Happy Family

My amazing photographer cousin, Kim, has posted a preview of our family photographs we had taken last week. You can check them out HERE. I am beyond thrilled! The location is actually Kim's home, which is really special to us as that is where we gather each Labor Day weekend for our family reunion.

Kim and Elizabeth, THANK YOU for being so brilliant!! I'm so happy we managed to freeze this really special time in our lives.

If you are needing a photographer, please consider using Kim. She is more than willing to travel to a location that is important to you!

Splashy fun with friends

We hit up the splash park again this morning. It's amazing to me how much gear I take with me now...I had the camera bag, diaper bag, a cooler of food and a huge tote bag. For two little kids! Thank goodness for the big basket on the stroller! That's what I really should have taken a picture of. ;-)

I managed to get a picture of each child while they were eating...except Beckett! Oops. I made up for him when we got home.

Madeline Lauren Brooke and Beau Nolan Natalie Beau

The babies...Tommy and Nick

Uh oh....here comes pouty face.I was super happy with this one...So after we got home I snapped a few of Beckett. I had to make sure I had a picture of him in this shirt. My sister Julianne brought it for him from her vacation to the Galapagos Islands, where they saw lots of blue-footed boobies. We decided (even though it doesn't) it says "Boobie Baby". Hahahahahhahaha! I had to get it on him TODAY...he has pretty much outgrown it already.

I love how his Buddha belly is hanging out.

All in all, it was another fun morning. I seem to have gotten sick again before I even got totally over my last illness, but you mamas know how it is...no sick days! You keep on keeping on!

To the races!

On Friday we headed to New Castle to the Go Kart track. My brother-in-law, David, has gotten back into racing this summer. In the past he raced professionally! Did you know that the track at New Castle is one of the best in the country? We were all excited that Julianne and David were coming up so all of us converged on New Castle. My parents drove down the RV so we would all have a place to relax in the air conditioning if needed. We got there at lunchtime on Friday and spent the afternoon watching David practice and work on his kart. My oldest sister Jennifer and her family arrived later that afternoon as well. After practice was over, we all went downtown to an Italian restaurant we had heard of, Bella Vita. It was a beautiful restaurant and the food was fantastic. It was the first time all 12 of us have been out to dinner together!

During dinner, Marielle decided she wanted to sit by Aunt Jennifer. It was so strange to have my food come and just be able to eat it without helping anyone else eat! Since the races were on Saturday, we decided to spend the night in the RV with my parents. THAT was an adventure....we didn't go to bed until after 10pm and Marielle had no nap...it was tricky to get her to sleep, but eventually she did fall asleep. These are the only pics of their cute 4th of July outfits before the rain set in for the rest of the day. It was a very soggy, chilly day!

Wacky weather

In the last five days we've gone from 95 to 65 degrees. Geez! We had our rescheduled family photo shoot this morning and I'll be on pins and needles until I get to see them...I'm so excited! The weather was great this morning, cool and overcast, so it was perfect to be outside and not get hot and sweaty. Here are some random photos we have taken over the last few days.

This past Friday night we had our rescheduled Father's Day dinner with Dave's family. Here are the girls checking out the fish on Grammy and Grampy's front porch. Last Saturday we tried to go blueberry picking...but they aren't ready yet. We tried to pick black raspberries instead, but it was too hard to get the ripe ones without getting stuck by the thorns. We'll try again for blueberries soon. Check out Dave's fancy depth of field in this image...I think it may have been an accident, but I still love the effect!I was just snapping a few when we got home today before naps. I love him in his new big boy shirt....all that's missing is a popped collar!

Hey, Mom...she's in my shot!!!She's still so smoochy with him, it's adorable!

Hello hot!

It has been unbelievably hot and muggy this week....like over 90 every day with super high humidity. Yuck. We were supposed to have family pictures taken today but decided it was too hot and rescheduled them. Since I made Dave keep his day off...I thought it would be a great chance for Marielle to have some special mommy time and have an outing just the two of us. We headed off to meet our mommy group friends at a new-to-us splash park and left the boys at home. It was amazingly easy just having my independent toddler with me! We had a great time seeing friends and playing in the water. It was the first time I've been to this particular splash park and I think it is my favorite of the area. Marielle was really enjoying it, especially when she and Layla finally buddied up and kept going "to the rainbow!", a multi-colored water arch. It was nice to be able to take pictures, I haven't yet mastered the art of shooting while having Beckett in the wrap. :-)

Here they are trying to convince some other kids to join in their shenanigans. They were demonstrating how to jump in the water and these two were NOT having it. So cute...I love watching little kids interact.

I lovelovelove this lens and the ability to catch the water like that!

Some of our friends....Katie and Max, Layla and Josie.

Beckett is three months old!

