Chicken Little

Clayton came home with a little {BIG} surprise for the boys {and me} tonight.  He had vaguely mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that he would love to have chickens to provide our family with fresh eggs.

I guess i didn't realize how serious he was.

The boys fell madly in love at first sight. Cooper named his chicken Grimlock (think Transformers) and Adam named his little chick Sparky.

They both expressed how excited they are to take care of the chicks and love them, feed them, water them and clean up their cage.

Adam excitedly told us "I guess this means we are farmers now!" 

We're back!

My new years resolution list is short. thank goodness because that means I might actually stick to it! One of the items on my list is to get this blog going again.


Here's a quick recap of the last eight months or so:

• We sold our home of 10 years. 

• We moved into a cramped 800 sq ft  basement apt, stuffed all our belongings into two large storage units and proceeded to go stark raving mad as we endured 4 months of roughing it. We battled ginormous spiders, a daily horrid sewage smell coming from our kitchen, an insomniac landlord who lived upstairs and kept us up too, outlets in the ceiling, an ant infestation, Barbershop Quartet music played above us almost nightly, absolutely no natural light from our tiny windows, and stir craziness and depression brought on by all of the above.

• We watched in almost pain staking slow motion as our new home was built and completed two months behind schedule. We came up to visit our lot on a daily basis as a way of maintaining our sanity throughout the process :) 

• In the end, we moved twice (sorry Clayton!) but looking back on all of it  I can say that it was completely worth it ;) We moved in on August 2nd and have now been here in our beautiful home for 5 months!! 

• Adam started 1st grade and is waaay too popular with the girls at recess. He is an awesome little reader and makes friends very easily. He is liking school this year but when asked about it he will tell you that his favorite parts of the day are "lunch, recess and coming home!"

• Cooper started preschool and loves wearing his "papack" (backpack). He loves riding his scooter and is a little speed demon. Those short little legs move so fast! He's also completely obsessed with the Skylander's Wii game and is always trying to talk one of us into playing it since he's not quite old enough to play it yet.

• Clayton got a new (OLD) car. It's a gem. I'm talking crushed red velvet interior. Your jealous, it's ok. He also started school- BYU/Idaho online and got straight A's his first semester. my hubby has a 4.0!! woot woot! 

• I enjoyed water aerobics 4 nights a week all summer at the outdoor pool and was so sad when it was over.  (can't wait till May!)  The busy photography season started about 4 days after we moved into our new home and I just shot my last session of 2013 about 2 weeks ago.  I had 52 photo sessions scheduled in the past 4 months! It does get crazy hectic at times but I love it. I have really worked hard over the last year and I'm proud of what I've accomplished. You can check out my stuff anytime on my facebook page or my blog  :)

• We decided to turn our adoption papers in again! I know. Crazy right? We just know that this is what we are supposed to do. Whatever happens, we are so happy and blessed and grateful for the family that we have but we are excited to see what 2014 will bring!

Here's our most recent family photo, Clayton shaved his mountain man beard about a week ago so I don't have to endure that awesomeness anymore ;)

Mommy reminiscing...

This is one of my favorite pictures from our vacation last year and I love it for a number of reasons. . I love that Adam and I got to share a special moment together feeding these birds. We share a fascination of animals so when we do things like this together it makes me extra happy. .
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To any other person it might not have been a big deal..but to Adam I know it was magical so it made it magical for me too.
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I love that he paid close attention to the instructions he was given.
For a 3 year old that is no easy feat! .


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He stood perfectly still even though he was quite surprised and little bit scared when all these birds landed on him and practically tore his shirt off! .
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He held his little cup of nectar as steady as he could and I only wish I could have captured the moment right after this one, when he was grinning from ear to ear.


I LOVE this boy!

Little Karate Kid

  

Adam earned his WHITE belt in karate last night and we couldn't be more proud of him!!!

For Valentines Day, on of his preschool friends gave him a Valentine good for 2 free karate sessions so we were really excited to go try it out and see if he would like it.

Adam did great during the first class and then had a whole week to practice everything he had been taught.  I had no idea that so much about Karate is based on respect, self control and obedience! 

Last night he went back for his 2nd class and Adam's instructor asked him to recite the things he had learned and also to show him all the moves he had practiced. We saw a lot of improvement for his 2nd time!

 Stretching and warming up to do some Karate.

Practicing front jabs with a target

 

Practicing cross jabs and remembering to say HIYAAA!!

 

Practicing his front kick

In order to earn his white belt 
Adam had to be able to break a board with his hand!!

Hear they are having a discussion about what it takes to break a board..

 

One...Two...Three....HIIYYAAAA!!!

