Happy 5th Birthday, Sweet Emma

Instead of a party for Emma's birthday, this year we took a trip to the beach. I don't even remember the last time I was at the beach at this time of the year, but it was so nice and peaceful down there. It was a very cold weekend, so we didn't even go for a walk out on the sand, but we did play on the back deck of the condo some, which the kids absolutely loved! :)

This was my sweet boy on the drive down to the beach... just chillin with the girls...



My friend, Heather, who I just LOVE made this awesome cake for Emma! It took her hours upon hours of meticulous work and I could not be more thankful. Emma was in love with the cake and I didn't want to cut it because it was so pretty, but we did and boy was it yummy!



This is such a sweet picture of Emma, I just love it. And the band-aid on her head is a result of her jumping on the bed and banging her head on the dresser. Maybe she'll listen now when I tell her not to jump on the bed? Probably not.

Blowing out her candles!

The next day was Friday! I got up at 5:30 am to meet Jessica and Austin to go to Wilmington, where baby August was born. This was such an eventful day and I loved every minute of it.. well, except the 20 minutes where I left to get something to eat, because Ms. Jessica was only at four centimeters and in that 20 minutes, she went from 4 cm to a fully delivered baby. Who in the crap does that????? Anyway, I sprinted into the room just as the doctor pulled the baby out. I was pretty depressed that I missed the main event, but I'm over it now, I still got lots of good pictures, I just missed the best part.... ugh....

Anyway, this is one of my favorite pictures from that day, I just think she looks so cute putting on her chapstick.

The next day was Saturday and it was a very, very lazy day. I was tired from the busy day before and these pictures were all taken with a very crappy point and shoot camera that has since been returned to Best Buy, so please excuse all the red eyes and not so great pictures, but they're of my babies, so I love them just the same...

I love the look on his little face here! He loves playing with trucks, which believe me is a relief, because he also REALLY loves playing with his sister's dress-up clothes, mainly her crowns, necklaces, and sunglasses, so the mere fact that he likes trucks and bugs is quite reassuring. :)

And Emma took this picture of me while playing with the crappy point and shoot and she insists that it's great. I just think I look really gross and bored. Whatever.

Emma in her new princess dress that Mimi got her...

And this is her new Dora gown, princess toboggan, and Snow White crown.. all together.. boy is she a fashionista, or what?!?

And here's Noah with the crown.. he really likes it..

Emma being silly..

Sassyfras again....

Love this.. LOL...

Sweet babies.. in their non-matching clothes with unbrushed hair.. I love it!

And I look hideous, but I love it nonetheless, because it's me and my birthday girl... FIVE years old..... crap, life flies....

Pool Days

We've spent the past few days playin it up at the pool. The pool is so much cleaner than the beach. This is nice. The sore eyes and floating ears from the pool water are unfortunate side effects, but we love it all the same.

I've been working on teaching Emma to swim. She started out really scared of the water, but as the hours have ticked by, she's become more comfortable and more willing to branch out and try new things. Such as jumping into the pool completely on her own, without someone holding her hand and being directly in her path for her to crash into. This is a nice development. I really thought she'd broken my fingers a few times and my wrist once.

Today, my cousin Carrie and her little boy, Aidan, came down to play with us for the day. We had such a blast with them. I was able, thanks to Carrie, to get some pictures of Emma jumping in, because, let's face it.. she still won't jump in completely on her own, someone has to be in the vicinity of her path for her to feel comfortable jumping into the big blue abyss... at least this is how she seems to view it.

I guess it's a good thing that she's got a certain amount of fear when it comes to the water. Well, I know it's a good thing. Like I've told Tony, though, it's a little hard for me to understand her fear of moving her arms and legs simultaneously and moving through the water. I never took swimming lessons, I've just always known how to swim. I'm going to find somewhere to get her some formal lessons when we return home, though, because she really is learning quickly and getting better and better at holding her breath.

Aidan was loving the throwing up in the air. What kid doesn't?

He was a little crabby toward the end, so he got the crab towel. :)

It's been pretty sad being at the beach without Tony. I guess because we had such a great ten days here while he was home. I've found myself being quite short tempered and easily irritable since he's been gone. I don't like this side of myself. I get so angry with myself and just generally feel a sense of self-loathing when I loose my temper with my kids. I feel like a horrible parent and an even more horrible human being. I'm ready to be a complete family again. I'm tired of being fractured. So, it's a great relief that my grandma was here this week with us, because she's really kept me company and helped me a lot with the kids and I'm so thankful for my friends who've come down to spend time with us to further keep my mind occupied and away from the darkness of loneliness.

So, on this note, I'm going to tell you another story of why I've hated myself this week.

While we're here, Noah and I share a room. Noah is a light sleeper a very light sleeper and since I am NOT a morning person, I've been turning my phone to silent at night to keep from him being awakened by some annoying telemarketer at 7am when I am SO NOT done sleeping. So, I never do this at home. NEVER. Noah's room is a mile away from mine at home and I'm really paranoid about missing an important call. You never know what may happen that someone may need to get up with me.

