Happy Birthday MEMA

Soooo, we've been holding out from you Mema, I have to admit... but TODAY, your birthday, seems like a great time to show you what we've been holding back.

You keep thanking US for a great vacation, but it was YOU and POP-POP that deserve the thanks. You are always just a phone call away, for anything. And vacation was more of the same. Look at Maggie's face below, she KNOWS that your soon to share dessert with her!

You had so much fun with the boys on the beach, the evidence is written on your face below...Here's your beach pictures with ALL the grand kids, thank you for being you Mom.
You brighten not only our day to day, but our whole LIVES. Thank you for being "made of the good stuff" as your son put it!

And here's your BIG surprise...don't print one for the house, we've already taken care of that. We just didn't want you to have to wait, since TODAY is your birthday!!

SURPRISE!!! A new FAMILY picture...
We love, love, LOVE you and hope today was the best birthday it could be!! We wish we were there to spend it with you!! Make sure you click the link in our twitter pics to see Maggie and Fionn waving hi to you!!

We're Off...

Tonight we leave to head home, off to the big ole Albion Fair. It is known as the "biggest little fair" and we can't WAIT to get out that door! We can almost smell it now, yes i said, SMELL it! LOL The food, the mud (or dust I've been told this week) and the animals. We'll watch truck pulls, horse pulls, and on Saturday THE PARADE!!

To give you a taste of the fair, click HERE to see last year's slide show.

I can't wait for Fionn to experience it all over again this year.

 See ya at the fair!!

BIG day locally for NILMDTS

I got a call Monday morning from my local council woman's chief of staff. I was just putting Fionn down for a nap, and I didn't recognize the number, so I just let it go to voicemail.  Kim, the chief of staff, asked me to please call her back because they would like me to come to the city council meeting the following morning, as they were planning to make a "proclamation" about Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep.  I wasn't sure what exactly a proclamation involved so I called back and got more information.  I then let the other photographers of our group know, and informed my family!  

Greg got the day off work, Maggie got to leave schoool for a while and we all got to spend the morning together.  We were escorted into Council Chambers and waited patiently(most of us anyway) for the meeting to start.  We felt so honored to be there, it was great to able to share this with the kids.

Fionn spent the entire time waiting trying to "tweet" to all of you!

 

The princess on the other hand, just took it all in, and wanted to take pictures!

 

Have I mentioned she's a GREAT big sister...she and Fionn were occupying themselves with the rows of chairs in the back.  Fionn didn't care what they did, as long as no one took his phone!  

We waited our turn to be called up, and then we all went up front while they read the proclamation out loud.  I got to say a few words after they awarded it to me, and then we took a couple pictures and we were done.  It was a wonderful and truly humbling day.  Below is a copy of the proclamation.   Just click on it to make it bigger to get a really good look at it!

Fionn's got a new shirt

 

So this shirt came today, a shirt that I ordered over a week ago, and couldn't WAIT for it to get here.  It is so Fionn and I love it...BUT he has other ideas on showing it off to you.

 First he was too busy playing tug of war with Godzilla...

THEN he wanted to play soccer with Maggie and Godzilla

  

He even crawled behind the garbage cans to avoid me getting a shot of the front of him.  Hmmmm, time to send in back-up...
 

Yeah, he looks THRILLED huh?  lol

BUT...

We suceeded!

 

Whew!  All that hard work just so you can see his new shirt!  

Sooo...what do you think???

lol

While the kids are away...

The kids left last night for Mema and Pop-pop's for the weekend.  Usually I would have had the camera out there, snapping away, as Fionn waved good bye for the first time, but not this time.  This is his first weekend away, and well I am surprised at how well I'M doing!  Greg planned this whole romantic weekend, but i've not been feeling well, so here we sit, at home.  

Our date day, and this is what we do...

We started off the morning at a session.  Greg was my wonderful assistant at this one.  His best friend is getting married next month, and we took some pre-wedding gift pictures for them.  

We were up at the West End overlook, that well, overlooks the city!  It's right by our house, and I can tell you that there's not one time that we're up there that the views aren't amazing!  See what a good assistant he is!  He makes me think that I may need on for real...

The boys can never resist goofing around...

