Big & Healthy!

He has been ours for a whole 15 months! I can't even believe it!

Paxton's stats:

23lbs 15oz. (67 percentile)

31.5 inches (61 percentile)

He got his Pentacel, DTaP, IPV and Hib shots today (not sure what any of those mean?) 

Luckily they put all of the vaccinations into one shot! There was no tears shed today, tough boy!

LOVE HIM!!

Holy hot!

The very last thing on our summer bucket list was to go to the North Lake Park and ride the train. Since the train is only running for 1 more week we knew we had to fit it in. We choose to go on a day that got over 100 degrees! Ugh! The kids had fun though and that's all that matters.

We had a picnic lunch and then let the kids play on the playground for awhile...

At noon we were able to go buy our train tickets! At only 75 cents per person we could afford to ride it twice! =) Aren't we lucky?

Alexis even got to ring the bell.

Then we fed the geese. It seems this is always the most favorite part of going to the park. I don't understand the excitement, but they really do love it.

And as you can see by how red Alexis' face is, it was HOT! And we left....

A fun family day at the park! It felt good to cross off the last thing on our summer bucket list. I'm actually impressed that we were able to do every single thing we wrote down. What a fun and quick summer it has been! Looking forward to cooler weather........

Bella Couture

Some pictures for Bella Couture. She makes the cutest flower girl dresses! =)

Isn't the dress just gorgeous? I'm thinking I'm going to try a different location and take some more sometime in the next few weeks. I'd like to make a collage of her in this dress and put it on the wall somewhere in our house!

Red Wagon

I have been wanting to do a photoshoot like this with the kids for a LONG time now. In fact. right after Paxton was born I searched and searched for a old red wagon that I could use. Never had any luck... until a month ago when Cory and I decided to go through a few antique shops in Fort Collins and found this one! I was literally jumping up and down saying I have to have it! I have to have it! Cory just doesn't understand my visions, but he went along with it. He's so great!

I then spent the next weeks finding the perfect location. Who knew it would be on a walking path about 1 mile away from our home? Perfect!

I was beyond excited the evening of the shoot. The kids however, were not. =( I was that mom that was bribing her kids! Yikes! I  kept saying that I'd give them chocolate, ice-cream, donuts, whatever they wanted, if they'd just sit still and smile nicely for ONE picture! The bribing didn't work. Paxton was paying more attention to all the people walking by and Alexis was annoyed that she couldn't get out of the wagon and run around. Trying to get both kids looking in the same direction was becoming impossible.

We spent a FULL HOUR out there trying and trying and trying. I have such a supportive husband who worked his butt off to get these kids to do as I asked. I decided to throw in the towel and we came home. I seriously felt like crying (how pathetic am I?) But before I deleted the card I decided I'd look through them just to see......

I hadn't even realized that I got this one. It's SO perfect (at least to me it is!) The lighting, the colors, my kids. I fell in love. The one and only picture that came out of that shoot. But it's become one of my favorites that I've ever taken of them. A vision came true!

I'm thinking I'll get this one enlarged, framed, and hung on my wall!

Water Table Fun

My kids LOVE this water table. It brings hours and hours of fun. And what brings them hours of fun brings me hours of mostly quiet, not fighting, moments of sanity! Win-Win!

I should also say that I got to shoot these picture with the Canon 28-300mm L Telephoto Lens! It's a $2,500 lens that I got to rent for ONE week for less than $100. Thank you Borrow Lenses for being so awesome! I was sitting about 15 feet away when I shot every single one of these pictures. To say I'm in love with this lens would be an understatement. I only have 2 more days left with this lens and I will shed a tear or 2 when I have to give it back. Can't I just win the lottery already?

Landscaping Phase 1

We had a landscaper come over months ago and design our backyard. Let's face it, I do not have an eye for landscaping. In fact, I'm pretty awful at it (just look at pictures of our old house! Yikes!) I wanted our new house to have pretty landscaping and some nice curb appeal. Since it is way out of our budget to hire someone to come in and actually do the work we thought we would do it ourselves. We have broken our backyard landscaping up into 3 phases, mostly because of money and what we could afford. We (I should really say just Cory) started removing all of the sod last weekend. This is where the kids' swing set is going to go. I figured we should start with this as phase 1 since we have the swing set sitting in boxes in our garage and it will probably be the part that gets used the most. Lexi tells anyone and everyone who is listening that daddy is building her a park! ha!

