Congratulations Grads!

Congratulations to 5 of my favorite seniors from McNeil HS. Today is their big day, and although its a day to celebrate I can not be a bit sad for their parents. It makes me sad to think of my little ones growing up, graduating and moving on. Not that I don't want that for my own children, but to see them leave the nest can leave me teary eyed.

I wish you all the best of luck in the future, whatever it may hold for you all. Do your best, and make wise decisions and don't do anything you will regret later. :)

Kelly

Chase
Logan
Doug
Josh

The Bob

Last week I took Parker to the hair salon to get her "summer cut". She sat so patiently in the chair and had it cut. At one point I think she even fell asleep she was so relaxed. The boys kept coming over to her and saying, "wow you look older than us!" and "look how good she's doing" When we got home she looked in the mirror and told me that her hair was ruined! This just made me laugh because it is so precious!! And by no means ruined. She seems to like it now. But to most of you who know her, she does NOT take compliments well. She was willing however, to sit for a few pics. I told her that Grammy needed to see her hair. If you blame in on Grammy she'll do whatever you ask her. ;)

Precious Family of 4

On Sunday I met this sweet family up in Georgetown for a fun family session. Their children ages 2 1/2 and 12 months were sweet as pie. Here are my favorites, and for some reason I was leaning towards all B&W this time, but I did add 2 beautiful ones in color as well. I would post the slide show, but it is really 8 min. long!! This mommy was a music teach and chose a beautiful song, the Forrest Gump Suite, instrumental. It was a fantastic choice for their family.



How preicous is this little guy?!

Busy, Fun, Long Weekend

We started this fun weekend out on Friday night. We headed to a friends house out in Lago Vista, where they enjoy this view each and everyday. Imagine that?! Here it is at sunset.

This sweet family has 4 precious little girls, below. Our kids had a great time playing with them.
Their sweet mommy, Heather even made cake! As you can see they were super excited about.
On Sat. Parker and I went to a princess party where she dressed as Cinderella. She did remind me several times that her hair was not yellow. ha! But you know that is now how Rick and I make our babies, they all come out dark. :) We have yet to make a blonde.
On Sat. night we had our good friends, the Hejl's over for dinner and then swam in our pool. After that the boys got out Rick's guitar and wanted the daddy's to sing to us. Then they realized they needed to start a band. So here is Carson on the piano, Griffin on the drums & Mason on the other guitar. It was pretty much just a bunch of noise. April and I just watched on and laughed.
On Sunday night I had a photoshoot (I'll post on that later). On Monday night we went to our friend Chris & Julie's house where we ate and the kids swam. Forgot to bring my camera. We had a great time and the kids are recovering today from such a busy weekend.

L. Family Session

How precious is this family?! I really enjoyed meeting them and working with their sweet children. Their little girl looks just like Parker, and was super fun. The big boy was great as well. And the little guy had us cracking up, the biggest ham. Click to watch their slide show, its a great one... http://cozyimpressionsphotography.com/Lippman/

Let the Fish Swim!

Friday playgroup buddies.

Can you tell we're happy to be back in the pool again? We have swam every single day this week. They are like fish out of water when we are not able to swim. This is truly our favorite activity.

Every Friday we have been having our summer swim playgroup. This week was at Madison's pool, which is actually our old pool. We lived in this neighborhood when we first moved to Austin. Here are some fun shots from our day.

Kitchen Renovation

Before: The dark, grainy kitchen...

Most of these shots were taken by Griffin with a little point & shoot camera, so the quality is the pits. Also I did no editing on any of these shots.


After: Coastal cottage kitchen. We LOVE it!! I love how our granite counter tops just pop out. They went unnoticed and just blended in before, now they look so pretty & are the highlight of the kitchen.
Facts on what we used and what we did to create this great change.
1. 1 gallon of primer $10
2. 1 gallon of Sherwin Williams Casa Blanca Paint $47
3. 1 gallon of Ralph Lauren glaze - smoke $25
4. 1 gallon of Ralph Lauren paint for the walls in Egg shell- Plantation $28
5. 9 pulls from Pottery Barn $86 (still looking for the right knobs to buy)
6. Wanes Coating for the bar & sides of cabinets $40
7. Hand Sander $20
8. Miscellaneous supplies $20
9. Decorator fee $50
Total Cost $326! Not so bad.
The entire project took us 6 days of work & a little bit of insanity to do this with 4 children running around. ha! We are so happy with the end results & plan to do the master bathroom next. Stay tooned!!

21 Months of Pure Joy

Our sweet Cooper Ben is 21 months now. He is growing taller and is starting to look more like a 2 yr old every day. Sometimes he acts like one too! Not too bad. His newest trick is climbing onto the dining room table over and over again. ugh! That one gets me. His vocabulary continues to grow. this month he has added the word vacuum (one of his favorite things to watch me do). He also says "I want" and of course "mine" gotta love that one. He calls his brothers "gaga" (Griffin) and "CarCar" (Carson) and he doesn't call Parker. ha! In fact he hits her if she comes near. Despite that he is still a sweet baby that loves his mama. When Daddy gets home from work he runs and yells "Dada" all the way to the front door.

We started swimming again everyday for the last 4 days & he is already back to being a water bug. Last summer at 10 months he could go under and swim to the side. This summer we are working back up to that. Just in the 4 days of working with him he is learning to float on his back, which he thinks is so funny. And he is back to going under, which he chooses to do. He cries when his lesson with Mommy is over and its time to get out. He would swim all day if I let him, just like the other 3, born to swim.

Hejl Family Session

All this mommy wanted for her birthday was a family portrait of her precious ones. Well Happy early Birthday April. I hope the pictures are what you were dreaming of. We definitely had a beautiful location, with trees, the lake & a dock.

To watch their slide show click the link and turn up the volume...

http://cozyimpressionsphotography.com/HejlFamily/
Here are a few of my personal favorites

Editing on Sunday

We have had a full weekend of painting, only a few more days to go on the kitchen. In the mean time I have taken some time off the kitchen to edit the Hejl session from yesterday... Came across this funny one with Mason's tongue out and it made me laugh. Don't worry, J & A they are not all like this! Ha!

Mason is one of Griffin & Carson's very best friends. They just adore him & I am glad because he is really one of the greatest kids out there.... more to come.

Blogger, Lazy

Just a quick post to let you all know I am still around. We decided this week to renovate our kitchen. I know we are nuts. And why you might ask? Since we live in a new house. Well for many reasons. When we bought our new home, one thing we never liked was our oak, grainy cabinets. So we had Meredith, our amazing decorator, help us with colors and our big change up. She came out this week and gave us our "instructions", thanks Meredith you're the best!! Our cabinets are on their way to being a creamy white wash with a glaze over them, a touch of brown. And the walls will be a sage green like the living & dining rooms. I will post a before & after when we are all done. For now we are only at the priming stage so we have the rest of the week to go. So all of our free time has been sanding, caulking and priming. More updates to come. And a HUGE thank you to my amazing husband who lives with me on a daily basis and allows me to make such changes in our house in any given moment. And then continues to love me. ha!

ps the pic was taken at our baseball game on Monday night. Parker & her daddy...