amore…

  

driving miss daisy, play-doh fun and waiting for a hair cut

 

diggin’ it and asleep at the wheel

 

legos and books EVERYWHERE and hanging upside down. ”again, daddy!”

  

alert the police, a car collection and ice cream treat

  

she’s a climber, fun at the splash park and another ice cream treat

  

grammy camp, sword and the stone and carsland

  

self portrait, pure exhaustion and practice for spring t-ball

  

cal the stylist, playground fun and my favorite grilled cheese

  

pig tails, wild animals and piggy banks

  

new nap mat, more ice cream treats and just relaxin’

 

breakfast of champions and true beauty

hoarder…

confession: I’m a closet hoarder of photographs.

I have dozens of dusty boxes in my garage with printed photos from childhood and college which need to be organized, trashed or scanned to digital format. we keep moving them from house to house, collecting more from our parents and knowing (or hoping) that some day I’ll get to that.

so one would think the transition to all digital photography would have made things easier. turns out, the only thing better (or possibly worse) about digital is that they take up less physical space.

my biggest issue/fault is most of the photos we take now never see the light of day, much less make it to a printed version. my blog certainly does its part to document and share the memories. but case in point, we’ve had two amazing family photo sessions over the past 12 months and I have yet to print a single photo. so the same older photos of our family BC (before callie) still occupy the gallery wall.

shame on me.

but, the one commitment I have made every year to myself and to the kiddos is to publish a special photo book for each of their birthdays to capture all of our adventures, holidays and every day memories from the previous year.

I’m sure I’ve blogged about this before, but I started this with drew’s first birthday and had the book available for all the birthday party attendees to sign or write him a special note, and we’ve continued the tradition ever since. they make such wonderful keepsakes and I love that the kiddos are always pulling them off the shelf to peruse the pictures.

so this year was no different and despite some technical challenges, I’ve FINALLY completed both of their books. it’s such a time consuming and emotional journey to sort through 8,000+ photos and narrow them down to a few hundred favorites. but, I couldn’t be more excited to have these as physical documentation of how much they’ve each grown and changed, how much fun we’ve had as a party of four, and how blessed we are to share such special memories with our families.

truly a gift.

so here they are in all their glory.

dhy - vol four | Make Your Own Book

 

cjy - vol two | Make Your Own Book

 

“ta-dah!” (as callie would say).

two-day…

TWO years ago, we’d just had a baby, moved to Abilene and the little guy started at a new school.

fast forward to today, my not-so-little guy is about to be four, still has the best crazy blonde hair and couldn’t be any sweeter. little miss is two and ready to take on the world with her adoring smile, new backpack and nap mat. no new schools today, but they have both moved into new classes and I continue to be TOO emotional for words.

oh, and we’re just about two months away from baby 3.0 arrival.

where does the time go?

sending good luck and lots of gratitude to my favorite educators as you embark on another year with our precious future!

magical…

we had so much fun that we debated having grammy just ship callie out to california, so we could stay permanently. unfortunately, we are back from that fantasy land but had an absolute blast.

before I can blog and share all of our disney fun, I’ve GOT to get drew’s birthday book done and sent to the printer. can’t believe he’ll be FOUR in less than two weeks.

so I’ve completed about 60 pages of the blurb book to date (about 75%) and my computer froze today. I haven’t been able to recover the book pages since…

pretty bummed.

despite the immense frustration, this picture will forever make me smile.

soooo many more to come.