Friday Randomness

I've been a bad, bad blogger! Mostly this is for me anyway, to check back at my kids' milestones and things like that. Random stories I remember to post. So I should be better about documenting these things but I'm not! I'll get around to it some day. For now, here's some Friday randomness for you!

1. I was recently release from YW. I WAS SO SAD!! I love love love those girls. I will miss getting to spend time with them twice a week, but I will definitely keep tabs on them. My new calling is the Relief Society Meeting Coordinator (ie Enrichment Leader). I'm really excited about it, and sitting in Relief Society on Sundays again after almost 3 years was actually quite refreshing. We have wonderful RS teachers so I'm happy that I get to be in again.

2. On that note, we have ONE Sunday left before Shelby goes to nursery. Can you believe it? This weekend is conference, then the next Sunday is a regular church day, then the week after that she'll be 18 months! Time has flown by faster with her than I remember if going with Ben.

3. Ben is completely loving school. He recently got Student of the Week and I was so proud of him. His teacher picks one student every few weeks to get the title and there's a yard sign they get to take home (Ben was very annoyed by the fact that we don't have a yard). His teacher says he's always good, is really nice to all the kids in his class and is super helpful. Ben can be pretty moody sometimes and gets really emotional when he's upset so I'm really proud of him for keeping it together at school all day every day. He is exhausted by the end of the day so we try really hard to make sure things are pretty laid back and consistent in the evenings.

4. I'm pretty sure Shelby is going through a growth spurt because all of a sudden her shirts are too short and her capri pants look like bermuda shorts. Don't even ask me about Fall clothes because she has maybe 3 long sleeved shirts and ONE pair of pants. But come on it was 100 degrees yesterday! I have no excuse now because almost every shirt she had is now too small. Why do they get so big so fast?

5. Shelby is also getting in 4 new teeth which will make a total of 16! I don't even remember Ben having that many teeth when he was 18-months old. But MAN that tiny mouth of hers is completely full of teeth now and her canines are finally breaking the surface. They have been giving her grief for months!

6. Ben has become a great little reader. He reads things out of the BOM during scriptures at night that completely surprise me. Last night he read me a bed time story. He also has spelling tests every week and he can spell words like green, apple, blue. He's doing so good.

7. Shelby has slowed down a little with her speech, but I think it'll pick up again soon. She says dog(duh), bye bye (bu bu), bird (bur), ben (I can't even comprehend this but when I tell her it's time to go pick up Ben she runs over to a pic of him and does this weird grunting at it), dad (da), thank you (ta too). I think that's about it. No mama anymore. Only da. She is completely in love with John!

8. Me and Shelby have been going to the park in the morning to walk and for the most part she does great. I've gotten up to 4 miles at a time and it's a struggle with a kid her age in our little Chicco stroller to walk around that long, but I think she'll be a little better once we get a jogging stroller (so I can actually start jogging!) It's been fun and I can tell Ben gets a little jealous asking what mommy and Shelby do while he's at school. He really doesn't like shopping that much anymore so as long as he knows he didn't have to walk around Walmart for an hour he's usually okay.

9. We are not any closer to getting our house on the market than we were two months ago. We still have so much to do! Time just ticks on by! We will hopefully in the next month or two, but it's hard with everything getting so busy!

10. I cut my own bangs the other day. Not my smartest moment. Still need my friend to fix them for me!

11. Okay I really can't think of anything else to say. I'm sure I will think of something as soon as I publish but I will have to save that for another post!

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Tuesday Ten

1. I'm a bad blogger. Bad, bad, blogger! I would use the excuse that having two kids has made me so busy and it's been so hard that I haven't had time to blog. But that would be a complete lie. We had a rough first couple of weeks but it's been great ever since. I have often said I have the best baby ever, but part of is that Ben was babysat and I worked full-time, so I didn't have control over his schedule. Now I have control over Shelby's schedule and it's been awesome. Definitely hiccups every now and then but for the most part she knows exactly what she wants, when she wants it and is great at getting back on schedule when we have off days. I just LOVE my baby girl!

2. Shelby's been smiling since she was 2 weeks old and has started cooing. Her favorite person to coo at is John and I'm so glad! She'll look up at you and give you a cute "ooh! ooh!" Love it.

