Lily meets Hello Kitty

Girls Day Out

Lily and I had a wonderful and much needed mommy & me time together yesterday. We started our day by painting our toes and getting Lily dressed in her favorite color. We headed out the the mall for a fun time with Hello Kitty and tea and cupcakes. Lily's friend Amy met us and eventually cousin Sophia and my sister Heather. They had so much fun coloring pictures and doing a puzzle of Hello Kitty. We enjoyed shopping and getting some cool Hello Kitty gear - all pink of course :-)

After we left the mall Heather and I took the girls to our favorite deli - Chappy's! After lunch we enjoyed ice cream and chocolate cheese cake. What a fabulous girls day out!

Frogbelliesandblossoms - Christmas Launch

Shhhhhhh - Sneak Peek

Miss Lily models another set for Mrs Julia!

click here to see the ebay link on this set

School Girl....

Lily loves being in K4 this year. I love, love, love her little uniforms. I got her a new ribbon for her to go with it so of course we had to model.

Time for soccer

Soccer Practice

The kids started practicing for the new fall soccer season. This is Lily's first year and she is so excited. She is really quite good and got right into it. They will have their first game next Saturday.

A sneak peek.......

Here are a few pics of my girl in Julia's latest creation. Please check back soon for her listing on this fun set.

Little Angels

Two sweet little brothers

My very dear friend Candace has been visiting from England for the summer. Sadly, she will be leaving on Sunday. I will miss her beyond words. Yesterday, however, I had the great pleasure of doing a fun photo shoot with her two precious little ones. These boys are a bundle of energy and sweetness and just light up the room whenever they visit.

I put together a little video slide show of some of my favorite shots. You will need to go to the bottom of my page and pause my music before you play the slide show.

Back to School

My babies went back to school today. They both love school so there were no tears from either of them. Sean jumped right up this morning, ran strait to his clothes and threw them on. He was so excited. Lily on the other hand had to get as much beauty rest as she could. She slept until the last possible minute and I had to pry her nightgown off of her to get her dressed. She was bouncy by the time she sat down to eat though. As you might see in the pictures, she had a barbie doll with a matching uniform. I just could not pass it up when I saw it in the uniform shop.

They had a great first day. Of course, you know we had to go out and celebrate so we all went to Chappy's for lunch.

What a great day!!!!

Back to School

Lily starts ballet

Lily's ballet class will be starting Monday. This year she has moved up from creative movement into pre-ballet. The ballet school she attends uses a certain color leotard for each level of ballet. She has been in pink for the last two years, so she is thrilled that she is now moving up to a big girl class and is wearing a red loetard. Although she was a little disappointed that she could not wear her FAVORITE color anymore.

Our trip to Massachusetts

I posted just a few of our Boston pics below. I have so much more to share about our trip.

The kids had so much fun and learned as well. The trip was indeed an adventure for them as they flew in an airplaine, took several "real" train rides, rode the underground/subway and took buses and shuttles around the big city. We kept them on the go the entire time and they were such troopers. They will make great world travelers with us one day :-)

We had a great time going into the city and also visited Plymouth and Concord Massachusets. In Plymouth we took the kids to see Plymouth Rock and the town was breathtaking. Concord was my favorite though. We ate at a darling cafe in the town square and took the kids to see the homes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Walso Emmerson. The highlight of Concord was when we took the kids to visit the real Sleepy Hollow Cemetary (as in - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) There were graves of many famous authors. Don't ask me why, we just love cemetaries and this one was just so historical and beautiful. This was actaully Sean's second trip. We took him to all these places when he was around 8 weeks old.

The trip was not all about visiting Boston and the surrounding areas though. We actually flew there for a long anticipated family reunion and surprised my father who has been batteling with cancer. He was so excited to get to see his grandkids. We also got to see my grandmother and many other relatives we have not seen in years. Heather and Sophie came with us and this was especially exciting because our relatives had never even met little Sophie who is already six. It had been close to eight years since Heather had last visited. We had a great time with all of them and I have lots of pictures I will be posting of all that very soon.

In Boston

We ate lunch at the Cheers place

Lily eating ice cream at the train station

the kids in Beacon Hill. I loved that area, breathtaking!!!!

