Can't forget my boy!

Since I just did a post about Lilly, I had to add these sweet pictures of my baby boy. 

He is really opening up and I am so proud of him!  He is usually the more social, adventurous one now (they just completely switched places)!  He is so animated when he gets excited about something, his smile makes me smile. Hope it made you smile too!

Like a swan..

I have wondered several times in the past year or so, if and when I should get Lilly into some kind of dance class.  I finally decided that right now she is just WAY too shy and I refuse to spend money to drag her kicking and screaming into a room so she can stand and watch the other kids learn to dance while checking every five seconds to make sure I am still within eye shot. 

Soooo.. when she met a real life ballerina at my mom's house (some family from Amarillo was staying with my mom because their daughter was trying out in Dallas for different summer ballet schools), she didn't know what to think.  Paris (the ballerina) gracefully showed Lilly and Nate some of her basic moves.  Lilly watched, giggling a little, but it wasn't until we got home that she broke out this one..

BAM

 

Don't you love her dress sandals with socks?  She's got her own classy sense of style.  She's not afraid to be BOLD.

She proceeded to tell me no less than a thousand times that night, that she wanted to go to "ballerina school", so I guess the moral of this story is - my little girl MIGHT be coming out of her shell a little.. and ballet class is in our very near future!

Three Year photos.. better late than never!

I wanted to try another one of my backdrops, so a couple weeks ago, I set up my little studio in my loving room and took some photos of my best little models in their birthday shirts we had made last summer for their party. They were in pretty jolly moods, so even though they were wiggly, I ended up getting some cute photos.  They really do love the camera most of the time..

Lilly was doing this creepy hard core laugh when I told her to smile, where she would crack up for one second and then be right back to a straight face the next.. only LILLY!

This isn't really his real smile, but I still think it's sweet :)

More of a real smile from Lilly..

Being silly!

Doing a lot of singing these days!

This makes me laugh because she was trying to hug him, but when you just glance it looks like she is trying to strangle him (which is really the more likely scenario these days)!

My clumsy girl.. I had to edit out about five bruises off her legs from running into everything!  Just like her mom!!

She just looks way too old already..I can't even deal with it.

One of my favorites.. this is very THEM.

And the shirts are adorable too, right?!  Loved them and glad to have some pictures of them!

If any family wants copies of any of these, just email me which one/s and I'll mail them to you (without my name on them, of course)! 

Fun with sidewalk chalk!

I've been seeing all these cute photos with people using sidewalk chalk, so I wanted to try it myself!  I actually wrote it as dark as I could get it, but it is still a little hard to see.  When I do something like this again, I'll try and make it thicker maybe. 

If it looks like they just laid down and cooperated, they DID NOT.  This picture was taken after about three melt downs and maybe ten bribery attempts.  They were riding their bikes around outside and when I finally got their attention, Nate came and laid (stomach down) in the middle of the chalk, getting it ALL OVER himself!  It was towards the end of the day, after we had an impromptu photo shoot in my new home studio (those photos coming in the next post)! I know their birthday was last summer, but I never got any cute pictures in these shirts, so I wanted to give it another try.. 

Crafty!

Thanks to some cold, rainy days (and Pinterest), we have been doing quite a bit of crafts lately!  Nate and Lilly both love anything with paint, markers, colors, scissors, glue, stickers, etc.  I am not crafty whatsoever, so I only attempt projects that have three steps or less and I REALLY love it if I already have everything I need around the house!  This one was a perfect fit!  Take a toilet paper roll, fold it into a heart shape and put tape across the top to hold the shape in place, then dip into red paint and stamp hearts onto paper! 

Couldn't we have guessed that Nate's would be strategically placed in nice little rows?  He really took time placing them exactly where he wanted them..He always wants my help, and looks at me to make sure he is doing it "right"..

Not Miss Lilly, nope!  And God forbid I try to help her.. She was having NONE of that!  Her way or the highway!! She just wanted to stamp away and have fun with the paint!! 

And speaking of paint,  Lilly had loved these paintable ice cream cone magnets that she got from Aunt Pam for Christmas.  She so carefully dipped her paint brush into the different colors and she even washed the brush off in between colors!  She really got into painting with the brush, so I'll definitely have to get her more projects to paint!!

Nate had this finger paint that was just a big gloopy mess!  You dip your fingers in the different "paint" and it's this invisible gel that only turns color on the special crayola paint paper.  He liked it, but seemed pretty confused.. I Don't think we'll try this one again for a while..

I know it's cheesy, but used to sit and work and wonder if it would be as fun as I thought, to be able to sit around the house and do crafts with the kids on a cold, rainy afternoon..

The answer is TOTALLY.