3. Ben is still having a hard time adjusting. He isn't jealous or anything like that. He's just partly sleep deprived from waking up too early in the morning and gets overly anxious and wild in the afternoons. Plus he's 4 and listening isn't exactly a strong point. We're working on it. I keep saying I got a good baby because I have to deal with Ben, but I guess that's not fair to Ben. I just need to be more patient! Part of the reason why I'm also a bad blogger is because I let Ben have computer time during the times Shelby sleeps long enough that I'd have time to put up a post. So it's all good!

4. Two weeks ago John and I shot a wedding in Princeton, TX. We left both kids for 8 hours! My sister Mandie babysat for us and thankfully Shelby was great. It was tough to leave her for the first time, but it all worked out. The wedding was great!

5. This past weekend we shot a wedding in Austin, TX! Thankfully my nephew and his wife life in Temple which is only about an hour and a half from Austin. They were more than willing to watch Ben and Shelby for us and we were so grateful! And the most awesome part? They watched our kids OVERNIGHT on Saturday night while we stayed at a hotel! I was really hesitant at first because Shelby is only 6 weeks old, but she usually only wakes up once a night to eat so I thought she would be okay, and of course she was. We were so exhausted on Sunday and we kept telling each other that we would have been SO much more tired if we hadn't gotten as good of sleep as we did on Saturday night! Thank you, Randi! You are the BEST!

6. Ben got to swim yesterday for the first time this summer at a friend in our ward's Memorial Day party. And he got sunburned for the first time in his life. I honestly can't remember another time he's been sunburned, even when we used to swim every week last summer! It's not too bad thankfully, and he was showing off his sunburn to John last night. He seems quite proud of it! It was funny seeing some people in our ward who I haven't seen in a few weeks because we've been out of town and not at church from having Shelby. A few of them didn't know we had Shelby yet, and one of them didn't even know I was pregnant!

7. We are shooting one more wedding this summer. It'll be in August and it's an LDS wedding for a family friend. We are excited! Super adorable couple! I'm hoping for an overcast day because it's going to be so hot!

8. We're blessing Shelby on Sunday. Mandie found an adorable white smocked dress at a consignment store for her. It might be 2nd hand but it looks brand new and it was only $8. It's a 6M but still fits her just fine! Her chubby cheeks are going to look so cute! :)

9. I can finally hear Shelby stirring (8:35am). She was only up once last night at 4:30am and has been asleep ever since. It's a good thing because I have a killer headache today! I did find her turned completely around in her crib when she woke up earlier to eat. I'm hoping that doesn't mean we'll have another mover on our hands like we did with Ben. He walked at 10 months and I would not wish that on us again! He was a tough toddler!

10. I know 7 women who are pregnant right now. SEVEN! Three friends and four family members. So far 4 of the are having boys (Kelli, Suzanne, Tiffany and Alison). The other 3 don't know what they're having yet. I'm excited to buy cute little boy stuff, but hope there are some girls coming, too!

**Edit: After thinking about it some more, I actually know 11 women who are pregnant right now! That's insane!!

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Update 'n Stuff

1. Home Improvement Project #1 is going well. But not without hiccups that's for sure! We're lucky to be staying within our budget because there just seems to be thing after thing! We got all the floor ripped up, the vanity taken apart and tossed and the shut-off valves replaced with no problem. Then when John demo'd the soffit we discovered it was built into the ceiling, so ripping it out left a huge hole in the wall and in the ceiling. John patched both with drywall (which is going to look a bit awkward since the ceiling wasn't level there in the first place). We also had to scrape the popcorn off the ceiling or we'd be stuck with repopcorning where the hole was left. Which means we have to patch parts of the ceiling before we can paint it. It's been so fun. ;) I must say that I haven't done much at all, because there's not much I CAN do, or that John will let me do because I'm pregnant. I'm super impressed with his calmness for one, and for his motivation to get it done. The tile has been laid and half-grouted. If John hadn't spent half of his work day yesterday putting a deco seal on a pool then his back would have been well enough to finish grouting last night. But I'm definitely not complaining. I'm excited to get it painted (a cool steel gray color with a hint of blue) so we can put in our AWESOME vanity with the coolest faucet every (on clearance at Home Depot). We also scored enough tile for our kitchen and bathroom for 57 cents/sq ft. Sweet!