Photography Workshop Week 2

This week for the photography workshop I am in we had to do a photoshoot all together and we had to bring along some models. My models are my kids, so I brought them! Cory came too! Here are a few of my favorite images from that shoot.

We were at Cheeseman Park in Downtown Denver - what a beautiful location! I loved the Greek looking white columns! Gorgeous! I wish it wasn't so far of a drive... but nothing stops me when there is a beautiful location! =)

I've really learned a lot about white balance and why it's important. I'm no where close to mastering it, but I'm starting to see a difference in my images. Baby steps....

I love photography!

First Day of School!

Alexis' first day of preschool! Such a big day for her.
 
Let's start with the night before... I bought her a book called "The Night Before Preschool" and read it to her a couple of times. It really helped and got her pretty excited for school the next day. I was a nervous wreck...
 
Luckily Cory was able to go into work a few hours late so he could be there for her big day! What a great daddy he is. We had to wake her up at 7:30. I was not expectiing her to sleep in, I guess we're going to need to start some sort of school schedule and send her to bed earlier. We'll see...
 
I gave her a bath, blow-dried and curled her hair, put her in this adorable orange and yellow outfit, popped a bow into her hair and we were ready to go! But not without a few pictures...
 
I printed off these cute signs from Pinterest (what would I ever do without Pinterest?) and had her hold them up. I'm glad that in the years to come I will be able to remember what was going on in this picture and what grade it was for! =)
 
We all loaded up into the car (OOPS! I forgot to feed her!) Ran back inside and grabbed some Ritz crackers - seriously that is all we have. I really need to make a run to the grocery store...ugh. She ate her crackers and drank her water while we drove to school (you'd think I was running a prison or something! Ha!) 
 
It was pretty chaotic when we arrived. A lot of new parents and a ton of kids all excited and nervous for their first day. We signed her in and she sat down at her table and started writting her name on her name badge. I can't believe how good she is getting with writting her name. Hopefully in the next few months she'll get it completely down. Her teacher said that when they were done writting their names they could go play. That's when Cory and I said our goodbyes. She seemed fine until I walked out the door. She had a panic moment and screamed "Where's my mommy?!?" Poor girl. It broke my heart to pieces. But I saw the teacher go and comfort her and she was over it and back to playing... phew...
 
3 hours later I was able to pick her up! I couldn't wait to hear all about her big day. Cory had gone back to work so it was just Paxton and I to greet her. The kids were playing outside. I saw her riding a bike and walked up to her and said Hi! She said "hey, look how fast I go on this bike!" Obviously she didn't miss me as much as I missed her. She showed me her awesome skills on the bike and we left.
 
She said that she loved school and that she did really good! I tried for the rest of the night to talk to her about it, but she didn't go into details. She just kept saying that it was really fun and she loved it. I guess that's all that matters, right?
 
I can't believe that the first day is over already. I hope she has a wonderful 1st year or preschool. It will be good for her and for me! =)
 

Photography Workshop Week 1

I decided to take a photography workshop in downtown Denver. It has been a wonderful class and I've been learning SO much! I couldn't wait to get home from class and practice what I had learned. I grabbed Alexis and went out to "find beautiful light". Seeing beautiful light has become apart of my every day life. I'm always looking at peoples faces watching how light and shadows are falling across their face. It's so interesting. Anyways.... here is my first attempt at finding gorgeous light. I think I nailed it! 

I can't wait to take this picture back to class and have it critiqued. I'm really loving the lighting and the rich colors. And loving my model! =) Isn't she cute?

I've found that I am really drawn to backlit images. The glow around the hair and on the shoulders makes me stop and say wow! I have been practicing and practicing to get them down. For the life of me I can't figure it out. I've read everything I can find on tips and tricks and I just stink! Here is my best effort... I'm hoping with practice I'll get better. I'm not giving up on this yet....

