what's been keeping me busy

i think in pretty much all of my spare time i've been editing photos. i have done all three of my practice newborn sessions now, which were all so different they are almost hard to compare. they were all fun and hard work (mostly for the moms i decided...lots of nursing, shushing, cuddling). but after doing these sessions i can hands down say i love photographing newborns. they are so sweet, and it is fun to see the baby while they are still so new. i don't have a ton to share yet, so basically all of my pictures look the same. with all three babies we started with the swaddle and that's what i edited first everytime.

beautiful baby hazel. she was definitely my sleepiest baby. although i don't have edited pictures to prove it yet, she let us move her around and stick her in a basket. and i had to share the last picture because right as i was snapping pictures hazel started smiling in her sleep. so cute.







handsome baby landon. he was my first to photograph, so i really didn't know what to expect. he couldn't decide whether he wanted to sleep or not, but held still long enough for me to snap a few pictures of him.





handsome baby aiden. this little guy was pretty much awake the whole time! but no worries because i think pictures with the baby's eyes open is something to remember. they grow up so fast! p.s. the second one was a very, very quick edit, so don't judge.





aren't they all darling babies?

and lastly i got to try my hand at my first maternity shoot. let me first of all say what a trooper this mother was. it was pretty cold outside and it was right after our huge snow storm. to get these pictures she had to take her coat off. brrr. by the way, this is aiden's mommy.





i also have done the sweetest little six month old, but i am not quite done with those pictures yet! hopefully i can post some soon for her mommy to see.

it's about time

i guess it's about time i make myself update the blog. i think i've had zero motivation for a while because my camera was broken. i had to send it in to get fixed, and it took foreeeeeever to fix. i missed that camera more than i thought i would. sounds lame i know, but i had spent literally every single day of last year with that camera in my hand doing my 365 days project. then all of a sudden i didn't have my camera anymore. it felt a little wrong not to be taking pictures. but, that long absence from my camera made it hard to get back into taking pictures and blogging again. but here i am ready to go now. i am finally feeling the motivation again.

this is a bit of what we've been up to this year:


taking care of our baby dolls. even tanner gets in on the action. i guess when you see your sister strolling around a baby all day then you want one too.


katelyn finding ways to bug tanner. when tanner was less mobile, katelyn would lay in this doorway so tanner couldn't get by. now it's a fun game for both of them because tanner just hops right over katelyn.


gathering toys. katelyn still has her obsession with holding on to as many toys as possible. she insisted that she could carry it all down the stairs herself, and she did.


playing golf.


and eating golf clubs.


and trying on shoes that aren't ours.


and reading lots and lots of books. katelyn was in her room for quiet time and was being extra quiet. i peeked into her room to see what she was doing and found that she had layed out a lot of her books on the ground for fun.


decorating for holidays. for valentine's day we hung some hearts from the ceiling. one of tanner's favorite thing was to point to them and tell me about it all day.


dressing up. we do a lot of this at our house. bracelets, necklaces, hairclips and of course, princess dresses. snow white frequents our house all of the time. poor tanner, this is really all he knows. we need more boy toys at our house.

and of course being silly. tanner is our little goofball who is constantly making us laugh. he is a kid who is so full of lfe, that's for sure.

hopefully i will update a little more faithfully from now on!

casting call (kind of )

first of all, i don't even know if anyone reads this blog, so i guess we'll find out. i am looking for two pregnant women out there who are due sometime in the near future (end of january/february/march) who think they might like some newborns done of their baby. i am hoping to gain some experience by practicing with your newborn. i can't promise perfect pictures because this is a practice session for me and they're free *yeah*! i would hold these sessions in my own home because let's face it, i know the lighting in my home like the back of my hand, and all of my supplies are here. we would have to do it within the first 10 days of your baby's life. the baby tends to be more sleepy and more willing to let us play. i am hoping to get one baby girl and one baby boy if possible, but if not, that's okay.

so, if you think you would be interested let me know! you can either email, call or leave a comment on this blog. i kind of hesitate to leave my email address on the blog, but i think most of you either have it already or have a way to find it, right? if you aren't pregnant but know someone who is, let them know! thanks.

our little memorizer

katelyn has always been a very good memorizer. she learns to sing songs by herself very quickly, she remembers lines from movies she has seen, and recently she started memorizing scriptures.

