What happened to my art?

This Did. I was asked to paint a backdrop for a Christmas play. So, this backdrop spent the last month in my basement while I (with the help of a friend of mine) worked on it. They gave me an actual cloth drop cloth as my surface & latex paint. To say the least it was difficult & time consuming, and this is what I am going to call DONE! It was hard to get a good picture of it, hopefully I will get a better one later when it's hung up. Whew... (big sigh)

Our Baby...

I was a little slow to get these scanned and put up, but here are the pictures from my 20 week ultrasound! I hope you can discern them okay. I love her already.
Here is a profile picture (you can see the jaw) and you can see a folded up leg toward the right side & the spine at the bottom of the little body. Another profile, you can see the skeletal structure of the face pretty well in this one as well as the 4 chambers of the heart inside the chest...

In this one you can see the two arms with the hands together in front of her face (upper left). She's praying :)

Yep, I can't wait to meet her (at least I think it's a HER) :)

Just playin'

Here's a couple of the first shots I took with my new camera...

Preschool Fieldtrip #3: The Zoo

We took a fieldtrip to the zoo as part of our "zoo unit" for preschool. We had a great time.I like Tyler's face in this one... Look, Blake is a monkey too...

So, thanks to "Dora the Explorer", almost all the preschoolers were obsessed with reading the map the entire time, and actually, I think Blake figured it out pretty well.

Checkin' out the Giraffes

It was also fun to see all the little younger todder siblings having a great time too.

The kids were convinced that this little pond for the decorative faountain was where the hippos were. It was really just a puddle, funny kids.

My 26th Birthday

So, on the 7th it was my 26th Birthday. I wasn't expecting a lot since my husband was absent, but luckily I have some very sweet friends who thought of me. I got several gifts, a couple of flower arrangements, and even a couple people gave me cake! It's so nice to have friends that think of me. :) Blake was a little concerned when I told him it was my birthday. He said, "Where's your cake?" I said, "I don't have one" he said, "I'll make you a cake". He then proceeded to bang around with his toys for a while before he said, "Mommy, you can make a cake". So, he was especially excited that others remembered me and gave me cake.

Pretty Stoked.

Yep, it's happened! This camera is on it's way to my house! Happy Birthday & Christmas to me! It has been a long time coming for me & I AM STOKED! Thanks Mom & Dad!

Goofy.

So, goofy mommy gets even goofier when it's time for preschool.... This last week we were doing a unit on the zoo & one of the days we talked about zoo workers, so when the kiddos showed up I was dressed as a zooworker with an apron, rubber boots & a hat. I gave them spray bottles, towels, and brushes to "groom" the plastic animals & then I gave them grass, beef jerky, goldfish, and birdseed to "feed" the animals. Later as a craft each of the kids made their own hats. To say the least, it was kind of fun.

21 Weeks = More than halfway!

So, this last week or so I've actually started to "pop" now that I'm halfway through pregnancy. It's becoming obvious now that I have a special little someone who is GROWING very quickly in there. So, I had Blake take a picture of me, he's my photographer as of late, and he loves it. :)

Family, REAL family in Illinois!

So, my grandparents came out to visit my aunt and uncle who live out here in IL. My Aunt & Uncle Jared have actually lived here for over a year now about an hour 1/2 away and embarassingly enough we haven't seen them. Luckily, my Grandparents came out to visit them and motivated me & the boys to head down and make an appearance. I LOVE all of them so much I'm so glad we did! We only had a short visit but it was fabulous!And... now that we've broken the ice we will have to get together more! The boys loved getting to see & play with their grandpa Howlett! This picture just makes me HAPPY! I love you Grandma & Grandpa!

Trunk-or-Treat & Halloween

So, here's me and the boys before we headed to trunk or treat. The boys were pretty tired during trunk or treat & suprisingly not much into it... Oh well! On Halloween Blake enjoyed passing out candy more than getting it. I took him & Tyler to something like 10 houses just on our street, and he was the one saying he was done. I would have thought my kids would like getting candy, well, I was wrong :) Apparently Blake is more of a "giver", & hey, I won't complain.

It's a little...

At my ultrasound today we got to find out that there's a 90 percent chance that the little one is a GIRL! The reason for the percentage is because the baby had its legs pretty darn close together so it was hard to get a good look, but we looked several times and saw that it was lacking certain parts and seemed to have others, so unless a little something is hiding, the ultrasound lady said she was 90 percent sure that it was a girl and that you can never be 100%.... So, I'm going with it!!! Hurray!!! We're really excited (especially me, mommy) :) :) :)

100!

Well, this is it. The 100th blog post. Who knew I was such a journalist? I hope that you all enjoy reading and learning about us!

Peter Pan & Captain Hook

So, today we had a little costume photo shoot, because I was thrilled to have the costumes finally finished and the weather was beautiful, and here in IL, it might not be that way the rest of the week or month or quarter. So, here's my little cuties in their Halloween costumes this year.

This is the side of Captain Hook and Peter Pan that we don't see in the movies...I was thrilled to get Tyler to put his costume on, because as I was making it, and wanting him to try it on, he would say "no peder pan, Tatain Dook" (He wanted to be Captain Hook apparently). However once Blake was outfitted and having fun in his Tyler wanted Peter Pan on too. Hurray!

I LOVED that Blake was giving me mean pirate faces.... haha.

Blake is FOUR!

Can't blame Tyler, he just wanted to take a peek!

Here's Blake with one of his gifts. He got a Leapster 2 from his Grandma Kate & he loved playing with it once he got the hang of it! (Oh, and that's his Captain Hook hat)

Blake is very into Pirates, Peter Pan & Swords lately. So, I tried to make a cake to fit.With paper for sails, I figured it may be best to make the candles more like canons. :)

A tradition of Brent's family's is to let the birthday kid have a go at the cake before cutting it. Blake of course remembered the tradition and requested the fork.

Blake's birthday was yesterday. We tried to make it special even though Daddy wasn't able to be there. Blake is such a special little boy. He is very sweet caring & thoughtful. We are so grateful to have him in our family.

Fall- This one is for you Love...

So, today I decided to rake the leaves in the backyard. Only about a 1/3 of the leaves have all fallen off the trees & this is probably the 3rd time we've raked, but with so many trees we have to try to keep up somehow!
After I finished raking & even while I was raking the boys liked having a nice jump in the pile...Yep, I joined the fun too.

"Glamour shots by Deb"... ;)One of the things I will really miss when we leave IL is this....
(Seriously, I think I've posted WAY too many pictures of our house- I guess I just want to remember)And, here's Blake on his "bikeycycle"