Waiting for a train to take us into Boston

Waiting for the subway

Heather in front of the John Hancock building

Walking down a street in Boston

A quick "catch up"...

I am SERIOUSLY behind on this blog thing..... many of you have emailed or called to check on me and I appreciate your concern. YES! I am ok.... I have not had any recent health problems and am doing great. I feel better than I have in months and am STILL seizure free.

It has been a very busy summer for us and my laptop is with a gentleman who is doing some recovery work on it after we reformatted it and lost a lot of pictures. I miss my laptop and even though we have several other computers, It is just not the same. I have missed blogging and facebooking but have to say that I have gotten more done in these last few weeks without my computer. Proof that I am a little more than addicted :-)

I have so much to post and so many new pictures to share. I will do it hopefully this week!

As I mentioned above, we have had a busy but tremendously exciting summer. After our beach trip I began working my new job (which I love) and also volunteering at the Clothes closet at Frazer. Between those two things, trying to spend time with the kids and the normal everyday "stuff", I have pretty much been on the run constantly. I helped with Vacation Bible school this year! That was a blast. Then, we spent some time in Boston, Concord, Plymouth and Halifax and really had a great time. I am going to save it all for the pictures to post details, but, it really was one of the highlights of our summer so far.

School starts next week and the kids are excited about that. I think I am more ready than they are. I will miss them, but, I am excited about things getting back to normal around here.

They are both playing fall soccer, Lily will be back in ballet and hopefully Sean will start piano lessons. I am really anxious about Lily starting, but, I think she is a bit young yet. Her fingers are still so tiny.

This week a very special young lady is staying as our house guest. She was my flower girl in my wedding over seven years ago. I have not seen her in a bit over four years and was so happy when we finally re-connected. I am looking forward to keeping her entertained this week and posting lots of pics of her as well. The kids are just crazy about her already as they are getting reacquainted. Lily was 6 months and Sean was about two last time she visited.

Well, I meant for this to be a short note and it is too long already so I will close. I will post again WITH PICTURES very soon!

Heidi

New! - Who knew?

This is a very exciting post for me. I have so much news to share and don't know where to begin.....

I am thrilled to say that I am feeling so much better and am now seizure free. I have been taken off all of the meds and can not begin to say how much better I feel. A "new" person would describe it well :-) Thanks for all of your prayers and concern. God is truely moving and working miracles for us.


After many prayers, I have been blessed with a new job. The new job was an absolute blessing and I know that I am going to be very happy where God has placed me. I will miss those sweet little faces at Montessori but I really feel that this move is exactly right..

I am working for a fantastic ministry. It is called Child Evangelism Fellowship. You can go here or here to read more about it. My official job title is: Office Manager. But, you know me, that sounds a little formal. HA! I am excited that I will in some way being doing just a small part of God's work through this. I am thrilled to be working in a christian environment and also back in an office which is what I love and have always done.


I will also be volunteering at Frazer (my church) in a way that is quite personal to me, food pantry and clothing ministry. I remember quite well how those ministries so helped us when I was growing up.


Another new thing I am doing is working - actually volunteering - in the kitchen on Tuesday nights at my church for the singles event TNT or "Tuesday night Together". It has been a wonderful and fun experience for me.



One side note: this Tuesday, June 30th is Spirit Night at Chick-fil-a. Proceeds from the sales from 5-9pm (as long as you let them know who you are there for) will go towards this wonderful ministry.

for more information, follow this link if you have a facebook account

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/event.php?eid=116124565752&ref=nf

Fun at the beach....

Orange Beach

We took a much needed relaxing vacation to the beach last week. The weather was perfect and our moods were all great. We had a wonderful time enjoying the sand and the ocean (and doing a few other fun things). It was by far one of our best beach trips ever!

Where we stayed

I used a filter on a software program I have to create this sketch like picture of our condo!

Beach portraits 2009

We decided to wait until our second day to get out and do some beach pictures. After the shoot we went to a wonderful place to eat called Grazie. It was (in Lily's words) a Fancy place to eat. It was a wonderful evening.

Me and my boy

Me and my girl

Me & my sweet angels

Daddy and his boy..

Sean's hair is a bit long - time for a haircut