Wednesday, May 27, 2009

on a rocky mountain high

although we haven't been able to actually 'see' them... due to the overcast and rain.. EVERY day since we've been here.. ugh.

we are enjoying being on vacation in Denver.

we celebrated Andrew's little brother's graduation from high school last Saturday. I got some fun pics, but need to edit them before I post.

We have had mucho mexican food. and I am suffering thru the heartburn that is over taking my body. ugh.
but seriously, when in Colorado.. who can pass up the amazing authentico... lol.

we have eaten our way thru graduation parties, visited with lots of family members.

went to the aquarium, which Brigham and his cousin Alex, loved. Tatum slept thru almost the entire thing.

I got to meet a "pea".. (heather , you're the only one that will get this.. lol)....
for all others- a pea is a an online buddy met through my scrap booking and photography obsessions fueled by Twopeasincabucket. (see left link)
So yeah.. met up with her and she spent two hours (much of it in the rain) shooting my maternity pics! I can't wait to see them, so FUN!
speaking of maternity... almost ending my 35th week! yikes. When we get home, I'll have four more weeks! people kept asking about me flying....
the flight was decent, though Tatum only sat still for a mere 5 minutes.Brigham was set with a movie on the laptop. Tatum was only happy when stuffing her face, with fruit snacks, gold fish, teddy grams, or rice krispie treats. Thankfully, she didn't scream. We live an hour away from the airport, and our flight last week was at 6:30am, meaning we had to be at the airport around 5am. We ended up going down to Indianapolis the night before, so we could eat a nice dinner our, and get the kids as well as ourselves to bed at a decent hour. Also, the Hyatt, gives us parking free for up to 14 days.
well, our plan didn't work out so well... we didn't have a crib for the room, so Tatum would not sleep. we tried every combination of the kids together, Andrew with one, or the other, or me, with one or the other. nothing worked. Finally, after three hours, Brigham fell asleep.
Tatum never did. poor Andrew was up with her all night. Around midnight, Andrew finally just strapped poor little girl in her stroller. She would fall asleep for about 10 minutes, and then jolt, and wake up. Andrew would get up and push her around , she'd fall asleep, and then repeat the cycle.
I was in and out of sleep too. Needless to say we were already awake for our 4am wake up call!!
None of us slept on the plane, and then we got into Denver at 7:30 am, but we were all on a different schedule. It took us until mid Saturday to adjust.
anyway.....
we have 4 more days of vacation, and we're packing in a lot more.
I am enjoying putting up my 'cankles' as much as I can, and letting the grandparents take care of the kiddos. Yeah.... hadn't started swelling until the air plane.. now every day by early evening, I have HUGE ankles. totally gross.
Ok, so off to bed, and I will post pics when I get home!

Monday, May 18, 2009

its May... time for graduation and mom's day

so I am just a tad bit late on this... don't know where my week went... oh, yeah.. we had graduation ceremony, hosted life group,last day of school picnic, nice weather= playing outside .. A LOT!!..... , cleaning out more drawers and packing up kids clothes in preparation for baby....
blogging always seems to get pushed back.... and I hate that =/ so here is my baby boy in his last PreK program.. looking quite dapper I might add....
"If I were a crocodile... I'd thank God for my great big smile..."

not sure why he's looking at us like this.
also, I hate that we never get to the programs in time, so my pics always have the backs of people's heads in them. lovely.
tried adding a vignette to these, to put the focus on him....



Rico suave..... yep, that's my kid... lol
seriously, I don't think he has ever been to school w/o a collared shirt on
pretty preppy kid right now... or on the other hand I dress him like a rock star with some cute stuff from Hannah Anderson..
I have NEVER put my kids in a single bit of "character" clothing.
ugh.
why do they even make that stuff?... kids get enough on tv.
well, maybe its for the 45 year old women that strut thru WalMart with their Pooh t shirts on.
OH.. shame on me!!!



