Andrew&Katie Engagement Pictures

BirchLane Photography took Engagement pictures of Andrew & Katie Friday Morning! We had ton's of fun and got some great shots. Here are just a few of my favorites!

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BirchLane Photography

HO-LY COW!!!!

Seriously, Holy Cow! I can't believe how BUSY I feel like I have been. I got a whole new class at work and am so excited to get started with them. It's a little stressful trying to get all of them into the Pre-K routine, but I'm pulling through. 

Campbell had his 1 Year Old checkup a few weeks ago. He is in the 25% in height and weight. So, he is a smaller guy. The doctor told us to start weening him from his bottle and from his binky. The bottle has not been a problem so far. He only gets it maybe once a day. The binky on the other hand...that's not going anywhere anytime soon. That kid loves his binky and with how fussy he is, I don't think I'll be taking it away anytime soon. Sorry Doc!

Here is a little peek at Mr. Cam Man after his shots! 

My little brother got engaged a few weeks ago! It came as a complete shock to me because I had NO idea he was thinking about doing it so soon. But I am so excited for them! I have never officially "met" Katie, but I feel like our frequent Skype dates and phone conversations count for something. ANYWAY, they are getting married in Georgia next summer! AND I am so honored that Katie has asked me to be one of her bridesmaids. Dave is going to be a Groomsmen. And Emery is going to be the flower girl!!!! Emery is BEYOND excited. I'm not sure she actually understands what being a flower girl means, but what she does know is that she gets to try on pretty dresses! Last week we went to David's Bridal and tried on some dresses. 

Can you believe how cute she is going to look?! There are still a few more places we are going to look at dresses at for her. She loves doing it and I love seeing her in them so, a shopping we will go!

Things coming up that keep me crazy!
Campbell is finally getting circumsized next week, Thursday to be exact. Then Friday I leave for the Lake of the Ozarks for my Best Friends Bachelorette party weekend! I am planning this thing along with 2 other bridesmaids so there is some stress there. Then, Emery's birthday is coming up, weekend trip to St. Louis to celebrate, and then back again to St. Louis for Heathers wedding!!! I think after the wedding, things should finally slow down just in time for the holidays! AHHHHH!

Cam's 1st Birthday!

We celebrated Campbell's 1st Birthday last weekend! It was so much fun getting to celebrate with just us 4 as a family too. Normally we would have gone out to eat with a Grandparent or something, but this year, we did what we normally do on a Friday night. We headed to Zona and listened to the band play! We got some watermelon (Camp's fav.) and a cupcake, and just hung out, listened to the music, and enjoyed each others company. The kids ate watermelon and cupcakes and played before heading home for bed.

 Good Morning Birthday Boy

 Enjoying his birthday cupcake

 Dad feeding C his watermelon

C playing on the blanket

Happy 1st Birthday!

My most favorite little boy is turning ONE today! Happy Birthday Campbell. Mommy loves you more than you will ever know!

Absent....but for good reason.

I feel so bad that I have not been blogging AT ALL! I have been SO busy at work and at home. Can I make it up to you by posting lots of pictures on this post?

At school, all my kids are getting ready to leave for Kindergarten and I have been trying to get all their portfolios together and notes for the parents along with just class stuff. I have always loved my job, but for some reason, I have just really been loving it and putting forth 150% there. I love all my kids, and they are so smart! And when I'm teaching them something, and they are giving me answers right off the bat, I love finding them a new challenge and teaching them something new. I know that most people see my job as just a daycare worker, but I am so much more than that. I am truly a teacher. My co-teacher and I work so hard to make sure that these kids are more than ready for Kindergarten while having fun at the same time. And honestly, I'm kinda glad that I don't work in the school districts. I don't have to worry about my job or my salary if my kids test poorly on their tests. Instead, I get to worry about what sort of fun art project we can do for the week. Last week, for example, was all about the olympics!

 We made Olympic head wreath things worn by Olympians

 Science experiment time. Bubble Snakes!