I love the sun glowing in her hair, but I feel her face is too dark. I tried sitting her on the concrete in order to bounce some of that light back onto her face, that didn't work. Maybe a reflector would have been better to get that sun bounced back and get pretty catchlights in her eyes. Hmmm... I could study this image all day. 

Estes Park

Every summer we go to Estes Park for a weekend. We love it up there! I mostly love that it's only an hour drive and we're in the mountains - away from it all. This year we picked a weekend that was mostly cold and pretty rainy. The first thing we did when we got there on Friday evening was ride the big rainbow slide! We've done this twice before and Alexis loved it! Not our luck this time. Cory went down with her and she screamed bloody murder the whole way down. She was screaming so loud another dad walked over to make sure everything was alright! Ha! Cory also took Paxton down, he didn't scream, but he didn't smile either. Luckily they had go-carts right next door so we decided to do that instead. Alexis LOVED it. She kept yelling to go faster and faster. She also got to jump on the trampoline- her favorite part of the whole weekend!

The next day we went to ride ponies! Wahoo! Alexis was so excited she could hardly control herself. While they were getting her pony ready she kept pacing back and forth asking me a million questions about the horse (why is it black? where is its mom? whats its name?) We got the pony named Duke. Duke was a stubborn man. Go figure. Alexis really enjoyed herself and I think she would have rode that pony all day long if we let her. I'm not sure where she gets this love for being a cowgirl from, Cory and I are definitely not that way. We let Paxton get on Duke for a few minutes, he cried instantly and was reaching for his stroller! He was not a fan. No big surprise, he is afraid of most everything.

Next stop - Trout Haven! Where you are guaranteed to catch a rainbow trout. Alexis loves to fish, I don't think she fully understands what happens to the fish once they are caught though. We'll let her think whatever she wants for now. =) We spent a full hour at Trout Haven and did not catch a thing! It was sort of rainy and cold and because there was not much action Alexis got bored. I spent most of the time chasing after Paxton as he would try to get into the water! That boy. We left empty handed (which I was secretly excited about - I'm not a lover of rainbow trout!)

We rode the tram to the top of the mountain, kids started to throw a fit and we knew that we were done. We came back down and realized that Estes Park was sooooo crowded! Every restaurant had lines out the door. Well with 2 starving kids we couldn't wait that long so we hit up the McDonalds drive through and headed back home. Until next year......

Special Treats

I always swore that I would never be one of these moms, but I totally am. I tell my kids if they are good in the grocery store that I will let them pick out a special treat. How bad of a mom am I? Oh well, I really enjoy seeing what they pick out and how much joy it brings to them. I also like that I can quickly say "I guess there won't be any special treat today then!" and Alexis immediately turns her behavior around. it's a win-win! Last week she picked her special treat and she picked popsicles! I couldn't believe that we had gone the whole summer and I never once thought to buy popsicles! Bad mom. I loved that she spent so much time looking at all the boxes trying to decide what one she wanted (it's a big decision after-all) With my help she decided on the variety pack. Here they are eating their popsicles, aren't they so cute?

We LOVE Target!

We're in the last full week of summer before Alexis starts pre-school. I ask her what she would like to do, she says LET'S GO TO TARGET! She is her mother's daughter! =) I love Target for so many reasons. We always end up spending too much time and too much money there. Oh well, it's fun! I waited until Cory got home from work so he could come with us (he is a big Target fan too!) Because Paxton got to sit in the cart, Alexis wanted to sit in a cart. I picked-my-battles! We bought the movie The Lorax. Since then, the kids have watched it over 20 times. They love it. It's a good movie with a good message so I don't mind that some days we have it on on repeat. 

Busted!

Paxton's first time sitting on the time-out bench. What am I going to do with him? He is into E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G, he is driving me crazy! We are at that stage where he is old enough where he needs to start learning that he can't touch everything, but young enough where he doesn't understand why. I scream NO a gazillion times a day. It's exhausting.

(He is obviously thinking about why it's not such a good idea to climb to the top of our entertainment center! Aren't we lucky?)