Emma Riley

I was so excited when Jamie, Emma's mommy and a previous co-worker of mine, asked me to do Emma's one year photos. We went to a park near my house and spent a little over an hour taking photos. Emma is a little doll baby and her mama's dream come true. It was so sweet watching the two of them interact, seeing the sweet smiles Emma would give her mommy so easily, and seeing the beautiful relationship between a mother and daughter even at such a young age. 

Like I said, a little doll baby for sure :)

My First "What I Wore" [Vacation Edition]

Although I love sports, being outside, and having a family full of boys, I am inevitably a girly girl too. I love clothes, dressing up, fashion, hair, make up.... I've been wanting to join in the fun of "What I Wore" parties for awhile now.... But since I only actually am presentable about 2.5 times in an average given week, I decided to wait for vacation to take some outfit photos. (Although I love clothes, I am quite fond of my gym shorts and tank tops when I'm staying home playing with boys and cleaning...) I convinced my sister to do photos with me, so next wednesday I'll post hers. She's a little more courageous with her clothing combinations than I am. :) Oh, and props to all the girls that do this on a daily basis... I only got pictures in less than half of what I wore on vaca. It's tough to find the time to do this! Here we go, (I will be linking to The Pleated Poppy):

Night at the beach house. Hard to see the color of my maxi in this photo... you can see it better in the photo of my shoes. Bought last year at Forever 21. $13. I wore it when I was pregnant with Isaiah last summer. So comfy. 

Earrings. Cool big black rosettes. Borrowed from my sister. 

Sandals. American Eagle. 3 or 4 summers ago. Color of the dress better seen here. And p.s. french pedicures don't last long at the beach... 

Dinner out. Skirt was clearance at Express 6 or more years ago. Shirt from Forever 21. $7. 

Starfish Earrings and Necklace from J. Crew. From two summers ago. 

 Dress from Macy's 4 summers ago. First wore it when I was early in my pregnancy with Drew. Necklace from American Eagle 3 or 4 years ago. Earrings you can't see, but they are little gold anchors from anthropologie. Flats from J. Crew- Christmas gift from my mom this past year. 

Church the day after we got home. Dress- Old Navy. It was my birthday gift from my sister when I was pregnant with Isaiah last year. Lace Cami-American Eagle last summer. Flats- same as above. J. Crew. Earrings you can't see but they are my favorites- cute little ivory roses from anthropologie that I wear all the time. Bought them 2 or 3 years ago. 

Didn't realize til I was putting this together how many non-pregnancy dresses I wear during pregnancy... It's nice to still be able to wear them afterwards too. :) 

And here's my sister and I on a night we never did "outfit" photos, but did take a picture together... Next Wednesday will be all about her :) 

My dress- Target this year. Flip flops- American Eagle several years ago. Randi's dress- Loft this summer. Not sure about her sandals... 

OBX 2012

Where do I start? It was lovely & wonderful, relaxing & tiring at the same time, full of family, friends, beach time, good food, happy chaos, family interventions, "firsts" for the boys... It was awesome.

I'm pretty sure I could write a book just on our travels TO places, and fill that book full before I even touched on how our time there actually was. This trip was no exception.

Here's the abbreviated version of our travels: Left friday night and drove three hrs to salisbury. We intended to split the 7 hour trip in half for the boys sake. We were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves when we pulled out of the hotel shortly after 9 a.m.  Saturday morning thinking we would arrive at the outer banks shortly after 1:00....
The trip was moving along quite well when we stopped in virginia beach to buy a new charger for our lap top (Isaiah sucked on the end of our old one and it doesn't work anymore) Shaun went in the mall with Drew and I nursed Isaiah in the car... when Shaun still wasn't back when I was finished I thought I'd run in and use the bathroom quick. He came out to the car while I was still inside and called me when he found the car locked and me missing. Keep in mind that his hands were full of Drew (who was shoeless at the time) and several bags while he was talking to me. I got out to the car, we buckled in the boys, and took off, anxious not to waste anymore time. 9 miles and about twenty minutes later Shaun started looking for his phone to order lunch at a little caesars. He couldn't find it. I jokingly said "You didn't like, leave it on the roof or something did you?" When he looked at me I was like "No. No you didn't. Say you're joking." He wasn't. We back tracked to the parking garage at the mall, through the parking lot, and onto the highway. An hour and a half later, we FOUND THE PHONE! sitting just off the edge of the white line on a two lane ramp onto the highway. Happy, but sad we were still in virginia beach, we kept going. Got to a toll, all lanes shut down due to accident ahead. Thankful we were not in the accident. Waited another twenty minutes. Through the toll. Hit four miles of traffic that took an hour to get through. Through the traffic. Three miles from our beach house. I texted my mom ecstatically telling her we were almost there. Another hour later, with the beach house in sight, we waited at the last traffic light forty more minutes til we finally got through. I was having a melt down. Then I realized my two year old was handling the time in the car better than I was, and I tried to shape up. We got through the light. Pulled into the driveway. I jumped out of the car. My knees buckled. Sitting too long in the same position. 5:00 p.m. We were there. This was the same day where God woke me up at 5:30 a.m. and I wrote this post. It had been a long day, BUT we were there, with a whole week of beach in front of us. How's that for an abbreviated version? ;)

