Easter 2012

Easter 2012. It was just lovely. Great sermon in church. Egg hunting. Cascarones. Family. Food. And a huge downpour that led to a house full of naps. It was perfect.

This years major failed attempt at getting a cute Easter picture of the kids. Huge huge fail.

Christmas 2011 Recap- Part 2

Christmas day! We went through our family tradition of letting the kids do stockings while we wait for the rest of the family to come over. The kids loved digging through everything.

Family came over about 8:30am and we dug into the presents shortly there after.

Santa brought Ashton a cozy coupe. I knew this would be a hit. I knew Emerson would want it too even though it is not age appropriate. I seriously considered ordering her a pink one to spare myself the arguing. I decided not to. Santa brought her a pink razor scooter instead. She liked it for 5 minutes and then got discouraged. Later that night in the bath I asked her what her favorite gift was. She told me it was the Leap Pad. (Duh!) I asked her what she thought about her scooter. "I don't like it", she said. Plain as day. Awesome. Oh well, hoping that she will grow into it when she has more practice.

Oh, and I have been breaking up lots of fights over the dang car. As expected.

In other big Christmas news, I was in charge of the meal this year. This is a big deal since I am not known for my cooking skills. I was really nervous, but I planned ahead and think it was a success. The food was eaten. Praises were given. And no one got sick!

Stockings!

Inspecting the cozy coupe. You should have seen Ashton run to this thing. It was a hit from the beginning.

First 5 minutes of scooter love.

One of my favorite pictures from Christmas!

A new police car. To go with his police car cozy coupe.

I did not take any pictures of the food. Bummer since I was so proud. At least I got a little table setup.

Gebhardt boys just hanging out. These three have the BEST relationship. I love watching them together.

The pictures abruptly stop after this. I was so worn out after the cooking extravaganza that I became "off duty" the rest of the evening:)

We had a fabulous Christmas and I hope that you did too!

Christmas 2011 Recap- Part 1

I am seriously behind on blogging. I knew this fall would be insane with the business but insane is an major understatement. Good news is that I survived! Bad news is that I am behind on lots of little things...like blogging. I have several posts to catch up on but I figure I should do Christmas first and then work backward.

I really made an effort to photograph a little more of Christmas with my family. I LOVE photography. Obviously. But I am terrible about catching the everyday moments in my family. Terrible. I am always so worried about making the moments look good. Perfect lighting. Perfect set up. Etc. Well, we all know that real life is just not perfect. I cannot set up my home and children on one permanent photo shoot. Enter one of my 2012 resolutions: Shoot more of the everyday with my kids.

Anyways, I did not to a fabulous job by any means, but I did better. I think.

We had 10 at our house for Christmas. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, kids. It was a zoo. And full of love. And I would not have had it any other way.

All of the family was in town several days before Christmas and several days after. It gave us lots of time to enjoy family and just be together. It was exactly what we all needed this year.

A few days before Christmas, just hanging out outside.

The ONLY picture I am in from the holidays this year.

Seeing the beautiful Chesapeake lights

Emerson and Uncle Scott in front of the Chesapeake tree.

Christmas eve was spent hanging out and playing games.

Of course, Ashton wanted to be where the food was.

All dressed up before Christmas eve service. Clearly Ashton wanted to be in the picture.

Emerson and "Miss Melody". She is Scott's long time girlfriend and praticaly a member of our family. We just love her and Emerson is slightly obsessed.

After Christmas eve service and dinner. A little love from grandmom.

One of my most favorite Christmas traditions is that my grandmother reads the Night Before Christmas to the kids. I made capturing this an absolute priority.

After the kids are in bed. Gifts are assembled. The tree is organized (thanks Scott). Lights out.

Christmas day is in part 2!

Emerson's 4th birthday party

Emerson started talking about her 4th birthday over the summer. Seriously. So it has been a long time coming. From the beginning she was very clear about the fact that she wanted a "jump jump" (bounce house) and to be a princess. We decided that it would be a costume party so that her friends could dress up however they wanted but that she would most definitely be a princess.

I was determined to do this party as much on the cheap as possible. Perfect example...I came up with the party colors of pink, purple and orange because I had plates and napkins in those colors already in my pantry as left overs from other events. Done.

The main event at the party was definitely the bounce house. I knew that we needed other activities because everyone would not jump at the same time. I set up pumpkin decorating and halloween color pages for the kids to do. We also had our playset and sandbox all cleaned up a ready to go.

When it came time to send out invites this year I asked Emerson who she wanted to invite. She did pretty good coming up with a list of her closest friends. The list consisted of all girls and two boys (not including baby brothers). This means that at the party we had 6 princesses, 4 fairies, a ballerina, a girl owl, a dinosaur, red iron man and a cute little giraffe. Can you imagine all the tulle and glitter?

The only two little boys at the party did not know each other. They are friends from different circles. The funniest thing happened. One of the boys was jumping and came out of the bounce house. He spots the other little boy sitting at a table and points to him and yells, "Hey, you. Boy. Orange boy. Come in here with me, boy." And the funniest part was that the other little boy totally ran in to play with him. Like they had to stick together amongst all the little girls. It was hilarious.

all dressed up and ready to go

happy to be a giraffe

the kids tables

food table minus the hot dog mummies that were in the oven.

pumpkins to decorate

ashton kept sneaking to the food table to reach up and grab whatever he could.

look at all the tulle!

time to eat.

one friend came in a full sleeping beauty wig. And totally wore it the entire time. It was awesome.

Even the little ones had cupcakes.

had to get a shot of the back of ashton's precious costume. He left the head piece on the entire time like it was no big deal:)

This shot is so funny because this daddy came with two snow whites. One of them stripped off her costume half way through the party so dad stuck it in his back pocket. No big deal.

the sandbox got lots of use.

the playset got lots of use.

Again, the tulle!

and I had to include this sweet picture of Ashton and grandmom.

I realize after going through the pictures that I never got a picture of our precious food creation- hot dog mummies. They were hot dogs wrapped up in breadstick strips with a little face peeking out. It was really cute and the kids ate them up. I also never got a picture of the entire party set up or a family picture of all 4 of us. Oh well. There is always next year.

The most important thing is that Emerson had a blast. We opened presents as soon as everyone left and when she was finished I told her that we would play with them tomorrow but it was time to take a bath. She looked at me with sad eyes and said, "Mommy, I am so tired. Can I just go to bed now?" It was 6:45. And she totally crashed. And slept until almost 8am. I take that as a success.