Lily is 6 Months Old!

Wow, I can't believe how fast the weeks and months are flying by lately. Lily had her half birthday last weekend. Crazy! How can my little baby be 6 months old already? It makes me a little sad that she isn't a tiny little newborn anymore, but I do love the stage that she is at now. She is so curious and funny and you can see her making new discoveries all the time. She is even sitting up by herself now.

Today I did her 6-month photoshoot and it was actually a lot of fun. I guess I am just so used to fighting with Ella to let me take her photos that I forgot what it was like to do a little shoot with a baby who can't run away from the camera. It was lovely! I wanted to try a fun, different kind of shoot, so I sat down last night and made her a tutu and I am SO glad that I did. I can't even stand how cute she looked in it. I also got a couple of headbands for her, which I don't love for everyday wear, but I do love for photo props. Anyway, I will stop rambling now and let you see for yourselves. Here is my sweet 6 month old baby!

I really wish that I had have used a different background for these next couple of shots. I really love the expressions that I got, but the grey came out darker than I wanted and I am not very happy with the texture of it. Oh well, I guess that just gives me an excuse for a reshoot :)

Is It Summer Yet?

I am starting to get seriously tired of winter. Just when I thought that the sickness had left our house and everyone was over the flu, Ella got the worst cold I could imagine. She has been coughing like crazy since Wednesday and hasn't had much of a voice since Thursday. The coughing has kept her up at night (along with Shawn and I) and it has also caused her to scream and cry a lot and be very cranky. Thankfully, she is finally getting over it.

The other reason that I am hating winter is that I am oh so tired of not being able to get outside and take some photos. I much prefer to shoot outside. The light is better and there is just so much more that I can take photos of - Ella can't hide nearly as well.

Since I have been busy taking care of my sick Ella (and Lily and the three other kids that I have been watching part-time), I'm only posting one photo for today. Ella is going to her grammy's for a few nigths this week, so I do hope to have time to edit some more photos and get them posted then. Until then, here is a shot of Ella feeding Lily. This was the first time she has ever wanted to hold Lily and feed her by herself, so I was pretty happy about it.

What My Girlies Have Been Up To

I spent all of last week sick with the flu, so needless to say I didn't feel much like taking photos or posting anything here. And now that I am feeling better, I've been spending all my spare time getting photos ready for my scrapbooking crop coming up this weekend (yay!). I've been going through lots of old photos, and new ones too, and I love seeing how the girls are changing not only in their looks, but also in what they are doing. So I thought I would a minute tonight to put up a few photos from the past couple of days of things my girls have been into lately.

Ella has been obsessed with these little pop beads that she got for Christmas. She always begs me to sit with her and make necklaces, rings, and watches. She even likes to string them ALL together and wrap them around herself, saying she is a Christmas tree. She cracks me up. You can also tell from this photo that she is still in the stage of making crazy faces at the camera. I can never get a natural expression from her. I keep hoping that will change some day...Lily is starting to sit on her own for a few seconds, but I'm too scared to let go of her long enough to take a photo for fear that she will fall down. She is loving laying on the floor, but only if I lay with her and sing her songs. She is truly the only person who can enjoy my singing voice. Her very favorite song is ABCs. I don't know why, but she laughs at it every time. I keep encouraging her to roll over, but she is showing absolutely zero interest. Ella used to use rolling to her advantage and go wherever she wanted in the room so I guess I just expected Lily to roll too. But no, she has no interest at all. I guess that's good for me so I don't have to chase her around yet. I'm also convinced that she is going to be a crawler because every time she has tummy time she tries to scoot herself along the floor to get her toys. She isn't quite able to move much yet, but she really tries. Little Miss Ella has been in love with anything creative. She is especially loving painting and gluing. The only thing is that she HATES getting glue on her fingers. She starts crying and tells me to "get the yuckies off".This is Lily's elephant that she is now in love with. She smiles and coos at it and tries so hard to get it in her mouth, but inevitably ends up dropping it and getting angry until someone will give it back to her again. And this is Ella's bed. Her teeny, tiny toddler bed. She is convinced that she needs to take five hundred animals to bed with her. Then she complains that she has nowhere to lay, but she will not let me take anyone out of her bed. She even has some of Lily's stuffies in there that she "takes care of" for Lily. Every night I try to sneak a couple out and hide them to make more room for her, but she takes inventory and always demands to have them back. It's starting to get out of control. I think maybe we should have went straight to a double bed and skipped the toddler bed altogether. And I couldn't resist putting this photo in because it just absolutely cracks me up. This is Ella and Lily in the ball pit. I love that Ella looks crazy and Lily looks terrified and confused. The poor little thing has no idea what's going on. Isn't it funny, though?

