Merry Christmas!! and Christmas card!

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you, my dear family and friends.  I hope your day is filled with joy and love.  I am truly grateful for each one of you and they ways you influence my life.  Thank you for being part of who I am.  Merry Christmas!

Halloween Pictures

A link to our Halloween Pictures, just for Grandma Miller!  :)

It was a fun weekend.  Happy Halloween!

It's a...

B - O - Y !!!!

And we are way super excited!  I've been loving on my adorable little McKay lately, and I'm really excited to have another one of these oh-so-sweet little boys around.  I just realized I never told you, so I thought I ought do that.  Next milestone... choose a name.  We're very much having a hard time this time around.  We shall see.  I can't wait to hold this sweet little guy though!

Haylee's Art Themed Birthday Party

Okay, so it was four months ago... so what?  :)  I'm just glad to have gotten these up somewhere I could share them. 

Haylee had an 'art' themed birthday party full of rainbow colors and lots of art activities. Art and crafts are her favorite things to do, so I thought she'd have so much fun with this kind of party and she did. It was a great day.

Please, please please click on the collage below to see the picture album.  They're much cuter individually and big!  (Then come back here and tell me what you thought!  Or feel free to comment on FB if you're on there!)

  It was a great day for my little girl and it was such a fun party to throw.

Camping, camping & more camping!!!

That's what our summer has consisted of.  I guess we got a bug after not camping while in Texas AT ALL (3 years) and then having our stuff in storage for 3 years... we're so happy to have it back and love using it to enjoy the great outdoors.  Our family and local friends probably think we're nuts by now... I haven't even kept track of the times this summer we've been camping.  More weekends than we haven't, I think.  We finish unpacking our stuff just in time to re-pack it all almost every week.  We just love it.  Who wouldn't want to spend the day and night in the beautiful outdoors, rather than in a stuffy house?  I love our new home, but I love being outside even more.  My dream home is something similar to this one of Richard Branson's:

Patio
Living Area
Hammock

The whole house is outdoors.  Amazing.

Anyway... We've had so much fun and even have plans for more camping fun next month!  Summer's quickly getting away from us though.  And before you know it this baby will be here!  We can't wait for that!

Our first trip of the summer: Papa (my dad) & Grana came up to meet us for breakfast.

Our next trip: Papa and Grana came up to meet us for breakfast again.

The best part of camping of course...

Papa & Haylee made leaf boats for the river

My super-delicious dutch-oven cobbler my dad taught me how to make on this trip.  MY favorite part of camping.  :)

   Our next trip was just Brandon and I because we went up north for a wedding and decided to camp the night before.  We packed in a little ways, and I didn't have my chair which wasn't much fun at four months pregnant.  It was the last time I camped without my chair.

We got to drive through some of the redwoods on the way home... that was amazing.

Not sure which trip these are from... they're from my phone.

Nice... (no, she didn't suffocate.  It was cute though.)

How sweet is this?

In June we went on a four night campout with friends.  We had such a great time and can't wait till next year.  Here are a few from that trip:

So lucky are we to be included among such great friends!

The campsite we were at was on a beach so we got to spend a lot of time there.  The kids loved playing in the sand (even though they wouldn't go near the water.)

Four of the six moms were pregnant.  Its so fun to be pregnant with good friends.

Thanks guys for such a great time!

A couple weekends ago we got to go camping with Ahma (my mom), Ampa, Aunt Hannah, Auntie Janeal and her friend Joey.  Another awesome trip.  We had such a good time with them all.

As you can see, with the new baby on the way and needing a new tent anyway (we'd been squishing into a little four man...) and we needed an extra tent for all the people coming, we upgraded to a condo for this trip.  Lol... j/k... we did get a huge tent though.  An 8 man.  It has a closet...!  Its a beast, but it sure was and will be nice to spread out and actually be able to keep our stuff in our tent, instead of in the car!

I didn't take very many pictures on this trip and my mom has a bunch I want... I'll have to post more later.

Haylee, the budding photographer (girl after my own heart...); "Make a sad face" she says... :)

Balancing on a log

Hangin' out at the stink-holes... fumaroles at Mt. Lassen National Park

We don't know what we're going to do with this kid's super-human strength!

We have a couple more trips to post about but those pictures are on Brandon's phone or another  so I'll have to get them later.  We also have at least one more campings planned this summer...  So I'll be back some time with more.  And I still have Hawaii to post about so you can look forward to that!  I know you'll just be loosing sleep over it.  :)

Thanks for looking... and mostly, thanks for being someone who loves and cares about our family.  We're lucky to have friends and family like you.

Presenting...

Oh, my poor blog, you are so neglected, aren't you?

Ah well... such is the life of the overwhelmed, doing-too-much, no-time-for-anything young mother that I am.  I do try daily to do better... I suppose I will get the hang of it some-day, yes?

But anyway... on to the important reason for this post...

I have yet to share this news with those who can't physically see me... If I've seen you in the past month or two, you surely know.  For the rest of you...

SURPRISE!

Yep, that's right... baby #3 is on her way!  (We don't actually know its a girl until after our ultrasound on Tuesday, but I'm putting my order in.  :)  We actually would adore another boy too though.)  I'm twenty weeks along tomorrow!!  Half-way there!  I'm due November 27th (hoping I get to take this Thanksgiving off from assignments! :) ) and we are sooo excited.

How I'm going to add another child into this overwhelmed, doing-too-much, no-time-for-anything life of mine, I haven't quite figured out... but I have five more months for that, right?  :)

Anyway... woo hoo for us... and we can't wait to meet you little one!

