Kid Update #2- Rylee

Ah my sweet Rylee. 6 1/2. She is my easy, go with the flow, child. She loves to tumble. Like everywhere. If there's anything we are working on with Rylee it's, could you maybe just walk a little more when we call you instead of tumbling towards us? Someone recently asked us where she took lessons at. I was like, um our family room?! She frequented a few classes last Spring but it was just to much money to keep up. She loved it and it's obviously made a lasting impact. The kid just is in constant cartwheel, tumbling motion. Ah Rylee.

She is a smart one. I LOVE listening to her read. There's pretty much nothing she can't read and it's just adorable hearing her sweet little voice read such big words. She is loving our school curriculum we chose this year, classical conversations. More on that later. But it's quite impressive what this girl has got memorized.

Taylor was in a musical called Suessical this fall. You would think it would be Taylor walking around singing all the songs but it was Rylee who took the greatest interest. She still takes my computer and turns on Spotify and dances and sings to all the songs. Her love for the piano continues but these days it's mostly focused towards singing and dancing to her picks like Britt Nicole, Jamie Grace and of course back to Suessical.

Rylee and Trevor have become more like twins over the years. Same height/weight they walk and talk like they are twins. It's quite cute. I've been asked on occasion if they are. She hangs in there with her brother with the best of them. I have a feeling she will rock the athletic world when we let her loose.

It's fun to watch her become more and more her own person. Being the third child isn't easy. So I hear. Her heart has been drawn to the Lord this year. She has created her own nightly routine of reading from her bible story books. Either to Chris or myself. I love to see a mama's prayers begin to be answered in that way.

This is classic Rylee!










She was a flower girl this summer in a friend's wedding. It was one of the first time that I saw a glimpse of an older version of rylee. Beautiful.


Love you Ry.

Kid Update #1- Lex

My oh my this girl is growing faster then I can take. New words, sentences added daily, new ways to make us laugh and new things she finds to destroy ;) She likes to be without a diaper. So after night after night of being woken up to, "MAMA, WET!!!". I have joined the duct tape mama club. That's right I am duct taping her diaper. But guess what? Somehow she's learned if she picks at the duct tape from the back long enough, you know after she takes off the layers of clothes I've put on her including a white snapped onesie, she can get a hold of a little piece and rip the rest off and then she's free. Then pees. Crazy girl. So now I've joined the cut the feet off of Pj's and zip up backwards club. I know what you're thinking. I should really join the my two year old is potty trained club.... but that just didn't happen as quickly as I'd like. So I'll stick with my other clubs for the next few months. Unless she learns how to unzip herself backwards. That might leave me with no other option.

She loves her new kitchen and making up plates of pretend cheese, turkey, lettuce and cookies. She is totally obsessed with dogs.  One of these days I'll grab a picture of every single little, big, plastic, dog's that bark when touched, dogs that move. It's quite comical. Let's just be honest, all those dogs are easier then the real thing.

Here are a few Lexie pics from my iphone that I am treasuring in light of so many of her getting lost from my hard drive crash.



Here she is displaying her "Christmas Spirit"


Notice the baby doll.


It works people. It really works.


First night of bowling.


I'm such a good mom.




She loves to practice her new founded skill. Opening the fridge door. Usually her attempt ends in something spilled everywhere. Blueberries...stepped on an smashed into the tile grout. Shredded Cheese eaten by the handfuls and then dumped on the carpet. In this picture it was my tub of Trader Joe's Parmesan cheese. She also likes to fill up cups of water with my dispenser and create a pool down by her feet. Thankfully that one has a lock but if one of the kids forgets to relock it, man oh man.


Nothing like a little black ink to start your day... same day as Parmesan cheese.


Or how about scissors left out by big brother and sisters.


Good thing she's adorable. I'm thinking about just keeping her here for the morning time.


Lexie-lou we love you.

Grateful for Social Media

I've neglected this blog for awhile. I've struggled with the why. Why keep it up? Facebook is so much more efficient for the little things. This blog isn't special in any one area. This isn't a food blog, or a share my deep knowledge blog, or a follow my adoption blog.  It's just kind of a "here's" my life take it or leave it blog and that just hasn't been enough to keep me going.

Something very sad happened this week. Something so sad that I said, "If THIS happens I will quit photography and everything extra in my life and just curl up in a corner and cry."Then a few days ago the call came and "THIS" happened.

See being a photographer takes up a TON of space on your computer. Having three to four sessions a week, what I can often average in the fall, can not be held on a computer. This winter if became evident it was time to upgrade pretty much everything. I needed a faster computer, the newer version of photoshop, and some new ways of backing up photographs and video's. But there just wasn't anytime so I kept going and going and going. Meanwhile dumping EVERYTHING I loved onto this one hard drive. Newborn photo's, video's of Lexie coming home, her first days, her first laugh, her first step. Need I go on. And for some reason, unbeknownst to me, it just died and all those photo's and video's were ruined by a piece of plastic that scratched away each captured memory. My poor husband didn't even know how to tell me. He just sat across the table after dinner was over and the kids were off playing and said babe it's all gone. Unrecoverable. I cried. Hard. And after crying I reminded myself I'd rather have my children alive then their photo's and video's saved. Then I cried a little more. I still tear up even writing this. I'm sure at some point I'll forgive myself. In all honestly I thought we had Mozy going on our computer but come to find out it was just on Chris'. Ugh.

The night Chris shared the news with me I was unable to sleep.  I found myself visiting this blog. The blog that had very little meaning to me until this point and cried and gave thanks for every post I wrote and every picture I shared. It's not all lost. I also found I had some of my favorite photo's in accounts like Costco photo, flickr, shutterfly and I've been storing a good amount the past six month on smugmug. Even facebook has a few video's and pictures full resolution! Social media to the rescue.

So I'm back. I see more clearly the why. Life may not ever slow down over here but I have to make it slow down enough to where I have enough time to do the little things that matter to me. Blog and back up :)