2. I never posted pictures on here from when we had all the snow! I posted some on Facebook, though I realize that's hardly sufficient. Here are a few from our adventures! I LOVED the snow!

While John was working in the snow me and Ben went to River Legacy and played in the snow for over 2 hours. I didn't fall down once! And Ben's favorite person Nikki got to join us to help us build a snowman!

3. I will be 33 weeks on Friday. I can't believe how close we're getting! I move from excited to freaked out day after day. I know things will be great, we just have a lot to do before the baby comes! My mom is headed to Brazil (I know!) in early April and she's going to look for a blessing dress for Shelby while she's there. I think that's so cool, and I really hope she finds one! We finished the quilt for her bedding and it's so cute. I need to take pictures of it, but I think I'll wait till all the bedding is set up in the kids' room to take pictures of our insanely small but functional bedroom for two kids!

4. I'm going to be doing just a handful of photo sessions before the baby comes. I'll probably work through March and decide whether to do any in early April depending on how I'm feeling. If you would like to book a session, let me know! Especially if you have kiddos you want to have photographed in their Easter clothes! Here's a pic from the last session I did. I have tons to update on my photo blog, I've just had a hard time finding time to actually post them!

5. That's really all I can think of right now! John's been super busy at work since going to Phoenix for training. I'm trying to hold down the fort at home while getting increasingly uncomfortable. Can I just mention how much it sucks having to bend over and pick-up toys? And how I never thought having just one working bathroom would be hard? Every time I shower I'm afraid Ben's going to have to go potty so bad he'll have an accident. Luckily that hasn't been the case! My baby shower is on Saturday and I'm so excited!

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Inadvertent Hiatus

Yeah I know it's been like a 87 years since I have posted. I have a couple of posts I started but never published. Why? I have no idea. It's been a long, hot summer! It's been great and we've all been really busy, trying to manage our days and my business and missing each other because of John's long hours.

Here are some things we've been up to:

1. Having 7+ photo sessions in 2+ weeks has put me really behind on edits and orders. My mom took Ben for ONE WHOLE DAY last week and I am so thankful cause I got a lot done!

2. My niece Anna got baptized on Saturday. I can't believe she is already 8!

3. Ben has gotten back into watching his Thomas movies again, after a short stint with GeoTrax and Planet Heroes (BAH!) I don't think I could stomach the lameness anymore!

4. My sisters came over last Tuesday to help clean and organize my kitchen. We've had a rotation of helping do some of that kind of stuff at each other's houses after we helped Ginny prep for Chrystal's wedding. My kitchen is now primped with the cutest blue and brown polka dot shelf paper EVER. I have awesome sisters.

5. My dad's birthday was last Wednesday. He would have been 67. For those of you who don't know, he passed away in 2000 after a 10+ year battle with Multiple Sclerosis. I love him and miss him!

6. Ben has been on a singing kick lately. He wants to learn the words to every song he hears. This is a completely new thing for him, and it's totally fun. It's much easier to keep him entertained at the store when we sing Thomas songs together!

7. John got a slight raise to his base pay last week. Every little bit helps!

8. I went on a road trip with two of my sisters to visit my nephew CJ, his wife Randi and his cute family in Temple, TX. Temple is a really nice little city! There were 5 little kids total so we went to the park, to the splash park, did some shopping (while my sister Ginny watched all of the kids so the 3 moms could shop alone!) painted our toenails and ate some great food! I got to take their daughter Lisa's 1-year pics since we've been trying to get together for a long time to get them done! Here's one of her and her sister, Mary. Aren't they so cute?

9. Ben actually took a nap today! Yay!

10. I'm looking into preschools for Ben. We're on the waiting list for PK3 at one local elementary school, but we won't know if we even qualify until they call us if they have an opening (so far there are 5 kids in front of us!) We will see what happens. I know Ben would love to go to school, and with all the photo work I am doing it would be great to have time to work!

Here's one last pic of Ben. He rarely lets me take his picture anymore and all I got out of him in Temple was this little melancholy face!

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