify. But I don't watch tv. At all. I don't have cable or satelitte. What little I watch (which is like the bachelor!) I watch online, skipping commercials making the best of my precious time.

But I do read my google reader and I have quite a few subscriptions. And I blog. Kinda. And twitter. And facebook. But I think I'm getting good/better at my time management. My ipod touch has helped me. I can help that lil gadget out and in no time at all, without sitting at my computer, check twitter, google reader, and facebook. Which is exactly why I haven't been blogging.

And I feel ashamed of myself. I blogged so much with Macy. It helped me feel connected to her. I bonded. I bonded with my growing baby over things I read about my pregnancy, blogging my thoughts and feelings. Noting every.little.thing about my pregnancy.

This time I obviously have not. And I feel bad. Guilty.

It's not just my pregnancy, but my life. Where has my life gone this year? Gosh, so much has happened. My life is constantly changing. Flexibility is the name of my game. I haven't wrote about it. Must.change.that. Now!!

I'll shoot some belly pics today and post them later, trust me, you don't want to see pics of me this early before the sun comes up, I'm still a pumpkin.

And I went to Oregon last week! Yup, I was gone and never told ya. So, I have pictures from that relaxing trip.

And we're moving. Huh, again. In like 6 weeks or so!?! Give or take. I refuse to move the week I have peanut like I did with Macy Grace.

I'm 21 weeks pregnant, feel like I've been it's been 10 months already and had my u/s and so I have pictures and an incredible video to share.

I have photo shoots to proof and new ones to prepare for.

I have spring cleaning and house cleaning to do (which has been postponed until nicer weather - snow is in the forecast for today! boo!). Well, I'm still cleaning house, when am I not!?!, but the spring cleaning has been postponed until like June. Just kidding, kinda.

So, here I am. Sharing this all with you in effort to release my guilt and not feel so ashamed of myself. I've been really stressed and busy lately. I need this outlet, big time. It's therapeutic.

sneak peek {miss charity}

I've been away and busy, here are a couple pics of this beautiful cutie!

Layla Grace

Ya'll are probably ready for me to move on to my next tangent and maybe you read this, felt bad and never thought about it again. Maybe you didn't read because you didn't want to or consider yourself 'one of those' that just doesn't go there.

But this story, her life has seriously affected me. This post describes it perfectly.

But today, something shifted. Little Layla Grace stayed with me. I rushed around all day - school drop off to meetings to school pick up to errands to after school activities to dinner to bed time. And all day that little girls story, her mothers words about how they only had her for a few weeks and it was urgent to get photos haunted me.....I immersed myself into the story of Layla Grace and her family. And, I gave them my full attention, my tears, my emotions. I took time to really feel sadness, empathy, love. I thought about watching your child suffer from cancer - Layla Grace has Stage 4 Neuroblastoma.....And while the barrage of tweets flash on my screen, I know that this little girl has moved me in a way I cannot express. That somehow I feel connected to a family who lives far away, whose story I do not know, but for whom my heart is full of love and empathy.

And I pray that, Layla Grace, little angel, finally sleeps well and flies with abandon when she joins those angels laughing and playing in a world we can only imagine.

To read about Layla Grace, visit http://laylagrace.org and you can follow her moms tweets at http://www.twitter.com/laylagrace.

And Shana, Layla's mom just did a phone interview with Ryan Seacrest to raise awareness on Neuroblastoma, you can listen to it here.

I'm telling you, there is an overwhelming amount of empathy within me at this time. I feel the most desparate at - "laying here, watching my daughter die."

I can.not.fathom.

I think of Macy Grace. What if this was her? It could be. Cancer is no respector of persons. However, I cannot get entangled with fear and worry. God is in control of my life and Macy's life.

Every child deserves to live. They do. Let Layla's story bring you closer to those you love, adults and children. Cuddle and love. xoxo