I Promise

I will blog again soon!

Once I catch my breath!

The holiday season is always super busy for photographers. It's like our tax season for accountants.

So, once I design and print all the cards and albums, edit all of the sessions, take the rest of the photos, I'll bombard with a ton of posts. I'm booked until December 17th, and hope I can squeeze in a few posts between then.

In the meantime, back to work I go.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

I Helped

Deliver a beautiful baby boy today!!

It was the most humbling and beautiful experience ever and I loved it. Also very exhausting. I took a 30 minute nap at home today when it was over, but I've been up 39 hours straight otherwise.

Can I pull a Rip Van Winkle?

Thanksgiving Thankfuls and Misc.

No pictures this post because I'm currently noise filtering a wedding and I don't want to slow it down too much. However, with one wedding, one family and four mini holiday sessions down and only two engagements and a family session to go, the light at the end of the tunnel is near. Or, at least until next weekend when it all starts back again. But the exciting thing is that I have a weekend off! So, in between spending time with my family, working in the yard and working on the business end, I'll (fingers crossed) be able to post some photos.

We've gotten the house mostly unpacked and I've gotten into a bit of a routine with everything. Things are settling in and it's nice.

Sunday we have church. That's a most of the day thing. I tried to keep it Sabbath and not work, but I'm so busy right now that I have to work a little bit.

Mondays I'm at home with the kids. Usual fare, diapers, potty breaks, doggie potty breaks, food, cooking, laundry, nap times, walks, etc. In the evenings are prayer meeting and choir practice. Once every two months my husband and I teach Monday School, so we need to be at church at 6. The other Mondays it's not til 7. And choir practice gets out at about 10.

Tuesdays it's the same day-to-day stuff. An errand here or there. Church in the evening, so we start getting ready at 3, eat dinner the second my husband comes home and off to church we go until about 10.

Wednesdays my MIL comes in for an hour in the afternoon so I can get some work done. Then it's pack the dog and the kids up in the van to drive to town for obedience classes. Fitzgerald does really well in class. My kids, however, not so much. They'll last about half an hour before getting antsy. But, we want to make it a family affair and get them used to the training aspect so when they're big enough they can tell him what to do when they start playing together.

Thursdays depend on the week it is. Sometimes my husband has musician's practice. Sometimes he's being assistant youth pastor to the guys. Sometimes I'm being assistant youth pastor's wife to the girls. Sometimes we have a night off - those nights I get work done.

Fridays, again, depend. Sometimes we have youth service. Sometimes we have a ministry function. Sometimes we have a church function. Sometimes I'm shooting a wedding. If we're not doing any of those, I'm working.

Saturdays, we go to the church and pray for the outreach team that is going into the community to bless others. We give away care packages. We don't knock people upside the head with Bibles. We don't stand on corners and preach. We just show others we care. After that I typically have some sort of shoot. Wedding, family, kids, engagements, what have you.

But, I am so blessed to have so much to do! I couldn't imagine feeling imprisoned and not getting to be involved. And my kids get to grow up serving as a lot of our lives revolve around church. We are gladly servants of the Lord and we're instilling that mindset in our kids. We were browsing through the toy section of a store one day and Auds asked for a toy. When I told her that we weren't buying it ("You are such a blessed little girl and have a dolly just like that at home.") and that it was for someone else, she said "It's a blessing for another girl. She'll like it." Aw.

Tonight she was singing a song in the back seat that I'm guessing she learned in Sunday School. It was too cute to hear her sing "Yes, I've got the Holy Ghost. Holy Ghost. Holy Ghost. Yes, I've got the Holy Ghost. It's Jesus living in me." Melted my heart.

Anyway, we're doing our month of Thanksgiving and writing something new each day just like we did last year. We don't have the big banisters to hang them from, so I'm stringing them across our bookshelf armoire in the living room.

Our first day was Jesus.

Today was water baptism and the Holy Ghost. Today is also my spiritual birthday. I'm six years old today. My husband bought me sushi. Life is good. :)

Pumpkin Patch

So, when you have a new house, a new puppy, photos to edit, save the dates to design, photo shoots to actually do, two kids who aren't feeling well, boxes to unpack and a studio to decorate the most logical thing to do is take the kids to the pumpkin patch, right? Right!