My first newborn photoshoot: Paige

Welcome to my beautiful new baby niece, Paige.  I had so much fun taking some pictures of her and I’m pretty happy with how some of them turned out.  Here a few I love.

   

Isn’t she just a little doll baby?  Welcome to our world Paige!  I love you!

Super Fun St. Patrick’s Day 2010

Okay, so I’m kind-of known in my family for taking millions of pictures, but unfortunately, it’s been brought to my attention (again) that people rarely get to see any of those pictures.  Somehow, even though being a stay-at-home mom with no kids in school shouldn’t be very time consuming, I’m ALWAYS, EXTREEMLY busy.  And blogging has been, unfortunately again, lower on my priority list.  But it is important to me, and I do REALLY want to do something with all these millions of pictures I take.  Pictures to me, really is how I journal.  Events and activities anyway.  I do keep a journal as well, and I put other thoughts and feelings down in there.  But pictures is how I chronicle (is that how I’d say that?) my and my families' lives.  I’m going to try to better, but I’m just going to start with these.  They were what were up on my photo filter on my desktop when I was reminded that my family don’t get to see any of the pictures I take.  And since it was such a fun day for us, and I took the pictures really looking forward to sharing them, I thought it was a good place to start.

I’ve been blogging officially for over a year now (I can’t believe it!).  A few posts ago, I pointed you to last years’ ‘Super Fun St. Patricks Day,’ and I thought it would be fun to show you this years.  If you know me and/or keep up with my blog at all, you’ll know that I love holidays.  I love doing a bunch of activities focused on a theme of any kind really…. (I’m going to be a great preschool teacher some day. :)  )  As I’ve said before, I love the opportunity they give for teaching and learning, and doing some fun and special things with my kids, and making memories.

I want you to know also, that I don’t post these pictures to get a hundred ‘good mom points’ and comments about how awesome I am.  I post (this post in particular, and also all posts) for a couple reasons…. 1) To share my ideas with anyone who can use them in hopes of letting you have a little more fun with your family, 2) just to share with my family, far away friends, and close-by friends some snippits of our lives, and 3) to journal/record/scrapbook some of some of our day(s).

With (all) that said… here we go with our Super Fun St. Patrick’s Day 2010!!

For first breakfast: the leprechaun turned our milk green, and left us a box of Lucky Charms!  A special treat because we usually don’t get sugary cereal like this.  Note: I really am a very health-conscious person… I try really hard to eat and serve healthy foods every day.  But I also do special things at times, especially on special days.  So… I’m sure we ingested more than our fair share of green food coloring this day… sorry if that disgusts anyone… lol… we had fun doing it though.  :)  

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, we made green jello, so it could be ready for a snack later.

      Snack:

 

We didn’t get to this last year, and I missed it, so I made sure we did it this year.  For second breakfast.  :)  (Don’t worry… my kids definitely eat enough for two breakfasts… and they were a couple hours apart…)

 

 

Amazingly, the kids scarffed them!  I didn’t think they would, but they loved them!  Score!  That was a really fun activity… getting to watch the food coloring change the eggs color.  And any time I can bring reading and books into activities, I’m in heaven.  I love connecting literacy to life.  Its the teacher in me I guess.  Readers are smart kids.  Smart kids struggle less in school and life.  Who wouldn’t want that for their kids?  I want, more than most anything, to raise readers.  Readers and artists.  (That’s a soapbox for another day. :) )

 

So… Moving on, (and yes, most of our activities centered around food… most of our day centers around food actually… I swear these kids eat more than I do…)  Anyone who knows my kids knows they’re ALWAYS hungry.

So next is lunch: clover shaped sandwiches with green mayo, & kiwis.  Yumm-o!

Then we did an art activity… mixed green glitter in glue and painted a shamrock with it.  After they dried and we cut them out, they turned out so pretty!

Next, more food coloring!  Green cream cheese bagles with green sprinkles!  Huge hit, of course.  What couldn’t be with sprinkles involved?!

A CD I picked up at a thrift store a month ago, that we listened to… literacy, art, and now music into the picture!!  I can just see my kids’ brains enlarging!!  :)

Another activity – coloring a picture and filling the ‘pot’ with gold.  Great fine-motor!  (Yes, I am a teacher… what can I say?)

And, after a day-o-fun, we finished it off with a delicious green dinner, complete with green shamrock napkin rings!  The menu: Green Chili’s Casserole (remind me to post that recipe sometime… Delish!), Green beans, green salad & green jello.  Want to be even more impressed (I know I said I wasn’t posting this to impress anyone, but this part is definitely impressive…)?  I didn’t PLAN any of this until the night before.  All the food I already had!  Yay me!  (It probably would have been better to have planned before, but that’s besides the point.  That’s with the exception of the Lucky Charms and green jello, which are not staples in our home, and I’d bought the week before  in anticipation.  But everything else, for all the other meals and snacks, I had on hand.  Lucky me!!  (Since I DIDN’T plan ahead of time…)  I got creative.  You’d never have known' I came up with it all as I went though huh!

And, finally, for dessert, one last treat/activity.  Making a pot of gold snack mix (darn!  I just thought about these little black pots I have for putting salsa and guacamole in that would have been perfect to put this snack in!  I’ll have to remember that for next year!)  Anyway… Lucky charms, pops for the ‘gold nuggets’ and green m&m’s (which were left-over from Christmas m&ms… resourceful!

 

Yeah… I’m a little chincy on the candy… there are a couple down there though… see them?

And finally… two happy children and a fantastic day.

I know it’s April now, but Happy St. Patty’s Day Everyone!