Momma to be....

Well here I am skipping school, as you know I am a teacher, to get rest and I find myself doing more than resting. I am here looking and gazing at others beautiful blogging pages wishing I could get mine just right, I really do think there needs to be a tutorial for creating amazing blogs however with that said I am also loving all the baby and prego pics that I have found. I had an wonderful maternity photography shoot with my last baby girl and with this one it will be completely different because now we have more in our family, and it will be on off site location somewhere. I have a few ideas in mind, however we are surprising ourselves with the gender of the baby until he or she arrives so the whole bow and booties thing really doesn't help in the photo department. But here are a few I did find that I feel would work, let me know what you think!

UPDATE--- for some reason I didn't actually post this blog so as I was doing a quick glance I decided I will actually post it with what photos I was able to get of our precious, well it was a boy as some of you know, but at the time up until delivery we were clueless... so here are some amazing shots for you all to ponder over I think I did pretty good with what I was wanting to go for in the first place :)

I actually have the one in the reeds however I don't have the rights to publish all of them online. If you want an amazing photographer in my area please feel free to looki nto Vanja she was amazing!!www.vanjadphotography.com/

Undescribable love

So today I was laughing, holding, kissing and squeezing my precious baby boy and realized love is something completely undeniable, unforgettable, beyond words indescribable. It is different holding a child than holding your husbands hand, this is someone God created in your womb, he knew him before you could even fathom being pregnant. Wow,what an amazing creation. I sit here writing this blog and feel like it was just yesterday when I found out I was pregnant, and just moments ago I had to ask " what is it, a boy or a girl" when I finally got to see my little boy!!

Here we are meeting the family!! I know that some of you reading this may be like, well I don't have children so I don't get it?? I mean I know how to love and I know what it feels like to love, but no puppy love is not the same, kitty love, niece/nephew love is not the same... I know some of you may have adopted and married into a family and yes I feel this is may be the same type of love, however I have never had this experience. The type of experiences I have had are the type when people tell you your child is precious or he is so adorable, your heart lights up and your face grins from ear to ear, you have so much pride it is pouring out over you. I know now that look, that grin, that same expression when they pan the camera to the parents of the Olympians, the love and pride from the side lines cheering on their young/well not so young children...that facial expression, even though I only have a four and a one year old now, I know is the same look that I have almost every single day when I look at my precious children....

( See the grin I was explaining about!! What is she doing here eating a brush, and look at that silly grin, I am telling you undeniable love!! So back to the Olympians,lets face it without parents unconditional, never stopping, everlasting love they probably wouldn't have gotten even to the preliminary trials, let along be on those stands receiving their gold, silver or bronze in a few short weeks. So here is to us moms, who bend backwards, can wipe up barf, pick up poop, shower with children, buy more expensive clothing and dress our children cutier than ourselves,

get up at five am to fit in a work out so we don't wake the kids, pick up clothes, shoes and toys till we feel like our hands will fall of, hers to us to show our children the real way to love, the full hearted, open mouthed, ear to ear grin kind of love, just like our Heavenly Father above I know looks at us every day even when the screams burst out everyone once and a while. And please hold those babies tight, because they grow up way, way to fast and soon they will hate the "mommy wants kisses" and the five books before bed, will all to soon be the yucks and the "I'm good I have my ipod".... so cherish each and every second of the picking up toys, the cleaning out ears and the brushing teeth moments!!

Cake Balls to cake pops

Recently someone asked why if I blog that I don't actually really blog, they said you only have a few things on your site... then it made me realize that I do mostly get on and read others so since today is a blah day and the kids aren't feeling up to 100% I am actually getting to write instead of read.

Cake Balls are actually different than cake pops, who knew? I didn't until recently when a friend showed me the difference. You are thinking to yourself they are exactly the same except you stick a stick in one and not the other... you are correct although there is a trick to the madness that I did not know when trying to design these almost a year ago today :)

These cake pops were made with fondant over un-chocolated cake balls which were then cut down, reshaped and then designed ( not my idea of fun and will never be done again, however I think they were pretty cute for my first time, as you can see mr potato head is missing a shoe!! :)

See if I knew what I knew now then, these probably would have looked even cutter!! I helped my friend out by decorating these with her and not actually creating the cake balls myself which was my first mistake. If you are going to make cake pops, make the cake balls yourself because you need to add a little hot melting chocolate to the stick and then place the balls around then put into the fridge, thus the sticks will not fly through the cake balls, as we had problems with. Or you can make the cake balls first then stick the sticks through them and refreeze/re-cool however you are just adding more work for yourself.

The second difference between cake balls and cake pops is that cake balls need to be much, much bigger than what you will need for cake pops. I am sure you all know exactly how to make cake balls however remember there is a difference :)

Happy baking and one of my all time favorite websites for cake pops/ cake balls is www.bakerella.com.....

PhotoShop, with this anyone can be a photographer....

