Five on Friday

I'm linking up with Darci, Natasha, April and Christina for Five on Friday!

 For those of you with long hair that tangles easily, especially right out of the shower, this brush is for you! I may be late in finding out about this, but this brush is amazing. It's The Wet Brush and you can get it at Target for $8.99. I picked one up this week after several people recommended it to me and it works great. Right out of the shower, my hair would be super tangled and it was like doing a work-out trying to get a brush through it even after using a good shampoo and conditioner. But this brush goes right through my tangled hair like a charm. 

I'm so excited to be re-doing Jackson's room tonight and tomorrow. He is spending the night tonight with my parents, so he has no idea what's going on. My dad is coming over to paint the walls tonight and hopefully put his race car bed together. Then tomorrow my sister and I are going to decorate it!!  Once we are finished with it tomorrow afternoon, my parents will bring Jackson back home to his surprise Big Boy Room!! I can't wait to get started on it and see his reaction to his new room!

These are some prints I made up after searching Pinterest for ideas! I can't wait to get them printed and hanging on his walls. :-)

 My sister kept Avery for a little while on Tuesday and decided to try and give her a little ponytail!! I really didn't think she had enough hair for one, but look how cute she looks with it!

Jackson and Avery got to play outside yesterday at Maw Maw and Papa's house since the temps. this week have been amazing! It was in the 70's yesterday!! Woo hoo! Look how happy Avery looks with her Papa!

We are having a Twinkle Twinkle Little Star 1st birthday party for Avery in just 2 short months and I found the perfect tutu for her yesterday at Target! Now I just have to find a cute shirt on Etsy to match. :-)

 Inspiration Picture

I hope you all have a great weekend! 

(Come back next week to see pictures of Jackson's Big Boy Room!! )

Just A Swingin'

Please tell me I'm not the only one old enough to remember this song.  It was a hit in 83. I would have been 2 and I've been told I used to sing it all the time. ;-)

This past weekend, we had beautiful, Spring-like weather and it was glorious to get outside and enjoy it! I took the kids to a really cool playground called Discovery Playground and they had so much fun! Avery was just a newborn last Spring and most of the Summer, so she didn't really get to enjoy it, so it was a lot of fun to let her swing in the baby swing and slide down the baby slide. :-) 

She really loved the swing. She was smiling and laughing the whole time. I sure hope this nice weather is here to stay!

52 Project 2015: Week 10

"A portrait of each of my children, once a week, every week, in 2015."

We're moving right along with these weekly pictures and I'm having so much fun with this little photo project!!

Jackson: We got Jackson a Nabi 2 for Christmas and he is loving it. It came with several games on it and we've downloaded a few games onto it as well. He loves playing the puzzle games and is quite good at them. He also enjoys the drawing app that came on the Nabi. (He is in Avery's crib here because he loves getting in there with her. Ha.)

 Avery: Daddy was making Avery fly around the kitchen Monday evening and she was LOVING it!!

(Linking up here at Practising Simplicity)

Five on Friday

I'm linking up with Darci, Natasha, April and Christina for Five on Friday!

We are moving right along with Jackson's big boy room. We have his race car bed bought, I've got his bedding and a red book shelf ordered. I have a few prints made up that I plan to frame and my sister has his two valances and bunting made!! I've also bought a few other decorations here and there that we plan to use. So next Friday night, Jackson will be spending the night with my parents and my Dad is going to come over and help paint his room. Then Saturday, we are going to put his bed and shelf together and decorate his room and surprise him with it Saturday afternoon/evening when he gets back home!

Last Friday I took Jackson and Avery to my parents house for my mom to watch them there while I was at work and Jackson decided to wear his stylish blue sunglasses with his dinosaur hat! It was too cute not to take a picture! Though it's quite blurry, I love it anyways.

I saw this quote on facebook this week and really liked it. It's such a good reminder in this Pinterest/Social Media day in age!

I read this blog post the other day from Finding Joy and loved it so much. It's titled "When you Feel Like You Don't Make a Difference... Remember This" It's such a great reminder for us Moms and may have made me tear up a bit.

I finished up Jackson's 3 year "scrapbook" a week or so ago and got it ordered finally. Better late than never since his birthday was in October!! I love it and can't wait til it arrives in the mail.

Storybook Photography - Maternity Session

This past January, I offered a Maternity Photo Session Discount to 2 lucky winners. I had not ever done a maternity session and really wanted to add this type of session to my portfolio. So I actually ended up with 3 Maternity sessions in January and had so much fun with all of them. 