I think this was actually right at the beginning, when I first looked out and spotted us. It never gets old, to see his face light up when I sees us.
mom, dad, Tatum, grandma, and even grandpa came up from Indianapolis for the show!
so we also had another program for just his preK class with the presentation of diplomas!
LOL
haven't gotten them off the ol' camera yet.. but will post them too.
and the last day at the park was pretty fun too. we had perfect weather for his last day with all his friends.


******
MOM'S DAY

since we had had Tatum's bday party the day before, I wasn't feeling up to much.
We met my mom and brother at the park and I brought all my 'leftover' party sides, and we picked up KFC.
LOVE, LOVE the unfried chicken there....
if you haven't taken Oprah's advice, to "go get you some".. then take mine.
It is fabulous!
we just played, blew bubbles, and flew kites..
very low key.
wonderful.



I was feeling rather large, so this mama didn't get in any of the pictures..
but here is my first born that made me a mommy.
(could not get the kid to give me a real smile for anything!)
! oh, and he didn't lose his arm. .. just hiding behind his back!)



and my feisty 2 year old!!!


always on the go, this one.... this summer should be fun-nnn.



******
and here is a pic of her with the worm that grandma got her.
she loves it.
apparently my mom was going down memory lane when picking it out for her.
I have no memory of ever riding one.








Tuesday, May 12, 2009

it has been a whirlwind of activity....

around these here parts......
We celebrated Miss Tatum's second birthday on Saturday with a cowgirl themed party.
(remember my invitations from an earlier post?.. well, I found these 'wanted' posters and we hung them up around the house.. totally cute.).
she just happened to climb up on this horse of Brig's. actually all the kids found this to be a fun activity. it is too bad, that I didn't actually have a horse to ride. Don't you know I thought about calling my friend Ann, who has horses and asking her to bring over a pony to ride... perhaps not for a 2 year old's party.... I have had requests for a cowboy party for 'when I turn six' from Brigham.. so we shall see. love this picture of her
and just having some fun with this one. I found this adorable Ralph Lauren dress a couple months ago, and knew I had to have it.
I had wanted to order boots online, but never got around to it. Just on a whim, Friday night, I ran into Once Upon a Child, (which I never go to... sorry, I just can't bring myself to buy used clothes when Target and Macy's have such good deals on kids clothes.).
BUT... they had one pair of these... and in her size!!


she thought she was pretty hot stuff, prancing around in them. I think they are pretty darn cute too.


Here is the birthday girl w/ daddy as he was saying the prayer. oops, caught her w/ her eyes open! But she has always been our 'AMEN' girl... so she didn't fail us with her big grin and her 'AHHHHMEN"



Here is Ta Ta and grandma in front of our garage -turned- barn-door.







and the grub at the saloon.
Brigham was pretty excited about the beef jerky...
and we had pulled pork, baked beans, potato salad, home made cole slaw, corn dogs and bbq chips.



everything was super yummy. and I paid for it later with mucho heart burn.






here is the dessert table. I made the horseshoe cake , vanilla w/ chocolate butter cream icing
and the cupcakes were a overly moist chocolate w/ butter cream icing.
The kids all loved the cupcakes, pretty much because of the horses on top!
and the moms enjoyed the green icing on all their mouths!
of course we had trail mix too.




a pic of Brigham with his friend Gabby. We had several straw bales set out for authentic seating in the back yard..




and last minute drawing for "pin the hat on the cowgirl" game.





the birthday girl, getting into her gifts.
she got lots of girly girl things.




bubbles, and balls, and musical(LOUD) instruments.




one of the kids , Andrew, came decked out in boots and holster. Tatum swiped his gun, and amazingly knew just what to do with it!!
pretty cute.




and Brigham had decided that all of Tatum's birthday presents were community toys.
case in point, the pretty purple princess earrings from her dress up kit.
I think it looks a tad "brokeback" mountain-ish, don't ya think?




here is the family helping her blow out her candles


another pic of the cake. for all of you who know I love to make cakes.. you'll notice I went super easy on this one. Did not want to have mucho heartburn, and carpel tunnel from using my piping bag.. lol




oh, and these yummy haystacks were on the dessert table too.
super easy to make, and soooo good.
butterscotch chips, a little oil, and chow mien noodles.