So I like every mom, or shall I say new mom takes a million photos of their adorable babies, it seems like one a day or close to it. So my husband always asks what are we going to do with all these photos, besides let them sit in our computer?? I have and always have done scrap-booking so the most adorable and most memorable will be captured hopefully via my camera or iphone and soon or one day shortly be put into a scrapbook. Madison has hers completely done from birth to age one which I had done not too long after she turned one, however seeing in about four months she will be four, please don't ask where the two,and three year old scrapbook is because it is not done nor will it ever be. I have concluded to allow myself to detail every important little milestone in the first year and the 2 to 5 year old/before kindergarten can all be rolled into one scrapbook to be started at a later date. Although now that I have Tanner, I have once again started scrap-booking, which is what I should be doing at this very moment instead of blogging. The real question is what do we do with the thousands of other great or kinda great photos that we have lurking around taking up space on our computer....


Photoshop?? Well there's an idea I thought today, what about Photoshoping the great ones and then categorizing the not so great ones into folders on the desktop and soon backing them up to an external hardrive.... however I don't know the first thing about Photoshop besides I have recently downloaded a trial version, which might I add needs an instruction manual. Since there is no true instruction manual with a free version I have since looked up a million sites, pinterest boards and more on help on Photoshop. One of my all time favorite websites, given to me by a friend is www.thepioneerwoman.com, if you have not heard of it you must go now!! But this is an amazing website with lots of awesome advice, recipes, and much more and here is an example of the amazing things she gives you for free.

As you can see these Photoshopping techniques, does nothing at all to the actual subject in the picture, no facial update or teeth enhancing and look at the huge difference it makes to a picture. No wonder all these people are becoming photographers now a days, it has little to do with their actual photo shooting ability but a lot to do with their talent and knowledge of Photoshop!!

So I too am jumping in and hopefully be the owner of Photoshop soon and allow you to see with your own two little eyes what the magic of simple light adjustment or fading can do to a smug little photo of a child!!( here is an example of a different before and after with a free similar photo editting program online)

So have fun and edit away....life is too short to not be your own professional photographer!!

ER.... pain no gain, well not until the bitter end!

I woke up Sunday morning not feeling well and called friends to see if they thought it could be a cyst or kidneys or what not. Then like every mom you start wondering if you are just making it a bigger deal than it really is... well it was a bigger deal. I pained through Sunday thinking it was bad gas or stomach problems, did everything known to man to try to fix it. I then mistakenly took Madison and Tanner out to try to go to the grocery store and Walgreen's to get Halloween Candy and groceries... well lets just put it this way we got the candy and never made it to the store. I than started figuring out I better call my doctor, and yes we have been here in this house for a long time however still no regular doctor which I will soon be finding one after this ordeal. Once it was all said and done and I realized I needed to go to the ER, well it was down hill from there. I called my fantastic mother in law and then called my non answering husband, however as we all know, moms are super hero's we are not really allowed to be sick especially with a child that is breast feeding!! So once we were off and the kids were taken care of we go to Care Now which was fantastic and sent me on to the ER which I was trying to avoid all in all I had nothing packed, especially not a pump or a hungry child and thus the pain now elsewhere in my body was also starting to hurt. All I can say is I had one devoted nurse, male nurse,might I add that came to my rescue finally at 1am in the morning. I will say to you as advice mothers who are nursing, ever think you are going to the ER or hospital or doctor late in the evening pack a PUMP and some bottles oh yeah and some clothes. After it was all said and done I had an appendectomy and stayed for two days which should and could have been longer however I had my best friends bachelorette weekend to get to which I was not going to let a little surgery let me miss!!

All said and done Women are super hero's with super milk making, tear drying, huggable lovable powers that not even grandma's have!!

It's a Boy!!

So we have been anticipating a new little one for months now, and he blessed us with his presence on July 8th, I know I am a bit behind on blogging as you can see. We didn't know the sex of our child however my parents and sister did know, and let me tell you they hide it quiet well. I am very excited to have one and one however my husband I fear is still in shock with now having to teach his son boy things such as peeing standing up, not burping at the dinner table and not goggling over some girl in front of mom.... you know the parenting things you have to do once you have a boy.... I was all game for having another girl but lets face it this way we have one each that we are in control of teaching the later life lessons, and I am so glad to now be splitting the responsibilities.

Baby Tanner... born July 8th, 7:25am, 6lbs 13oz 19.9inches

Hubby and I right after Tanner was born

I am now going to get to stay home and raise this new little blessing and am more than extactic about it. I have things planned out for fun and adventure come fall, if it ever becomes fall, it is so HOT!! Madison is a great big sister although has said many hilarious things in the past few weeks that I soon will be adding to my blogging.... I hope to update you all more often and add to my interesting life stories and journeys along with reading about other fellow bloggers... so long for now and hope to be back soon with funny and entertaining joyous things :)

Need a NEW LOOK!! Please help!

Haven't been on too much blogging lately however need some advice from you experienced bloggers. I want a fresh look, I am now a full time stay at home mom and will be intending on blogging on new experiences, crafts, and such and want a fun looking site in which to do it on. I love the easy layout of this particular site and do not want to change off of blogger, however would love to update my look. Please post any info on cute and free layouts and designs to help me get started... I have been using a cute one however I hate how the background is white and pretty plain. PLEASE HELP!!