I'm all about experiences. I would rather give my kids fun experiences (like going to the pumpkin patch) than buy them all the toys in the world. We got there about half an hour before it closed for the evening, which was plenty of time to find our pumpkins and take a few photos. I may have spent so much on pumpkins that they decided to stop counting. Ha!

I had a reason: our front porch has these two large urns that were just crying to have some short and stout pumpkins lying on top (white ones with orange veins, of course) with some rustic looking tall skinny ones standing in front. And then Auds had to pick out little pumpkins for everyone in the family. So we got 4 huge pumpkins and 4 baby pumpkins.

I'll try to take a picture of the pumpkins out front tomorrow, but it's cute. I'm a little giddy. We had a great time tonight. If I weren't so busy on the weekends, we'd go then because they do hayrides and face paintings and games and all sorts of stuff.

But I needed a nice relaxing evening. The kids have both had coughs for about two weeks now so I took them to the doctor this morning. Typically I don't go to the doctor except for well visits, but a lingering cough deserved a check. The culprit? Severe drainage due to insane allergies. At least it wasn't anything serious. But, I cancelled a major photo shoot this afternoon while I was on my way to the doctor just in case - I didn't want to spread any germs.

Then it was a typical two-year-old-living-here day. Auds hit the dog in the head with a curtain rod that hasn't made its way up yet. Then she got caramel all over the table and refused to eat her pickles. She wouldn't let Tony go down for his nap so he was cranky and fussy. Then she got so tired she had an accident. And I'm talking an accident. It was the Hoover Dam of accidents. Soaked herself, her clothes, the couch, HER HAIR. This required a bath.

While I was bathing her, the dog pooped in the living room and then ate it - in like 30 seconds. I smelled it happening and ran out there to find him eating it. So I had to clean the remnants and the dog - with a toddler in the tub who decided to get out, run around naked and wake her brother (who just went to sleep 30 minutes ago) up. Add to that my husband worked late and it was just peachy. Life is getting back to normal. ;)

So, all of that to say that I needed to spend some quality time with my precious little family and make some positive memories. I think we accomplished that.

Look at this beautiful girl. I can never stay mad at her.

The "Mommy" pumpkin and the "Audrey" pumpkin.

Steering the wagon.

Climbing on the pumpkins.

Checking out the petting zoo. Yes, a petting zoo with a sign "CAUTION: ANIMALS WILL BITE." How much sense does that make?

Auds getting out of the wagon. You can see a couple of my big ones there. Let's call them Bertha and Maude.

There's no pictures of little man coz he was here with me.

Happy National Babywearing Week!

My perfect little family. :)

I'm Alive!

My house(s) are covered in boxes and things are here there and everywhere. I've got two kids with fevers, one screaming right now (her daddy's tending to her, I'm not neglectful). I'll be spending the rest of the night packing coz the big and final move is Wednesday. 25.15 hours from now. That's how long I have to get this place livable-ish for the next person.

But, I just wanted to say that I'm alive.

These past few weeks have been wrapped up in packing, packing, packing and, uh, more packing. Taking a trip to the zoo coz to get away from the boxes. The kids accompanying me on an engagement shoot and an al fresco lunch of maque choux there. Making slides out of the boxes. Play dates to get away from said boxes. Birthday parties, church activities, and general all around craziness. In addition to slowly moving things over to the new house. Not to mention the fact that my husband is working at the firm like crazy and I've been booked since the end of August and this train ain't stopping until December.

I have pictures on my iphone of all of these and will upload when things calm down. That'll happen soon, right? Please tell me that'll happen soon? Oh, and tell me that the dust bunnies will move out on their own and the resident country spiders will move their webs from my windows (the tops of which are a good few feet above my head... I'm not that lousy of a housekeeper) before I move.

What's that? No, they won't. Well, that's no fun.

Our Pup

Well, the black lab that I was initially interested in adopting likes to chase cats, and since we have two Katrina babies, that wouldn't be such a good mix. I can picture it now:

"Mommy! Desi is eating Cheeto!"

Explain that to a toddler.

So, I asked for recommendations from the rescue society and gave them some information on us. Well, they recommended this little (big) guy:

Say "hello" to Fitzgerald Fitzwilliam. Named after F. Scot Fitzgerald and Fitzwilliam Darcy. We're so literary. We'll call him Fitz for short.

I was supposed to go meet him the end of the month, but due to scheduling conflicts (I took on another family photo shoot) it wouldn't work out. I had a cancellation this morning (the dad got stuck at work out of state and couldn't make it back in time) so we made an impromptu appointment to see him.