******


well.. that completes the tour of the celebration at the Miller homestead !!
we had perfect weather, perfect friends, and Tatum could not have had more fun.
(though I am pretty sure, she had no clue it was all for her!!)
Sunday, we celebrated a low key mother's day.. but I'll post pics in my next post.
(hopefully it will be sooner then a week from now. gotta get back into regularly scheduled blogging.)

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

not every day.....

one of these comes floating into our subdivision!!
after spending 6 1/2 hours out in our yard on Sunday, we were relaxing on the back porch , eating pizza, when we heard this loud noise.. couple times in a row. I said. " man , that sounds like a hot air balloon".. . and sure enough, we ran to the front of the house, and this was in the sky, just barely above the houses, one street over.
the next street over is the last phase of new homes being built right now, so their backyard is just one big field. We dropped our pizza and ran over to see the balloon, just as it was landing. There were probably 50-75 ppl out watching in the field, and many more were standing in their driveways gazing up in the sky. The balloon man, just landed for a few minutes, and then away he went. The above picture, shows my mom and Brigham(can't really see him) waving good bye.

Unfortunately it was such a cloudy day.. I would have loved to have captured these shots against a pretty blue and white speckled backdrop.. (guess I could always go create it in PS!!!LOL)
Speaking of... got my new computer last week.... its up and running, but we need to order one more external drive, to retrieve all my pictures from the old computer. Andrew filled the first one with some of my programs including a brand new CS4!! I was used to using CS3, and occasionally using his version on his mac... so now, I am trying to learn as much as I can, as I go along.. taking lots of pictures so I can practice. So since I had some photo shoots coming up, I needed PS, and my templates, etc, to be reinstalled first. next we'll get to all my own pics.


Monday, we had great weather. Since Daddy has Monday's off, we decided to pack a picnic and take a field trip to :

THE ZOO

if you can really call it that... lol
seriously, our local zoo is about the saddest display of a 'zoo'.
.

there are 2 prairie dogs. and a llama. a few bunnies, some goats, and 2 miniature horses. oh, yeah, and some chickens and a rooster in the petting zoo part.




there is also an owl, and an eagle. pretty exciting I know. but I guess it is free, and we do tend to use it as a great play date activity throughout the summer.
there is a huge mulit level playground, which the kids really enjoy.
The tire swing :
Andrew had a great time pushing the kids, and as you can tell, they had a blast. It is so much fun to see Tatum as a 'little girl'... not the baby she was last summer. She wants to do everything that the big kids do.
So happy, that I have another baby to fill her shoes coming soon.. =)















I can't wait to scrap these pictures. I love all the new spring lines out right now!! I am still so behind. Since most of my prep is finished for Tatum's party this weekend, I am going to focus each night on scrapping 2-3 pages. At least if, I can get Brig's book up to date by his birthday, I'll feel good. Tatum's second year book is almost finished too.
I haven't started any pages for the new baby yet. Want to at least get the maternity ones down, and a few thoughts from the journal I have been keeping.
I do however, have several pages completed, that I'll share in the next post... gotta take pics of them first.
Oh, and I caught my sweet lil' girl at my scrap table once, again 'enhancing' one of my nearly completed pages!! ugh.
I really don't want to re do it, so I may just sign her name as a contributor, and leave it at that.
After the park, we hit hobby lobby for some things for Ta Ta's party, and then finished off the day with a trip to Culvers. Love that place.
Brigham endulged in a chocolate custard with nerds and Ande's mints.
can you say 'Gross!!'. whatever, the kid ate every bit of it, and was on a major sugar high for several hours.
summer + ice cream = pure awesomeness.
We've got Brigham's spring program tomorrow night, so I have to get my hiney in gear and make some cookies to take....
(so I can scrap of, course!)
hope you are enjoying the fabulous weather!
I know I am... it is making this pregnancy much easier to handle now!!









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