Friday, December 30, 2005

I'm going to try to update the last few weeks in the next couple of days (hopefully)
Reminder checklist for me:
*Dinner at Pings
*Pride and Prejudice with Shanna
*Bordino's with CJ
*Christmas
*Katie's visit and Pesto Cafe

In the meantime...I'm waiting for my new camera lens to arrive!!! :) (that's not all real money...but a lot of it is! I'm buying a new lens and hopefully a new flash)

<-------Happy Christmas to me! :)

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Stephanie's wedding

Here are just a few pics from Stephs wedding. Actually, these are from the reception, a beautiful hall covered with tulle and christmas lights to look like a huge white tent. The lights gave everything a hazy yellow glow, so that's why all these pics look yellow. :)

Stephanie and John Mark
Christopher Valerie Stephanie
Kent and Steph















The HUGE beautiful cake!
Mimi and PaBob (so cute!)


















Chris and Valerie













"The OTHER Mimi" (Mimi's twin, and Bella's nickname for her)












Misty and baby Bear













Mindi and Julian

Friday, December 16, 2005



oh yeah, since Dad complained about not making the blog...here ya go Poppy. :)
and here's Cj (wearing the red table napkin on his head) with Joe (curly hair) and Blake (hat) making magical yummy food for the rehearsal dinner.

tomorrow is my day off. dustin is at my brothers house tonight, so i'm spending the evening:
*editing photos
*ordering christmas gifts (i officially hate shopping, now that i work in retail)
*resting my achy feet (working overtime this week)
*listening to sweet bella cough in her sleep :(
*mourning my missing camera (left in the back of my mom's car after the wedding this weekend)
<-----loving this picture of my sweet girl.

tomorrow we are making some yummy dessert from a picture that Bella found in a magazine. She is very excited and loves cooking. And is addicted to my parenting magazines, since she discovered that they are full of toy ads and pictures of cookies and other desserts.

I am also going to see Pride and Prejudice with a couple of friends from work and hitting downtown for a relaxing girls night out. way cool. And I have the best husband who thinks that fun nights away from home are a key to sanity...and I couldn't agree more.

Friday, December 09, 2005

A few wedding pics

These are for Kris. I was pretty disappointed in my wedding shots.
1. Because I was in the wedding, so I couldn't carry my camera around for many shots
2. Because I was trying to keep up with the kids (remember Julian getting lost for 30 minutes?)
3. Because I kept getting in the photographer's way, so I tried to back off, but in backing off, got crappy views of everything.
So here are a few that I like so far...







Bella waving goodbye to the newlyweds.


She loves Amy, but she LOVES Salomon, so she had to give Amy "permission" to marry him. In the end, she was okay, but she did grieve a bit on their wedding day :)

These next two are the mothers, Salomon's and Amy's, Salomon's mom is with his little girl, and my Mom, of course with Bella.
Amy and Salomon. This picture is making them look a little yellowish, so I need to edit it, but I couldn't show a bunch of wedding pictures without showing the bride and groom! :)

Amy's tiara, so beautiful.



The cake, yum. The reception was beautiful, all red, and my brothers delicious food. :)


That's all for now! :) We're headed back for my cousin Stephanie's wedding tomorrow! Super excited! Oh, and I went shopping, the kids and Dustin look super cute right now! :)

Thursday, December 08, 2005

So I'm off of work today, and I expected to wake up to a huge snow (well, 3 or 4 inches at least) I let the kids know what to expect as we watched the snow falling on the sidewalk last night. I went to the store to buy turtlenecks, gloves, hats, the works. I wake up to a light dirty dusting around the base of trees and in the shadows of the cars. Bummer. Bella still wants to play in it.

We had breakfast and the only thing on the agenda today is making Christmas sugar cookies (with mini m&m's) and a possible haircut for Julian. He can no longer see where he is going, so he walks around the house, running into tables and doorframes, while tilting his head skyward in hopes of seeing underneath his long shaggy hair.

He is still fascinated with trucks, cars, anything with wheels.
He sleeps so well in his bed that I fear moving him to a big boy bed anytime soon.
He shows no interest in any sort of potty training, other than the part where we take his diaper off and he gets to play with himself.
He uses animal noises to communicate his love. When I come home from work late, I take him to Bella's bed and snuggle him and that's when he makes dog panting noises, lion roars, and owl hoots.
He has a beautiful voice that he uses to make robot sounds, implicating that he knows a language that we will never understand. Hopefully someday soon he will understand and speak OUR language, but no rush.
He will be TWO years old next month. Bella is excited planning the party. All on her own, no help from us.

Bella is a party planner. She is a party animal. She lives for birthdays, weddings, holidays, any event worthy of a cake and friends.

