I know that I probably should have done this post first rather than posting up the other projects showing off our new baby girl, Reagan, but I wanted to make sure that I had the birth announcements mailed off to the friends and family before I put it out there on the web. It also just works out that tomorrow Miss Rae is 1 month old.

I knew early into the pregnancy that the birth announcement I wanted would involve chalkboard lettering. So after numerous google searches for ideas and inspiration, I came up with an announcement that I am in love with.


I had a lot of fun creating this announcement in Photoshop. Playing with different shapes and what not to achieve the right look.

Much thanks to my friend, Leilani Mitchell, for taking such stinking adorable pictures. If you're in the NoVA area, I so recommend her! You can check out her blog {HERE}.

So a week ago, the boys and I found out that baby #3 is a bouncing baby GIRL!!!!

I will say that we're all thrilled. Harrison was not thrilled at first, but only because he didn't realize that he could be a big brother to a baby sister. Once he figured that out, he was good. Although he still won't call baby girl by her name. Its just Baby.

Dev was over the moon, because he's said the entire time that she was a girl. Steve is excited for the change of pace, and I was super happy, which then turned to panic. What the heck do you do with a girl!?!?! I mean, I know I'm a girl, but I've got boys down pat. Boys are easy. Girls are scary and unknown. My fear and trepidation lasted exactly for one evening and then I was over it.

Planning started the next day! I think I'm going to do a more in depth post on just what her room will be like, since I've got most of it planned and sketched out. My notebook looks like a bipolar person owns it. Some of it is super technical with drawings and measurements and well put together lists for what needs to happen, and then other pages have random thoughts scrawled in all directions. Oh well. Its how I work. :)

I did happen to find some terrific fabric at Hancock this last weekend, so the colors are set. I'm even excited that Harrison picked out all the colors for her room. The boy did good.

So anyways, here's a pic of our new baby girl, Reagan.

Here's a sneak peak of what Harrison picked out. There's no pink, but that's ok. I like that he included both his and Dev's favorite colors.

So 2 weeks ago, Dev saw a guinea pig. It was love at first sight apparently. So for the next week he studied and readied himself for pet ownership. He approached us with a well thought out request and passed all of our tests.

He's also gotten quite capable with said new pets. He takes care of them. I help here and there, but only with such things as refilling the hay wheel and figuring out why the water bottle won't stop leaking (fur was the culprit last time).

Here are our new friends. Yep there are 2 because H wanted one, and he's super cute. :)
 Harrison's guinea pig is named Bee. He also named Mom's fish, Mouse. He seems fascinated with naming animals with other animal names. Dev's is named Pika, who is not quite as docile as he would have had us thought. :)

 Here are the boys with their pets! Aren't they all so cute? Well I think so. :)

Maybe one of these days I'll get around to taking pictures of their new room set up.

Have a great day guys!

Do you know that its been two years since we had family portraits? I know. I'm terrible.

I did rectify that this year though! One of my friends is a absolutely wonderfully talented photographer and she did our portraits this year! Thank you so much Leilani! Leilani's site is Leilani Photography and if you're in the Northern Virginia area then you should definitely give her a call!

I love how all of our pictures came out, and what's better we got to visit my old stomping grounds. So here are some of the wonderful shots! Some of these shots Leilani added artistic touches to and some  of them I did. The shots I added some photoshop actions to are the first 4.



 These pictures are all now hanging on my gallery wall. I have the 3 of the boys in a collage, and I love that they're all against that old wooden door.

 I love this picture of the hubs and I. We don't have many pictures of us together, and being as how this month (actually Dec. 4th) is the 10th anniversary of when we got engaged, I figured having more than 4 shots of us together is probably something that needs to be rectified.
There are so many train tracks around where we live, and the boys absolutely love when the trains come through, so its pretty awesome that we were able to get this shot.

Because Harrison was done. Here's what he thought was more fun than having pictures taken with his family.

Thanks again to Leilani for taking our pictures!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful thanksgiving.

The table is set, the pie is done and soon we'll be sitting down to a wonderful rack of ribs with the family.

Love you all!

Today was a wonderful day!

School was back in session!!!!!!!!!!  I know I was more excited about this fact than Devlin was. In fact, he told me this morning that he didn't want to go to school. Too bad!!!!!

This Momma needs a return to normalcy and that includes my big guy going back to school, so I can then head off to the gym with the small fry and I can get some me time.

Being as it was spring break last week, not much got done. I still haven't taken pictures of what I have gotten done, and well, at least that gives me stuff to post about tomorrow.

Today, I'll share some pictures from Easter and spring break.

Random afternoon watching Disney Channel. Too cute a pose not to snap.

Easter morning with his new shades.

Everybody got new shades from the Bunny-Man!

In their Easter best! Thanks to my mom for making their adorable outfits!

So that's a small view of our fun adventures last  week. Tomorrow I'll bust the camera out and show off some of what  I have gotten done. :)

At 12:01 AM I was going into labor - 6 years ago.

It was my due date, but I didn't think I'd actually be giving birth. It was another false labor, just like the other 4 or 5 times. They send me home around 3:30 or 4. I'm effaced enough but not dilated enough.

They tell me to get some sleep and go to my OB in the AM. Sleep eludes me. I finally give up around 6.

I waddle out to our living room and sit in my favorite chair. I watch the sun rise. My contractions are getting worse, but I don't want to wake anyone. It was a long night for them too. If I only knew.

