blog slacker comes back!

Mr. Graduate

(from PreK ) that is !! love the 4 year old 'fake' smiles.. seems like that is all I am getting these days from him!
these are a few from his actual graduation program... a few songs,

a presentation of his 'diploma'

and his class picture at the park

We have been out for almost 3 weeks and already I think I am about to lose it!

Luckily vacation snuck in there for about 10 days...

Hard to believe my little guy will be turning five in a month and then off to kindergarten in the fall. Seems like we have had him around much longer then five years!!

I am not one of those sappy moms that got all emotional at the prek graduation.

c'mon... it IS hardly school at this point after all!

Brigham really could have cared less either. He has been telling everyone that he is done with school and gets to go to a new school in the fall. I thought maybe he'd be sad to leave his friends. Nope. hasn't mentioned it once. Guess that is because most of his friends are not from his class.

He is super excited for Kindergarten and actually will see several preK classmates again in the fall.

We have already been gearing up. Reading, writing, math. As some of you know , I hardly have to push him into it. I am going to have a different time with his sister, who we think will be the kid that works super hard and still gets average grades. but she'll be our jock.

funny how kids are so different, and it is evident at such a young age. it will be such a joy to see what God has planned for them.

****

had to get those pics in.... will probly start posting pics from the vacation later today....

we've been busy , busy, since returning last Friday.

oh, and I am in the final stages of growing the baby.. so I am not moving the quickest! LOL

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!

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.

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.)

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!!

summer is here

and apparently spring decided to just skip us by this year.

we enjoyed an afternoon of soccer with our friends and then because Miss Kylie scored two goals, we all went out to celebrate with some hot chocolate! Actually it was called "20 below hot chocolate", but Brigham kept misunderstanding, and thinking that he was going to get the hot stuff with marshmallows. not quite, after we just endured the intense sun and we all now have some pretty nice farmer tans!

but my flowers did especially well, and I seemed to have 5x more daffodills in my front yard then last year! I was also happy to see that the bulbs I planted in the back yard bed came right up! since we went straight to mid 80 degree temps, my tulips are starting to pop open now too!

I can't wait til this weeked when I can plant the rest of my pots and get some more color in my beds. Since we have only EIGHT more weeks til we meet our third child, I need to get a move on the ol' gardening..

Plus, in two weeks we will be celebrating our sweet Tatum's second birthday....

I have to say that I was trying to get that perfect photo for her invitation, but at nearly two, she had other ideas, and was not wanting to cooperate. So I improvised, and used three of the cutest ones. I actually created my first PS document all myself, and I think it turned out pretty cute.

Though after they were all in the mail, I somehow realized that I had made one major mistake..

can anyone spot it?

I'll let you know at the end of my post...

So yeah, this pregnancy is going by super fast. I think I said that when I was carrying Tatum too, but this one seems to have gone by even faster. Maybe because I was on the go so much. Like when I was pg, with Brigham , the time seemed to drag on for -ever. Perhaps that was because I was working the entire time!! LOL

Well, last Friday, my friend Kelli and I went to get our toes pampered. Her husband set it all up for us, and he watched all the kiddos, so we could relax for a bit. It was so nice to have a couple hours of uninterupted girl time where we could just 'talk'. She'll be having her little girl this week, and we are sooo excited to meet her! Hopefully, we'll get to see her shortly after she is born. I just love those 'hours old babies'...

and as we wait for our bundle to arrive, I am busy, busy with projects. This week is focused on getting all of B and T's clothes boxed up and then switch Brig's dresser into Tatum's room. She will be sharing space with the newborn clothes and at least her folded/ stuff. All of her hanging stuff will still stay in Brig's closet.

I sure can't wait til' the day that they all have their own space. But for now (since I have completely taken over T's closet with scrapbooking stuff), we are improvising. and it seems to work for now. but they just have so many, many clothes!!

Also, on the agenda for the week is to narrow my choice for a double stroller. I am finding to be very frustrating, b/c I want the colors to match with the two seats that we already have. Plus it needs to blend with the interior of our car . (which is black leather as of the Jetta), but sadly we will be trading that in before too long..... I soon will be a mini van mama....

so before I ramble on too much more, I'll leave you with some self portraits. Took these last week. I actually did have Andrew help a bit, he thinks he is in training to be my assistant.. HA!!

not sure about the umbrella thing.. but I had seen it somewhere. I just won this umbrella in a women's group I belong too, and thought it would be cute to try out.....

so this was me at like 31 1/2 weeks along.... I have got to get my pg photos scrapped soon, so that at least baby tres has a few pages in his/her book, before we meet them!

**so did you find my huge mistake on the invite?? um, totally forgot to put the date on it!! must be my pg brain on the fritz again!! LOL

catching up

spring fest at Purdue was last weekend. I loved it when I was in college, though I participated in more of the wearing of the crazy get-ups, and consuming large quantities of Long Island Ice Teas.Since we have had Brigham , we have taken him over to campus . The weather has only been nice once. 2 years ago, it was so cold we were in winter coats and hats. and last year it was pouring down rain and about 40 degrees. But we marched on and participated in as much as we could.This year, it was 70 and sunny, and we stayed over 5 hours. We all had a blast!! Above is Brigham with the sought after bee (spring fest is also called Bug Bowl and the entomology department goes all out at teaching that insects can be useful and liked, instead of detested.) We ran into one of his friends from school, Cloe, so they took a picture together,
this was toward the end of the day, but my pictures are all out of order.. the horticulture department always has a great plant sale and the seniors all have to do a final project in the way of landscape of some kind. This year, there was a huge focus on water features, which was really beautiful.
My little pretty in among the flowers. Notice she is decked out in her lady bug dress.. to attend 'bug bowl'.. !!Brigham was dying to join in the cricket spitting contest. Here he is picking out his gem.
and here he is spitting it. (this picture is also for daddy.. lol)
and they had set it up like a football field, and Brig's spit measured all of 9ft !!

Next we moved onto eating the crickets. Brigham remembered this from last year, and was begging to try it again. These are the chocolate covered ones.
and obviously, my kid had no problem chowing down!!
I believe this was eating the stir fried meal worms.
The animal science department had a tent , where they taught all about different animals, etc. Here is Tatum petting a chic. I think she liked it..
Here she is with daddy, petting the chick
Brigham loved milking the cow. Somehow my angle here is not the best....lol
moving on to the entomology department... Brig just walked right up and held this big ol' furry spider... um, mom and dad wouldn't go near it!!
Tatum was ok, with touching the millipede...
and of course mr. bug man , loved it too..

and that was our fun last weekend. We also had a great evening with friends who are getting ready to move away to HOT lanta to attend seminary. We will miss them and wish them so much luck.

computer update:

well.. so apparently the ol' computer did crash last weekend, and the part Andrew ordered was not going to bring it back.

soooo. my hardware genius of a husband, researched and researched and built his own computer.

We ordered it this morning, and should have it next week. my fingers are crossed.

so in the meantime, we get to fight over his macpro.

I have had a couple photo shoots, and it is driving me nutz as I stumble thru learning CS4 as I edit them. ( I am used to CS3 on my puter)

not to mention I don't have any of my actions or templates on his mac.

I am in no way anxious to get mine back up and running. nope. not at all.

oh, and if you could all say a prayer that all my stuff saved on the external drive will transfer on to the new one. thanks.

hope you are all enjoying your weekend! we finally have some sunny and warm weather . YAY!!