Anyway, all this blah, blah, blah... boils down to this... one of my favorite girls, Jessica.. you've heard about her on here lots and odds are, you've read her famous blog. Well, she was coming to see us with her kids yesterday. Have you guessed what happened yet? I forgot my phone was on silent and she came earlier than I was expecting, I guess.. she ouldn't find me (because we didn't plan well, I didn't give her directions the day before, nor did I give her the house phone number) AND she couldn't get my horrible friend butt on the phone, so after she drove ALL THE WAY out here, she turned around and drove home. OMY GOSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH~!!!

So, of course, I called her when she was half way back home. This is when my sorry self saw that she'd been trying to call me forever.

Have I said I hate myself?

WEll, not all the time, just when I do really stupid S**T like this!

So, anyway, I'm professing my horror to you, because she was nice enough not to blast me on her blog.

I still don't know why she doesn't hate me. She should. She totally should.

So, since she doesn't, I love her all the more and I'll probably never again put my phone on silent. It'll just be on vibrate from now on when Noah and I are in the same general sleeping vacinity.

Oh, and Jessica and her clan and Amber and her clan are coming to visit me tomorrow. Can you believe it? OH, the mercy I've been shown. And she'll be really happy with me for giving her blog some exposure. Go visit her. She'll love it. She loves being famous.

Today at the Beach

This blog's pictures are here thanks to my bestie, Amy. She went to Best Buy in Jacksonville today and got me a card reader so I wouldn't have to wait until I returned home to blog about my trip! She's wonderful! :) And what makes it even more wonderful is that I was so desperate to have a way to transfer my pictures onto my computer, that I left straight off the beach and was going somewhere to find a card reader. Straight off the beach.. still covered in sand, no make-up, and a hat. Wow. Desperation. Anyway, so instead, I just had to go to Amy's house to pick it up from her. This was awesome for more reasons than just the card reader, though. I had left my kids at home with my granny and mom, so we got to spend some quality, kid-free time together. This never happens. Never.

So, today, we were only on the beach for a short time because the little man was not all about it today. And I felt so sorry for Emma when we first got out there, because she didn't have any friends to play with or a daddy to play with.

However, after only a short time, Emma spotted these twin little girls, Megan and Jordan, just down the beach from us and she played with them the whole time we were out there. Thank goodness for nice people, because they truly didn't mind Emma joining their group.

There was also a fourth little girl playing with them, she just didn't make it into this picture.


So, while Emma was playing with the little girls, I started documenting Noah's pure cuteness.

He licks his little lips like this constantly when someone has something he wants to taste. The boy loves to eat!


He was being so sweet, but so not liking the sand..

Being sweet with his Mimi

Such a cool dude he is...


Chillin with his granny... I love this picture!!!

We had fun on the beach again this evening.. more to come later...

Back to the Beach

All week my mom's been planning to go to the beach for the weekend. She's been wanting us to go with her, but Noah's been sick and I just didn't know if it was a good idea for us to leave town with him still sick, away from his doctors. But, he woke up feeling much better this morning, so I started to consider going. And then, my mom came over on her way out and conned me into letting Emma go down there with her. Since I'm not particularly fond of being in a different zip code than my children, Noah and I are packing up and heading down there! :)

Also, I have a VERY busy weekend next weekend.... a wedding and two family shoots, so I figure this will be a nice way to relax before the hectic weekend.

So, I'll be posting lots of beach pictures, I'm sure over the next few days! Have a great weekend!

Ten Days {...at the beach}

Our beach trip went by way too fast. There was so much going on every single day. It was such a great time! We got there Friday, May 1st and Johnny and Maura (Tony's brother and his fiance) got there just minutes after we did. They spent the whole weekend with us and we really had a great time together! Friday night, I did Johnny and Maura's engagement pictures. Here's one of them and the rest of them (well, mostly the rest) are posted on my photography blog.

Saturday was too chilly to stay out on the beach, so instead, we just hung out with Johnny and Maura, then around five, Maura and I headed out to find a great spot and take her bridal portraits. I had so much fun doing them and it was quite stressful at the same time. Something happened to my BEST lens while we were out shooting and I almost had a breakdown. I switched to a different lens and everything was fine, and then when we returned home, it was working fine. It was extremely muggy in the location we chose and I'm thinking that had something to do with my lens malfunctioning? I don't know, but it really freaked me out a little. Oh, and Maura's bridals are beautiful, but I can't share them until after the wedding, because Johnny would surely sneak on for a peek. ;)

And Saturday night, Johnny cooked us an amazing meal of shrimp, salmon, chicken, and rice pilaf. It was really great. Here's Uncle Johnny and (soon to be) Aunt Maura with Noah and Emma...

Sunday was GORGEOUS!!! We spent the whole day on the beach! There was a group of kite boarders out, because it was super windy and I took about two hundred pictures of them doing their thing. I'm pretty sure they thought I worked for the paper or something, because one of them kept showing off right in front of me and smiling for my camera. It was so funny! :)

But what was hands down the funniest thing ever was this... When we first got onto the beach, the wind was blowing SO HARD that Emma's beach ball took off at top speed down the beach. It was hilarious!!! Tony chased it and chased it and chased it until we could no longer see him at all. MILES he ran down the beach chasing this $1 beach ball!!! hahahahahaha.... Okay, here's a picture of him returning from his impromptu run...

