Our Family Photos

I was so excited...when Jacquie, a blog reader, left a comment on my blog's facebook page about being from pittsburgh...I checked out her blog, The Sweeter Side of Motherhood,

 and saw how completely ADORABLE it was!

She is not only a busy mama to two sweet girls.. she is a baker.. an artist..

AND a photographer.

I was so excited to connect with her and have her take some family photos for us.

Her price was incredible..it made family photos actually possible for us!

She was so good at keeping it fun for our girls while capturing great shots.

If you are in the pittsburgh area.. stop over and say Hi and schedule a shoot!

She just invited us over for a princess play date... can't say no to that!

Even prince Micah was invited. ;)

So nice meeting other creative joyful mamas.

Happy to have connected... and excited to share our photos. :)

sorry...I couldn't edit this down any more than this.

**Already printed and put some of these in frames I love them so much!**

LOCATION- Backyard.

My dress- target(current). sophie's-old navy(current)

sienna's dress- target(handmedown)

micah- polo from target, shorts(handmedown)

Our neighbor was so sweet to let us use part of their yard...

he even went out and mowed it and scrubbed down the benches!!

I love my man.

He is my rock. and 'he's got da muscles.'

 

 

Thanks for following a long as our family has grown.

Feels like just yesterday we had sophie!

and then sienna! and then micah!

We are so blessed... exhausted-ly blessed. ;)

We are going to try and do family photos more often....

most of our family photos are taken with a phone camera!

So glad we have these memories captured. Love these sweet people.

"No, You cannot marry your cousin."

We recently packed up our crew and traveled to Indiana for my cousin's wedding!

It was one of those trips where, during the 5 hour drive, I had to keep

reminding myself that we were going to have some good family time!

**"stop being crabby we're having fun family time!!" might have come out of my mouth at one point.**

Before we lost shannon, I was blessed by a random "stranger" with

an airplane ticket to fly down to atlanta to visit everyone.

Little did I know that would be the last time I got to see Shannon.

It's experiences like that that make me so much more determined to make the effort, however challenging it may be with little ones, to visit friends and family. Life is too short to stay in the house doing a routine nap time! pshhh.. lets live a little and lose some marbles.

I'm so glad we made the effort to go.

Family is important.

The girls had fun, but are now stuck on finding their

prince after seeing all the love in the air! ;)

SOPHIE: mom who is going to be my prince? how about jude?

ME: honey you can't marry your cousin. and you'll find your prince one day!

SOPHIE: how about micah? ME: you can't marry your brother either.

SOPHIE: why? ME: because micah is gonna marry another girl.

SOPHIE: I'm a girl. he can marry me.

(I didn't bring my camera..but had my iPhone to snap away!)

car trip tips:

1. BUY and PACK scooby doo graham crackers snacks.

Looks like dog bones... immediately awesome to toddlers.

2. pick up bribery dorito bag at gas station.

3. do NOT share your water bottle with the toddler who just ate the doritos.

My girls have a lot of cousins nearby..

but they don't get to see their atlanta cousins as often.

So I was happy they had the weekend to catch

fish together, eat ice cream and force them to slow dance with. good times.

My cousin's wedding was BEAUTIFUL!!

I made the mistake of quietly whispering in sophia's ear "He is about to say you may now kiss the bride!".... because she then responded with "Daddy says you don't kiss boys!"

loud enough for everyone in the rows around us to hear.

only to follow it up with "Are they going to have a baby now?"........... :::head in hands:::

I love the first dance at a wedding reception. love love it.

But my cousin and her "prince", as the girls call him, 

had the most AMAZING first dance.

It was like straight out of a movie. so romantic!

Sophie: "Mom.. the prince is handsome. he has nice hair."

 

Hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day!

So thankful for all of the men and women who serve our country and

those who have given their lives!

God Bless America.

Hope you got to soak up a lot of family time over the long weekend!

Having 2 and 4 yr old girls.

The other day, as I watched my girls driving

around in their little jeep in the backyard...

I pictured them little again.

I'm so glad my girls have each other. They will be 3 and 5 in August.

The fighting over toys and "don't look at me!! mommmm she's looking at mee" moments

are worth the cute ways they play together and giggle.

They make each other pee their pants from laughing.... seriously.

we've had to do complete wardrobe changes.....

Sophie and Sienna share a room..

and even though there are nights many nights we

wish they would just goo tooooo beddd...

It's cute hearing them giggle and whisper.

When sienna first moved from the crib, to a big girl bed in sophie's room...

She kept waking up in the middle of the night and coming to our room.

Or sometimes she would just cry out from her bed for a minute.

One morning sophie told us sienna woke up but that she got her back to sleep by rubbing her back. Once sophie held sienna on the couch and got her to fall asleep...... Tonight at dinner sienna got down and moved her chair closer to sophie's. they are so cute together. They also know how to push each other's buttons.

sienna is a hair puller/leg pincher..and sophie is a pusher/stomp away-er.

we do plenty of time outs during the day because of sisterly love. ;)

GIRL TIME.. + daddy.