HE DID IT!!!

I don't think he believed it at first lol.!!
We are so proud of him, he did a great job!!

A room with a view

This is Adam's new safari themed room!! 

We have been wanting to have a mural painted in his room for about a 2 years now so this weekend was very exciting! We found a wonderful talented artist who came in and whipped up these beautiful images in just 2 days! He came to our house a couple of weeks ago for a little consultation to find out exactly what our vision for the room was. Adam was able to tell him which animals he really wanted in the mural and he was one happy boy today when the room was done :)

 

 

 

 

 The gorilla was painted on another wall right above Adams headboard. He was super excited about this guy standing guard above his head every night :)

 

 

 

We all love this close up Giraffe! All together there are 2 Giraffes, 2 Elephants, 2 monkeys (in the tree) a Zebra, a water buffalo and a Gorilla...oh and 5 little birds in the sky (for some reason the birds were a very important element of the mural for Adam) The whole mural turned out wonderfully and we already have plans to add some more animals to the room in the future!

Where's my sister?

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For the last six months or so Adam has been asking us where his sister is, this has been happening on an almost daily basis! At some point in the day he will mention something about "his" sister and how he can't wait till she's in our family.  We've talked to him about the fact that we may never have a little girl in our family and that it's up to Heavenly Father whether he gets a brother or a sister but he has his mind made up lol. 

The other day while we were on our way to the store he said "mommy, is my sister still in heaven?"

I, for the sake of not explaining yet again that it's not in our control whether the next baby will be a boy or a girl just said "Yes, she's still in heaven buddy"

For a few moments there was silence and then a loooong drawn out SIGH followed by "Well I know she's ready to come down, why won't Heavenly Father just send her now?"

Isn't he cute? Love this sweet innocent age :)

Later that day he took matters into his own hands. He came into the kitchen and said that his sister had arrived and she was downstairs! He lead me down the stairs and introduced me to "Holly" 

 

 Isn't she pretty? The blanket is supposed to be her long flowing hair :)

And not to be outdone by his sister "Holly", he found some beautiful flowing hair for himself too :)

NOTE: As I was literally writing this post and finishing it up Adam asked me again "Is my sister still up in heaven?" ...I replied "Yes" and he said "Ugh!! When is she coming down?!"

Poor kid! I hope his wish comes true :)

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Reason #864 Why I love my husband

He takes 'Boy's Night' to a whole other level  by camping out downstairs in a tent!

 and boys night can't be complete without ice cream, popcorn and a movie (Kung Fu Panda 2)

I love this man :)

Back to School 2011

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Adam started Preschool today.
He was super excited about his Super Mario backpack.

I know it's only 2 1/2 hours but I miss him already!

3 Birthdays in 3 weeks....PART 1.

The last several weeks have been super busy and hectic because
Adam, Clayton and Cooper all have birthdays within 3 weeks of each other!

Adam had his birthday first and turned 4 years old!!
he had a "friend" party the day before and it was loads of fun.
This year it was all things Winnie The Pooh. I made fun themed cupcakes, "Piglets" in a blanket and "Rabbit" Juice. The kids played pin the tail on Eyore, danced to Winnie the Pooh music
and had a Tigger parade.

In our family we have some fun birthday traditions.
First, we always open our birthday presents
first thing in the morning.
(This usually makes for super scary pictures of me
so I try to stay away from the camera!)
We always have a special breakfast and whoever is having the birthday gets to choose the menu.
Adam chose bacon. yes. just bacon.
I added hashbrowns to make it a meal..and because it made me feel less like a bad mom for letting my kid eat
loads of bacon for breakfast. We also have a special plate that the birthday person gets to eat from all day.
We always decorate the bedroom door of the birthday person too. This year Adam was super excited to see his door with all the decorations on it. :)
He was even more excited to open all his presents!! He got lots of Winnie the Pooh stuff and lots of Mario Kart figurines.

Later in the morning we dropped Cooper off at grandma and grandpa's house and had some one on one time with Adam. Clayton and I took him to see the Winnie The Pooh movie and then took him out for lunch. In the afternoon we headed to the Bean Museum to look at all the animals. For his birthday dinner, Adam chose to go to Red Lobster. He loves that place because they always bring a live lobster to our table so he can pet it. This time the hostess put a fork in the lobsters claw...it was kinda creepy, I'm not gonna lie! But Adam loved it even though he was a little nervous about petting it. After dinner we headed home so we could sing Happy Birthday and he could blow out his candles and open the rest of his presents from our families.

He had a wonderful birthday! We can't believe how fast he is growing up but we have never been more proud to be his parents and are so lucky to have him in our family!

