Family Pictures 2010

We could not be more excited about this year's family pictures! Tim did an amazing job and we had a really hard time picking our favorites. Before letting you peak at the new ones let's start at the beginning...These were all taken by Tim Watson Photography. Thanks for all the wonderful memories, Tim!!! Stacey- thanks for scheduling all these for us...we would probably have no professional pictures if Stacey was not on top of us...:) Love you friend!

Our first offical family picture -7 months pregnant with Mr. Luka

  

2007 - Luka was 2 months old  

   

2008 - 8 months pregnant with Mia, Luka just turned 1!



2009 -Luka 2 years 2 months/Mia 13 months        2010- Luka 3 years 3 months/Mia 2 years 2 months

Here are the rest of this year's pictures...

27...Thanksgiving...Black Friday...10K...#1 Husband

On the 21st I celebrated my 27th birthday.  The weekend started with our Family Fun Friday and the celebration continued for a few days. So blessed to have a husband who totally jumped on board when I announced ( a few years back) that my birthday celebration should really last for 3 days. Love you so much, honey!

As I already blogged, we had the best Friday together. On Saturday I got to enjoy some ME time at the nail salon while Justin took the kids to run errands.

Headed to the bike shop with Daddy's new bike...they were so excited!



 That afternoon I was lucky enough to have my favorite three people follow me on the bike while I did my running. So fun!!!




That evening we went to a baby shower for Sally and Ryan and had a blast hanging out with friends. Right before the shower my wonderful hubby suprised me with the news that we would be heading out to dinner alone afterwards. We enjoyed a quiet evening, some yummy Italian food and two delicious desserts. Thanks Mimi and Papa for watching the kiddos while we enjoyed a fun evening away from home. Since the kiddos were up when we got home ( actually they were running around the living room)...we decided we would have another family movie night...we watched Shrek!

On Sunday- the day of my actual birthday I got to sleep in. :) Then I was rushed to my very own birthday picnic prepared by the kiddos and Dea.  The big stripped pillow was "my cake" and leggos were "my other food and drinks". The kids were so sweet and so excited!



The day was wonderful! We went to my parents for lunch and cake #1...then to Justin's parents for some yummy sundays...then off to my sister's for more cake. Dea ( my 11 year old niece) made me a cake- SO SWEET! The evening ended with Justin's sweet cards and some beautiful roses.  27 years and so much to be thankful for...

I seriously married the best guy! A few weeks back I got to have a nice shopping spree for some fall/winter clothes/shoes as my early birthday present and the last part of celebrating the big 2-7 is this coming up Friday. Justin and I will be heading out of town for a little getaway while Mimi and Papa take care of the babies overnight. So excited  and so blessed with a wonderful husband who truly makes every birthday super special. I asked for 3 days and here he is streching it out even longer- his Momma raised him right for sure!

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Thanksgiving was wonderful...we took our family pictures on Wed. and got to hang out with the Watsons that evening. A huge thank you to Tim for doing an amazing job with out family pictures. That will be another post soon! We love, love, love the pictures! The one at the top of the blog is just one of many we really love.

The night before the pictures we  practiced our "smiling" and wanted to make sure I knew what to do with Mia's hair...Luka is showing off his new hair cut and Mia is showing off her new bows that matched her outfit perfectly!



We had a wonderful time celebrating Thanksgiving with both sides of our family. No pictures since my camera kept acting up. That evening at 7 I headed out for some Black Friday shopping and made it home at 6 am with everything we wanted for the kids. Such a long night- but SO WORTH IT! What we do for the little ones! I can't wait to share pictures when Luka and Mia finally get to see everything!!! April and Brandon were such huge help! We split up at Toys R Us when they let us in at 10 pm and by 10:45 we left the store with everything in tow. It sounds like this is becoming a tradition and I am not even going to lie and say that I did not love IHOP at 1am...:)  Thankfully Tono and Justin entertained the kids all morning while I slept until noon...that evening we started decorating the house...


The very next morning I did my very first 10K with my friend Jennie. It was freezing, I was seriously dreading it due to my lack of sleep the previous night but I will admit that I am so glad I did it. Not sure if I mentioned before but me and the timing chips during races DO NOT GET ALONG...this was actually the first time the chip time was actually recorded and there were not issues. Both Jennie and I did very well for our first 10K and I could not be more excited to have done it together. I finished in 52:43 and got 3rd place for my age group. I was happy with my time as my goal was to finsih before 55 minutes. Here we are after the race..

