The day has arrived

The day finally came. The day I have been dreading and Jackson has been waiting for. His first day of Kindergarten. He is so ready and so excited. I know that I need to be happy for him, and I know that this will be a good thing. He loves people and friends and loves to learn new things and is so happy when he has accomplished something new. Learning to read will be so much fun for him since he is always trying to read his airplane books, and wants to read to Asher. This is a good thing, but I will miss my little buddy. He always wants to be where I am, and he is so fun to talk to. I love having him around and I know this is the beginning of the end. From here out it will be school and friends and activities. Time with mom won't be as much fun and that breaks my heart a little. I know I still have more time and I will make the best of the time I have left. A lot of moms have talked about becoming teary as their child went off to school. Teary! I was in full on sobs. (I am pregnant)

The morning went just as I predicted. Jackson was so happy and ready to go at 7:00 am, and Asher was sad from the moment he woke up because he knew what was coming. Jackson picked out his clothes for the day and was ready to go. We got a few pictures and we were off to the bus stop.





This is so sad, but this is what I had to deal with. I finally got him to stop crying with bribes of chocolate and told him he could go to his own school someday. Notice Asher has his backpack with him.


Happy Jackson. He was the first one on the bus. He was the happiest kid at the bus stop. He went up to one of the neighbor kids and asked him why he had a sour face? I mean he should be happy, it's the first day of school. They get to ride the bus!



These are kind of my favorite. I love the first one with the "deer in the headlight" look on his face. I think at this moment it all hit him. In the second one he is crying, but not because he is sad about going to school, it is because he was sad for Asher. At this point Asher was in a full on fit because he couldn't get on the bus, and Jackson, the ever concerned brother, started to cry for him. They are so close, and this summer they have become very attached. I knew there would be tears. I just hope that Jackson got over it quickly. I want the happy Jackson to be the one that arrives at school.

Follow up: Jackson returned home as excited as ever. He couldn't stop talking about the day. He made new friends, he played on the playground, and he even got homade cookies from his teacher. He can't wait to go back tomorrow.

32 weeks

This pregnancy has had it's fair share of trials, but it has been such a blessing. I love how my boys get so excited when they talk about the baby. And I love the feeling of this little person moving around in my belly. In fact, that is something that I always miss once the baby is born. Despite all of the trials we have faced over the past few months, we feel so blessed to be expecting this new life into our home.

Happy Birthday!

I have to take a day, and a birthday seems like as good a time as any, to tell my man how much I love him and appreciate him. He has always been so wonderful and helpful, and the last few months he has really come through for our family. Doing pretty much everything. I am so grateful to him for all he does and all he is.

Asher: Happy birthday day daddy, and then we gotta make cakes and presents, and then give him a helicopter cake, and give him a helicopter. I lub daddy!

Jackson: Daddy I love you. I just didn't mean to be bad. I love you have a good birthday. Have a fun time at your birthday. Love Jackson

Happy Birthday to the best husband ever!

I feel bad that I had to go back a year to find a picture to use. There just isn't that much from this year, since we haven't done much this summer. Oh, to have last summer again!

Bisous, bisous!

I have had quite a bit of time on my hands lately. I have spent a lot of that time working on photography stuff. I really don't know what I am doing, I just want to be a mamarazzi, and get really good pictures of my kids. My goal was to never feel the need to get professional pictures of my kids again. I spend a little time everyday leaning something new and working on pictures and I felt the need to put them somewhere. I started a photo blog Bisous, bisous! for these pictures. I don't know how well I will keep up on it and if it will last once I have baby #3 and I have less time that I am supposed to be off my feet. I just thought it would be fun and then I can keep this blog free of all my photo experiments.

Getting ready for school

I have spent part of my down time messing around with my new photo editing software. In today's lesson I had some fun with these apple pictures and messing around with color. I thought they would be fun for Jackson's pre-kindergarten pictures. He is such a sweet heart and he was so happy to be my model today.



I found this fun template and many other fun stuff for photoshop here.
http://coffeeteaphotography.blogspot.com

The view from where I sit

Yes, that is a cast on my foot. Yes, I broke my foot. How does one break their foot on bed rest? Well, that's easy. You become so uncoordinated from sitting around all the time, that you fall down three stairs, that's right, just three. That's pretty much how it happened.

We have reached a new level of pathetic. I almost didn't go to the emergency room because I couldn't bring myself to ask for more help. I am glad that I did, and my boys were well taken care of. After I had my foot looked at and treated, I was sent to Labor and Delivery, to check on the baby. She is doing great and was not affected at all by the fall. In fact I am sure that I broke my foot protecting the baby. I also have a nasty bruise on my arm where I caught myself. Now I am really stuck. And the boys know it. If they want to do something they know I won't approve of, they just go upstairs because I can't get to them there. However, most of all they have been very helpful. Jackson helped me get breakfast this morning, and lunch this afternoon. He even helped with the clean up. Now if we could just get him to sweep, mop and do the laundry we would be just fine.

When I got home last night, Asher said, "I am sorry Mommy." to which I replied; "Did you break mommy's foot?" He said; "No, mommy, I didn't push you down the stairs." He sounded a little guilty, like he did, but I don't remember being pushed.

I Scream

While the boys were eating ice cream cones outside, Jackson came and told me that Asher was so cute eating his ice cream and I needed to take some pictures. Always happy to have more picture of my boys, I obliged.


my boys have been dressing themselves lately, and as much as the miss matched PJ are a little embarassing they do give the picture some fun colors.



I have been messing around with adding textures to my pictures and thought this "molten lead" look made the concrete slab in our backyard look kind of cool. I apologize to anyone who is disturbed by the look of the underside of Asher's tongue, he just smiles that way sometimes. I think it's kind of funny.

Insomnia

Bed time around here seems to be more of a suggestion to Asher. We have found him out playing with his trains, or reading books, anywhere but his bed. We have to go in and check on him every night before we go to bed because he will fall asleep anywhere, a chair or the bathroom floor for example. Last night we couldn't find him in the usual spots. Just before I started to worry, I found him asleep in our bed with his Leapster in hand. He was still holding the pen. I wonder how long he played before he fell asleep? It's kind of a stinkerish behavior, but also kind of cute. I think he is the sweetest looking little guy when he is asleep, it reminds me of what he looked like as a sleeping baby.

Ricketts Glenn

July 18th I (Mitch) took the boys hiking to one of our favorite places in Pennsylvania. Ricketts Glenn is about 2 hrs north of Hershey. The hike we did was about 5 miles long with 21 waterfalls. The area is very beautiful, and the waterfalls are a lot of fun. The tallest was 92 feet. It is a great place to walk in the river and swim in the pools. The kids loved it and can't wait to get back.

The boys found a natural waterslide and loved it

We also found a cave under one of the waterfalls, the boys thought it was pretty cool

Jackson was a great hiker and loved to climb and explore all of the waterfalls