The Wedding I was able to make it to

Here are Jason and Becky after their wedding celebration, on the beach in Melbourne, Florida. I took their wedding photos, although I am not a professional photographer. Their celebration was low key, so Becky asked if I would mind doing the photos. I agreed for the fun of it, but I realize that I have a lot to learn (and a lot of supplies to add to what I have!) if I wanted to do it professionally. I would suggest another wonderful photographer if someone asked me to do it for fun again. Jan is amazing and any photo I took was with her beautiful pictures in mind. This photo was another friend's idea and I think it was beautiful. It was a lot of fun to be on the beach in January!

Congratulations Jason and Becky!

Two Weddings

In addition to Jason and Becky's wedding, this weekend one of my roommates from college is getting married too! Teagan and Brian are getting married in Knoxville, TN, and I really wish we could be there for that. Teagan is a special friend and I am so excited for this time in her life, and not being a part of it is extremely sad. I met Teagan my freshman year at Liberty and then our Senior year she was one of my housemates. I've been to Teagan's childhood home in Oak Ridge, TN and we've had some really good times together. It was a hard decision to make between weddings this weekend, and our thoughts and prayers are with them this weekend!

Congratulations guys, we hope it's an amazing day! (Teagan, all your roommates hope you do your special dance on Saturday!)

Driving out in Lancaster

long (short) viedo of the farms we passed on our way out to Lancaster for scrapbooking. I wasn't sure this would actually post!

Away Again..

This weekend I am going away again, without Jon and Caed. They both will be left to their own devices while I travel to sunny Florida. I can't say I'm particularly happy to be going away this weekend (2nd one in a row) and that I am looking forward to the flight (I dislike flying a lot, but nothing compared to my sister Kristen). But I am looking forward to celebrating my childhood best friend's wedding. Her and her husband got married back in October at a simple wedding with only her family, and so this is the formal ceremony. I am really looking forward to supporting Jason and Becky as they begin their life together, and I think this is a big step for Jon and I to show that support. (even without him there!) We are so happy for them and look forward to the many blessings in their life as husband and wife.

I do have to say that sunny Florida weather sounds wonderful right now too since I have a cold I can't shake. But I am also extremely jealous of another fellow blogger Logziella (my sister calls her the 5th sister!) who has been having tons of snow...I just don't like this in between. Really cold, and wet with nothing to have fun with! Just braving the cold every morning to take Khaki out for walks, and complaints from Caed not wanting to wear his mittens. It gets old!

I probably won't blog again until after the weekend, but I'll be back with stories I am sure!

Catching up

This past weekend I went away scrapbooking with my older sister Heather in Lancaster. We had a blast. Caed stayed home with dad and Uncle Jerry and cousins, Aden, Chantz and Olivia (and new cousin Brooklyn the dog). They had a great time in Philadelphia and Heather and I scrapbooked our hearts out. I didn't take any pictures, just video, which I'll get to posting as soon as I can manage to move all the videos. I have some good material.

This week we've been keeping busy and keeping warm. Monday we got to see the Edward Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery. Phenomenal exhibit. Not enough time. Hopper is one of Heather's favorite artists and so she and the kids made the trip down and I was beginning to feel like she was a neighbor- but back to normalcy and it will be a few weeks until we see them again.

Today our mom's group started up again- so nice! And the kids all seem to be growing like weeds. It's amazing to see all their developmental progress. A lot of it is all the hard work from the mom's coming out in their kids little personalities finally. Some are starting to walk, talk, jumping, counting, listing colors...the tricks go on. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by these other women right now.

I'll have more to post later- oh, Caed's latest trick (besides telling me to 'Stop It!') was unzipping his jacket and taking it off by himself! So fun! (now to get him to hang it up too!).

yippee!

Last week I made a run to Target for diapers, and as usual came home with more. While I was there I had picked up a bag of bird seed. I've always liked the idea of feeding the birds, my grandparents always did it, and my one sister does too, and I am sure there are others- but I hesitated because of living in such a small space. Well this last week apparently I had a change of heart. I bought a bag, and what I thought was going to be an inexpensive bird feeder. (bird feeder wasn't inexpensive, so I didn't buy it, and only left with the bag of seed.) I got home and told Caed we would feed the birds, so we sprinkled the seed on the ground around our tree. I also thought this might be a good idea to attract birds to eat all the bugs in our yard come spring. (nasty grubs hopefully!) So we waited. later in the week I went on another errand and the store happened to have cheap bird feeders, so I bought one there. I hung it out with seed in it and still no birds. All weekend, not a single peep. I would go outside and hear the birds far away, but none in my yard.