This was a sunset session in one of my favorite locations near my home. We actually had our family pictures taken here and it's where I took Avery's 9 month pictures as well. The sunset is so pretty here and it's just a few short minutes from my home, which makes it very convenient. The weather was seasonably warm this particular January evening, which made picture taking perfect. :-)

This couple was so sweet! They actually went on to have their sweet baby girl a week later. She was born several weeks early, but looks to be doing very well in the NICU. 

We waited til the very end for the sun to set just right to get this shot. It was definitely worth the wait!

Avery's 10th Month

 Avery,

On February 28th, you turned 10 months old!! How are you 10 months old already?! I can't believe you will be a year old in 2 more months. Cue the tears. It just doesn't seem possible.

(All the pictures below are from your 9 month session. The blanket was made by your Maw Maw (My Mom). She made it for me when I was little. ♥)

At your 9 month check-up, you weighed 20 pounds, 11 ounces (80%) and you were 30 inches tall (95%). Your pedi. was very impressed with how you are doing and how big you are! :-) You are a huge fan of any food we give you. You LOVE to eat!! It doesn't matter if you've just eaten a whole jar or 2 of baby food, if we are eating, you want to eat! Ha. If we are eating a snack in the living room, you will scoot right on over to us as fast as you can and beg for some. It's hilarious. You can eat anything soft now, so you've tried macaroni, bread, carrots, potatoes, green beans, cake and several other things. You love it all!

You are sleeping great still! You sleep all night and usually wake up once for a bottle at some point between 3 and 5 a.m. Then you always go right back to sleep! I love that your such a great sleeper.

You wear size 4 diapers, 18 month clothes and you've moved up to size 3 shoes. 

You are still scooting to get where you want to go and you are cruising like crazy along all the furniture, tables, us... whatever you can pull up on and walk along, you will. You have started taking steps if we stand you up and let go of you, you will walk to us and it's so cute! You don't normally let go to walk where you want to go, but you have been getting braver and braver and will occasionally turn loose of the furniture to walk a few short steps to get to us! I have a feeling you'll be full blown walking by the end of this month!

You can clap, raise your hands when we say "so big", you tilt your head over when we say "upside down", you give your babies hugs when we say "awe baby", you will put your hand up to your ear when we say "hello", you can wave bye bye and you  know where your nose is! You're so smart and I'm so proud of you!

You say, Dada, Momma, Baba and Ni-Ni. I don't think you really associate those sounds with anyone or anything other than maybe Momma. You just say Momma when you are sad. 

(Maw Maw, Avery and Mommy at your 9 month photo session.)

Well, I think that about covers your 10th month. You are getting so big and are so sweet and so much fun.

Pretty girl, I love you so much! You are such a blessing.

Love,

Mommy, xoxo

Our Arizona/California Trip: Days 5-7

Sorry it's been a few days since I posted about our trip. I've been busy and hadn't had a chance to edit pictures. This post will wrap up our trip. If you missed the previous posts, you can check them out here. 

After getting back to Phoenix late Saturday night, we got up Sunday morning and went to the Phoenix Open golf tournament. I had never been to a golf tournament before, so it was fun to experience it. Tiger Woods and Phil Michelson were already out of the tournament by Sunday, so we didn't get to see them, so that was a little disappointing, but we had fun anyways. Unlike any other tournament, the Phoenix Open has a hole, (hole 16) where there are bleachers and you can sit and watch the players on this hole. What makes it unique is that you can yell and be loud, cheer and boo the players. It was where we spent a majority of our time there. 

After a few hours at the tournament, we headed back to Jim's house for the rest of the day. I had some face-time fun with my Mom, Dad and Avery and we spent some time out on the patio!

We also watched the Super Bowl that evening and Jim made some yummy pasta.

Monday was spent just relaxing and hanging out in the back yard again! His back yard and patio are so great! Monday evening, some friends of Jim's came over for dinner and he made BBQ hamburgers and home-made fries! He and Jackson also juiced the grapefruits they had picked a few days prior and Jim made us some martinis with the juice!

Tuesday was the last full day of our trip, so we decided to go back to the Japanese Garden that we had visited the year before because it was so beautiful there. They have a big koi pond there and they sell fish food. So we always buy some and feed the fish, but what's funny is that there are always pigeons there and they will land right on you and eat the fish food right out of your hand! It was hilarious the first time it happened to us last year. So again, we fed the pigeons right out of our hands.

And because I love a comparison, here are our family pictures at the garden in the same spot from last year when I was pregnant with Avery and this year. :-)

Early Wednesday morning, we flew back to the cold and snow in St. Louis. Yuck! We had such a great trip though and look forward to going back!!