 Here's our house:

Had as many as 21 (or maybe more) people staying at once. 

Favorite Beach Photos

Favorite Family Photos: 

Favorite Foods of the trip: 

cinnamon rolls made out of bagel dough. 

Sweet Frog 

Lovin' his frozen yogurt

Favorites of me and my man:

Mini golf date with my sister and two of her friends. 

Making dinner together. Chicken etti

Our old time photo of the week. 

Favorite Moments of the Trip: 

Sitting on the beach in the evening just me and Shaun while my parents watched the boys. 

Poolside family Intervention. Thank you, psychologist Nan. I can never fully put this memory into words. It was entertaining, enlightening, and very helpful. "Don't supress, kindly express." jet in the bathing suit. communication. 

Watching Drew come to love the ocean and learn to swim by himself in the pool. 

Getting to know Eric's friends. 

Petting a shark. (Not me personally, but others in our group who were braver than I...) Not too cool that he came right out of the ocean we were swimming in though...

Doing my hair and make up at the bathroom mirror next to my sister with my mama standing in the doorway talking to us. 

Dance party in the wings store when me my mom and sister went shopping. 

Laughing til we cried mini golfing. 

Talking about our high school days standing in the waves with my sister. 

Taking "What I Wore" pictures with my sister. (Doing my first post on that tomorrow!)

Seeing my mom and dad so happy when they got to hug their grandboys every morning. 

So much more, but I have to stop somewhere. 

out growing the guitar case

Shaun's first father's day. 

Shaun's third father's day.

To Shaun: You are an amazing father. Your patience, your gentleness, the way you play, teach, encourage, and love on our babies is just awesome. I love doing this whole parenting thing with you. Our boys are so blessed to have you as their daddy. I hope they grow up to be just like you. I love having you as the leader of our family. I love you with all my heart. (And so do they!)

To my Dad: Thank you for being an awesome father to me!! You never missed a thing in my life, you always worked so hard for us, wanted the best for us, counseled us, loved us, and prayed us through everything. You are a warrior for our family, and I am so blessed to be one of your kids. I'll always be your little girl. :) Love you so much Daddy!!!

Happy Father's Day Everyone!! 

p.s. Shaun, if we have any more, I think we're going to need to get a bigger guitar case.... ;)

What's Your But?

I was laying awake at five thirty this morning thinking about this... quite random, but I am pretty sure it was God. It all started with this:

I was thinking how some people will say "Babies are cute, but they're a lot of work." And others will say, "Babies are a lot of work, but they're so cute!" (I would like to be in the latter category of people.)

Two entirely different meanings. A "but" can change more than just the meaning of your sentence. It can change your entire outlook on life. (insert grinch voice for italicized words- sorry, I'm a movie quoter, you don't really have to...) ;)

Here's another example: "I have this dream for my life, but this, this, and this." (exchange the word this for whatever it is standing in your way.) Now reverse the sentence. "This, this, and this, but I have a dream for my life." New meaning: no matter how great the obstacles, there's nothing I'm gonna let stand between me and my dream.

Our pastor says all the time"But God!" In other words, here's the reality, the circumstance, the situation from human perspective, BUT GOD can turn it all around.

I guess this is kind of just my take on the whole "is the glass half full or half empty" thing. How am I looking at my situation right now? Is there a but in there anywhere? If so, can I flip my sentence around and change my perspective on things? Or if there's not a but in there anywhere, can I add one to the end and say "but God."