18 hours of labor is what I was in. You, big guy, decided to grace us with your presence at 6:30 on the dot.

Happy 6th Birthday D!

I can't believe how you've grown.





Happy Birthday Big Guy! We love you so much and we're so blessed to have you in our lives.

Its been such a busy few weeks around here.

The hubs went away on business, the kids came down with pneumonia, then Dev had this whole virus appendix thing, but hopefully things are starting to settle down. Hopefully.

Dev is back at school today. We got discharged from the hospital yesterday evening, and after an early doc appointment this morning, Devlin was giving a mostly clean bill of health. He has to stay hydrated or else his tummy will start hurting again, but other than that we just have to let time heal his poor little belly.

Harrison and Dev are now both pneumonia free, but H may have another infection, caused by the antibiotics from his pneumonia, so we're waiting on more test results for him.

Steve has recovered, mostly, from his illness, and thankfully - I AM NOT SICK!

I got a lot of stuff done before Halloween that I wasn't able  to share with you guys, but I'm going to now!



 Here are my guys rocking their Halloween shirts! Dev's just has a swarm of bats on it, coming up from the left bottom corner and then swooping up. Harrison's is the skeleton with the glitterfied heart. Don't they look cute!?
Here are all my guys during our pumpkin carving session. Dev was supposed to scoop guts, but decided that he did not like pumpkin guts, so the camera got put down and I had to do it. :)

Now on to our costumes!
 Its Mario and Luigi! Aren't they adorable?!


We got about an hour's worth of trick or treating in before Dev was puking again, but they did get some candy. So all was not lost. :) The mustaches even made it for most of the time. Good effect of the mustaches? The whole thing was  sticky so it kind of tape their mouths shut. :) Not an intended side effect, but the boys did enjoy wearing them. :)
Ok, well that's all I've got for today. Tomorrow I'll be sharing a quick and easy graphic pillow with you guys!

See ya later!

What would be a vacation without some pictures?

Here are 10 of my favorite snap shots from our vacation to OBX last week. As most of you know Irene tore through and really left some people and businesses hurting, but our amazing rental company, Sun Realty, managed to move us from our original condo to another condo and didn't charge us any extra for the upgrade and we got an extra day. Such a wonderful company!

So this was the boy's first BEACH vacation. We were so excited. I used to vacation down in OBX every year until I was 18 or so, because my grandparents owned a vacation home down there. Stephen and I tried to honeymoon there in 2003, but Isabel had other ideas. We did make it down for our first anniversary though. :)

There are so many good memories associated with the OBX that I wanted to share them with the boys, so here are the pictures. They're in no particular order either. :)


These pictures were at the Wright Brothers Memorial. Harrison and Steve got to spend more time there, because I had to take Devlin to the Outer Banks Hospital, because we thought his pinky was broken after a gust of wind slammed the car door shut on his hand, but thankfully the pinky was not broken, just very badly bruised. The bruise did not stop him from enjoying the park though.

Here is the view of the Atlantic from the top of the hill at the Wright Brothers Memorial. Love the salty sea air and the breeze we had all week, but I'll tell you what - it did nothing for my very curly hair. :)


This was taken from the car while leaving the waterfront of Manteo. This boat is usually about 50 yards back in the parking lot of one of the stores. There was so much damage in this section of town. Only two businesses were open on Tuesday after the hurricane, and both were restaurants. We ate at  the Full Moon Cafe where I had the best sandwich of the week. Yay for French Dips!


 Here's Harrison at the NC Aquarium on Roanoke Island. I don't think he's too sure about the alligator behind him. :) The aquarium had a really nice exhibit on Sea Turtles that the boys enjoyed. It was really interactive and they had fun toting their 'turtles' around for examination and recovery.

 We saw this little guy at the entrance to the Queen's Rose Garden at the Elizabethan Gardens. Love all his colors!

 This was also taken at the Elizabethan Gardens. They had a fun Garden Detective activity for the kids to do, which Devlin really enjoyed. There is also an ancient living oak in the garden that was alive when the first settlers arrived which would make it over 400 years old.

 This is by far the best  picture of the trip! We went on a Dolphin Tour and during the trip Harrison came up behind Devlin and hugged him and rested his head on his shoulders. They stayed like this for a few minutes.

 Here's one of the dolphins we saw! We saw a ton of them, including a new one that was just born in May. Baby dolphins are more adorable than full grown dolphins. We took our tour through Kitty Hawk Kites, which experienced a lot of damage in their store in Manteo (it had to be gutted) and at their store just before the causeway to Roanoke Island  from Nags Head. The dock was destroyed, but they were very courteous and went with the flow and had all of the the tour customers drive across the causeway to the public boat launch on Roanoke Island. They were even good-natured when Harrison went nuclear because he was tired. :) Good thing the motion of the boat put him to sleep pretty quickly.

And finally, one of our only beach pictures! Harrison was chilling up with Stephen on the dunes, while Dev played in the surf and tried to convince me to roll around with him. That did not happen, but Devlin had a blast taunting the ocean, and then the ocean tumbled him up the beach and stole his sunglasses. Dev learned that it might not be a good idea to taunt something so much larger than you, but that didn't stop him from playing in the waves and surf. :) Harrison was a little nervous of the waves, but as long as he was on our laps he pretty cool with the water coming up and getting us every so often.

I'm sad that our vacation is over, but oh so happy to be sleeping in my own bed again!

See you guys tomorrow!