So as you may or may not know.....

Miguel has been steadily losing weight and has lost to date about 80 lbs. He recently joined CrossFit to help him get super fit. So today I went to go check it out and it was fun. Should have eaten before I went, because I ended being really sick to my stomach afterward because of it, but lesson learned. I have managed to lose 54 lbs by myself, hopefully CrossFit will help me lose this last 20 or so and get in really good shape. :) One of these days, I'll feel brave enough to post a before and after picture. Right now, not so brave.

One last thing and I'll leave ya'll alone for a couple of days...

We had Kate's 3 year check up this afternoon. All went well, and the Dr was very happy with her overall progress. She came up from her very small 10th or something like that percentile for weight to 50th! Yay, she's average now! Average to small for height. Everything else looked good too. So now let's hope for no more visits until next October. We only had one for her between her 2 year and 3 year, so fingers crossed. Sam's six month appointment is in exactly 1 month, so I still get to go back to the dr for him on a fairly regular basis.

Just some random pics of my own kids from yesterday

Yup they were with me at the shoot. Oh and these are all edited differently. Just me playing.

My photography session last night

Thank you to Melody!

I think I am done with the change over

Sorry for any confusion I might have caused. I hope that you all made the transition ok. :) It feels better this way. LOL
So what I have been up to lately besides wasting time adjusting my blogs? :)
I have been baking a lot. On Thursday I spent a lot of time baking pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread. I still have the squash to bake. But the pumpkin came from our trip to the pumpkin patch last week. It was actually really good pumpkin. Sweet and yummy. Sam has been working on his sitting up skills. He does really really well. Every once in a while he'll topple over, but I can actually put him down with a toy now and he can stay sitting up. He's also working on pulling himself up. I remember Katie trying to pull herself up to her knees at this age, but he tries to get to his feet. He actually accomplished this the other day, but it must have been a fluke because he hasn't done it since. No movement on the crawling front really. He's just not interested in trying. Kind of like Katie was, she never really crawled either. Just went straight to cruising to walking. Anyway, just thought I would update you guys a little. :)

So my blog was schizo today....

I was trying to decide what new template I wanted to use. I think I have settled on this one, although it needs some work. So excuse my construction mess. :) Also, either tonight or tomorrow, I am going to be moving everything to a new name, and Child of Mine will be only for photography and designs. But I'll let ya'll know. I won't leave ya hangin'.

So this three year old...

...tells me the other day, that she doesn't like to be called Katie, and that furthermore, she wants to be called "Kate" from now on. LOL Well now, is that so, Miss Kate? Since when have you developed a preference for your name? :) I've always thought of you more as a Kate anyways. So ok sweet princess, I will make a concerted effort to call you Kate more often from now on. I guess that goes along with the lack of the -my syllable when you refer to me. I hardly ever get a "mommy" anymore. Well except when there is pain or tears involved or manipulation.

Slideshow of Kate's Party and Birthday, and one of the other day at the Pumpkin Patch

So I did not feel like being the photographer for Katie's Birthday. I wanted to be an active participant. So I apologize for there only being snapshots. And that there are some things missing. Like Katie blowing out the candles, the spread of food that we had, or the general lack of pictures of Katie. LOL Oh well. We all had fun. The Moonbounce was a huge hit with everyone, as was the little art station I had. Quite a few of the kids enjoyed coloring and drawing. Who knew? LOL The sandbox was a hit too, especially with the little kids. And apparently my cake didn't turn out too bad. It helps that I can follow directions fairly well. ;) Kate got tons of presents, and she's been playing incessantly with them ever since. She loves everything and is just enjoying having new toys to play with. Oh and she loves the Mr. Potato Heads. Miguel and her make the silliest faces. We still haven't gotten to open everything, but don't worry we will. The next slideshow is of the day we spent at the pumpkin patch and Amicalola Falls. Enjoy!

A quick note.....

Because I don't have time or energy right now to post about the big shindig. I will just say Katie had an excellent birthday weekend. Thanks to all who came to the party and helped us to spoil her some more. :) I have tons of pics to go through, but I don't have patience for it tonight. The one pic I am posting tonight with this post is of a harmonica we gave her on Friday. It was a super hit. But I don't think it held a candle to the moon bounce we had yesterday. Anyway pictures and more info to come tomorrow probably.

