Mother's Day 2013

This year was my second Mother's Day and I must say it was a great day!  Jerry and Annabelle got me a beautiful bird feeder for our garden, we tried out a new local for brunch at a local restaurant with a little shop filled with lots of cool items mostly things made by individuals.

Annabelle and I showing off my new bird feeder

At Brunch up on the balcony near the shop (NOFO Restaurant)

After brunch we headed over to sweet bottoms to look around before hitting the nursery to pick up plants for our new garden.  Speak of garden I am loving our new raised bed garden we got from NaturalYards.  It was very easy to put together and we got to pick the dimensions and have it built and shipped to our door.  We still have some work to do on the area around the beds but here is how it looks so far.

This was taken yesterday

I got these cute signs on ETSY at Tarra Hartlauer

I love all our garden signs because it makes the garden look so colorful and it will be great for Annabelle as she gets older!

Back to Mother's Day.  It was a wonderful day full of love and joy!  I hope you all had a great Mother's Day as well!

Happy Easter!

I wanted to wish each and everyone of you a very Happy Easter.

A special wish to Maria who is going to be meeting her sweet baby girl any day now :-)  What a long road they have been on to get to this very point and I wish them all the love and happiness they deserve!  Dreams do come true and her beautiful family is proof of it.

Happy Valentine's Day

Christmas Pictures

Christmas Eve

This village was given to us by my Aunt who received it after my
Grandmother passed away many years ago.  My Grandmother hand painted
every house and it is beautiful.  We will enjoy it for many years to come.

This year we went with a real tree and COLORED lights!  I have always
been a white lights fan but for Annabelle's first Christmas I figured
why not spice it up and add some color.

All our stockings hung up and waiting for St. Nick!

"Is it time for presents yet?"

Putting out cookies and milk for the big guy and carrots for Reindeer.

Christmas Morning

OMG our living room exploded with presents.

She is taking it all in.

"Sure I will help you open your gift!"

She loves her little house gift from Santa.  This gift rocks!

Opening a gift from Mommy and Daddy.

Cheeeeeeeesseee

Loving her new activity center from Grandma and Grandpa Collins.

Posing with Daddy.  That is one of her many faces.

Awww giving Mommy a Christmas morning kiss.

Posing with Mommy.  She looks like "huh?"

Annabelle loved all her presents from loved ones near and far and we hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

To Maria:  Thank you so much for your comments they mean the world to me :-)



I can not believe how fast Christmas has come.  Thankfully I finished up my shopping today!  Now just to finish wrapping and mailing out gifts.  :-)  Hopefully they will get there on time.

This year we got a real tree!!!  It was so much easier than setting up the fake one and it was a lot funner too.  Annabelle has been good with it so far and she has not trying to pull it over or anything.

Looking for the right tree

She is not so impressed with our pick

Daddy's little girl

Me and my little Santa's Helper

For now I am done with photo shoots for the year and it is a much needed break.  I feel like I have been running at full speed for a few weeks and I don't think I can keep up that pass for long.  I am very happy the business is doing well and I am happy I was able to help everyone get some wonderful family, birthday, Christmas pictures.

This is Annabelle's Christmas picture in my studio setup.  I made the Christmas pendant and I wrapped the presents in fabric and used a glue gun to make sure there would be no little fingers ripping them open.

Well this up coming week Annabelle is going to get to meet Santa!  Let's hope she doesn't get scared.

Merry Christmas everyone!

It has been so long!

I feel like I have not written a post in so very long!  In fact November has now come and went and I didn't post a thing until now.  So some updates... Annabelle now has two lower teeth, she can wave hi and bye, she tilts her head to the side when we say "So Cute," and she can play pick-a-boo.  She is still doing her army crawl like crazy and we are now moving to eat purees 3 times a day.

For Thanksgiving we went to Maine to be with my family and this was Annabelle's first flight.  She did well and even slept through one of the flights.

She did very well with all the new family she met and though her first couple days there she was cranky she soon got over it.

I hope everyone has a very Happy Holidays.  Our Elf on the Shelf showed up a little late but he is now here.

He left her a nice note.  We still need to name him.  Annabelle wanted Da Da Da but Jerry said he is DaDa so we are back to the drawing board.  LOL

Happy Holidays Everyone and I wish everyone luck with all their Holiday shopping!

Merry Christmas!!

I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas!  Jerry and I have had a great Christmas.  I feel so spoiled this year and Jerry said the same, we didn't get each other outrageous gifts but we got thoughtful and meaningful gifts.  Being pregnant and emotional I cried a little when I saw he had got me a new charm for my pandora bracelet, it's to rings on a pillow and one has a little diamond in it.  It's was a charm to represent our marriage.  I love it!