 

Don't worry Kelly, Greg will make sure there are leaves falling for your pictures!  LOL, oh my!  Are those smiles or what?  I suppose I should post one that I took of them, but you'll just have to wait for those  as my husband just informed me it was time for a trip to Busy Beaver!  

And the fun continues!  

We hope that everyone is having a productive and fun weekend as well, and Maggie and Fionn, we love you and miss you!!  

xoxoxoxo

Getting ready for Kick off!

 

It's no secret that we are HUGE Steeler fans, so I thought that I would post these pics of Fionn I took today with my I-phone.  He was showing off his skills at getting up and down our staircase.  He was especially proud because, to mommy AND daddy's surprise, he got through the top one and down the stairs ALL BY HIMSELF.  We found him trying to open the baby gate at the bottom!  I thought he was in his room playing, but somehow he wormed a locked baby gate open!  Looks like I can't just trust he'll leave it alone now if it's shut!  

GO STEELERS!

Wordless Wednesday

 

Presents, Presents, Presents...

I had mentioned on Maggie's birthday that she was lucky enough to receive SEVERAL of her birthday presents in the mail, and here is the collage to prove it.  Thank you, all of you, you helped make her birthday even more magical.  Click on the picture to enlarge it!

The Shack...

 

I know that I am late reading this book, that many, MANY others have already read this book AND have talked about it.  I've never been in a book club, and i'm not really sure HOW to talk about books I guess.  Amanda sent me this book(with a bunch of others she thought I would like, bless her!) and told me of the warnings she had heard about the book, but told me to read it anyway.  

I have mixed emotions about this book.  I want to say I love it, but I want to say that certain parts irritated me.  I love the trinity, I love the way that the father went through the emotions of forgiveness and how it cleansed HIM.  There were a few points in the book however that I'm not so sure I liked.  I thought it was an interesting perspective on how God COULD be different, could show up to us in different forms, but at the same time there was something gnawing on me about that as well.  I was raised to believe in the FATHER, SON, and HOLY SPIRIT.  Not that it's wrong, but it's not the God I know.  We were always taught that there IS a hierarchy of the trinity, but this book tries to blow that wide open.

There were many, many parts of this book that I did like.  I like to think that we ALL could have that kind of relationship with our Heavenly Father, the open giving kind.  The kind we have with our husbands and children.  I loved the point made that God loves us all, for who we are, no matter what because we ARE his children.  I think reading this now, after having my own children I understand THAT point just a little more.  

I guess I could keep going with my review, but if you have NOT read it yet, I would like to leave some of it up to YOU for your own thoughts.  If you have read this book, I invite you to PLEASE leave a comment and let me know what YOU thought of it.  

Tonight I started this book, Crazy Love, for the Bloom Book Club.  I've only read the pre-face so far but it looks to be another great book to delve DEEPER into my relationship with Christ.  There has been so much MORE to think about these last few days, and I love the questions that these books bring to the forefront of my mind.  There is still time left to purchase the book and join the book club.  Just look for the BLOOM button the side there and click it and it will give you more information!

There is this BOY

 

This BOY, he's the one...who even when I think it's a PERFECT chance to snap a great picture of him, he moves as soon as I release the shutter... 

This BOY, who either cries or makes THIS face when I try to plan to take his picture...

 

This BOY, who would rather look at whatever else there is to look at instead of at me...

The boy, who, even as I type this is playing in his baby tub that he will have NO part of when it is actually IN the tub.  But for right now, he's sitting in it, playing happily with toys he brought in the room. 

Or not...as soon as I wrote that he ran OUT of the room to dip his toys in the toilet, then after I washed his hands, and while I was cleaning his toys, he blazed a path of destruction(seriously in a matter of TWO minutes) throughout the upstairs.  While I was cleaning THAT mess, he went BACK to the bathroom, and decided to shampoo his hair...Seriously as nice as those big pump shampoos are, NOT so great with one year olds!  He came into the laundry room, rubbing Maggie's strawberry shampoo in his hair...

THAT Boy, is now in his crib, squeaky clean and taking a nap!

So where was I??  Oh yes...

 

This BOY, who loves the ocean and couldn't bear to leave it behind...

That I adore and wouldn't change for the world!  I love you Fionn!