The cake

Just in case something should happen to my precious creation, I am posting a couple of pictures of Katie's cake. I am by no means a cake decorator, and it's not perfect, but it's cute. Katie likes it and that's what is important. :) The colors in the first are a bit more accurate than the second, but I have a lot more stuff to do today and no time to fix it. So there you have it.

And so it begins.....

So as some of you may be aware, it's Katie's 3rd birthday tomorrow!! Yay Katie! So being the big partiers that we are, we started celebrating today. We took cupcakes and birthday hats to Katie's school and had a little party for her there. It was so fun! The kids in her class really are the sweetest things. We sang happy birthday to her and gave all the kids bubbles. They were all happy and excited. Katie was the most excited of them all I think. She was thrilled to us there during her school day and repeatedly kept coming up to us and giving us hugs and kisses. Happy Day before your Birthday Katie!

The Pumpkin Patch and Amicalola Falls

So we went to Burt's Farm yesterday and had a blast. We got a pumpkin for carving and 3 sugar pumpkins for pumpkin pie. We also had tons of homemade baked goods while we were there. It was so so yummy. Katie's favorite part of the whole day was the hayride. I have a lot more pictures to post, but I can't post them right now because I have to go make cupcakes for Katie's class. She's turning the BIG 3 tomorrow!
We also went to Amicalola Falls again yesterday. We walked around the falls and had dinner at the lodge. It was a really nice day and I hope Katie had tons of fun. I know we did. I'll leave you with a picture of the top part of the falls. The sky was beautiful yesterday and the leaves are starting to turn here. I did enhance the colors a little bit in this pic, but the sky really was almost that blue.

So besides the engagement session....

what have we been up to? Well Friday night we went up to scout out the location for the shoot with Robin, Claire, and Caleb. We decided while we were there to get some shots for Claire's 5 month, albeit a little late since she's almost 6 months. :) I even got a few of Caleb in there too. Maybe he's not so camera shy after all? Or maybe he's just used to me sticking a camera in his face by now. LOL So here's some from that.










So then on Saturday morning we went to Avery's birthday party. Katie had a blast even if all she did was shoot foam balls out of a cannon and dig in the sand pit. Oh wait, I think she went down the slide too. Once maybe. LOL After they played we all sang happy birthday, ate cake and pizza, and Avery opened presents. A good time was had by all. So the next pictures are all of that morning. Katie is totally psyched about her own birthday party and tomorrow I am starting on her cake. Hopefully I can do at least half as good a job as Sara did on Avery's cake. :)



And this is because I can't not take a picture of a baby when I see one. :)



Katie being a pirate. This is her best pirate face.



And this last one is Danny, who was 8 months old and the subject of only my second ever photo shoot. :) Time flies. He's almost 2 now.

If you want to see more pictures, Sara and her hubby Mike took a lot of pictures and there are some of me and my two in there.

I've been busy, but I had a great session yesterday....

and got some beautiful pics with Bethany and her fiance Mark. I thought I'd post my favorites so far.

The start of Katie's Ladybug cake

I decided this year I was going to make Katie's ladybug cake and that I was going to go all out for her birthday. Her first birthday we were in the process of packing everything up to move, and her second birthday I was very sick with morning sickness and could barely lift my head up. This year I feel great and have the energy for it, so it's going to be fantastic. In any case, I premade the cookie that's going on her cake as part of the decoration. Of course, Katie will get the cookie once we start cutting into the cake. I froze it and will be working on the rest of the cake first of next week. I'm probably more excited than Katie. We are also having a princess castle moonwalk, a art area if any of the kids are interested and a pinata (I know, crazy we are). It should be a blast!

Rocking Chairs

Just a quick post with me playing around with the kids yesterday. Oh the torture I put them through. :)

Katie draws with chalk

So one of Katie's favorite things to do is to draw portraits of Mommy. I think all of her portraits are just beautiful. :) LOL The video is of her drawing. Excuse the crazy hair and the pjs. We had not gotten ready for the day.

In the next week or so....

I'm going to be adding some packages to my business pricing. Special photography packages and also print packages. I'm going to be doing a bellies and babies package, a babies first year package, and a birthday package. As far as prints are concerned the packages will look more like what you might get from your child's school. You know like (1) 8x10, (2) 5x7's, (4) 4x6's, (4) 3 1/2x5's and 1 set of wallets for each pose. I'm excited and hoping this will make it easier for people when ordering!