The Unparty

For my son's first and second birthday we threw him a party complete with decorations, pizza, cutsie cakes, and lots of people. They were fun and I plan on doing it again when our baby turns one in 6 months. However one thing I don't want is for my kiddos to expect some elaborate celebration that gets bigger each year. My plan (which is always subject to change) is to have a party about every other year. So this year we kept it simple, but still had a great time.

First of all here is a photo of the results of our Mickey Mouse waffles that I talked about yesterday

That evening we went to Grapevine Mills Mall and piled into this little train which I had told him a long time ago that he could ride on his birthday.

Then our little group went to the Rain Forest Cafe where we had dinner and he opened ONE present. Don't pity him he has gotten PLENTY of gifts, but he only got one for this occasion.

Then the servers came out to sing and we ate this volcano cake.

At the end of our meal this guy made him a fun elephant balloon.

And bada bing bada boom. It was that simple. No major planning or RSVPing, just a nice meal at the mall to celebrate 3 years of the sweetest little boy I know!

What about you? Do you have big parties every year or do you alternate? Or maybe you always just celebrate as a family?

The unparty works for me and is linked up with Works For Me Wednesdays over at We Are That Family.


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The Baby Wants A Beer

My son just turned 3 over the weekend. Here he is on the morning of his birthday helping me make Mickey Mouse Waffles.

I look back at the past year and having a two year old was certainly challenging, but he would always say the cutest things to make up for the hard times. Here are 10 of my favorite saying from Z-


1. "I was louding for you. Did you hear me?" (meaning he was yelling)

2. "I want Bud Light" (He used to call Buzz Light Year, Buzz Light, only he mispronounced it)

3. "I stopped screaming see" (as he would point inside his mouth)

4. I said "Z you melt my heart" and he said "no your hearts right there" and points to this hanging on the wall


5. "I don’t want style and I don’t want style on my head" (in regards to hair gel)

6. I am waiting for the Lion King (His response when a women asked if He was waiting for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords)

7. "SJ wants a beer" (he pronounces bear as beer. When he thought the baby wanted a teddy bear it sounds like something else)

8. When he was trying to eat my brownie I said "No that's mommy's" and he responds "No, that’s chocolate"

9. "The cloud turn the light off" (When the room got darker because of a cloud blocking the natural light)

10. " I'm dissapointed! I am SO dissa really pointed" (I guess he thinks disappointed is two words?)

There are so many others and I wish I could remember them all. Who knows what his newfound 3 year old vocabulary will bring. I am sure it will be fun!

This post is linked to Oh Amanda's Top Ten Tuesday.

Labor Day Link Ups

Birth is supposed to be scary, gross, and nasty right? Well, that is what society tells us and that is why so many people feel that way. However there are plenty of women AND men who appreciate the joy and beauty of the miracle of childbirth. Amy at amyfinerthings just had her 4th baby 3 days ago and is celebrating labor day by hosting a labor day link up where those of us birth junkies (as my friend Hannah calls it) get to share and read stories about birth!

Some of you have read the story about how my little baby girl came into the world 6 months ago.

However, many of you are maybe newer readers and never heard about the birth center delivery with my first baby.

Both times I had a photographer at my birth. I know this may sound weird especially if you are considering the first sentence of this post, but being a photographer myself it felt totally natural to have the experience documented through the art of photography. Both babies had songs that I felt like the Lord had given me before I even knew their gender. I coordinated the photos of my pregnancy and birth to these songs and both of videos can be seen at the links posted above. I cherish these videos and look forward to doing one with each of my children.

I would encourage you to check out the labor day link ups if you are into that sort of thing. It's actually a very timely post for me because it was on labor day 3 years ago that I went into the family birth services wondering if this was it and that was the night I became a mom.

End Call

This week I've been writing about changing with the times. My mom was holding an imaginary phone call with my toddler once. At the end of the conversation she says bye and she took her outstretched thumb and pinky and hung up the imaginary receiver. My son however said BYE and pushed a button on his imaginary phone. It was intriguing to see the difference between someone born in 1959 and 2007. My son may never “hang up” a phone in the literal sense because these days we just push end call. Times change.

I like what Oh Amanda had to say about blogs vs. magazines. We get information so much quicker online than if it were in print. I read The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging and Chapter 7, "How The Blogoshpere Is Remaking The Media" discusses a similar comparison between blogging and newspapers. Blogging is the new magazine, newspaper, baby book, cook book, journal (should I keep going?)

Speaking of blogging here are a few links I’ve stumbled upon recently.