 Making Olympic torches

Doctoring up the "Olympic Athletes" in Dramatic Play

I don't see things slowing down at work either till about the end of the month. All new kids in our class and we have to "mold" them into Pre-K students and set expectations for them. This upcoming class will be the first class that I will have from beginning to end. My first year as the Pre-K teacher, I came in towards the beginning of the new class, but they had had another teacher for a month or so already. And then my next class I had to leave them early because I had Campbell. So this class coming up I will have from beginning to end, and I'm excited about that.

Home. There really isn't anything new going on at home. I know I've posted before about how time just goes at warp speed at home. Get off work, pick up Campbell, make dinner, eat dinner, showers/baths, maybe some play time, bed. That is every night. Unless we go swimming, then after we get home, it's either a super quick dinner, or Emery and I will skip dinner and just go swim for a little bit, then come home and eat and go straight to bed afterwards. Of course I don't go to bed as soon as the kids go to bed, and I wish I could say that I go downstairs and run on the treadmill, which sometimes I do (only about once a week,  I just hate the treadmill), but more nights than others, after the kids go to bed, Dave and I are up cleaning up dinner, the house, and getting things ready for tomorrow. It Sucks!

With my running, I really wish I could get back into the groove of running every other day, but that treadmill just makes me want to shove pencils in my eyeballs! So once a week has been it, and I'm fine with that. Once the weather cools down, I'll be back out hitting the pavement, 3 days a week. Promise!

In the spare time that I do have, playing with the kids is always my #1. And I wish that I could say that the pictures I'm going to post are pics of what we have been doing, but honestly, I havn't really been taking that many pics when we are just playing, because I just want to be in the moment with them. But here are some of us swimming at my Moms or my Dads.

 Grandpa and Emery after a fun swim

 Trying to get a pic of the kids together....unsuccessful

 Emery going down the slide at Grandpas pool

Emmie and Mommy at Mimi's pool

Camp enjoying his veggie dog and fruit

The weekends have been just as busy, but better. And my favorite part of the weekend....getting my Pinterest on!!! We have been doing so many Pinterest projects and they are turning out great. You saw my last post on the pallet hanging on the wall that we got from Pinterest, now here are a couple others.

My first project was to do something with all of Emery's artwork from her toddler/2's years. First, I went out and bought a canvas, doesn't matter what size, whatever size you think you'll need for however much artwork your using. I also bought some acrylic paint in a gray color.

 So, step number one is to paint your canvas with your acrylic paint. Don't forget the sides!

 While thats drying, cut up the artwork your using into "leafs".  I used 5 different art pieces for my project and cut the leafs into all different sizes.

 Next, after the paint has dried, arrange the pieces however you want them on the canvas. Then, use a hot glue gun and glue all the pieces down.

 Last step! Hang on the wall! Some people have used modge podge as a last step to kinda smooth everything out, but some people have commented that this ruins the canvas. Others have had success though. I didn't want to ruin my daughters artwork, so I opted for no modge podge, even though it kills me that the leafs are not flush to the canvas.  But it works. We hung it in the kids playroom and will hopefully have another one in a few years after Campbell has made us some beautiful art.

I bought 2 other things while at the craft store. An 8X10 picture frame that was 60% off, and some chalkboard spray paint! Here is what the frame looked like before spraying the glass with the chalk paint.

The end result of this Pinterest project is in the pictures below =)

One very fun and special thing we did just this weekend was take Campbell's 1 year old Pictures! He will be One on August 17th! I can't believe how fast the year has gone by. So, we took our new chalkboard and our handsome man out to our family's farm and took some pics. He didn't last too long though, he never does. So we took what we got, got in the car where he instantly fell asleep, and we headed to Kansas City's West Bottoms to do some antique shopping with a few new projects in mind. We found what we are looking for too! That is to come in a later post when it's all done. While we were shopping, I tried to take a few more pictures of Campbell because I LOVE the scenery down there so much more than the earthy farm. But Campbell was pretty much DONE with us trying to get him to sit still and smile. So here are a few of his 1 year pictures (the last one is the one in the West Bottoms, obviously) and the results of the chalkboard Pinterest project. Love me some Baby Campbell.