Ella's First Time Skating

On Saturday we took Ella to the rink in Alma to try out the skates that Santa got her for Christmas. I didn't know if she would jump right in or be a little timid, but she did really well for her first time. She definitely didn't want Shawn to let go of her and I think she had the most fun when daddy was skating around with her in his arms, but she did love it. She's been telling everyone that she skated all by herself. I think she's going to be a great little skater when she gets a bit more practice in.

Easy Bakin'

On Sunday we got out the Easy Bake Oven that Ella got for Christmas and was she ever excited to use it! She immediately went to her kitchen and put on her chef's hat and apron and got all geared up to bake. She was happy that she got to do pretty well everything all by herself and it was fun for me too, since I got to relive what it was like when I had my own easy bake oven. Nothing about it has changed in the last 20 years, either, other than the color (mine was a lovely shade of orange with black trim). Here's a little step-by-step instruction about how to use an easy bake oven, featuring the lovely Miss Ella.

Step 1:Pour out cake mix.


Step 2: Add water. Step 3: Mix well.

Step 4: Pour batter into pan.

Step 5. Put cake into Easy Bake oven.
Step 6. Wait for cake to bake (who knew a light bulb could bake a cake in 12 minutes?).

Step 7. Smile for the camera as you wait for your cake.
Step 8. Give mommy a thumb's up to tell me how the cake's doing.
Step 9. Remove cake from oven when baked.
Step 10. Pour frosting mix into bowl while cake is cooling. Step 11: Add water and mix frosting well.
Step 12: Spread frosting on cake.
Step 13: Add sprinkles to cake.
Step 14: Admire finished product.

Step 15: Show off your hard work. Step 16. Enjoy!
Yummy!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Oh, and since I haven't been around, belated Merry Christmas! Wow, the holidays kept us busy! So busy that I gave up on even trying to edit photos or get them posted, but now that things are slowing down I am going to get back to it.

We were on the road A LOT over the holidays, but had a great time nonetheless. We got to spend lots of time with family and friends and ate way, way, way too much great food.

Here's a small sample of what our holidays looked like.

Lily and her boyfriend, Carter with their lovely decorated heads. Try to get four kids under the age of three to sit still and look at the camera at the same time. Just try it. Don't even think about trying to get them to smile, though, because it won't happen. Even with bribes and threats, it never works out. This was the best we could do and I thought it was pretty good, all things considered. My little Lily, relaxing on her pillow in front of the Christmas tree. Yay! I actually got a photo of both my girls in front of the tree! And yes, I know, there are a lot of presents under that tree. We all got very spoiled. Ella trying on her favorite present from Santa. Hopefully she'll like them just as much when she gets them on the ice. Another fave from Santa. I'm thinking Santa should have thought a little harder about how many thousands of times mommy would have to pick these up before he gave them to her. She does love them, though, and they are pretty cool. And hey, I get a new piece of jewelry to wear every day. Lily and the world's most expensive teether, Sophie the giraffe. She looks and sounds like a dog toy, but everyone I have talked to swears that she is the best. I hope she is!Daddy and Ella trying out Ella's new drums before we left for the day. This is how you can tell how busy we were. Ella always wakes up the second the car turns off, but on Christmas day (after going to bed the night before at 10:30 and getting up that morning at 5:00) we drove to Alma, pulled her out of the car, threw her on her grammy's couch, and poked and prodded at her with no hopes of waking her up. We decided to stay home with our kids for New Year's and invited a few friends over to join us. Here is Hailey and Ella enjoying their special New Year's Eve cupcakes. This was taken at 1:30 a.m., just before Melissa and Kevin took their kids home for the night. Isn't it amazing how they don't even look the least bit tired? We thought for sure they would have crashed eventually, but they didn't slow down all night.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow, the days around here have been crazy busy. Between getting ready for Christmas, photoshoots on the weekend, Shawn working so much overtime, and our everyday craziness, I don't have time to do anything extra. Needless to say, I haven't been up to blogging very much. I did get a beautiful new lens for my birthday and have been practicing with it, but haven't had the time to edit the photos or get them posted. I'm hoping that things will slow down a bit in the new year.

Tonight I actually took a few minutes to myself and edited a couple of photos to put up here. You'll notice that I have a few of Lily and only one of Ella and that is only because Ella will not let me take her picture lately. If she sees the camera she runs. Luckily for me Lily can't run yet, so she becomes my daily subject. She always has big grins for the camera and her big eyes always look so nice in photographs.

I've really been loving high contrast black and white images lately, so that's what I am posting tonight.

Here is little miss Lily sucking on her rattle. And she LOVES laying under the Christmas tree and looking at the lights, like she was doing at grammy's house last weekend:I love this one because of her sparkly eyes and her spikey hair:And here's my one and only shot of Ella for today. I'm not sure how I managed to capture a natural smile, but I was glad to have it.