Vote for Nathan!!!

Help my boys win a photo session with an awesome photographer here in Virginia Beach!!! You can vote two ways, every day until April 2.

#1: Here's the link to the contest on her blog: Cutest Kid Contest. You get one vote per IP address, per day. Nathan is cute kid #22 and the poll is at the end of the photos.



#2: Here's the link to the Facebook Fan Page: Kimberlin Gray. Once you become a Fan of her Facebook Page, leave one comment per day on Nathan's photo found HERE.

Thanks for your help!!! I promise to share photos from this shoot if we win!!!

More Birthday Photos

I had better finish sharing photos from Nathan's party before Ian's party sneaks up on us!


Roar! Dinosaur Nathan was ready for his friends to arrive.


Ian, showing off his quick dinosaur door hanger craft. He was thrilled to be able to make a door hanger using his favorite color - black.


The CAKE! I was not allowed to make a cake or cupcakes for this party since Nathan had been talking about this very specific WalMart dinosaur cake for almost a year. It was delicious!


Blowing out the candles (with a little help from his nearby friends, whether he wanted the help or not).


Happily waiting for his piece of cake. These boys will do anything when they know food is only moments away.


Ian was showing daddy how big of a piece of cake he wanted. He polished off two pieces of cake, but the still didn't add up to his desired amount.


Our two 4-year-olds. They are so goofy and they very rarely look at the camera at the same time.


Nathan was so very excited to receive his Toy Story bike! He immediately climbed onto it and was ready to go!!!


A little bit of instruction from dad and Nathan thought he knew everything about riding bikes.


Both boys ready to explore the neighborhood. Yes, we made it two houses down the block. These kids are a bit slow when it comes to understanding the "art" of riding a bike...and not putting on the brakes constantly.

Dino*mite Party

Nathan is 4! It's hard to believe that our "baby" is 4-years-old already. He had been talking about a dinosaur cake that he saw one day at WalMart for the 10 months leading up to his birthday, so we hosted a dinosaur party this past weekend.


Nathan thoroughly enjoyed his dinosaur cake and remained at the table eating frosting long after all of his friends had finished their slices.


Always underestimating how busy I will be, I decided to make or embellish all of the decorations myself. Will I ever learn? Probably not. These dinosaurs are from a cute digital scrapbooking kit I found online.


The 50 cent balloon chandelier decoration rocks! Oh, and it is still up, just in case you were wondering. Ryan's birthday is Monday so that's my "excuse" for not taking the balloons down just yet.


Goodie bags! Again, using the digital scrapbooking kit I quickly made up these personalized panels to decorate the plain bags.

We have about 150 more pictures from Nathan's birthday and I will be sure to post more soon...just as soon as I finish studying photosynthesis and have a chance to edit them all in Photoshop.

I Do Exist!

When it snowed last month (yes, I'm a month behind on my blog posts) I made a point of getting in a picture. It's proof that I'm really still here. I think that I may need to buy one of those children's digital cameras so I can teach the boys to take pictures. Ryan isn't around often enough and I have no idea if there is a timer on my camera. Also, I will not be handing my heavy Canon DSLR over to the boys any time soon. So rare is it that I'm in a photo with the boys that I have scheduled a professional photo session for the three of us at the end of March while Ryan is away. It's my mother's day gift to myself!

First Snow

The boys LOVED playing in the snow!!! Ian was especially thrilled when he realized he could eat as much clean snow as he wanted and we didn't yell at him. Nathan enjoyed throwing snow at all of us more than anything else. It's a good thing he's short and his aim isn't so great.

We're still here

I promise to post some fun things this weekend! We have video of the boys playing in the snow and pictures from recent events. Things are crazy, but I have over 100% in my biology class right now and I guess that's a good thing. My children are still healthy, mostly happy and the house...well, that's another story.

Wish Me Luck

...and come babysit my kids.

I don't know why, but I have enrolled in school again. Just part-time, but it is sure to be the death of me. I really want to be a pharmacist, but I am a mother already. My husband is never home and it's not his fault, but it really doesn't make this easy. I have about a week to decide if I want to withdraw and wait until both kids are enrolled in school in the fall. I'm leaning toward that decision, but I'm trying my best to make this work.

The class I REALLY need to take, Biology, is the one where nothing is working online and the professor is useless so far. Oh, for clarification, my Biology "lectures" are online and my labs are in person...in Norfolk...they begin at 7:00pm. There are no real lectures, just a couple of powerpoint pages of fill-in-the-blank sentences. Are we given the answer key? No. Does the professor answer emails? Not in my experience. Am I able to log in to the online access that goes with the textbook? No. Did the bookstore sell me the wrong book twice? Yes. Did the textbook company include the wrong online access code? Yes. Are they going to fix the problem? No.

I don't like to fail. Withdrawing one week into "school" seems like a failure to me. Not getting an "A" is a failure to me. However, I don't have childcare for my boys during the day and I'm struggling to line up sitters for them for all of my labs. Could I do this if Ryan were around? Certainly, but that's not going to be the case for a LONG time. Why can't I just look at the situation and realize that it is beyond my control and not a failure on my part? I don't know. I'll let you know what I decide...