It was love at first bark. He is such a sweet puppy and a goofy gentle giant. He was a puppy - running all over the place and acting spastic - but was very, very gentle with the kids.

There he is holding hands with Auds. She did get a little overwhelmed just because it was a new place, a new dog running around and there was another two year old there (that explains the extra arm in the picture) to play with. But, she's been talking about him ever since.

We're gonna be filling out the adoption paperwork and all soon and will be bringing him home after we close on our house. And we're closing in less than three weeks! Eeeek!

I Am Insane

So in addition to buying and moving to a new home, we've decided we're gonna adopt a dog. I'm nuts. But after Tuesday's incident, we decided that after we move we're gonna get a guard dog to let us know if something is going on outside.

We found a beautiful black lab who was rescued and is very mild tempered and patient with kids. I'm hoping her foster mom will hold her for us until November, after we move and get unpacked and settled in and whatnot.

So, now we need to pick a name. Eurydice, Desdemona, Eliza Doglittle and Ouiser are the top contenders.

Perspective

My van was broken into today. While in the driveway to our house. Or, rather, shot at with a pellet gun by a delinquent youth according to the sheriff. It's not the first call they got. They didn't take anything, coz there's not anything in there but car seats and outreach stuff to take.

It's also pouring down rain in a storm of epic proportions. I hope my husband secured the plastic around the hole well enough.

And Auds is sick and has a fever.

But I could be in Job's shoes.

Honestly, I hope whoever it was took a care package and comes to church. I'd greet them with open arms.

I'm thankful to God for some much needed perspective on the situation. This could easily be a situation that could get me down, fester, and cause bitterness in my soul. But He has provided me with enough mercy and grace to not allow that to happen. For that I am grateful. $325 poorer to fix it, but grateful.

God is good.

My Girl

This is my future worship leader after choir practice tonight. Ain't she cute?

This is What Happens

While we assemble packages for community outreach. Amazing what kids do to entertain themselves!

It Has Not Been a Month

Since I last blogged. No way. Time has not passed by that quickly! Stinking insane, I tell you!

This past month has been very busy. Our church is in the middle of a huge revival/move of God/whatever you want to call it. We've had over 50 people get all Acts 2:38 in, oh... about two weeks. Two weeks! That's craziness!

We've seen people limp in with RA and walk out straight. We've seen babies near death with EB and start getting better. We've seen people addicted to everything under the sun and throw the drugs away. We've seen people want church at their wedding. Like church, church. Typical Pentecostal Holy Ghost throw down church. We've seen our services grow from 90 on a good Sunday to around 250. That's nothing but God!

And, as such, our lives have been revolving around church. But it's amazing to see what is going on. Let's see, our week starts on Sunday. We get to church around 9:30am - if we teach Sunday School, work nursery or have a special service we get there earlier. We leave sometime between noon and two, depending upon how long people want to pray afterwards and how many people want to get baptized. Then we go home and crash.

Monday my husband goes to work and I stay with the kids doing various activities. Monday evenings we have Monday School ( a class for new Christians on the history of the Christian church and whatnot) that we teach once every two months from 6:30-7:30. At 7:00 we have prayer - if we're teaching we go straight to prayer when we're done, if we're not we just go straight to prayer. Then I have choir practice after that that lasts until about 10pm.

Tuesday we have evening service. We get there at around 6:30 for prayer beforehand and leave sometime around 9 or 10.

Wednesdays we typically have an off night.

Thursdays vary between musicians practices for my husband, ministry meetings and youth functions.

Fridays vary between having the night off and youth functions.

Saturdays we take the lead as Community Outreach Directors and go out into the community. Beforehand we make packages of drinks, snacks and information cards and go to whatever area God lays on our hearts and bless others - mostly kids or people mowing their yards in this oppressive heat - and just let them know we care. Sometimes they ask questions, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they receive us well, sometimes they don't. We don't go to witness to people or give Bible studies (unless they want us to), but rather just give them something with no strings attached. I also do weddings and portrait shoots on Saturdays.

And that brings us back to Sundays. Throw in the day-to-day life with two young ones and it gets hectic. Every moment of our lives has to be planned out or I'll miss something. Now, this isn't for everyone in the church. My husband is part of the church leadership and we gladly do what we can to help our church grow for God's glory. It's work. I won't lie. But it's what God has called us to.