 Photography by BirchLane Photography

 Photography by BirchLane Photography

 Photography by BirchLane Photography

Photography by BirchLane Photography

Getting my 'Pintrest' On

I don't know if ya'll remember my Mothers Day post about getting my pallet stained. I may not have even posted it to be honest. But anyway, I saw this thing on Pinterest with a pallet up on a wall, and I fell in love with it. And I fell in love with the idea of something unique on my wall that wasn't going to cost me a DIME! Seriously! Dave gets pallets in at his work all the time, so I asked him to bring me one that was pretty beat up. The one he finally ended up bringing me, after a few weeks of nagging, looked spanking new. But, I had some nice dark stain and sealer out in the garage, so I put it all over the pallet. It made it look old and beaten up and brought out all the imperfections of the pallet which was exactly what I wanted. After the pallet dried, it got put in the garage for MONTHS! Look, I stained thing thing and got it all done on MOTHERS DAY! And we just got it hung TONIGHT! But anyway, it looks great on our wall in our living room. 

If you look up close, you can see that there isn't much on there yet. But I have ideas, don't you worry. Just need to do another Pinterest project and get some updated pics of the kids and a few trips to the antique market and I think we will be set! Thank you Pinterest!

A Trip to the Park

You know I don't take my kids to the park just to play. I really take them just to get cute pictures of them! That's not really true. They are too distracted by everything else to give me the time of day when we are there. Campbell use to just LOVE to sit in the swings the whole time, but now he has gotten much more adventurous and started climbing on the equipment and going down the slides. Don't worry, we keep lots and anti-bac in our pockets.

Emery is the darndest thing. When I try to take her picture, I'll say, "Emmie, look at Mommy" And she will say "CHEESE!" but she isn't even looking in my direction. So tonight, I said "Emmie, don't look at Mommy. No! Don't look at me!" And guess what?! Damn kid looked right at me! I guess this shouldn't be surprising. Here are some pics of the kids from the park tonight.

I'm currently getting wardrobes together for Family pics later this month, and Campbells 1 year old pictures! I have no idea what I'm going for yet, but once I see it, I'll know!

Went for a run last night. It had been almost a week since my last one. I decided that even if my timer went off to stop running, I wasn't going to stop until I hit 2 miles. Well, my timer didn't go off until just a little over 2 miles, and I ran the whole damn thing. It wasn't easy though. It was hard. But thats okay. Hopefully tomorrows run will be easier now that I'm back in the swing of things. The one thing I do HATE about running, my face freaking freaks out like a kid going through puberty! I'm freaking 27 years old! I should not be getting zits! I wash my face as soon as I get home and everything, I don't know why it's doing this, but it's driving me batty. Okay I'm done.

Summer Time, and the livin's.....BUSY!

Finally some pictures to share with everyone. They are not really much, but we are just SO busy and I don't always remember my camera. Hopefully I'll have some fun pics from the 4th of July to add later on. 

This summer has been so busy. We swim as much as possible on the weekends anywhere there is a pool. We have yet to go on the weeknights when we work the next day because when we get home from work, we barley have time for dinner, baths and story time before bed.

It has been SUPER hot here in KC the past few weeks. Easily in the 100's every day. We try and stay busy inside though when it's too hot by playing together as a family. Campbell can't really do too much besides play chase though, so there is a lot of running and screaming in the house at night from Emery either chasing Campbell, or Campbell trying to catch Emery.

I've been trying to keep up with my running as best I can in these heat. I refuse to run on the dreadmill in the basement. Time just goes by so much faster when I'm on my trail or can look at other things besides the TV. Dave loves the treadmill though, so I'm glad we have it. But I will just wait till evening to run and make sure that I hydrate myself all day. I'm getting so close to the end of my program too. It is so empowering knowing how far I have come. Dave will do his Week 3 runs and come up and tell me how his 3min runs were hard. I remember those weeks! I remember how hard those runs were! And now I can run for 22min without stopping. I know that isn't a long time for a lot of people, but for someone like me who hasn't ran since High School, it's pretty damn good. One day I need to just try and run the 3.1 miles and see if I can do it or not. I'm sure I could, but it would be really hard. I'm so pumped for my first 5K though. I keep hearing that once you do one, your addicted. Which is exactly what I want! And I want Emery to see me do these so when she gets old enough, she can run them with me. We'll see how that goes.

 I threw in a random picture of me just because there never really are any of me. I'm always the one behind the camera!

