Trying a new lens

I rented a lens for this week (24-70mm) from an online website for my Nikon. It is really something. Really heavy. I am getting a few more clearer shots indoors than I can with the lenses I have. I haven’t really tried it outside yet, because it is so hot. Hopefully I can get out there with the kids later this week. Anyway, I’m making the most out of my time with it, so you should see an increase of photos here.

We’re all doing well here. Like I said it is pretty hot, but it gets a little stormy in the late afternoons, which cools it down here a little bit. I feel bad for Josh because the air conditioning on the Cavalier just went out during the hottest week of the summer here. I’m so tired of things going wrong with that car that I’m about ready to sell it and go back down to one car again. We were able to purchase my grandpa’s Cadillac after he passed away and he took such good care of it that I think if we keep the maintenance up on it, it should last for a long time. It’s a pretty fancy car to be towing two little kids in, but we are grateful to have it.

Josh has been working extra hard at work this week. He’s trying to write the schedule and make it so it’s more consistent week after week. His schedule is so hard to plan around sometimes, so hopefully he can get something worked out. I will be starting work again soon. I’ve had my hours increased, which is great for extra income. Thus another reason why Josh will need a more consistent schedule. Now I have to figure out how Easton will eat the day I go into work. I bought some sippy cups for him, so we may just have to go straight to those.

Sydney spent the night at my parent’s house Monday night and my Mom took her to see Ice Age 3. She seemed to enjoy it and my Mom said it was really cute, in case you want to see it. I kind of want to take Sydney to see Up this weekend since Josh has the time off, so hopefully we can work that out. You don’t suppose she’d wear 3-D glasses?

She’s getting interested in dinosaurs. My Mom has a bunch of dinosaur toys at her house and Sydney plays for hours with them. She’s still into her princess stuff though. I bought her a princess pillowcase and she loves it. She carries her pillow all around the house with her. She also loves to play pretend. The other day we brought out her blanket and pretended we were flying on Aladdin’s magic carpet. She loved it.

Easton’s great. He’s so sweet and cuddly. Over the last couple of days he’s been doing this fake laugh. It’s so funny to hear. He loves to grab my face now. He giggles his head off when he grabs my hair or my face. He’s still a champ at eating solids. He’s tried quite a few different foods. He loves squash and bananas the best. He’s doing much better at the store when I carry him. It will be nice when he can sit in the cart because it kills my back and shoulders to carry him around.

Here’s the latest photos.

These next few were from the 4th of July. We did end up watching the fireworks this year and it was a lot of fun. I think this will be the start of a yearly tradition.

Sydney was still covering her ears even ten minutes after the show.

Sydney was being so silly and Easton had no clue what was going on.

Poor baby got tired from all the pictures. He loves his thumb.

I love his bright blue eyes in this one.

Easton is always on his tummy in his crib. The poor thing can’t figure out how to roll back still. Although on Monday he did roll to his back, but it kind of scared him and he didn’t seem to know how he did that.

This girl’s hair is crazy. Maybe she’ll bring afros back.

Look at Sydney’s bright, big, brown eyes.

Easton was fascinated by the yellow.

His chubby legs barely fit into the bumbo.

Such a smiley guy.

I like this one in color and black and white.

Happy Fourth!

I love the 4th of July! Josh has to work today, but that won’t stop me from grilling some good food for Sydney and I. I also plan on making this Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie recipe from “The Pioneer Woman Cooks” blog.

I’m not a huge peanut butter fan, but this looks delicious AND I plan on using my brand new

!!!!!!!!!!!! You won’t believe what I paid for this. The customer service lady at Kohls was shocked and freaking out too. I got this mixer for under $30! So excited! Now I need to find a ton of recipes to try. Anyway, sorry to rub it in, but I’ve wanted one of these for years.

We are planning on watching the fireworks tonight at La Paloma. We have gone there a couple of times before we had kids and it was always fun, so I’m putting my brave hat on and taking the kids to see them. We’ll see how that goes. Hopefully it doesn’t rain like it did last night. It poured while I was out shopping last night so hard that I had to buy an umbrella. Luckily I found one on clearance. :

In other news Sydney officially made the biggest mess in her room today. Last night when I came home, I went into her room, told her goodnight, and she told me how clean her room was in a proud manner. Then, this morning Josh tells me to look in Sydney’s room and I see this. So, within 9 hours, her room went from fairly clean to THIS.