Oh, yeah... and we decided to buy a house. So, in addition to all of this, I've been house hunting, neighborhood researching, number crunching and everything else. We have been feeling the itch to move for a while and were just praying for God's will. Well, everything we tried on our own failed.

We saw house after house, but nothing was perfect. We even made an offer on one, but they wanted full asking price with buyer to pay closing costs. Psh. Whatevs. We used mortgage broker after mortgage broker and it took FOREVER to hear anything on pre-approvals. You know, the supposed to be instant part. One we never heard back from at all. Everything just hit a dead end.

Until last week. Another minister's wife told me to ask one of the ladies in our church for help. She grew up in the area and is the local florist so she is virtually a walking phone book for our city. So I walked into her shop just to ask her to keep her eyes and ears open for me. She said that it was too weird, but she had just heard last night of a place for sale in a good neighborhood that would be perfect and for me to load the kids up we were going over. Right then. Not "I'll check and see if it's still available." Not "I'll give you the address, go on over. " Not "Maybe later we can head out there. "

No, it was right then. So then we went. It's a cute home on a quiet cul-de-sac, around 1800 sf, 3 beds, 2 baths, big lot and a separate studio space for my business (I was initially gonna settle for using a space bedroom just to stay in our price range, but this even has a separate entrance!). It even had the shower of my husband's dreams - one of those full shower ones with multiple shower heads from all the walls and ceiling. She's throwing in the appliances and knocked 12k off her asking price. Just for us. She had refused offers higher than that before.

My husband called to go over stuff with her and she is now turing away offers to do "whatever it takes to get y'all in." Oh, and my grandfather called completely unprompted and told me that since he heard we were buying a house he was giving us the down payment. I refused him because we're not hand out people and he said that it was his money and he could do what he wanted to. He wanted to do it and that was it. He called the lender and had them three-way call my husband and got us approved on the spot. All while I was looking at the house.

Within a matter of hours we went from not having a substantial down payment (but doing it on our own), not hearing back from any lenders, and not finding a house that was perfect to having EVERYTHING. Our pastor is going to look at it with me tomorrow because he feels that is is God's will and wants to pray over it. Home inspection is happening later this week and if that goes through, we'll be placing an offer on Monday to close next month.

Does that justify me being a bad blogger? ha!

Sneaky Sneaky

My daughter amazed me last night. Seriously, she's too smart for her own good. We treated some friends to Chik-fil-a last night and I got a large lemonade because I was incredibly thirsty. I had only drank about 1/4 of it before having to nurse, entertain, what have you. When I came back, it was gone.

I knew my daughter was behind it, but I didn't know how good. She swiped my drink, put it in her grocery basket and covered it up with other items. This enabled her to carry it around in front of my nose without me noticing it. She'd take it into various rooms to drink it, cover it back up, and go about her way. It wasn't until I saw a drip trail behind her that I suspected anything.

I must say, I was pretty impressed. It was good.

Play Day

A friend of mine owns an indoor play center a couple of towns away. I've seen her clean, so I'm not too worried about the germs. If it had been a seedy place and I didn't know the owner, then absolutely not. But, it's the same place that we had Auds' birthday party and where she had taken classes so I'm okay with it.

They have an open play time where you can come in, pay for the kid to play, and stay in the nice, safe, air conditioned place as long as you want to. Amen.

Typically, Auds runs around like crazy and TB either sleeps or lays down. He's been sitting since the beginning of the month now, so I decided to let him play, too.

There is this circular thing on wheels that I stuck him in. He LOVED it!

Woo-hoo!!!

Ooooh, what's that over there, Mommy?

Here he is declaring his love for it and playing with the balls that his sister threw in for him to play.

And this is what happens when Auds realizes that it moves.

It was a fun day. I love these kids.

MIscellany

"The helmet of salvation and the sword of truth!"

I swear my little girl ran around screaming that one night while we were cooking. It was great. haha

My kids love each other. It's cute.

Family's First Camp Meeting

Every year, there is a huge camp meeting in our state where all of the people from our organization can get together to hear wonderful preaching, participate in great prayer, and get some fabulous worship on. Heck, even people not in our organization. It's open to whomever wants to come. They have them in every state, but ours is big. It's a good few thousand people every single service.

