four

this is what she woke up to when she came downstairs. wall o' elsie and goodies 🙂 we do the pics like this for every kid on their birthday night and keep it up all week.
night of real birthday. she saw this outfit on a mannequin at jcrew and wanted it so bad. glad i held out till her birthday! i love that little yellow necklace/belt thing! those jcrew people, so creative!

next day, party day! a few little friends at the nearby indoor playground. sportin her yellow belt again 🙂 happy as can be!

BFF and els!

at the party place, everytime i took my camera out, els would say, no pictures! 🙂 finally at the end, she gave in and at least i got thiiiiis. 🙂 i love it!

the night before she turned four, she asked, "why are you sad that i'm turning four? i'm excited!!" 🙂 i am excited too… just means she's growing up and of course that makes me sad. 🙂 a few days passed and she said, "why are my pictures still up? (the picture wall) oh yeah, it's my birthday, i just LOOOOVE birthdays!" 🙂
little party animal 🙂

March 5, 2010 23

together

he's been traveling but is now home. i can't explain how out of whack my head and heart gets when he's gone. i'm so thankful for all my munchkins that keep me on my toes, not too much time to really feel sorry for myself! he's my partner that gets to tackle our day to day life with moi- working, parenting. parenting especially. last week was incredibly emotional for me. as soon as i picked him up from the airport till the minute we fell asleep, i don't think i stopped talking. 🙂
i love him.
(i'm super thankful for my 2 girls (sil and conster) who babysat me on text/fb/phone while i talked their ears off everrrryday) 🙂

layout for writeclickscrapbook.
lots of goodies from studio calico and some basic grey here.

super cool photo by the amazing jonathan canlas.

March 2, 2010 10

day before four

iphone pics, spending the afternoon together, the day before she turns four. F O U R.

i just love that picture of her. i wish i had my real camera with me. she is such a little dancer daydreamer. that little puddle was part of this whole imaginative story she saw in her head. i love it.
popping in her most absolute favorite shop! (ok not more than toys r us or target but she is just on cloud 9 whenever she goes in this store! she is her grandmother's granddaughter!) little fashionista!

in almost every photo i see of her, i am amazed at how much she's grown and how fast it's gone, etc etc etc. this picture is one of the rare that i could see her little childish 3 year old age. those cheeks! i am really going to miss age three! 😦
i just kept hugging her today and saying i can't believe you're four…. and she'd reply, i'm not four YET, silly! 🙂
her grammies wrote in her birthday card, 'to think we hardly knew you 4 years ago- how can this be?!'
so true, so true! her uncle also wrote that she is delicious. yes that is also so very true 🙂
can't wait for a week full of celebrating our girl!

February 28, 2010 14

in my bucket

i haven't put a bucket through at 2p since october! it felt so good to dig through all my stuff that's been sitting here. some were even unopened, shocker! but it's time. lots of new goods coming out so i couldn't resist 🙂 just a little sneak peek of what i got. lots of american crafts. trying out their new adhesive, heard good things so i'm sure it will be! lots of cutesy and lizzy and hearts and cosmo. so excited about the calico rubons. yay!

February 24, 2010 5

favorite people

why do some of our favorite people have to live so far? doesn't everyone want to live in southern california?! 🙂

some of our favorite people are in vegas, washington, australia, the bay area, the east coast, new mexico, michigan, utah, and new zealand. even orange county and long beach isn't close enough to us. this is how it makes us feel:

not happy.

February 23, 2010 7

layout of my girls

Sigh. Cute paper is all I need… 🙂 The floral is the new Basic Grey, Kioshi line. It's not at 2p yet but you'll have to keep your eye out. Lavendar hydrangeas, some of my favorite flowers, they were my wedding bouquet! 🙂 I think I'm going to use a butterfly on every page for awhile 🙂 So addicting! Some yummy Dear Lizzy and some new October Afternoon. Solid lines from all of them!

