Happy Halloween!

I sure do hope that everyone has an awesome Halloween today and tonight! Lucy kind of got screwed this year and she is wearing her flamingo costume from last year. It is so cute and she didn't do any trick or treating in it last year, so really no one saw it. I will post pictures of that tomorrow. She practiced the idea of trick or treating last night and as soon as she saw the candy, she got it. Trust me, this girl is going to be beside herself when she realizes that all of our neighbors have candy for her. Here are some pictures from her test run of trick or treating. By the way, PLEASE go HERE and leave a comment saying that you think that the pink flamingo named Lucy should win!! Consider this a little hint as to what my secret news may be. Subtle, huh? Anyway, here is the flamingo in all her glory. Now, go vote for us!!




About the new blog and password, again, don't worry, I still haven't sent out the address or password. I am waiting a bit longer. Shouldn't be too long though. I have LOVED some of the guesses as to our surprise. I wish that it was that we won the lottery! I got a good laugh over the reality show or Lucy being in a movie guesses. Just so you know, years ago I did try out for Amazing Race with my friend Liz. I am still shocked that we didn't get chosen. Our video was awesome. Whatever, their loss.

I got some really adorable pictures of Lucy today. She has always loved playing in my shoes. I have written before how she is more than capable of getting on a pair of my super high heels, clunk around in them, bring them back to the closet, and change into a new pair - all with no assistance. Today I got some pictures of her playing. Have you seen the pictures Brad Pitt took of Angelina in W? My favorite is the one of Angelina and Zahara both in heels. Such a precious picture.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.





No one said getting up in these things was easy....





And these are from this morning at the park. I just love this first one.

Um, Wow.

Okay, so I am a little overwhelmed by the requests for the password. I am not positive about how to handle it all. Don't worry, I have not sent it to anyone yet. In fact, I don't even have a second blog started yet. My plan is to get it up with at least one post this week. I can make no promises, but those are my intentions. So, hopefully I can get the password out this week sometime. But for a little fun while I procrastinate getting the site up, what is your guess about my big news? I am interested in hearing and bet that I know what most of you will say. My guess is that most of you are wrong!! So, that mixes things up a bit, huh? If you know my news, zip it up. It will be out of the bag soon enough, password or no password.

I am feeling overwhelmed in many aspects of my life at the moment. It will all calm down, but in the meantime, I am just feeling stressed out. I am not sleeping well again. I feel like there are not enough hours in the day, but then I find myself not getting the things done that need to be done when I have the time. Do you know the feeling? I look back on a lot of my days and think of what I SHOULD have done. Get it together, Kelly!

One of the exciting things going on that is not a secret is that I am going to really pursue getting into the photography business. I still lack the confidence to really say that I am going to do this, but I am getting better. I find that I am normally embarrassed to say that I am doing this because I just don't think that I am there yet. I still have so much to learn and figure out. It is definitely a learning process. Some day I hope to be really, really good. But I have to start somewhere, so I am getting the courage to take the next step. I have a bunch of friends with kids here, so I have summoned them to be my guinea pigs and luckily, they are all more than thrilled to aid in my learning of how to work with other people's kids instead of only my beautiful little subject. I have worked with two of the families so far and both sessions have gone so well. I am just so excited to get into this and think that it would be the most amazing job - I love taking pictures and can work my own schedule. Lucy will normally be able to be home with Justin when I would be out working, so her little life will not really be affected, which is VERY important to me. But, I need your help. Can anyone think of a good name for my business? My goal is to capture natural, fun photos where the child or family's personality really shines through. I want to photograph what feels like a normal day for the child. So, going on that, any name suggestions? I like A Day in the Life (sticking with the Beatles theme here). Justin likes this name as well. Thoughts? Here are a few of my favorite pictures of some of Lucy's adorable little friends. She really has the cutest little friends, so my job is fairly easy. I have more sessions coming up, so stay tuned to hear more about this. But don't forget to give name suggestions.

I really love this picture. I love the light in her eyes and the sweet, precious look on her face. I am really proud of this one.



For some reason I really love this picture. The focus is on the baby, and sweet Hannah is just so joyful in the background. You can see that the baby would love for this to be over and Hannah is smiling so big at her momma and is clearly thinking, "Hey, I will smile all day for a few fruit snacks!" The girls did so well, but let me tell you, getting an almost 2 year old and a 2.5 month old in the same picture, looking natural is not any easy task. This is the kind of stuff that I will only learn with time.




And this is my favorite of Hannah. She kept asking me where Lucy was. Luckily, she was more than thrilled to just look at a few pictures of her that I had on my camera.


And from my very first session!! The first one is definitely my favorite. I just love it.







I don't even have any new pictures of Lucy Goose. Sorry grandparents!!

Princess Party

*Be sure and read the last paragraph if you normally just skim or look at pictures because there is some important stuff there*

Lucy attended Princess Anna's birthday party this past weekend. It was so cute. The girls were to come dressed in princess garb. I just kind of assumed that Lucy would not be that interested in dressing up because she is not that into it. She has started to like it a lot more, but she only dresses up when it is 100% her idea. However, she got really into it when I asked her if she wanted to dress up for Anna's party. She wore 2 pink skirts, fairy wings, a tiara, and of course, her high heels. Anna looked so adorable. I am going to give props to Mandy for making such a cute outfit for her. She just loved being a princess.