The first time I went was when I spoke about 5 or 6 years ago. I met Nona Freeman. If you don't know who that is, look into her. She was Amazing - with a capital "a." I hadn't gone since.

My husband decided this year that we needed to go as a family. So, go we went.

I whipped out my iPhone to take pictures of my kids for their first camp meeting.

You can still see the bites on my poor baby girl's face.

My handsome little man.

Not the best quality, but at least I captured the moment.

I'm not gonna lie, I was in tears. But not at the preaching - TB was too fussy and Auds wanted to take too many bathroom breaks for me to hear.

The beginning of the service had kids from an orphanage singing and testifying. God put it on my heart two-ish years ago that we should adopt from this orphanage as they take the rejects that no one else wants. An Antioch, if you will. When I first looked into it, I fell in love with a little boy. But, I was pregnant for Auds at that time and we were about to move and things were just crazy. So, we put it off. It's been on my heart for a while, and I keep praying about timing.

Well, the little boy that I fell in love with was there and he testified. I knew it was him before they even introduced him. The moment I saw him my heart leaped. My eyes watered. And I dug out my checkbook to write a check to support his care, even if I couldn't adopt him right then on the spot. I swear, had they let me, I would have run up there, swooped him in my arms and had my husband go pickup another car seat to take him home.

So, I'm still praying about that. Maybe one day in the future, in God's timing, that little boy will come home with us. Gah, I'm crying writing this.

Sunday Fun Fun Day

So, one recent Sunday, there was a big fun day at a friend's house complete with a volleyball tournament, bouncy house, bbq contest and a whole lot of people.

Here's TB watching his daddy play in the volleyball tournament.

And my husband playing. He's in the front in the blue.

Auds getting help to take her shoes off to get in the bouncy house.

Having fun.

Bouncing around.

And she climbed in and out a million times.

And putting her shoes on to go back inside so she can...

Spin on the table. Oh, that daughter of mine.

Catch-Up

I haven't posted. I'm a bad blogger.

So, I'll be bombarding you with the haps.

This is what Auds' face looked like July 5th:

Yup. That's my sweet angel. This is what happens when she gets bit by mosquito bites. She had three bites on her poor cheek.

It looks worse than it was. She felt fine. The swelling eventually went down.

She was back to sass in no time.

Oh, yeah.

Happy Fourth of July!

We initially had plans to BBQ with some fantastic people, but illness ensued and they were cancelled. It's okay, we've got a rain check, people!

So, instead we headed down to Avery Island and avoided the insane mosquitos. There are only 5 pictures of us there because we were running for our lives. There are, however, landscape shots on my business blog if you really want to see them.

Auds in her Fourth of July dress I made in front of the arch to get to Buddha.

My men. TB isn't mad, he had just woken up.

3/4 of us. Aren't they just so cute?

The whole lot of us. Yes, we did dress in red, white and blue to be cheesy and patriotic. I realize it's eccentric. But I think it's cute. And there's plenty of ammo for the "crazy things Mom mad the kids do" discussions with their future therapists. Just kidding about that last part. I hope.

We then went to a plantation where my kids - yes, both the 5 month old and the 2 year old - went through a guided tour of the house with minimal talking, no touching and no meltdowns. Can I get a hallelujah?! It was amazing.

Since everything in the house was original to the first owners, I wasn't allowed to take any pictures of the inside. But I did get a couple of everyone outside. It was, however, 100+ degrees, so we didn't stay outside too long.

Auds trimming the garden with her fan.

Walking the grounds.

And, of course, she found a stick.

I had intended to use the grounds as a backdrop for his five month pictures, but he decided that his sister and her stick were much more interesting than me trying to preserve memories.

Look at the sweat on her. We weren't even outside half an hour.

He didn't like the heat either.

Happy Fourth!

Sunday Fun Day

I meant to post this yesterday, but blogger was giving me fits. Our church had a family fun day for the 4th a day early and we had a blast! I could show you the pictures I took of everyone as church photographer, but you just want to see my babies, right?

Checking out crawfish holes.

"How do you work this thing?"

"Like this?"

"Cheese!"

Look at that chunk!

Chewing HARD on his fingers.

All.the.time.

Stealing Honey's Gatorade. Her shirt was completely orange!

My dreamy, handsome men.

Little ladies man.

Stealing Mommy's lemons to make...

Her own lemonade!

She really did drink it.

Isn't she adorable?