before we started having her memorize scriptures, we just thought it would be a fun thing to do. but as we progressed along, i became amazed with how much memorizing these scriptures made an impact on her and me. we picked our scriptures right out of the friend magazine which has a page dedicated to one scripture with a correlating picture every month. this made it easy enough to explain and help her remember the subject of the scripture she was memorizing. after we began, i noticed that she started paying attention in sacrament meeting better. i can still remember one sunday after she had memorized a scripture, she kept leaning into me saying, they said commandments, they said righteous and so on. i know for me, i thought having katelyn memorie a scripture meant we would have to set aside a specific time to do this, but that wasn't so. it was amazing how many little moments we were able to find together to memorize. while katelyn was in the tub, driving to the store, sitting on the couch together, at the dinner table, wherever. it was a great moment together to talk about the scriptures and have some good mommy-daughter time. i can honestly say that this has been such a neat experience and would highly recommend this to anyone that is interested.

on a side note: at first we started memorizing one scripture a month, but soon found that the sciptures were getting jumbled in her head, so we slowed it down a little. maybe your child wouldn't have a problem with this though.

two last things: i think i sound a little bossy in this video and wow, i can't believe how much her speech has changed since the summer!

i've been meaning to get this up

i know christmas has come and gone now, but i meant to get this up before christmas. then the week before we left for utah i was running around like a chicken with it's head cut off...so that didn't happen.

i know we wrote a little bit in our card, but we wanted to add that 2010 was a fabulous year for us. we love being here in milwaukee and although we miss our families, we are grateful to be surrounded by so many good people. we were most definitely blessed and well taken care of. we are very grateful for birth of our Savior Jesus Christ, and hope that we can remember those feelings of peace and joy the christmas season brought in this new year.

back to catching up

back in august (whoops) three of the hedin boys came to visit. this was a highly anticipated trip for the guys and my husband. why? well the pga was being held right here in the good ol' state of wisconsin not too far from where we live. and if you know the hedin boys, they love to play and watch golf, so they couldn't pass up this opportunity to go. of course they did manage to squeeze in some other activities while they were here besides golfing. they also didn't want to miss out playing with our kiddies.

we hit up a local restaurant in our area that has some good food and a fun atmosphere. and the balloons are always a hit with the kids. those come in handy right around the time the kids start getting bored and antsy.

andy decided that maybe, just maybe, med school might be worth it just for the white med student coat.

the boys happened to come into town right during the state fair, so we went to gorge ourselves on all of the deliciously disgusting food, see the sites and check out some of the animals.

i think we were all eating fried oreos, and boy were they good. i didn't think oreos could be any worse for you (apparently they can be) or taste any better (apparently they can).

i told katelyn to smile. i guess this is the best she can do when there is too much going on around her.

i love these two pictures of katelyn with her grandpa hedin. she sure loves him and his adoring attention. he loves to make katelyn happy and spoils her and did so by taking her on the slide.

probably the grossest food we found at the fair that day. a krispy creme donut with a hamburger patty inside. yup, we bought and tried it. not worth the money folks, not worth the money.

the running pigs again this year. i don't think our pig won once. maybe next year.

we definitely tried other deliciously disgusting food while we were there, but it's been so long i can't seem to remember it all.

we don't have a single picture from the pga. you aren't allowed to bring in cameras at all, so they didn't even bother. the only picture i got of that momentous day was of poor little katelyn who ended up getting sick that day. our first experience with a throwing up child and most likely not our last.

luckily she wasn't too miserable for too long. she doesn't even look that sick in this picture (but she was).

until next time boys!

p.s. can you tell tanner looks like a hedin next to all of these hedin boys?

leaves, leaves, leaves

remember my last post how i promised to post about our leaf activity? remember how i promised to post it soon? yeah, that didn't happen, but at least i'm eventually getting to it.

this leaf activity was so fun. i saw this idea in the family fun magazine (always has great ideas in it by the way) and decided to try it. which led us to getting outside, taking a walk, taking lots of pictures and eventually back inside to our art project. normally i just get katelyn started and tidy up the kitchen while she's working, but like i said, this project was pretty fun, so i joined in and painted with her. i highly recommend this project for next year if you're interested.

katelyn knows the routine now. spread newspaper at the end of the table, put the art smock on, wait for mom to get paint, water and paper towel ready and start project.

i ditched the kid paint for this project and let her use my paints from the craft store. they worked perfectly on the leaves.

the finished product.