Daddy crashed the picnic I made the girls...

Seeing my girls growing up, makes me excited for

all the fun we have in store with our micah!

I love when babies are little and in the newborn stage...

but I reallyyy love the 6-12 month age!

He is coming to life.. giggly and jolly as ever

but moving and ready to rock and roll. a total snuggler.

Trying to savor every moment with my kids...

and have more patience in all the crazy moments...

because they are growing up SO FAST.

We Moved! - Moving with Kids is FUN.

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Yep. We moved!

This isn't news if you follow me via instagram or facebook or twitter...

BUT. for blog record...it is true.

We moved last week to a different area of Pittsburgh.

Ben took a new job and we found a new rental minutes away!

It was too ideal a place to pass up. The owners renovated it to sell and ended up wanting to rent it instead. Almost everything is new. It feels so nice and clean..which is all I wanted!

It's not a huge house..but it's just what we need.

great neighborhood and great area.

We have moved a few times before.. so you would think we would be experts. but no.

And having 3 kids under the age of 5 made it a bit tricky to get ANYTHING done.

So we are in survival mode.

(I feel like I say that exact sentence in almost every family update post.......)

COUPLE MOVING MUSTS: Cookie Cake, New Door Matt (Target $12.99)

and Professional Back Massages.

One of the best parts of our new house.. it has THREE Bedrooms!

So that means Micah gets his own room and is out of our closet! ::woohoo::

I'm kinda excited to decorate a boy room. Luckily our neighbor/landlords are amazing

and have read my blog so they are letting me decorate. :)

Micah is kinda pumped.

His own room...also means getting him to sleep through the

night in his crib officially commenced. So far... better than before.

Unpacking is going....slowly.

Everything is finding it's place.. just with a lot of.. um.. interruptions.

Below is a shot of my lap. Sometimes It's easier to stand...

My big girl sophie has been a big helper.

Holding Micah for me.. or playing nicely with her sister.

I feel like the girls are getting better at playing "nicely" together for longer chunks of time.

I'll hear them playing hide and go seek...or school. :)

Sienna has been a good girl too....

in a more active type of way.....haha.

She found one of her nice Easter dresses that I had packed up and forgot where.

Even found tights. (A day too late to wear on Easter... #momoftheyear)

But I admit, I'm impressed with her scavenging skills.

She has been an expert snuggler all week.

Occasionally getting her hair pulled or drooled on.

Just to keep our move exciting, everyone in our house decided to get sick and have a fever.

It was a one day thing and each child took a turn.. AWESOME.

We had dropped off cookies the day before to the neighbors on either side of us (store bought. best I could do.) The next day was officially the hardest with everything.

That night my landlord delivered the tupperware back...

but FILLED with a big chunk of chocolate cake from carlo's bakery!

(he was doing a 10,000 free cake event downtown)

I told her she was my angel! delivering cake to my door!

My plan is to deliver more cookies in tupperware to her house......haha.

It's officially baseball season.

So my philly boy husband and, by default, my son

will be like this till october.

(Finally found that missing drawer 2 days later.)

Moving with kids means
--unpacking breaks to play at the park...

--and unpacking breaks to snuggle.

First "real" meal in our house.. Beef Stew (Pioneer Woman)

and Caesar Salad. I love the Fresh Express Caesar Salad Kits right now.

I remember when dino nuggets were cool.

I raised the bar too high by doing "silly face" lunches.

Pinterest made me do it.

And one thing I can live off of during this move...

yogurt strawberries and granola. seriously could eat for every meal.

Micah's personality has really been bursting out this week.
I'm loving it. and a little jealous every time He takes a nap. ;)


We stay in pajamas a lot...Spending most of the day trying to unpack in between kid stuff.
I'm trying to be realistic in that we won't be unpacked within a couple weeks...
it's gonna take time.
All I want is to get things "settled." So wish me luck!
Gonna keep on juggling. :)
The only way this blog post happened was with micah in my lap...
and letting myself get interrupted to play pretend.
Sophie informed me that I was the witch.. micah was the dragon..
sienna was the horse(for the carriage)...and Sophie, the princess of course!
Not sure how I feel about our roles....... ;)

Can't wait to share more of our new place!

St. Patrick's Day Fun

Yesterday we had fun with St. Patrick's Day!

I took a bunch of photos of our day at home being festive...I'll share tomorrow!

But if you follow me on instagram.. you might have seen some of our fun already.

We decided to add mint oreos to the brownies to make them a little healthier.

Lunch was extra special with their little leprechaun guy on our fun party plates from Solo Cup!

Love the green plastic plates.

Less dishes makes me happy.

The green made the girls happy.

I could make fun lunches all day if it meant I could avoid the dishes ;)

(I'll share what I used for what as requested via instagram!)

More St. Patrick's Day cuteness tomorrow!

I want to share our Corned Beef and Cabbage recipe we tried too...

first time making it and I LOVED it.