Beautiful Eyes

This was such a tough choice for me! I have two gorgeous little boys with the most beautiful sparkly eyes
and they are exact opposites :)
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. In the end I picked this image because if it is true that the eyes are the windows to the soul then you can easily see just how beautiful he is inside and out!

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Check out more of the beautiful eyes challenge over at I Heart Faces!

Growing up

This past week Adam celebrated his 4th birthday.

It's hard to believe!
In fact, writing this post made me think about this one that I wrote what seemed like not too long ago!

We keep having the "stop growing up" talk with him but it's not working.

It seems that over the last several weeks we are finally moving out of the terrible three's. (yay!)

Our sweet boy is happy, polite and oh so smart!
He is very articulate and uses many big words in his vocabulary.
Yesterday we were talking about whether we should celebrate Cooper's upcoming birthday at Chuck E Cheese or Pirate Island and Adam's response was "Hmmm, I think I would prefer going to Pirate Island instead of Chuck E Cheese." Seriously.
A few days before that we had a serious conversation about hibernation. (one of his big words)
He never ceases to amaze us!
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He is an AMAZING big brother, always sharing his toys, and basically anything else that his little brother covets. He also keeps Cooper properly smothered in hugs and kisses.

Right now he is really into Winnie The Pooh, Mario and the rest of the Super Nintendo characters and jumping on the trampoline.

His favorite book is Cat in The Hat.

His favorite food is candy.


We love him so much and even though we wish he would never grow up, we are enjoying watching him learn and grow into a wonderful little man.

Doing the crazy laugh

Yesterday was one of "those" days.

You know.

The kind of day where you question your own sanity at least a dozen times.

Both the boys were struggling yesterday. Adam was struggling to have a good attitude and be nice. Cooper was just struggling.

While Adam was at summer day camp I thought I'd take a few minutes with Cooper and snap some pictures of him without any distractions.

I'm not really sure what happened.
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I don't know if I looked at him the wrong way
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maybe I scared him as I was trying to make him smile?
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What ever it was, something upset him.
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I figured I wasn't wasting my shooting time even if it was just a screaming baby so I kept clicking away.


I wish I could say this summed up my day but it just kinda went down hill from here.
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Last night we were finishing our errands and by the time we got to Home Depot the boys were completely done. Cooper was bawling and Adam just would not stop talking back.
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Clayton loaded them in the car while I took the shopping cart back.
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And that's when it happened.
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I started laughing.
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It wasn't just any laugh. It was the "I'm going crazy because I've had it" laugh.
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There I was pushing a shopping cart by myself and I couldn't stop laughing.The harder I tried the louder and crazier my laugh got.
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Out of the corner of my eye I could see several people looking at me and that actually made me laugh harder.
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In my mind I had a perfect picture of how I must look to those people. Yep, just like the crazy cat lady from the Simpsons (minus the cats)

I think I mighta' cried a little too, but by the time I got to the car I felt a little better.

Laughter really is the best medicine. Especially the "crazy laugh"....at least for me :)

Bear in Training...

I just had to share this picture...

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Adam decided it was time that Teddy the bear was potty trained.

Show and Tell: Playing catch-up

SUMMER is officially here.

We're soaking up the warmth one day at a time.
First things first, we bought a trampoline and
BOY do we love it.

Clayton and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary.
No pictures..too busy havin' fun!
Clayton's sister took our boys and we had 2 WHOLE days and nights alone! Woo Hoo!

The boys have been keeping each other busy.

We've gone camping and fishing already.
No fish caught just yet but Adam is looking forward to it!

Camping was an adventure to say the least.

Long story short:

We had a trailer but NO keys.

So we bought a tent.

10 years ago I vowed I would never sleep in a tent again and I kept my word.
Until this trip.
It was as bad as I remembered.
Made worse by the plug that was MISSING from the air mattress.

Somehow we all managed to survive. Even me.

We celebrated this wonderful man on Father's Day.
He's the best dad ever.

This lovely picture taken on our camping trip was obviously shot BEFORE I was informed that the plug was missing from the air mattress.

My camera has become an extension of my body.
I can't stop taking pictures of our beautiful boys.

When I'm not shooting my family I'm shooting someone elses.
With my camera. of course.

See that adorable doggy above?
That's MiLO
He was my very first baby. I love him to the moon and back.
For 5 years I dressed him up daily and spoiled him rotten.
Then he went to the family he was meant to be with forever.
It's a different type of adoption story but it's an open adoption and that's the best kind.
Someday I'll write it down and share it.

See more of my images here and here.

Busy, busy, busy and lovin' it.