It's the Simple Stuff

Hannah Grace

So I'm long overdue for posting pics of my sweet new niece, Hannah Grace.  The most precious thing about meeting her, was seeing the kids with her, especially Emma.  While the boys love her it was so cute to see her reaction...she LOVED her.  Didn't want us to take Hannah from her and she kept kissing her and hugging her.  It was adorable!!  Here are a few pics....

You can see the rest of the pics here

Some random stuff....

So it's been a few days since I've posted and even longer since I added some pics.  In that case I thought I would do a quick run down and just some random stuff.

Two weekends ago we moved Grady into a big boy bed.  As with the other boys he has given us absolutely no trouble at all with staying in bed or getting out without David or I getting him out.  He is so adorable.  He will sit in his bed and read (he loves books) himself to sleep and then in the morning or when he wakes from his naps I will hear him reading to himself and that is when I know to go and get him.  He is soooo cute in his big boy bed and he absolutely loves it.  He gets really excited about getting into his big boy bed and often looks at me with those adorable eyes of his and says about his bed...."Mommy....nice".  So it's a hit. Here are some pics of him in his new big boy bed!

Grady has also taken to wanting to pick out his own cereal in the morning....I can see I'm becoming obsolete!!!  Even though he tells me most often that he wants "shocate" aka chocolate or "nute nacks" aka fruit snacks for breakfast!

That same weekend we moved Emma into her own room (which was sort of haphazard and not at all how I intended it to be).  All of my kids slept through the night before I moved them into their room...easier on me not to have to lug myself out of bed and into another room to nurse...anyway we had been talking about getting her room done and moving her since she didn't show any signs of actually sleeping through the night any time soon.  Well when I went to go pick up some stuff for Grady's room in order to get him into his bed, I came home to her crib set up, the packnplay torn down, etc. etc.  Which was fine, HOWEVER...the main reason I didn't want to move her until her room was painted and such was because getting things like that done are like pulling teeth and I figured it would get done sooner if she wasn't in there yet.  Anyway...she is in there and has been for two almost three weeks and yet the promise of the painting getting done has yet to be fulfilled!!!  BUT the past few nights she has slept through the night and she looks soooo cute when I go and get her in the morning or after a nap, peeking out over her crib. Here are pics of that little face that greets me every morning and after naps....

Emma started pulling herself up on things a couple of weeks ago and I swear she is soon gonna take off and walk.  She is not content to sit, crawl or otherwise...she desparately wants to walk. She pulls herself up on anything and everything and its cute of course.

And one last pic for the road....I bought this adorable shirt that says cutie on it at Target along with a cute pair of red pants with adorable stitched hearts on the back pockets...

As you can tell from the rest of the pictures of her in this shirt we are having great difficulty with bad hair days....  What little hair she does have has a complete mind of its own and most of the time she ends up looking like I just rubbed a balloon on the top of her head!!  She is so stinking cute and so easy to get pics of.  She loves to smile...I hope it stays that way!

Alright....more later, I gotta go set the boys school clothes out for the morning!!!

Pictures...

I have been wanting to take pictures of my scrapbook room for a really long time and I finally did!  Here they are if you want to take a peek!!  Now that the basement is done (for the most part) and it is all recently cleaned and organized, I can't wait to get in there and scrap!  I was in there for a little while last night and finished decorating my ribbon boxes but didn't get any actual scrapping done.  David was down there watching the Patriot/Colt game and it was way too exciting and I kept going out there to watch.  I just couldn't concentrate!  Maybe tonight after my scrapbook club at the store, since I always have creative energy after that!!

Picture People....

I have to be honest...I haven't been to get a "professional" picture taken of any of my kids since 2005!   I used to go all the time, you could really have called it an addiction.  I was there all the time, I think I have a picture of Owen from Picture People for like every month of his life for at least the first year if not the first two!  I have several of Cooper from there as well.   And that is pretty much where it ends.  By the time I had Grady Picture People was definitely in a downward spiral.  It started before he was born really.  I would go with the boys and wait forever to get pictures taken by some 15 year old who would ask me what to do, how to pose, spend all this time and frustration of trying to wrangle and bribe my boys.  After much sweat and toil I would leave to walk around the mall for an hour to await seeing my photos.  All of this to get back and have the girl realize she never turned on the flash or some other ridiculous thing like that.  So I decided it really wasn't worth the effort.  So when my mom wanted to make an appointment there to have our Four Generation picture taken I was not expecting much.   Well I will admit I was pleasantly surprised!   The girl was AWESOME...she knew exactly what she was doing, how she wanted us to pose and was willing to make a fool out of herself for the sake getting some fantastic smiles from Emma!  I told her how good she was and how I would definitely be back and told her how in previous years I was so disappointed with that company.  She explained to me that new management had taken over and really was striving to improve the store.   So that being said, if you have sworn off Picture People, I would highly recommend you reconsider and try them out again. You can see them at smilestore.picturepeople.com and the user name is Aimee Snyder and the Access Code is 9b4494464e.  I know that in some of them I have a wayward piece of hair but guess what...SHE TOOK IT RIGHT OUT.  The wonders of technology.