And here's my most precious little love muffin in his beach get-up...

Omgosh, I could eat him... how many times have I told you that???

And Tony and Emma spent the whole day building a sand castle... This girl loves the beach so much. She would stay out from sun up to sun down every day if we would let her. Such a sweetheart...

Building sand castles is such hard work...

Then, Monday we headed to Wilmington because #1... I really wanted to eat at The Waffle House and the closest one is 30 minutes away in Wilmington. Since we were driving all the day there, we thought... Hey! Maybe we'll head over to Fort Fisher and go to the Aquarium. So, that's what we did and somehow, we passed the road to the Aquarium and suddenly were upon a ferry. We had no idea where this ferry went, but we knew Emma would LOVE it! And as chance would have it, the ferry was leaving like 30 seconds from the time we pulled, up so we paid the $5 fee and onto the ferry we went.. the last car! :) That's when we found out this was the ferry to Southport. We didn't know what that was or where that was, but that was where we were going!

When we first got out of our car, this cool blackbird was on the back netting of the boat! He was so cool! See how he's looking at me?!? I quit taking his picture, because I thought he might attack me if I kept snapping..

Here's Noah and Daddy on the boat.... Let me tell you a funny story about this picture... the next night was cinco de mayo... Tony and I made strawberry margaritas... you'll read about that in a minute... and during the drinking of the margaritas, we started looking at these pictures from the day before... well, you know.. I had a little margarita in me, so I photoshopped Noah's hair onto Tony's head... pahahahahahahahaa!!! Okay... you had to be there, but seriously, we were close to peeing on ourselves after I did that... oh, and plus, I made his teeth like super duper glowing white and I made his skin look like a mask. It was the funniest crap EVER!!!! I wish I woulda saved it, but the funnier I made him look, the less and less funny he thought it was, so to save the marriage, I deleted the photo.. ;) However, you can picture it and you KNOW it's funny!

Tony took this of me and my babies. Hair's a little messy, my hand's over Emma's head like a claw and Noah's not looking, but other than that... it's perfect, dontcha think? Oh, and my boobs are hanging out. Sorry for that. ;)

Pretty, pretty princess on the ferry. She thought it was the coolest thing ever. That was the point. We knew she would think it was the coolest thing ever.


Just a pretty bird in the water by the boat.. probably hoping we would throw him some food... we didn't.

And Southport is the coolest little town EVER!!!! Pretty much no chain stores there, it's all little mom and pop stores. Loved it so much!! And THIS one was my VERY favorite!
Emma got to see her favorite old man in the world. Emma's one of those kids that sings Christmas Carols year round.. every day... loves Santa.. talks about him daily..
The Christmas House had a cool gazebo attached to it that had this cool train going around the top of it.. Emma loved it..

My fam-a-lam..

And here's Cinco De Mayo... do you know we bought that blender just so we could make strawberry margaritas? It's fabulous too, it's like a bar blender. Makes super smooth, perfect drinks. Oh, and it also does pancake batter quite well. I used it for that Thursday morning...

Tony said I make the BEST margaritas. I do. You should come over and try them sometime.

Emma's margarita was VERY virgin. Please refrain from calling dss. Thanks.

Noah wanted some of the action, but instead he got a bottle of milk and went to bed.
Here's WEdnesday morning. We were determined to find that Aquarium and boy did we!
I do not know how we missed the aquarium sign. It was so blatantly obvious. The only thing I can think is that God knew we were just supposed to take the ferry to Southport on Monday, so he temporarily made the sign invisible? It could totally happen. Right?

Okay, so this is a cool, pretty duck in a pond at the start of our aquarium visit.

Emma was so stinkin happy to be here. She loved every second of it.

This is at the part of the aquarium where you can touch the shell fish and anemones. I'm pretty sure this guy had a crush on Tony. Look how he's looking at him. Freaky. And Emma's holding a conch of some sort...

Noah very much wanted to be a part of this touching action. He was very happy when we let hiim out of the confines of his stroller and allowed him to splash in the water.

Emma the crab

Such a little daredevil he is!!! Emma was absolutely terrified of this alligator! Noah.. no way! He could not wait to get as close as possible. By the way, this guy's a statue in case you're questioning my parenting at the moment...

Then when she saw her brother's enthusiasm, she got a little closer, but still... not too close...
Thursday, my dad and brother came down and they stayed with us until Sunday. It was nice to have them. They fished most of the time so we didn't really see a whole lot of them, but still, they were there and we enjoyed them. Here's my dad and Noah having a conversation on the beach on Saturday.
I have a few more pictures I'm going to upload and share with you, but for the moment, this is it! :) Sorry it took me so long to get these up. The internet service at the beach is horribly sucky, so I just did not have the patience to wait thirty minutes for five pictures to upload down there. I'll share more with you later. :)


p.s. Yes, Jessica, I meant to say Holy Crow below. Everyone says Holy Cow and somewhere, sometime I heard Holy Crow and decided I liked it, so now it's mine. You can borrow it if you'd like. ;)