Ceramics

I love spending time as a family!  And it was a perfect way to spend my birthday.  I recently found a local ceramics shop and I was excited to go try it out with my kiddos.  I thought it would be a great gift idea for the kids to paint mugs for my parents as Christmas gifts and I had planned to go with all three kids in tow one afternoon until I pulled up in front of the shop and began to wonder if I was biting off more than I could chew.  Paint, 2 toddlers, 1 baby, no help... it was a good recipe for a disaster.  So we went home and I didn't think much of it for a couple days until my birthday rolled around.  Nathan had the day off from work and we were trying to figure out what to do when I remembered the ceramics shop.  So off we headed.  Let me just say the kids had a blast!!  We picked out a mug for each of them to paint, let them pick out the colors they wanted and got them set up and they went to town painting with huge smiles on their faces!  Once they had each covered their mug with paint we left for a while to let them dry and went back a little later and put each of the kids hand print on each mug.  I'm so bummed that I forgot to get a picture of the final product since we went during the week while my parents were here to pick them up but they turned out SO cute.  All I can say is we're heading back soon because I want one!

Zeke's paint colors

Kenzie picking out her paint

getting started

lots of concentration

Kenzie having a great time

daddy helping out when needed

one blessed momma

absolutely love my babies!

having such a great time

such a sweet girl

the love of my life!

silly faces

precious

all done!

Zeke's mug for Papa

Kenzie's mug for Grandma

Baby Photo Shoot

My beautiful baby is a perfect model.  And one thing I do know is that the evening sun makes for some beautiful photos with the natural light.  I had the perfect combination of my baby and the evening setting sun so I decided to snap a few bunch of photos of her.  One of my favorite things that babies do is grab their little toes and play with them while laying on their back!!  It just melts my heart!  So here are some pictures of my precious little baby!

Figuring It Out

Nathan decided to give me the camera a couple days before my birthday so that I would have time to play with it a little and try to figure out the basics before Christmas and my parents visit.  Here are some of the initial photos I took with the new camera.  I'm trying to figure the camera out and not just shoot in auto and nothing is edited because I don't have an editing program yet.

Here they are:

Apparently Janessa is my easiest subject and I've told Kenzie that she can't complain when she's older about having the least amount of photos of her because she hates the camera and will almost always try to dodge it!