 When it's too hot to play outside on the swing set, we get creative! Emery loves bubbles! So a bowl filled with soap and water and a straw provide a good 30min. of entertainment.

This is how I know these kids are Dave's, eyes closed! It's actually kinda surprising that Dave's eyes are open.

Gone

I know, I have not posted in awhile. But, even though I have not posted, I have been keeping up with my runs. So anyway, decided to take a quick break. Here is what has been going on though with my runs, then we'll get to family.

Last Tuesday I ran Week 7 Day 1. I did it, not problems, except for this HUGE black bug that kept circling around me towards the end. It would just go around and around me and sometimes hit me, which is not cool! I don't like bugs at all! So I sped up thinking I could outrun the little bastard. He kept up, so I started waving my arms around like a crazy person, while running, trying to get rid of it. After a little while, it finally went away, but it was SO annoying!

So Thursday would have been my next run day, but we have started this new summer tradition of going to Zona Rosa on Thursdays and sitting in the square to listen to the band play their music. The kids have fun, and it's just a fun, easy, and cheap way to get out of the house. Needless to say, I didn't run Thursday night. So Friday night, I had all intentions of running, but I didn't. I don't remember why though. And then Saturday and Sunday were filled with swimming and going over to families to eat. So FINALLY on Monday after work, I laced up and headed to Parkville. It was hot out, but I had drank water ALL day and eaten really well, so I wasn't too worried. Plus, Dave and the kids came with me to walk around the track and play on the playground. So I knew that if I keeled over from heat exhaustion, someone would at least be looking for me. 

I went ahead and re-ran Week 7 Day 1 because I didn't eat all that great over the weekend and it had almost been a whole week since I had last ran, so I didn't think I could handle Day 2 of Week 7. Well, I was wrong, because after my 5min warm up walk, I jogged for 15min. After the 15min jog, the little voice told me to walk for 2min. But I didn't stop to walk, I wanted to see if I could keep going. So I did. And after 2 min., the voice told me to start running again for 5 more min. So I just continued my run. I ended up passing Dave and the kids on the path right at my 1min till the end mark. I later asked Dave how I looked when running. He said I started out looking great, like a was a real runner or something (lol I put that part in myself), but when I passed them in the end, he said I looked like I was ready to be done. Ha, so true and I could feel myself getting tired. But hey, I did it. Ran 22min without stopping. Now I kinda wish I had gone on to Day 2, but it doesn't really matter. Tonight I will run Day 2. Warmup 5 minutes, then jog 20 minutes, walk 2 minutes, then run for 1 minute. Since that last party doesn't say jog, it actually says to run, I'm guessing it will be a full out sprint for me, which is prob a normal persons jog, but it will be fast for me.

The Color Run 5K is this weekend out at the stadiums. I wish I was ready for it. That is a 5K that really sounds like a lot of fun. I am still aiming for The Glow Run 5K July 14th, but their facebook page says that there are not many spots left to register for, and with me just not being sure if I could make the whole thing, I may end up needing to skip it and try for a different one. The Zoo one is out for me as well in September, Bachelorette party at Tablerock Lake that weekend. Sooo....there is the Jingle in July 5K on the 29th that I may set my sights on now. And if not that one, well, there are lots of 5K's. I'll find one that will "break my seal" and then, like everyone says, I hope to be addicted to them!

Okay on to family stuff. Campbell is doing all sorts of stuff. Clapping, waving, climbing, saying Mama and Dada. He's also standing on his own now too, but no steps yet.

We have been saying goodbye to an 8:00pm bedtime for Emery this summer. There is just so much fun stuff to do this summer and it's too hot to do it during the day so we have to wait till night. As long as she is in bed by 10pm at the latest then she isn't too bad the next day. We have been swimming a lot at night and going to concerts at Zona Rosa. She has been lots of fun so far this summer. Hopefully my next post I'll have more pics of the kids.

Maternity Photoshoot with BirchLane Photography

I got the opportunity to take pictures of my beautiful cousin Kate today. She is due any minuet with baby Evelyn and let me practice maternity pictures on her. It's easy when you have such a nice round belly to work with =) Here are some of my faves.

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