I also got an awesome mono pod for my camera and it rocks!  I have wanted one for sometime now and I can't wait to start using it.

I got Jerry new cuff links that are monogrammed and he loved them.  He also got a heart rate monitor for when he works out.

We both also got each other things we needed but just wouldn't spring on for ourselves :-)

Annabelle wasn't left out this year either.  She got some books and a few toys along with some leg warmers, socks, hat, pacifiers and a Sofia Giraffe.  We can't wait until next year when we have her here with us to open gifts and enjoy a good family Christmas.

All of Annabelle's Goodies

Today we have been laying around in comfy clothing all day and we are making a good old Yankee Pot Roast for dinner, it is yummy and so easy to make and clean up. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!! I hope everyone have a wonderful New Year and may 2012 bring you everything you have been hoping for :-)

Thanksgiving, Busy Weekend and Reaching 27 Weeks!

Thanksgiving

Usually we spend our Thanksgiving in Maine but this year because we did not want to travel this far into our pregnancy we spend this year at home.  Jerry and I made a full Thanksgiving dinner for ourselves and made enough to have plenty of left overs. 

Our bird came out just right and this year the cracker stuffing was awesome.  Jerry made some giblet gravy from scratch and it was just what we needed to finish off the meal.

In an effort to try to feel like I had wine we had got some alcohol free wine, um yeah not the same.  LOL

Our spread and no as I said that isn't "real" wine

Busy Weekend:

This weekend Jerry and I did hit the shops to see what kind of deals we could find on clothing.  Jerry did find some good buys and we got little Annabelle some outfits from the Carters outlet as everything was 50% off.  We also found me a Birthday gift as my 33rd Birthday is right around the corner Dec. 7th, COACH was having a BIG sale at the outlets and being I never could justify getting a bag from there these prices were to good to pass up.  So as my Birthday gift Jerry got me a nice leather red bag!

We also got our Christmas tree up and some decorations up in our family room.  Right now as I write this I am sitting in front of our tree with our fire place going and our stockings all hung from the mantel, and Annabelle is listening to some Christmas music by Michael Buble on the belly buds, LOVE Christmas.  Annabelle seems to love it too because she is moving all around in there.

Today we actually made it to Church for the first time in a long time and we picked up a tag from the Angel Tree.  It's a 4 yr old little boy in need of a Christmas.  On the tag it asked for some pants so we got him 2 pairs of pants but also put in a shirt and a coloring book, because what 4 yr old "wants" clothing for Christmas.  We would of got him another gift but I am not sure how the Angel tree works at our Church, they might of put his requests for toys on another tag.  It felt good to do something for someone in need, lord only knows we all have been on the other end of that or know someone who has.

It's been great having 4 days off but we really have been very busy between cooking, shopping, decorating and doing the usual grocery shopping and cleaning it has been one busy weekend.  I just wish we had another 4 day weekend next week :-)

27 Weeks:

Have you seen the counter on my blog?  Today it reads 89, can you believe it, we are now not just under the 3 digits we are under 90 days until our little pumpkin arrives!  I am feeling big these days and I can feel her moving around more often now.  I read children books to her when I get a chance before drifting off to sleep and we also have our music times too were she gets to listen to some lullaby music or like tonight a special treat of some Christmas music.  Jerry is able to feel her kicks now more often.  I am having a hard time getting up and walking it's almost like I need a warm up because my hips feel tight.  My feet seem to throb when I am on them for any length of time and I am still having some swelling in my feet and hands, to be expected.  But for the most part I am feeling ok, I just think it is the extra weight that is causing my biggest issues.

Next week we have 2 big updates coming; 1 we have our 1hr glucose test on Friday and 2 we are going for another 3D/4D ultrasound to take a peek at Annabelle and get a final good shot of her little face in the womb before we meet her in person here shortly.

For our small business Saturday purchase we got some more cloth diapers and we had a $25 off coupon plus the $25 we get back from American Express for shopping small.  All and all we got each diaper for about 9 dollars and usually they cost about 18.

There are still several things we need to get for Annabelle but that will have to wait until we see what my bonus is like come Dec. We did order a monitor off Amazon as they had a good deal this past week saving us almost $30 on it.  We have been using our registry really to keep track of things we need and the brands we want as we do the research and just marking it off from there, it works!  Boy am I glad we started getting stuff as we went along because I can't imagine having to get all this in the third trimester can you say expensive!

I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoyed some good food and great company.  For those of you who are not in the States I hope you are getting into the Holiday season and having fun doing it!