We got a great 4 generation in their really cool retro color affect.  Really perfect for what it was.  I also got some of Emma by herself.

It was a great day!!!

Photo developing....

Ok, so right now my house is fairly quiet.  Emma went down for a nap around 10:45 a.m. and when I came down to get Grady dressed he was SOOOOO fussy...very abnormal for him that I decided to see if maybe he would nap.   IT WORKED!!  Doing the happy dance that two are sleeping at the SAME time!  Cooper went over to Cami's to play and Madi came over here to play with Owen.   So my other two are occupied and having a good time and guess what....NO FIGHTING.   LIFE IS GOOD!!!

So with this "quiet time" I decided that it was high time that I upload some photos to get developed.   That's the bad part about digital, the extra work of uploading photos as opposed to dropping off and picking up your film.  That being said I wanted to do some "research" regarding online developing.  I was going to conduct a test of sorts by sending a few of the same photos to several different developers and see what the outcome produced.  However, when I did a search for "online digital photo developing" one of the results was the following  link....online photo developing review!   I'm sure there are MANY reviews out there on the subject, however, being a scrapbooker, I have my own ideas about the "ideal" photo.  SO I was very excited to see that another scrapper had already done all the work for me!  Thought maybe some of you may be interested in this little tid-bit so I thought I'd pass it on.   

Now I'm off to the tedious task of uploading my photos!  YUCK!!!

Owen's 7th Bday....

Well it was a lively one, that's for sure...but then again any time that Chuck E. Cheese is involved, its lively!  He had a great time with his friends and frankly I enjoyed the fact that they could act like maniacs  and #1 nobody noticed, because everyone else's kids were going nutso too and #2 they weren't being crazy in my house!  Good times for all! 

TOLD YA EVERYONE HAD FUN.....EVEN THE ADULTS!!!!!  Here's Adam sporting a pair of glasses that a couple of the kids picked as a prize with their tickets!

These are the cupcakes I made for his birthday snack for school!

I think he had a good day.  I can't believe our firstborn is already seven!   Just doesn't seem possibly, but isn't that what I say about every birthday???  He's getting so big and he's all boy, there's no baby left in him, which is as it should be but nevertheless sad!  Anyway...click here for the rest of his bday pics!!!

Trick or Treat....

smell my feet....JUST KIDDING!!!   So here are my TorTer's!!!   Aren't they cute???!!!

Trying to get a pic of all four of them is NO easy task, so at this point, I take what I can get!!!  Forget the fact that it's slightly blurry, Coop's "head" isn't on straight and Grady is getting strangled!  WHATEVER, they're still cute! (can you tell I'm working through my scrapper's picture perfectionism...if you don't scrap, you probably have NO idea what I'm talking about!)  You can CLICK HERE FOR MORE HALLOWEEN PICS!  All of which are far less than perfect, but the memory has still been captured!  Lisa has some more pics of the kids that she's gonna send me.  One in particular of Grady from behind that I can't wait to get.  He was sooo adorable TorTing!   You should have seen his little ears flopping as he toddled around!  He was so funny because the first few houses that he went to, he took candy out of his bag and tried to give it to the person that was suppose to give him candy!  Too cute!  And he was so adorable saying thank you to everyone!  He went to a few houses and then was content to sit in the stroller eating his loot!

Coop made and adorable robot!

Owen was a cool S.W.A.T. guy!

Grady was an adorable Mickey...here he is with Minnie (aka Kacy)

What I didn't take a picture of was our loot table!!!  If you could have seen all the candy, etc. we had, and to know that it was all but gone...I guess I should've stole my candy bar BEFOREHAND!  I got all my candy that day at Sam's, I bought....a box of 90 Airheads, two cases of Snickers, MilkyWay etc. mix each with 30 bars, two cases of assorted Skittles and Starbursts each with 30 in it, two cases of assorted Pirates of the Carribbean M&M's each with 30 pkgs in it, two packages of Play-doh each with 66 mini canisters in it and a case of individual bags of animal crackers (for the wee TorTer's) and by the end of the night all that was left was a handful of Airheads, a few canisters of Play-do, a package of M&M's!  O and we had plenty of the animal cracker packages left over!  I love Trick or Treat!!!

Pics as promised.....

Here are Payton pics from our visit yesterday....he's definitely a Hilsher!!