Lucy is always really shy/clingy to me at birthday parties. However, once the cake comes out, she is not shy anymore and even when she is done with the cake, then she is fine. She was very hesitant to jump in the bounce house before the cake, but afterwards she would go right in on her own and bounced away. I seriously believe that she is so concerned at birthday parties that she may somehow miss out on the cake that she can't relax until she knows she gets her piece. I am not kidding. My girl loves her some cake. So does her momma! Oh yeah, and we were trying to bride Lucy, Anna, and Maile (all adopted from VN) to sit in the grass to take a picture of them together. It was hilarious because they did sit next to each other, but all three just scowled their biggest scowls. Mandy and I had to keep telling Lucy and Anna that they could have cake when everybody got there. Once we gave up on the picture, Lucy jumped in my arms and said, "Everybody here momma." She was ready for that cake.

Remember how I have said that Lucy just loves Anna's brother, Louis? Well, she had kind of been giving him the cold shoulder lately but fell back in love with him at the party. She would follow him around and whenever she couldn't see him, she would turn to me and say, "Where Louis momma?" He is so good with her, so luckily he didn't seem to mind. Speaking of boys, I got an interesting report when I picked Lucy up from school today. Her teachers told me that she had her best day yet. They have told me that she stays very quiet at school, but apparently today she totally opened up and decided it was okay to talk at school. They said she was so active and just chattering away. And she also decided that one little boy was her special friend. They held hands when they walked to their activities and her teachers said they saw her kiss him!!!!!! For anyone who knows Lucy, you know that this is a HUGE deal. I try and get her to hug or kiss her cousins or friends all of the time and she rarely does. However, apparently some boy in class is quite worthy. I got the biggest kick out of that.

*I am about to start a second, private blog. I have some really exciting stuff that I want to share, but I am not ready to share it on this blog just yet. The information will eventually make it to this blog, just not yet. If you want the new website and password, you need to do two things. Leave a comment here with your blog address and email address TYPED out in the comment. I get comments from people all of the time that I can never see their blog because it doesn't show up in their profile or they use a different service or whatever. For those of you that I don't know personally or really well through blogland, you will most likely have to have a blog to get this information. If you are not comfortable with sharing your email address AND blog address in the comments, you will have to wait until the news makes it to this blog, which will be a month or so. I need to have some way of tracking who is reading. Thanks for wanting to follow along and understanding my need for privacy in some aspects of our life!*

Here are pictures from Anna's party. Enjoy the crazy cuteness.

I have to get this for Lucy for Christmas. She loved Anna's camera. The girls almost went to war over the thing.

The birthday girl taking a quick rest in the bounce house.

This is what I am talking about when I said that the girls didn't want their picture taken.

Right before the cake came out. The girls decided that they were in fact happy since it was cake time.

I absolutely love this picture of Anna and Maile


Lucy was about to eat her hand as she waited patiently for Anna to blow out the candles.

And then Lucy got a little impatient. Notice how Anna is trying to block her from getting in there!



I think this is my favorite picture from the day.


2 cupcakes anyone?

Lucyfer has Left the Building

Lucy is back, at least for the moment. We have had three great days in a row. I am sure I am jinxing it, but I had to share that she has been so happy and pleasant the past several days. I appreciate more than you know the comments from the last post. Thank you to each of you who shared a similar story or just gave words of encouragement. I did pick up a few books - Happiest Toddler on the Block and Raising Your Spirited Child. Thanks for the suggestions. I have just started reading. For now, we are enjoying every smile and giggle that we get. I love that girl more and more, crappy days and all.

I never posted again about the glitter pumpkins that we made a few weeks back and several people asked about them. All you do is paint craft glue on pumpkins (with a sponge brush seemed to work best) and then coat with glitter. But the secret to making them look fabulous, is using really good glitter. I would have said that was a crock of bs, but it is so true. We used the specific glitter recommended by Martha Stewart - I think the company was called Art Glitter and I ordered it online. It is really fine and sparkly glitter. Really, it is beautiful glitter.

Lucy and I did another Halloween craft today. I cut out a pumpkin, the letters B-O-O, and a ghost and handed her some paint and paintbrushes. She LOVES doing crafts. I need to do more activities like this because it just makes her day. She was so pleased with her work. We did it this morning and she was still in jammies. And yes, she is in Christmas pjs. They still fit from last year AND we are already ready for it to be Christmas time.

Happy Birthday to Anna!! Today is Lucy's bff's birthday. We have a big princess birthday party this weekend which should be loads of fun. We love you sweet Anna.

Is anyone else disappointed in Grey's Anatomy so far this year? I am just kind of bored with it, which is so disappointing. Next week looks pretty good though. Also, who was shocked by Project Runway last night?? I totally was. I won't write who won just in case someone is reading that hasn't seen it yet, but I would not have guessed who they picked. And I want to say, that I really loved all three collections, which I never have in the finale in the past. They were really good.

Here are our pics from today. Also, for the first time ever, I shot my pics in RAW today. I like it, a lot, but it is much more time consuming. I think I am hooked though because I was able to REALLY improve some of my pictures.


She said that the trash truck was being too loud. Check out the shoes.







She ended up deciding to paint her hands. Whatever works. She did make some cute handprints and insist I made one too.




Our finish products. I am going to hang them on the front door.


She needed to go check out the men mowing - in her heels, of course.