Maternity Session Photo Fun!

When Heather asked me to do a maternity session for her I was more than surprised. I had never done anything of the like before. Sure I own a nice camera, I like to take pictures, but I never thought anyone would ask me to take pictures for them. 

I nervously said yes, because she's one of my besties and I couldn't turn her down. But I also didn't want to disappoint her so I proceeded to give a lot of warnings: I've never done this. I don't know what I'm doing. I'll be slow. Don't hate me if I fail miserably. 

Thankfully there are tons of websites out there that provided inspiration for both of us! Maybe a little too much inspiration at times. We had so many ideas that I ended up taking over 500 pictures. Wow. Yes, this is a very small sampling of the set ups we did.

This will be Heather's second child. Her first son Carter just turned 2 and is beyond adorable! Heather's only 20 weeks along so we are all still anxiously waiting to find out if Carter is going to have a little brother or a little sister. We took two different gender reveal shots to prepare for either option though!

I learned a lot from this first experience. It's definitely no easy task and I have a lot to improve on if I were ever to do this for anyone else, but I think we both had a lot of fun. I also think that we got some great shots. How could I not? Heather sure knows how to work a camera!

Thanks Heather for letting me be a part of this very special pregnancy. I'm looking forward to going back a little closer to delivery time to do some more photos with Carter and her husband Daniel. That is, if she asks me back after doing these ;)

A Learning Moment...the Hard Way

Today was one of those "learning" days in life. You know the ones I'm talking about right? The ones where you come out saying..."Well, I'll never do that again." Let me share so I can save you these particular "learning" moments.

1. Don't let your husband schedule any appointments for you. 

Okay, okay. I asked him to schedule it because I don't like talking to auto mechanics because I am the stereotypical woman who has zero clue as to what anything related to the car means. He scheduled it right in the beginning of the first nap time which obviously means disaster.


Again. My fault. I gave no directions because some crazy virus had taken over my body at the time I asked him to do this.


I blame the virus.

2. When you are taking your car in for a problem with the breaks don't believe them when they say it should only take 2 hours.

Lies, all lies here folks. It took 7 hours!!! 

Let's let that sink in for a moment.... 

You and your 11 month old in a waiting room for 7 hours.

Who wants to jump off a cliff at that thought? Yeah....me too.

3. Throw out any scooped necked, v-necked, loose fitting neck tops you own immediately.

Even if said scoop neck top is no where near scandalous you will end up flashing all of the service team folks at Carmax as soon as you walk in with baby on your hip. 

You will not notice that your entire boob is hanging out until after you have started talking to a service member and happen to look down when they point out how cute your baby is which right next to your exposed boob. Covered with a bra mind you, but still, exposed. 

You will be mortified.

4. Be thankful that you are an over packer when it comes to your baby.

I was only expecting a 2 hour wait. I thankfully had packed enough diapers, formula, and food for the entire 7 hours. We were one hour away from emergency store run though for both diapers and formula. Geeze louise.

Oh yeah, and I packed the stroller on suggestion from the hubs. 

LIFE SAVER!

5. Don't forget to pack something for yourself.

Remember that virus? Yeah well let's just say I didn't eat anything for two days straight and what little I did eat didn't stay down very long. 

Ahem. 

Anyways, when the only way to entertain your child is to walk the parking lot for the entire day and you have had nothing to eat or drink you start to feel light headed. 

You might start stealing some of your baby's lunch in fear that you will pass out if you don't.

You might put in an emergency SOS call to your husband to pick you up something. 

Your husband might be awesome enough to come bring you something, unfortunately he just drops it off and can't help with the bored of his mind child, but you might get food only if you're lucky.

6. It's okay to be afraid of germs.

The dealership had an amazing kid play area, but I was too afraid to use it. My SAH baby (who is still in that stick everything into his mouth stage) has been sheltered of germs for so long that I didn't want to risk using stuff that I had no idea the last time it had been wiped down.

4 hours into this ordeal I was cursing myself and ready to cave. 

As I walked up to the play zone I saw three kids hurling the baby toys across the room into the wall. These were no small baby toys (rocking horse, activity table, a walker) and these were no little children (8 to 10 year olds). 

Their parents?

Sitting right outside the window watching them. 

Ridiculous. People are stupid and inconsiderate. 

7. After sitting in the in the waiting room for 5 hours (errr walking around the parking lot) Carmax might decide to let you have a rental car.

Wait. This was an option?

Why didn't someone tell me this 5 hours ago?????

I shouldn't complain. I'm glad that at least my baby got some sleep for those last two hours and my legs were able to take a break.