Picture of my and the girls from last summer in Australia. I love my girls. Chris and I were just looking at the pictures from that trip and marveled at how much Kira has grown since then. Seems she was still a little girl there, but since she started high school, time seems like it has accelerated. The teen years are such a delicate time. So many emotions and decisions where every day you face different challenges. It's all about how you as a parent are going to face them. All I can do is pray constantly for the right words and right attitude. It's crazy to think we get to go through this stage 3 more times! But I love the thought of me and my girls when we are all finally past this, when they are grown women. I hope that whatever we do to make it through these teen years, ties us even closer. Elsie makes me think of Kira so much when she was little, I miss her… but am just in awe of the woman she is becoming now.
I hardly take my own pictures anymore, I have to go to Chris' blog to steal his 🙂 He takes so many amazing pictures, these are some of my absolute favorites.
ok it's tied with this one. 🙂
you can read his own sappy post about her here 🙂
we love her. xoxoxo

February 19, 2010 6

play

it's her favorite thing to do! most of the time she requests that we play with her. which sometimes, i will admit, is sorta hard for me. i don't mind doing things with her, baking, gardening, cooking, being crafty… it's the pretending stuff that i'm not so good at. she's the mom and i'm the sister. she's the princess and i'm the friend. she's the mouse and i'm the lion. yeah, tough sometimes.

this is my favorite thing, looking over my shoulder and seeing her engaged- pretending with her toys. reading to them. talking to them, singing, dancing and being a mom. i LOVE it.

she's four in a few weeks, we cannot believe it. :( she requests nothing but a few friends at the local indoor playground and some cupcakes of course! 🙂 hoping she will have a day of play and feel celebrated. we are so blessed to have her busy little self in our lives!

i told her today that i thought she needed a haircut and replied incredulously, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" ha! love her.

February 16, 2010 10

valentine’s

why does valentine's have to be so red and pink and cheesy? every piece of junk mail i got this week was plastered in that stuff. i like simple love. the kind that looks at me in the eye and knows what i'm thinking. the kind that reaches for my hand and i get butterflies. the kind that dreams and plans. the sentimental kind.
and i love my crafts 🙂 and hers 🙂
top image source here.

February 11, 2010 7

old school, happy birthday caleb :)

9 years ago today caleb was born!

he was born a week early in a hospital in chesapeake, virginia. kira was nearly six and cam just turned two.
kira would be off to school for a few hours each day. the boys were home with me while chris went to work and finished his masters. we lived on the east coast for barely a year while our family lived on the west coast. we weren't used to the cold weather. we lived in a tiny apartment with one car. our days were lonnnnnng. we passed the time with lots of playing and Toy Story and baking. the internet wasn't quite big yet and we didn't have a digital camera, i remember calling my sister in law lots and sending lots of photos to family via snail mail! to say that these days were the toughest of my life to date isn't an exaggeration!
this image above is a perfect description of a long day. 🙂
and now that they are all grown up, i miss those long virginia days!

elsie was looking through all these photos with me and was wondering why she wasn't in any of the pics 🙂 seems i cannot quite escape the playing with a toddler stages of my life, oh well. wouldn't trade it for the world! 🙂

more old school, via scrapbooking talk here today 🙂 crazy to see the evolution of my style 🙂

February 8, 2010 7

little bit of rain

it seems like ages ago when i had a girl who would love to play in the puddles and i'd be happy to capture it all with the camera. today i don't think i would have even whipped out the camera if she didn't look so darn cute as she came into my bedroom wearing my socks. 🙂

seriously that's all she had for me. and since all the cold air was coming in, i was fine with just that. it's been rainy. i'm not a rain kind of person. sorta hard on me. i haven't stepped outside at all today, even to take these pics, i was still inside and i just shooed her outside to get some nice light 🙂

just to clarify, yes she is wearing the saaaame boots from 2 years ago 🙂 they were big at the time and she wore lots of socks to fit. now they are close to being too small. she loves them so much, she's going to be sad when she does finally outgrow them!

February 5, 2010 9