We received a birthday party catalogue in the mail, a piece of junkmail that shows pictures of a million different birthday party themes (Dora, Bob the Builder, Madagascar, ponies, butterflies, etc.) Dustin was about to throw it away, and Bella spotted it.

She read the catalogue cover to cover, for 2 hours. Without moving. I don't even know if she was breathing. She then brought it to me to look through for 2 hours.
"Look at the Madagascar party! You can have chocolate cupcakes with the Madagascar party!"
"Look at the Dora party! You can have pink cupcakes with sprinkles with the Dora party!
"Oh MOMMA Look at all the balloons!!!"

When she asked who the catalogue belonged to, I said, "It's yours Bella."
Her eyes grew so so large, and she thaaaaanked me over and over. She's such a sweetie.

UPDATE:
Okay, I lost this post yesterday before I could post it, so I re-typed as much as I could remember. And now I have pictures of the christmas cookies, but none of Julian's new haircut (which wasn't much, just a bang trim, a little layer around the sides, while he growled and flexed his neck muscles into the mirror at the salon) but now he can see :)


Saturday, December 03, 2005

my baby sister

this is one of my very favorite pictures from the wedding day. I love that you can see the birdseed flying through the air, and my aunt and Grandma laughing in the background. Her flowers (red gerbera daisies and roses) were simply gorgeous. I carried white gerberas. She was a beautiful bride.

We are planning huge housewarming events in the coming months, I'm super excited. Homemade pizzas and cookies and girlie movies and poker nights (for the boys) and lots and lots of candles, to mask the fresh paint smell (which i kind of like...) Posted by Picasa

this was one of many "poetic" statements written on their getaway car (scattered among boxes of condoms and saran wrapped doors). i thought it was hilarious.

Oh yeah, this is my new brother in law :) Salomon. Posted by Picasa

Baby Bear

This little bear outfit came from Baby Gap. It is the softest material, almost as soft as baby Bear himself. He was adorable in it (as you can see)

What you can't see are the little fascinated eyes of his two sisters and my Annabelle, waiting for me to take the picture so they could poke his nose with their skinny little fingers. They are fascinated by him and just can't keep their eyes and hands and lips off of him. I felt the same way...and he didn't seem to mind too much. Posted by Picasa

Friday, December 02, 2005

Baby Bear

i still haven't found my photoshop cd, but here is one that just made me so happy (one of many) This little boy was just so easy, he let me hold him, pick him up, lie him down countless times, dress and redress and undress him, lie on his belly, his back, in a little chair. He was perfect.

More to come.

and yes, Bear is his real name. It fits him perfectly. I love it. Click on the picture to see a bigger version. you can see all the little fuzz on his face and shoulders. Posted by Picasa

Thursday, December 01, 2005

little juju man, at the wedding.

not a ring bearer, because he fell asleep
on the front pew.

wouldn't come into the reception hall without bringing a dirty deflated basketball inside with him.

wouldn't eat his own food, but devoured all the rice off of each plate at the kid's table.

we lost him for about 30 minutes and I nearly had a panic attack. (found him asleep on the front pew)

when he woke up, I held him because he was crying, and he proceeded to pee all over my bridesmaid dress, causing me to change into green cargo capris, an orange long sleeve cotton shirt and a grey and pink sneakers. oh yeah, and we hadn't taken pictures yet, so we let the dress air dry until picture time and then covered the pee stain with a black scarf (also covered in pee, a black scarf that cost me $40 that I had planned to return to the dept. store after the wedding...i'm evil...i know...i deserved to be peed on)

soooo, fun day. :) i love this little guy. Posted by Picasa

Bella and I are having a girls day out.

Lunch at el Chico's (because we both LOVE
tortilla soup)
and then a playdate at my friend Misty's house.
I'm so looking forward to that, because Misty just had a baby
boy a few days ago and we're going to photograph him. Wish me luck!

Until then, more fun hours of computer play! Posted by Picasa

i'm back :)

so, i've been mia. my computer died. a slow, painful death. but replacements have arrived and i'm back online. it drove me nuts, i have TONS of pictures on my old computer, who we will refer to from here forward as Sebby. Sebby was an old laptop, purchased from Half.com for 500ish dollars. Dustin was installing DirecWay (broadband) satellites for customers and he needed a laptop for installation. So, Sebby was exposed to harsh environments, rain, wind, dust in his keys. We went to a meeting where we would need our laptop to take notes, and most of our notes looked like this (due to sticking keys):

Thhhe grEREAtest tttthinggg youuuuu'll evver lleaara:rn, isss j

you get the idea.

I got most of my pictures burned to CD's, and am searching frantically for my photoshop CD's so i can get down to work. I believe I have wedding photos to share, I just have to find them on a stack of CD's.

Until them, i am busy answering emails, leaving blog comments and just playing on our new big guy, who is yet to be named.

Missed you guys :)