Then today around noon, I went to look out back for no particular reason and we had 5 Blue Jays, a Cardinal, and a woodpecker!!! They were so cool! They were so colorful, like someone plucked them out of the bird book and put them there! I was so excited. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, Caed was at a friend's house, so he didn't see them. Also a little while later a cat showed up and now no more birds. But they know it's here! And I am so happy about that! They were eating the seed from around the willow tree, so I'll have to move the bird feeder and hope they come back to the more safer place to eat with a cat around...

I can't believe they were all such pretty birds that were out there- and I don't think there was a single chickadee or plain looking bird. Trucks and birds make this girl happy and I feel blessed that something so small made me so happy. Can't wait to get my camera out to take a picture of the birds! (These are not my photos)

So much fun!

Today has started off fun! They are doing some work on a neighbors water meter outside the front of her house. Not only was it so much fun when two trucks with traffic cones showed up, but then after breakfast, a digger showed up!! So we looked at it out the window, out the front door, and out mom and dad's bedroom window! What a fun start! I hope today is this fun for everyone!

Weekend

We had a good weekend. Just a nice relaxing weekend- the way it should be. On Friday night we picked up a new jogger stroller which is lovely, and quite the blessing. (thank you client who paid me!) Saturday Caed and I took it for a walk with Khaki. It's a little more bulky to take on a walk with the pooch, but it was fun to take out. Saturday night we had dinner with family friends, and we were out as a family until 10- that's including Khaki too! It was a lot of fun, good meal and Caed was occupied almost the entire time by the 3 older kids who play with Caed and who Caed is simply in love with. (older kids are a great thing at his age!) Today, nothing special, we were the nursery workers at our church this weekend, so we had to get out early, but it was enjoyable. We had a low key afternoon, including Jon posting new house numbers outside our home. I am very excited about this because our other ones were so shabby looking, and the new numbers were painted by me and the frame was done by Jon- a real family effort....

After Caed's nap (a long one!) we took another walk with the new stroller with Dad this time. Jon and Caed watched some football. And unlike my sister, we are Giants fans- so we are excited!

That's it, just doing normal family things, which was so enjoyable and much needed.

Video Camera

This is the magical instrument, the Flip Video camera. Usually my husband is the more video interested one, but this is really a lot of fun. I stayed up way too late playing around with the software and organizing tools. But I will be carrying this with me even more then I thought I would. Last night I started thinking, "I could put together a Mom's Group video, oh and maybe some footage of dinner time, and I wonder if other mundane things could be made more fun with this new outlet?" Watch out!

New Video

I put together a video from Christmas, but it's 9 minutes long and I think entirely too large in size for the blog. But I put together another video of Caed with some of his friends. Most of it's from our trip to the building museum, but I really enjoyed putting it together, now I need to get some actual shooting skills. (my composition could be improved!) Thank you to my family for such a wonderful Christmas gift!

Anyway, first bit is in our kitchen with Aliyah. They were cracking each other up which was so funny to Katrina and I.

New Year

I've been mulling over a new post for the past week. I don't really have any new photos, but I do have some funny video. Anyway, It's late and it's been a long week. Caed was sick last Friday with a high fever for what I didn't see as any reason. He didn't seem to have anything else. I guess it was just a test of patience as a mom (oh and a virus). He didn't want to let me go at all on Friday. Luckily he seems to have perked up.

We took a trip to the Building Museum again today, the other mom's in the mom's group came along as well. But I took my film camera and took a bunch of shots with that. I'll get them developed and made digital, but it will take a little longer. I was so happy to grab my Minolta today. I forgot how much I like taking a picture with film. I took a roll of black and white, and I am excited about that...if only I could develop them myself...ahh. Well anyway. We had a great time.

The post I've been mulling over will come out soon. I need another wave of inspiration to actually get it typed it. Right now it's daunting. Jon and I have been talking about goals. Personal and family. Short and long term. We had the inspiration with a New Year's walk we did through a local park, and then our pastor gave an outstanding message on Goals. You can read his blog here, where he writes a little bit about it. So I'll write more, but it's a good topic for me to consider. I'm not one that is good at making goals happen. I like to set some beautiful goals and then hope they happen. Luckily, my husband is a good counter to me and he's good at the follow through.

Anyway, It's been a long two weeks since returning from Myrtle Beach. We are getting into our routine again (i like our routine too much i think) and looking to what lies ahead!

Happy Birthday!!

Today is my sister Kristen's birthday (second in from the left). She's the oldest of us four girls, a great big sister, a wonderful wife, an awesome auntie and an amazing woman. I wish her the best today on this chilly January 2nd and I am so glad I had the oppurtunity to spend Christmas with her. Kik, I wish I could spend your birthday with you too! I am thinking of you!