Baby Shower for my Sister-In-Law

While I was in Atlanta, I teamed up with my Sister, Valerie(of BLANQI), and My Sister-In-Law, Mary, to throw a Baby Shower Brunch for my little brother's wife Shanna!

I was so thankful to be able to come into town to help throw the shower for her!

It is Shanna's first baby and we wanted to make it extra special for her.

Mary and I had so much fun shopping at target and the grocery store to pull

everything together the day before! Valerie hosted the party at her

house and had made an Aldi's run the day before.

We all worked to make it come together!

left photo: Mary and I in Target.:)

right photo: Micah in his pj's the morning of the shower...

wake up sleepy head..time to celebrate a mama!

We had the Baby Shower Brunch at 10:30 am on a Saturday.

We might have "taste tested" some a lot of the donuts the day before the shower...

(my mom made those cute baby booties below!! eek. adorable.)

Mary used a pack of tissue paper of each color (from target) to make the pom poms!

I found flowers at the grocery store and the colors were too pretty to pass up.

On the table we used linens my mom brought with her from Charlotte.

Some of them were family heirlooms that we were so excited to actually use!

I made up favors and we were lucky enough to have the easter candy

at target match our colors perfectly!

It was fun seeing everything come together. :)

We served some yummy sweet and savory options at the party.

We had donuts, cinnamon rolls, blueberry muffins, prosciutto wrapped cantaloupe, nutella croissants and a few other yummy treats. I love the little toppers my sister had found at marshalls..little animals! they ended up matching the colors of the party perfectly.

If you want to make the most amazing Sausage and Egg Strata of your life this is it!

It disappears every time I make it. (We have it every year for Christmas Morning.)

We offered juice, coffee, milk and ice water.

One of my favorite touches on the table-----the parfaits!

(all from aldi's.. yogurt, granola cereal and strawberries)

We used cute mason jars leftover from Mary's Wedding.

everything tastes yummier in a mason jar ;)

I couldn't resist making up some treat bag tags as favors!

If you would like to use these at your Baby Shower I added a listing to my shop. I can customize them with your mama(or couples) name and date of the baby shower.

"Thanks for Popping By!" Treat Bag Tag - Printable PDF

A Baby Shower can't be complete without some cut throat baby shower games!

I created a printable with a fun 'Baby Animal' Game...

and also a 'Prayers for Baby' Card.

If you would like to buy my baby shower printable you can get them in my shop!

The listing includes both of the above printables. Print as many as you need!

Baby Shower Game & Activity - Printable PDF

We played a game during the present time as well...

We had everyone write on the back of their 'baby animal' game

card 5 baby things shanna might get!

We had a handful of prizes to give..most of them candles. (everyone loves candles.)

I love babies and baby showers. :)

The Busy Budgeting Mama - Harlem Shake

WE COULDN'T RESIST.
The Harlem Shake craze has hit out house! ;)
This morning we randomly decided to make the video after an
impromptu dance party had already started in the family room.
We pulled away the coffee table and boom... dance floor!

As I was helping the girls dress up I was like, Ben... what am I going to wear??

then almost at the same time we go..wedding dress!!..haha.
Check out my youtube channel for more videos...
Our most popular is our Christmas morning from this year. A favorite of ours too. :)

Nothing says love like..Freezer Crock Pot Meals.

So I spent most of our valentine's day night in the kitchen..

it was the only chance I had to finally make up the freezer bags

and we didn't want all the meat to spoil.

Very romantic. Ben even helped. ;)

(posting later this week round two of my

freezer crock pot meals.--downloadable grocery list/recipes)

Other romantic activities of the day included:

picking up our broken down van from the shop.

doing dishes.

running out of toilet paper in the house.

returning our friend's car we were borrowing.

Our morning with these cuties was fun...

Sophie loves holidays.. and they both love anything where chocolate is involved.

Earlier this week, they might have been reminded about chocolate bunnies at Easter...

the count down has already begun. gonna be a long couple months.

Daddy made breakfast. it was delish.

I had some much needed girl talk at a friend's valentine's day party in the morning.

the girls had fun playing and they had a table full of yummy treats!

This mama is seriously domesticated...she baked fresh bread DURING the party..and gave my girls pb&j's on fresh bread before we left...

It's a miracle if we even HAVE bread in our house when we need it.

my sweater- h&m    my necklace- caroline g

I made up some valentine's for my two nephews who I don't get to see often!

They are back in my hometown, atlanta.

Used some of my printables I sell. :) 

I had a few orders come in where they got these and were gonna put cars in too!

I love Valentine's Day..any holiday really..

because my shop blows up with activity and then

everyone shares their projects via facebook and Instagram. :) 

It's fun being a part of everyone's special day!

PS. I love this guy. 

1. because he is a holy man.

2. because he is smokin hot.

4. because he didn't go crazy on a certain crabby commenter

yesterday and was the better man. 

5. because he loves all of me. he is my rock.

6. because he helps me get to heaven by doing things like leaving the shower curtain wide open when he knows that drives me insane. patience bonus points.

7. he is a great dad.

Hope you had a wonderful Valentine's Day!