I know I'm a few days late on this, but we've been overtaken by illness. Boo. Thankfully Beckett seems to be at about 95%...just a little sneezy and watery eyes for him. His personality has developed so much this month. He is a total sweetheart and is loving just laying on the floor, stretched out, talking to someone. His sister is still his favorite person, he will watch her and lights up when she gives him attention! You can see he was going in for her kiss... I love this picture as it shows how strong he's getting. He's always trying to sit up if he's propped on pillows...you really have to watch him and stay right by him now! He is also rolling consistently from back to tummy. He's very smiley these days and coos and has this little "krrrr" sound that is so cute. He has a decent routine going of sleeping and eating with little bursts of awake time thrown in. He loves his blankie and most of the time if I put it up by his face in the swing or bed he will snuggle up with it and go to sleep. I'll have to work on getting a picture of that because I'm sure it's a phase like all other cute things they do. :-) I just can't resist comparison pictures. I love looking up Marielle's pictures from the same age!

As far as Marielle and I go....we're both still under the weather. We both got progressively worse over the weekend and by Sunday afternoon she was complaining about her ear. She refused to nap, which told me she was REALLY ill...I've been lucky to always have a good napper in her. Since now she's done it and I'm not irking the bloggy gods by saying it, I can count on one hand the number of times she has resisted her nap. So we headed off to an urgent care facility. I knew Dave was hesitant to go and thought we should just wait until today to see our regular doctor, but the poor thing could not stop crying. The visit was short and quick, but awful because she wailed and I had to hold her down for the doctor to examine her. She cried the whole way home and really kicked into high gear when I needed to nurse Beckett and she didn't want me to. She was coughing and crying and I knew it was probably coming....she started vomiting. Dave scooped her up and headed to the bathroom, getting covered in vomit in the process, and I plopped Beckett in the crib and tried to help. I knew Beckett was going to be unhappy, but Dave (sorry to bust you out honey, but it's funny!) was retching and gagging trying to clean up Marielle. I chased him away to clean himself up and check on Beckett and took care of showering off Marielle. I think she actually felt a tiny bit better after getting rid of that, so Dave distracted her with brushing her teeth so I could feed Beckett. I sent Dave off to the pharmacy to fill her prescription and she spent the rest of the evening on the couch sipping water and watching movies. This morning she was up super early and hungry, so thank goodness we got the antibiotics into her as quickly as we did! The big downside was that Father's Day was pretty much a bust and we had to miss out on the planned cookout at Dave's parents' house. All the blogs I read have these lovely tributes to the daddies and I had really planned on doing one but the day was just gone. I actually can't think of a better tribute to a great daddy than how Dave handled yesterday....comforting his little girl, catching her vomit, and doing whatever he needed to in order to make her feel better. That's what being a daddy is all about, right?

I took this picture this afternoon, and of course by looking at it you would never know yesterday even happened. Ha! She loves to sit at the desk and wasn't listening to me tell her to be careful on the office chair. This is the look I get a LOT. :-)

Lessons learned

I am a big fan of the schedule. With a newborn, I'm an on-demand, go with the flow type mom...but with a toddler I like naptime and bedtime and mealtimes. I also know though, that some days you have to throw the schedule out the window and be willing to pay the price. The last 24 hours would be a good example of that! Yesterday afternoon we headed up to my nephew's lobball game and then to my sister's for dinner and the farm tour. Marielle was in heaven, running amuck with her cousins checking out the cows, goats, turkeys, chickens, ducks, rabbits and the baby kittens. Being summertime and dumb ol' daylight savings time, I had no idea how late it was until we were preparing to leave. It was nearly 9pm, and she is usually in bed by 8 and we still had an hour's drive home!

When she woke up at 4am, I knew I was going to be paying the price for playing so hard. :-) She was pretty much up for the day, not feeling well, and napped at 10:30am instead of in the afternoon. Thank goodness for small favors and Beckett was asleep at the same time so I was able to sleep as well. I feel like I've lived two days in one today! So the lesson learned is: back to the schedule. I also have a new mission of getting Beckett to bed at an earlier time, so that is my new pet project when we get home. I'm dreaming of the day I can get them both in bed at the same time and have an hour or two to actually converse with my husband!


This is where she has been sleeping at Grandma's house. I knew the pack-n-play was way too small for her finally, and I needed it for Beckett anyway. We sold the bed as "mommy slept in it when she was three!" and it worked quite well except for 4am today. Ha!

Dave got home this evening so we are headed home tomorrow. Marielle has a full-blown cold and my throat is starting to tickle, so I hate to be telling him via blog that he may have to cancel his golf outing Saturday morning. If we're both sick I'm going to need him!

We are super grateful to Grandma and Grandpa for letting us stay with them all week. I know they love having us, but I also know it's a huge change of routine for them. One thing stayed constant though...they still had their daily naptime! :-) Thanks for having us! We may be back for Dave's next trip!

Dave is in my computer!

I took this picture on the drive to my parents' house. Marielle was having fun with her stickers! After we got here, I set up my Blackberry as the ISP for my netbook. I was just typing an email, when I heard Dave's voice from the speakers! I couldn't figure out why he was in my computer, it was very funny. There must be some hidden settings that automatically answer incoming calls or something. I'll have to figure that one out!