Bottom line, make your "but" the best part of your sentence. :) There's my 5:30 a.m. thoughts for the day. :)

Friday night (family night)

This was my facebook status after our spontaneous family night on friday: 

"Friday night Perfection! (note: translate the word "perfection" loosely here... it was my idea of perfection anyway.) Dinner on the back porch (it was just leftovers, but i didn't have to cook!) Isaiah's first ice cream (but he loved it so much he cried between every bite because i couldn't get it to him fast enough) Trip to the park for Drew to play on the slides, which he LOVES (but he pooped without us knowing, and after consecutive trips down the slide it squished out onto his shorts, at which point we realized we were so very caught up in the spontaneity of the evening that we neglected to bring the diaper bag with us... so we improvised and made wipes out of spare napkins from the glove box and drew proceeded to finish his park fun in just an elmo diaper...) Like I said, Friday night perfection. :)"

Here are the phases of Isaiah's first taste of ice cream. 

"mmm"

"that was good!" 

taking my spoon. 

indignant when i took my spoon back. 

Like a baby bird when I would give him more. 

There should be photos of Drew going down the slide here.... but I already mentioned what happened with that....

The wagon happened to be in the back of the car from a photo shoot I did earlier in the day, so Shaun got it out and took the boys on a walk around the pond. This was status post Drew with no pants. 

My babies :) 

Playing bottomless street hockey. 

Beautiful sky before heading home. 

random thoughts on life in random order.

I want so badly to blog about the photo shoot I did last night... one of my favorites by far! but, I can't yet because it is a SURPRISE! So maybe in a month or so I will be able to post the photos... they are awesome. Great setting, great lighting, great subjects, and, did I mention, a great surprise! :)

Isaiah is scooching himself all over the place... combination army crawling, inchworming, rolling, and push up positioning to get where he wants to go. He can get back up into a sitting position from his belly too. He just hasn't quite figured out the crawling thing yet. But it's ok, cause once that boy starts going he's never going to stop. He also has a fascination with doors... if he's in a room with a door he army crawls/inchworms himself over to it and just pushes it back and forth. Same with cabinets and drawers. I'm thinking there's something prophetic there... open doors... I don't know, something.

Drew is my little friend. We talk all day long. He is so very proper and specific with his words. He asks "is this mine?" "is this ours?" "is this for me?" "is this my space?" etc. etc. all the time. He's very conscious of not taking something that is not his.

I have puppy bi-polarism. Sometimes I love him, sometimes I hate him. (Usually with the latter being the more commonly felt emotion) Sometimes my only calming thought is that I could put him in a box at the end of the driveway with a free sign on him if I wanted to. This is not to say that he is not a good dog. He is. But he's a puppy, and puppies chew, and poop, and need attention, and I already have two babies, and sometimes I feel like the multi-tasking and referee-ing that go on in a day are going to drive me to the edge of crazy. Drew and Zion have a similar relationship to me and Zion. They are either snuggling, or antagonizing each other. Drew will have a toy, Zion bounds out of nowhere, snatches it from him, and runs around the house with Drew chasing him screaming frantically and waving his arms. But somewhere deep inside, and I mean very deep, so deep that I sometimes can't feel it at all, I have bonded with our little puppy. Because I can't really imagine not having him here. It's like I want him here and want him gone in the same second. Basically, I'm just trying to keep my sanity until he grows out of the puppy stage and we can have a normal, peaceful household again, with a nicely trained doggy to go along with it all. (Realistic dream? probably not... but it's still a dream I'm holding out for...) Anyways.... enough puppy ranting for now... I mean, we did this willingly, and I really shouldn't complain. He is so very cute.

Marriage. Another subject on my mind quite a lot. Last night the boys were in the tub, and Shaun and I were both in the bathroom with them, talking, splashing, exhausted, communicating about life. I looked at him in the eyes and couldn't help but think how much I love our life together. Sleep deprivation, figuring out parenthood, trying to be there for everyone all at the same time, finances, cleaning, long work days. It's the beautiful mess of marriage and I am so thankful Shaun picked me to do it all with. As I thought about writing about marriage I hesitated and almost decided not to. Simply because there are no words for it. It is too much, there is so much depth to it, a single glance in the eyes of someone who knows what you're thinking the second you look at them, the whole mystery of two becoming one is just barely comprehendible anyways, without trying to describe how much you love someone to the whole world.

Shaun- you show me Jesus day after day after day. Your patience, your gentleness, the way you play with our babies and work so hard for us and thank me for all that I do. Your compassionate heart, your lifestyle of worship, your protection of me. You are amazing. I'm so thankful I get to do life with you. I love you babe.

little revelations

"God is the God of the get back up" - Jen Johnson

With reference to the fact that He doesn't focus on our fall, he focuses on us getting back up. So let's not live like we're still fallen down when we're picked up and walking again.