Monday, June 17, 2013

Mother's Day Tea

This has been probably my favorite part of Jacob attending St. Timothy's preschool.  The Mother's Day Tea they do every year.  It never fails to bring tears to my eyes (happy tears) watching all the kids sing songs about their moms.  Even as I type I get a little teary.  It's just the sweetest thing ever!

This year the Mother's Day Tea fell on Jacob's birthday, so we ended up celebrating his birthday with his class the following week.  My mom was able to go with us, so it was extra special for me and for Jacob.  I'm excited to see what his new school will do to celebrate Mother's Day next year.

Here are a few photos from the day ....


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Henry and Gee waiting for the show to start. 

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Here they are singing.  I loved every minute of it!

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Jacob's entire class and then him with a few of his buddies.

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And, last Jacob with both teachers.  They were absolutely wonderful!  We're gonna miss them next year for sure. 

Thursday, June 13, 2013

March Digi Scrapping & Therapy?

After losing my sister back in October I've been trying to keep myself super busy.  The kids keep me plenty busy, but I've been looking for new hobbies (which is why I've been away from my blog for some long) in which to throw myself.  My photography hobby (hopefully turned business soon) is one of them.  It has kept me SUPER busy, and therefore I don't think about missing Ashlee as much.  I should add that I still miss her terribly and think about her every single day, I just don't think about how much I miss her as often since I'm so busy.  Make sense? lol  Anyway, digital scrapbooking has been my other hobby I've recently taken up and it has kind of consumed all my free time (which isn't much).

As I mentioned above, I've FINALLY learned how to use the Photoshop program I've had installed on my computer for the past THREE years.  How sad is that, that it took me that long to figure it out?? Well, thanks to quite a few You Tube videos, I finally saw what my friend, Erin, had been talking about ... "layers, layers, layers".  And, again, thanks to Erin, I joined an amazing digital scrapbooking forum called Scrap Takeout where I've been learning things here and there, and getting some amazing inspiration from other creative minds!

Here is what I was up to in March (when I learned how to scrap) ... you will notice as I start posting more and more layouts here that they are improving, but ya know ... Rome wasn't built in a day people.  :)


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Thanks for looking!  I'll be posting April's layouts soon! :)

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Quick update ...

I have been SO busy lately with other commitments and ventures that I have totally been slacking on the blog front!  Maybe no one noticed, but I need to get back in to it if for nothing more than to continue documenting our life as a family.  It's only been a two month hiatus, but a lot has happened.  I'll make separate posts for each, but real quickly here is an overview of what we've been up to.

Heather (me) has joined a super fun digital scrapbooking forum called Scrap Takeout.  I absolutely love it there!  I've also joined the praise team there and one of the creative teams, so this alone keeps me pretty busy.  I'll be making separate posts to show off the pages I've made lately.  I will say that in the past two months I've finally managed to get Jacob's first scrapbook made and ordered, so I'm pretty excited about that!  I've also, and this is the biggie, started putting together a photography portfolio in hopes of starting my business this fall once Jacob is in school full-time.  Here is a link to my Facebook page: Photos by Heather Z.  I also recently bought the URL for my website and started working on that, but that's going to be a huge work in progress ... it's not published yet or anything, but once it is I will post a link here for that as well.  :)  Anyway, I've been doing complimentary sessions as kind of a training program for me to learn more about the right lighting, poses and how I want to actually RUN my business.  There are a lot of logistics I didn't really think about before hand.  haha  Plus, I don't want to take anyone's money until a) I feel confident with my work and b) I am a legal company that will pay taxes at the end of the year.  The last thing I need is to get a hefty fine for taking money and not paying taxes on it!  So, before I start charging I also need to go get a tax id number.

John has been working a lot, as usual.  Thank goodness for him.  He supports our family financially, but also supports my dream of being a photographer.  He's been watching the kids every weekend while I go out on photo shoots and he's been supportive of me trying to balance my work for his company as well as editing photos during the week. It's been rough, but he's always been my rock and my number one fan.  He finally got his motorcycle back from the shop and while I'm not a huge fan of him riding it, I know it's his hobby and it's fun for him.  I don't want to take that away from him, so I just don't say much.  I just always say a silent prayer when he goes out for a ride.  Anyway, he's happy that warmer weather is finally here, so he can go out riding.  Now if the weathermen could just get it right as to whether it's going to rain or not!

Jacob turned five at the beginning of May!  Hard to believe my sweet little 4 lb-er is now a healthy, happy, thriving five year old!  I'll have another post about his birthday and all about him turning five at a later time. :) At the end of May he graduated from preschool!  Crazy!!  He'll be starting Kindergarten in the fall and I'm just not sure I'm ready for it, but he sure is.  It's all he talks about!

And, our little Henry is well .. still Henry!  lol  He's still my sweet little baby even though he's talking more.  He's talking in full sentences (but it's still hard to understand a lot of what he says) and really knows what he wants.  The terrible twos are in full swing now, but I still don't think he's as hard as Jacob was/is.  Either he's just NOT as hard or it's because he's my second child and I know better how to deal with the tantrums, etc., now because he has just seemed so much easier than his brother.  I'm looking forward to spending some one-on-one time with his this fall when Jacob's in school full-time, but I know the following year when he starts preschool is going to be SO hard on me.