the real st. patrick's day

this year for st. patrick's day we started some new traditions in our home. i'm not sure if we'll keep all of them, but they were fun for at least one year. for instance, i'm not sure we'll keep having lucky charms for breakfast on st. patrick's day. both of my kids just wanted to eat the marshmallows and nothing else.





don't they still look sleepy? we love our kids, but sometimes they just get up too early. maybe they knew we had some fun things planned that day?

this year we decided we were going to try and catch one of those sneaky, little leprachauns. we found the perfect idea on the family fun site for a leprachaun trap and got to work making it. of course this was a huge hit with katelyn. she loves doing any and all kinds of crafts.



then we got to work setting it up with some lucky charms on top. our hope was that the sneaky leprachaun would come during the night and try to get some of those lucky charms, then fall right inside when he stepped on top of the paper.



but...those leprachauns are more skilled than we realized. somehow he ate all of the lucky charms, but he didn't fall in!



he even left a big mess for us and some green footprints all around the room.



ah well, maybe next year. one of my favorite traditions of st. patrick's day is dressing up in green. i don't know why, but i'm a sucker for "matching". i'm also a sucker for these two cute kiddos sitting by each other so nicely.







later that night we had our friends, the odells, over for our traditional, very fancy, green dinner. we are glad they shared our tradition with us that night!

st. patrick's day

my sister told me my blog was getting boring, so i guess it's time for a real update again. of course we had to go all out this year for st. patrick's day. i love this holiday. but who am i kidding, i think i love every holiday. we started off celebrating st. patrick's day down in chicago with my sister, camille and her family, mike and benson. they recently moved out to illinois, and we couldn't be happier. we love having family nearby. chicago does a big parade every year for st. patrick's day and every year they also dye the river a bright green. i've been dying to see the river ever since we moved out here. now that camille and mike are in chicago we have no excuse not to see it.


just hanging out after getting all of the kiddos into bed.

we decided the day of the parade that we would take the train to downtown chicago, so we wouldn't have to worry about traffic and paying for parking. we were positive the kids were going to be in love with the train. i think tanner had fun looking out the window for about five minutes, then he was done.



katelyn just adores her uncle mike and aunt camille. she opts to hang out with them instead of her own parents when we're together.



walking to the parade was probably the most entertaining part of the day. people go all out dressing up in green. i think we saw an awful lot of spandex while we were there. as you can see we were on the more conservative side of dressing up.



there were a lot of people out to watch the parade, so we actually didn't get to see a ton of it. well, actually none of it. the kids did get a chance to see some thanks to tyler and mike who made a nice comfy seat available on their shoulders.





my sister just so happened to move into a ward where our good friends from orem also now live. it was fun to get all of us together. small world. oh, and don't i look ravishing?



i think we entertained ourselves by people watching some of the characters that were out that day and taking pictures of ourselves.



here's us and the wrights. sadly i forgot to take my camera off of manual for my sister, so that's why we look very over exposed.



after the parade the kids were more than willing to get back into the stroller under the warm blankets. all three kids fell asleep within five minutes of walking. they were all worn out.



after the parade we walked over to see the green river. it was so green. it looked like they had poured green kool-aid right into the river. very fun to see. too bad none of the kids saw it.



this picture is set up. i was a little over-excited about seeing the green river and had to take a picture showing that.

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.