First of all I started Twitter as a part of this whole changing with the times theme. Twitter and Tweeting may sound really cute, but don't let the name fool you, Twitter is a beast. Here are a couple articles written by Musings of a House Wife that I am hoping will help me tackle the beast, Twitter For Dummies and, 7 Ways to be Worth Following on Twitter

I also have been following From Texas To Ethiopia who has been waiting 2 years to get a baby girl from Africa and finally has custody and is back at home with her now! Here is the post about their first meeting.

Last but not least I LOVED this post that my friend Mama The Reader did about the feminist mother.

Check out more great links at It's Come 2 This, Saturday Stumbles.

Video Chat

It's another part of our society today that feels like a scene from of the Jetsons. Video chats are becoming a standard form of communication especially over long distances. For some people it's just a cool computer feature, but as someone who has loved ones all over the country it's so much more. It has brought my family together when we wouldn't have been able to be otherwise. When I found out we were pregnant with our first child we planned a video conference for my dad's birthday. Then we surprised my dad with a special "birthday rap" which at the end revealed that they were going to be grandparents! My brother and sister in Atlanta were in one frame, the rest of my family in Kentucky was in another and of course we were in Dallas, but everyone got to hear the news together and we got to see their reactions. It was a moment I will never forget.

Since my family is in Kentucky sometimes the kids and I will travel and skype with J while we are away.

This was really early in the morning. J had some major bed head. He would kill me if he knew I posted this. Good thing he doesn't read my blog.


I do have some of our video conferences from the past few years recorded, but nothing that wouldn't bore you to death so instead I will just leave you with a video we did using the Apple photo booth a few months ago. It will melt your heart.

Skype and Web Cams may not be one of the FINER things in life, but getting to see the ones you love even though they are far away is. Check out Amys finer things for more of what matters most!

My Tweeting Adventure

MySpace was the first social network I had ever heard of. I remember the day a friend of mine was doing his best to explain what it was and talk my husband and I into signing up. I was reluctant. At first I wouldn't even post my own photo because I was chicken, so naturally I used a photo of a chicken for my profile pic. Granted I worked on a farm at the time so this was a chicken I knew personally. Pretty quickly the whole form of communication picked and everyone was doing it. I had hundreds of "friends" and was pretty obsessed. Then all my friends started getting into Facebook. Once again I was reluctant. Why would I want to start up on a new site when this one has done a perfectly sufficient job at taking over my life. Eventually it only made sense to switch over to where my friends and family were and still are. I personally don't know many twitterers, but it seems to be the bloggy thing to do. I am not really ready to fully submerse myself into tweeting, but I did start an account yesterday and started following some of my favorite worship artist and this morning I posted my first tweet. I wanted to talk about how when I went to sleep last night I had the bed to myself and by the morning I was sharing it with my entire family of four. Of course it that was too many characters so I had to rewrite it.
The way I see it I have nothing to loose, it's like a nose ring (you can always take it out if you decide you don't like it). If nothing else I can get some great deals by following and tweeting about some of my favorite places. Who knows I may turn into a full blown tweety bird, and just about the time I finally get into it everyone will switch over to flutter.

This my latest adventure. Check out Alicia's Homemaking for other Try New Adventure Thursday posts!

What Is Wrong With This Picture?

This week I am talking about changing with the times. Photoshop for example is a buzz word that has gone from a specific professional photo editing software to being a word synonymous with retouching photos. Ten years ago we all knew that magazines were airbrushed, but that was about the extent of it, this practice rarely entered into the family photo album. Today however it is a total different story. I am not just coming at this from a photographers stand point I hear moms talk about it all the time. The joys of stretching a photo to look thinner or using the clone stamp to remove your kids pizza stains, all miraculously done from your own home computer. But when does is stop?

Take these photos for example.


They look like your everyday snapshots right?

But they've been altered

Z had chocolate on his face and SJ's skin had some red spots and scratches that I removed.

These photos were edited for the purpose of this illustration. If you looked at the photos posted on my Facebook or here on this blog you will see the latter. When I downloaded both of these photos (at separate times) I was tempted to touch up the photos, but I didn't. I want to remember the way things were not what I deem ideal in my mind.

Let me just say before I sound hypocritical that I do color correction, brightness, and things like that. Or for a professional print I am certainly not opposed to removing a bug bite or pimple. If I am sending out copies of a photo shoot I did of my son and he had a snotty nose I might adjust it because I want them to see him as he normally looks, not the temporary distraction due to a simple cold. On the other hand sometimes my kids do have colds and when the future generation looks back at their family ancestry they will say "yep, they had colds too" or maybe they say "Look great great grandma Natalie always had something stuck in her teeth. What a hoot!" For the most part I think they will just notice that we looked like we loved each other and that we had a lot of fun. That means bug bites, chocolate smudges, scratches, snotty noses and all, but hopefully not all at once.