 Justin got up at 6 to get the kids ready and make it out to McKinney on time. LOVE HIM!

Yes, it was freezing but my little cheering crowd did not miss it. I got to see the whole family ( Justin, Luka, Mia, Debbie & Gary) three different times while running. So fun! Thanks Debbie and Gary for coming our to support us!

On Sunday we spent some time outside while Tono and Daddy hung our outside Christmas lights! I got another sweet surprise from my love...shoelaces that you do not have to untie....BINGO!

The long hangy strings on the sides were cut after the adjustment...

 He knows how I hate the process of properly taking my running shoes off so he picked these up at the bike shop he uses. Not to mention that he spent majority of his afternoon trying to adjust them... This might be the coolest gift ever! If this isn't true love, I don't know what is!

 It was a busy, wonderful week!!! Hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving, too! 

Family Fun Friday

Due to my sweet husband taking the day off this past Friday we were able to have a wonderful family day together. I had no idea Justin took the day off until very late the night before. So surprised and so excited! There is nothing more I cherish than days like these filled with lots of fun activities with my favorite three people. We slept in a little, had breakfast, were not in a hurry like we normally are when our days are packed...we just took it easy, planned out our day and right around 11ish headed out of the house. We went to the Arboretum first to have a picnic lunch and enjoy this wonderful fall weather. The kids and I have defintiley been using our annual passes quite a bit since we got them in October but this was our first time to go with Daddy. The weather was gorgeous, the Arboretum was pretty quiet ( other than a few buses of field trip kids who left shortly after we got there). All in all it was a wonderful 3 hours we got to hang out as a fmaily, explore parts of the Arboretum that we never got to this year and just took our sweet time. We headed home around 2:45ish and the kids napped in the car. When we got home Luka decided that was all the napping he needed so while sissy slept for a few hours, he played and Justin and I got to catch up on some of our favorite DVRed shows. We watched Modern Family and Grey's Anatomy from this week.

Picnic lunch

 Cheesing it up

 Checking out the flowers

 Joy!

 They might not be Lister Lions but they know their "silent butterflies"...the kids at my school are required to walk like this in the hallway...it is part of the Positive Discipline Plan, it works great and the kids don't mind it at all...these little ones know that we are not allowed to touch the flowers at the Boretum...so when Momma says SILENT BUTTERFLIES- they know to not touch and not be loud...Call me drill sgt. but I love me some kids who follow directions!

 People watching while the boys are playing ball...

 Our little tree huggers!

 Daddy said that we should probably go back to basics in our everyday life...YEAH RIGHT!

 This is how we walked around at one point while heading to the pond with the fish...Luka was on Justin's back, I was carrying Mia who wanted to hug Daddy while we walked...so sad that I was not able to get Luka in the picture...walking like this while carrying bags and snapping a picture- quite the task!

After Mia's nap we got ready and headed out again. This time it was to go bowling. We told the kids we would do it earlier in the day and they were so excited. Actually Luka tried to convince us that the Boretum (Arboretum) was closed and we really needed to go bowling first thing in the morning. Since there was no open lanes that morning we decided just to put it off for the evening. We had a blast bowling together. We had done it only one other time at a birthday party this summer and Luka was just beside himself to be able to do it again. The kids did very well and we had so much fun together. Mimi and Papa stopped by on the way to work out and got to hang out with us for a bit. After bowling we got to play some arcade games. Luka was all about them while sweet Mia just ran around from one to the other and by the time the game would start she was off to something else.

Skinny jeans and bowling shoes- where has the time gone?

 So excited and proud of himself!

 Our little pro!

 Celebrating again!

 By the end of the evening we were all pretty pooped so we headed home to eat dinner. Luka was getting cranky ( due to a short nap) so we decided it would be best to just take it easy at home after such a busy day. After dinner kids enjoyed some ice cream and sprinkles while we had our first offical "family movie night". Yes- we all sat and cuddled on the couch during the entire movie. Well, I might have snoozed during about 30 minutes of it and the kids fell asleep toward the end. I am just amazed that no one got distracted and we all stayed in the same spots. Movie we picked was one of my all time favorite kid movies- "Finding Nemo". The kids actually paid attention to it majority of the time which is a first. We have never taken them to the movies because we have tried this before but it never lasted more than 15-20 minutes.

All in all it was one of my favorite Fridays ever! Everyone happy, out and about, having fun together! In two weeks we get to do it again which I am SO EXCITED about. I don't think I could have picked a better way to kick off my 3 day birthday celebration! Thank you hon!