Catching up…

Finally, I feel like I can breathe.

The last month has been such a whirl­wind in our lives, but a won­der­ful one.  When I look back at the last few weeks, I won­der how we sur­vived, but we did, thank God, and we’re all set­tling in.  We couldn’t have done it with­out the help of our fam­ily.  We hired some amaz­ing movers as well to help.  If you are in need of a mov­ing com­pany, I highly rec­om­mend Two Men and a Truck.  They were A M A Z I N G.  The best money we ever spent.

We offi­cially moved into our new house on the 26th.  It’s been a lit­tle over a week, but now it’s begin­ng­ing to feel like we’ve been there MUCH longer than that.  I drive by Tyne Lane every day and won­der how our cute first house is doing.  I’m sure the new own­ers are lov­ing it, but part of me does miss it just a little.

We also had an awful deci­sion to make about a week before our move.  Our dog, Zeus, was 9 years old (that’s senior for a Dober­man) and his health had been declin­ing pretty quickly over the last few weeks.  We knew the time was com­ing, as hor­ri­ble of a deci­sion as it was, we made the choice to put him to sleep and let him cross the Rain­bow Bridge.  It was a very sad day for our fam­ily, but we knew in the long run, it was the right deci­sion. 

We’re now get­ting set­tled into our new home.  I have been tak­ing a few pics here and there, but it’s been such a mess with boxes and unpack­ing, that I’ve been hold­ing out on tak­ing too many until it’s all pret­tied up.   So, when it’s all nice and pretty for B’s party this week­end, I’ll be sure to take some new ones.

Speak­ing of The Princess, can you believe she’s turn­ing ONE on Sun­day?  I know I sure can’t!!  We took her one year pho­tos on Sun­day and did a cake smash.  Stay tuned for those, but here’s one of my faves of her laugh­ing at her brother.  And I LOVE my new nat­ural light stu­dio in the house!!  I can’t wait to use it over the com­ing years!!

While I’m on the sub­ject of photography…I’m hav­ing an amaz­ingly fun con­test over at the Ten Tiny Toes Blog.  Def­i­nitely go and check it out and I’d love to have you join in the fun!

Project 52: Week 5

The pack­ing continues…good thing boxes make fun toys too.   New pics of the house com­ing soon!  We were over there yes­ter­day and I took some of the main level.  Stay tuned!!

Project 52: Week 1/52

So, instead of a Project 365 (where you take one photo every day), I’ve decided that I’m not quite up to that chal­lenge!  So, I’m going to aim for one photo a week, which is much more man­age­able for me. 

So, here is my week 1 photo.  Bai­ley is really try­ing to start crawl­ing now and so here she is doing one of her pushups.  I tried to do a fun crop on this one.

Decking Our Halls…

This will prob­a­bly be the last year that we’ll be in our lit­tle house for the Hol­i­days (more to come on that soon I’m hop­ing!)  So, it was very bit­ter­sweet dig­ging out all of our Christ­mas stuff.  We are tak­ing it easy this year and I’m not putting up my Christ­mas in the City vil­lage, but it will def­i­nitely be up in our new house next year.   Tony was VERY happy to be dig­ging every­thing out of the crawl space for the LAST time.  He only said maybe 15 curse words this year instead of the usual 50 or so

Tyson was AWESOME at dec­o­rat­ing the tree this year.  As you may recall last year, he con­cen­trated the major­ity of the bulbs in ONE spot on the tree.  But this year, he was a dec­o­rat­ing rock star and even wanted to put the star on the top on (which I tried to let him help with, but it’s Swarovski, man!)

Here’s Tyson hard at work and VERy focused

And since his Daddy was mak­ing weird faces and poses for the cam­era, guess who else had to do it??!

And I’m SO proud of myself for tak­ing all of these with­out any flash (yay, me!)

More focus and concentration…

That smile…and my attempt at get­ting some Xmas tree bokeh!

What the Princess thinks of our Xmas tree…let’s pray she doesn’t start crawl­ing until after it’s all down because then I think she’ll LOVE it!

And I’m in LOVE with our new stock­ings that I splurged on this year.  And it was awe­some to finally be able to use the 5th stock­ing holder that I’ve had for the last 5 years

Had SO much fun tak­ing this pic, I’ve always wanted to get one with the “glow” of the Christ­mas Tree.  It took my tri­pod and lots of test shots, but I LOVE it!

It’s been so awe­some get­ting these annual orna­ments, some­day I’ll have a whole tree full I hope!

So Thankful!

We had a won­der­ful Thanks­giv­ing this year.  We are so lucky to have such awe­some fam­ily and friends to spend the hol­i­day with.  It was fun hav­ing another “first hol­i­day” for Bai­ley too, we’re run­ning out of them all too quickly.  This year we spent with my Dad and step-mom and my sis­ter hosted at her new, first house!  She did a fab­u­lous job and the food was all so yummy!

We attempted to get a cou­ple of fam­ily pho­tos with my tri­pod set up and I man­aged to quickly teach my dad how to use my cam­era, he did great!  Now, these are not the smi­ley, per­fect fam­ily por­trait that I had hoped for, but oh well, you take what you can get, right?  They make me smile and really show our family’s per­son­al­ity

It was an excit­ing day for B, we man­aged to get a bow to stay in her hair!  Woooo!

The mon­keys with our lovely hostess