52 Project 2015: Week 17

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

 Jackson: I just love his long eye lashes.

 Avery: Giving Daisy some love. ♥

 (Linking up here at Practising Simplicity)

5 on Friday

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

 I am in full party-planning mode. Avery's 1st birthday party is two weeks from tomorrow and her actual birthday is this coming Tuesday! How is that even possible? I feel like it was just yesterday that they were placing my sweet newborn on my chest! It's so true what they say, "the days are long but the years are short."

I loved this blog post by Julie at The Girl in the Red Shoes earlier this week. She hit the nail on the head.

 And as if that post above didn't bring on the tears, this video surely will.

This past Saturday was a super nice day, so we spent a majority of the day outside. Jake mowed the grass and did some yard work and the kids and I played with bubbles, took a wagon ride and played in the back yard on our swing set. We were having so much fun that Avery went past nap time and ended up falling asleep in her swing. It was so sweet!

Happy Friday!! 

It will be a fun but fairly busy weekend for me. I have two photo sessions and a birthday party, plus church on Sunday morning. Thankfully I'm off work on Monday, so I plan to spend lots of time with my babies!

 

Jackson is 3 1/2!

Jackson,

This past Monday, April 20th, you turned 3 1/2 and I really cannot believe it. You are starting to look so old. Your baby face and chub are gone and a tall, skinny little big boy have replaced it. You are so sweet and hilarious! You amaze me with all that you know and can do. You can count to 12 and are really close to being able to count to 20, you can spell your first name (you do this first thing when we drop you off at pre-school), you can sing all of your abc's and can pick out a few letters and numbers and you know all of your colors. You are very polite and almost always say please and thank you. You are shy around people you don't know, but usually warm up to them quickly. You are brave and you are loyal. Your daddy and I just love you to pieces and we're so very proud of you!!

Some of your favorite things:
-Peanut Butter Sandwiches (cut in shapes like Mickey Mouse, a star or heart)
-Cinnamon Rolls, Nutty Bars and Donuts
-Pizza
-Downloading apps on the ipac (also known as an ipad)
-Running and playing outside and at the park
-Going for walks in the wagon or stroller
-Riding your bike or driving your Lightening McQueen car
-Paw Patrol, Team Umizoomi and Blaze and the Monster Machines are your "Favorite shows in the World!"
-Pickles
-Playing with cars and Disney action figures
-Cake Pops from "Star-box" (aka Starbucks) We've started a Friday evening trip through the Starbucks drive-thru for cake-pops (and a White Chocolate Mocha latte for Mommy)

Some funny things you've said recently:

After waking up in our bed one morning...

Me: Why did you come and get in our bed last night?

Jackson: I didn't, I disappeared from my bed and then was in your bed.

On our way to some friends of ours house...

Me: We are going to Natalie and Alivia's house tonight.

Jackson: My gonna be shy.

Me: You don't need to be shy, they are nice.

Jackson: Yeah my do.

While playing hide and go seek (before you really learned to count)...

Jackson: You go hide and I will count.

Me: Okay

Jackson counting: One, Two, Free, Eleven, Klelve... Ready or not, here MY come!

 Me: Jackson, can you pick up your toys?

Jackson: Mommy, what you said?

After spending a lot of time with a few of your cousins one weekend, I took you and Avery to a park on my Monday off and when we got there you didn't really want to play by yourself so you said, "I need a cousin to play with." :-)

Our Bradford Pear Trees bloomed a few weeks ago and when Jackson woke up that morning he saw the white flowers out of the little window on our front door. It's up high so he could only see that there was white on the tree. So when he saw this he told my mom it had snowed outside! Ha. She had to open the door to show him that in fact, it was just flowers on the tree, not snow.

If you're asking Daddy a question and mommy answers it instead, you'll say, "No mommy, I'm talking at Daddy". Ha!

You are very protective of Avery, (when you're not the one bothering her). She likes to stand up in the bathtub and not lay still for diaper changes, so I have to tell her no and of course she cries and when this happens you always say, "don't make my baby cry"!

You say, "I told you" if we say something won't work and then it does.

"Sunder Storm" = Thunder Storm
"I did that last day" = I did that yesterday, or a month ago... ha!

You say living room with y's like... "yiving yoom" and kitchen is "chichen".

Your best friend (in the whole world) is Gabe at pre-school and it's so cute how much you love him. We were at your school for your art fair this past Friday night and you were being shy when we first got there. But when you saw Gabe, that all changed and you went running over to him. :-)


We've got you all signed up for pee-wee baseball this Spring/Summer. I can't wait to see you out there playing!

So I think that about covers you at 3 1/2 Jackson! You are so much fun right now (despite the few tantrums and whiny moments) and I absolutely love being your mommy!

What to do with the 52 Project Weekly Pictures

So a couple years ago, I started doing Project Life digitally. I loved it, but unfortunately got too busy and I never finished the year and never got back to it. :-(  I make a photo book for both Jackson and Avery every year for their birthday but still knew I wanted to do some kind of family album for me. So when I started doing the 52 Project this year, I thought about starting Project Life again, but I just really don't have time to do it.

 So I decided to use the concept for Project Life but simplify it some and make it more of a monthly thing rather than a weekly thing. Here's what I came up with using picmonkey.com and many of my 52 Project pictures of the kids, plus a few others that I've taken throughout the month. I decided to do 4 pages a month, plus an iPhone picture page.

I have Jan.-Mar. done and plan to complete these pages monthly to keep up-to-date rather than waiting til the end of the year.

Jan. 2015 Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

January iPhone Page

 February 2015 Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

February iPhone Page

March 2015 Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

March iPhone Page

I am making a square book using mixbook.com to put them in and will just print it at the end of the year! It's not as cute and fun as I'd like it to be, but it's simple and easy and it will assure I get pictures printed to have them to look at in hand instead of just on my hard drive.

52 Project 2015: Week 16

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

 Jackson: Playing with his new Mickey Mouse Bubble Machine Saturday morning.

 Avery: Playing outside Saturday as well. It was so nice out, so we spent a majority of the day outside playing with bubbles, going for a wagon ride and swinging in the back yard. :-)


 (Linking up here at Practising Simplicity)

5 on Friday

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

 Avery got to go for her first real wagon ride yesterday. Jake took Jackson and Avery up to the park yesterday in the wagon. They had so much fun!

Jake offered to let me pick out a new watch for my birthday and I'm trying to decide whether to go with silver or gold. I have white gold rings and most of my other jewelry is silver, but I love all the gold right now, so I'm torn. Here are a few of the watches I like.

I'm excited to have 2 photo sessions this weekend. In fact I have 2 photo sessions every weekend for the next 3 weekends!! :-) It's about to get really busy and I love it! A couple of them are even repeat clients, which is such a huge compliment for me. I love seeing clients come back again!

 Last Friday was National Siblings Day and I didn't even realize it until later in the day. I posted this picture of my sister and I and thought I'd share it here as well. :-) It can double as a Flash Back Friday picture. ;-)

Target has buy one dress get one 50% off right now. So as I was browsing online I bought a couple that I liked and thought would be great for this Summer.

Have a Great Weekend!!



I'm also linking up here this week.

52 Project 2015: Week 15

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

Jackson: Playing a game with Daddy in the kitchen! He was so excited!

 Avery: We traveled to Kansas City this past weekend for Jake's Grandma's funeral, so I thought it was a great time for Avery to wear the little Royals outfit that Jake's Mom had gotten for Jackson at this age. She looked so cute in it that I had to get a picture. Jackson had his cardinals shirt on and I wanted to get a picture of them together, but he wouldn't cooperate... as usual. ;-)