8. Be thankful that you have a child that can handle it.

Even though this was a disaster of an experience, my baby kept it together for the most part. He was in a stroller all day, bored, and tired but he only had a couple of melt downs. I had to walk him around most of the day to keep him happy, but it could have been WAAAAAY worse.

I'm Back!

Because I have mountains of laundry, mail, and dust to take care of today....I'll leave you with a small list of updates.

1. We are home from our awesome trip and trying to get back into the swing of things!
2. Both of our children are happy we are home.
3. Poop was the topic of conversation when I checked in on either one of the kids.
4. I'm very grateful that my SIL picked up Lola on Wednesday since she wasn't doing too great with boarding.
5. Ethan has learned at least 10 new things while we were gone.
6. He also looks a great deal bigger to me in both height and weight...neither of which I've checked yet.
7. I came home with a little virus. Fun,fun.
8. The reality of how fast certain upcoming events are approaching on us is hitting now and I am beginning to enter panic mode.
9. I am terribly behind on Google Reader, but promise to try to catch up soon!
10. Oh, and if you are wondering, I did not have a nervous breakdown while I was gone from Ethan last week. I think we were too busy to dwell on it, but with that said, I'm glad to be back in mommy mode!

I'm Feeling the Burn...

After a long day of traveling yesterday, we finally made it to Cody, WY. This place seems to be a complete 180 in both landscape and atmosphere from Jackson Hole where we were previously staying.

We are staying in the Irma Hotel, built in 1902, in the square of Cody. We were suppose to be in one of the historic rooms complete with claw foot tubs and four poster beds, but instead we ended up in more of an "old" room with historic details like a radiator and a pull cord toilet. 

Today was our last day at Yellowstone. We focused on the East entrance of the park seeing mostly waterfalls. We hiked our little hearts out (seriously, I'm pretty sure my heart came out of my chest at one point). 


We climbed down over 500 feet and 328 stairs (an evil version of a stair master complete with a side effect of vertigo) on Uncle Tom's trail to see this...

308ft high Lower Falls twice the size of Niagara Falls

We also hiked down over 600 feet via a series of switchbacks to see the top of the Lower Falls.

Honestly you could feel the pull of the falls from this point and I got as physically close to a rainbow as I have ever been!

View of Yellowstone Canyon

Finally we climbed down another 600 feet to see one more view....

You really felt like you were in the bowl of the canyon from this point.

I'm pretty sure I'll be feeling all of this tomorrow. Ouch....mama's out of shape! I know this is a short and very sparse recount of our day, but honestly...that's all I've got the energy for at the moment!


A few more views of the day just because I can't help myself...


Pictures speak louder than words anyways right?

Honestly, who tries to pick some one up on the edge of a cliff? And it is a cliff even though you can't tell from this picture.

"Hell to the no Michael!" That's what I'm saying (errr, screaming) here. Nice try.

Until next time Yellowstone!

Geysers, Thermals & Mudpots, Oh My!

Yesterday we made our first venture into Yellowstone. This park is amazingly huge and even though we are here for a week, we still won't get to see it all! The first section we decided to visit contained the geysers, thermal pools, and mud pots.

Of course we stopped at Old Faithful. It goes off around every 90 minutes. When we arrived it was about 30 minutes until showtime so we just stopped and waited. 

There were several false starts....she's a tease for sure!

Once she got going though, she was really beautiful. I have to admit that my awe was distracted by a lady behind us who was very in awe. In fact, she was having a "When Harry Met Sally" moment. Our inner 13 year old selves could not stop from laughing.

After the show was over we toured the rest of the geysers and although Old Faithful is impressive, there are several others that are even more so. You can see some of the smaller ones up close and actually feel the steam come off of them and see the water bubbling.

There was also a triple geyser that we got to see go off from across the park that was spectacular. 

I expected the geyser park to smell like sulfur and if the wind blew right, it did, but for the most part the sulfur smells were kept to a minimum. I also envisioned hearing a lot of rumbling, but again, it was mostly quiet. Some of the tiniest ones were the loudest actually.

One of the parts of the trip that I was most looking forward to were the thermal pools. The colors are amazing, and I have to admit that the camera picked up the colors much better than my own eyes did.

Sometimes I think we all get caught up in wanting to go out of the states to really see things, but there is so much here in our own backyard to experience! Our own country has so many natural wonders to see.

The land we were on today blew my mind. At times it looked like we were on another planet, but in fact we were on top of a volcano. All the bubbling and gurgling is caused by the hot magma that was right beneath our feet. 

God is amazing isn't He to create all of this!