Look she’s all tired from making this mess. So, we will be spending some time today organizing things and discussing some ways she thinks she can keep her room clean. What’s really bugging me are all the tiny little toys she has. The little princess doll outfits with shoes the size of my pinky nail, the happy meal toys, and the random things she keeps to play with, like deflated balloons and pinecones. Ah well. We’ll get something worked out so we can all live in peace. I’m just glad Easton isn’t going around and making messes just yet.

Speaking of Easton…Isn’t he cute?

So, I don’t have time to make a lengthy post about what we’ve been doing, but I did want to get some photos up. Here’s some I took yesterday of the kids having lunch together. Aren’t they cute together. Sydney loves sitting next to Easton and trys to push her chair as close to his as she can. He loves watching her. It’s almost like he’s studying her with the faces he makes. I made this peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Sydney. Isn’t it fun? I found this sandwich cutter in the Target dollar spot. I don’t want to use it everyday though because I want Sydney to eat the crust, but it’s still pretty cute to have a butterfly sandwich.

Poor Easton scratched his eye during the night. I clipped his nails, but they grow just as fast as he does.

I love this photo of the two of them.

I hope to get some photos today, but we’ll see how that goes. Enjoy this wonderful day!

Trip down memory lane

I’ve been editing photos today and noticed that I haven’t posted quite a few of them on my blog. I know I have some family members that would probably enjoy seeing these, so I am going back into time, circa April 2009.

Easter, that was a good day. Marie, Brian, and Aiden came down to visit and we celebrated. I was really excited about getting the kids Easter baskets. (Note to self-don’t go the night before looking for plastic Easter eggs.) Sydney was pretty excited that a bunny came to our house and she loved the Sleeping Beauty doll. Unfortunately the doll  now rests in the Tucson landfill as Layla found her too irresistible. Sydney also loves the movie, Bolt. I’m sharing some photos from that weekend and apologize that it is almost July and am just now posting these, but I thought they were too cute not to share.

We are hoping to get Easton into baby modeling. How are we doing?

Peek-a-boo

This kid cracks me up. I love his little bow tie.

This was the best we could do with the three kids together. Kind of funny.

Sydney really loved looking for the hidden Easter eggs

These two Josh took when he went with Sydney and Aiden to the park .

I thought this was cute with Aiden’s feet poking down the slide

Swagbucks

Update again: So, the code works, but only when you enter it when you first register with Swagbucks. So, that was my fault, sorry about that. They weren’t very clear about where to enter the code when they sent it to me. Anyway, they post codes on their blog, facebook page, and twitter page frequently, so if you follow any of those you can get quite a few points that way.

Update: It’s still not working. Sorry about that. Hopefully I’ll get this fixed.

Hi again. My code had expired before I posted it on my blog, so I asked to have it extended again. It should work through the end of this Thursday.

RENEESCODE (case sensitive)

Anyone that has a Swagbucks account can use this code. Let me know if it doesn’t work.

Swagbucks code

Have you heard about Swagbucks? I came across Swagbucks a few months ago from another blog I frequently visited.

Swagbucks.com works just like any other search engine, but with swagbucks.com you are rewarded for searching the web. Every time you search with swagbucks.com, you have a chance to earn from 1 to 5 Swag Bucks (on Fridays, you can win as many as 100 Swag Bucks in one search!). I actually won TEN swagbucks just last week. So exciting! These Swag Bucks can be used to redeem thousands of prizes from the Swag Store.

I didn’t really start paying attention to these Swagbucks until just a few months ago. In fact I remember seeing several swagbucks pop up after my searches and I didn’t even claim them. :0 Once I realized that I could regularly win these and accumulate them for useful prizes I got hooked. Since I started claiming my Swagbucks I’ve earned three $5 gift cards to Amazon and am very close to a fourth gift card. These come in handy for the really good deals on Amazon. In fact I used my first two gift cards on a FLIP video camera, which I love.

Anyway, I was given a code to post on my blog, so if you sign up here as a new member you will get 3 swagbucks in your account and where you just registered you can type in RENEESCODE (case sensitive) where it says “swag code”. It’s only good until the end of Thursday(7/2), so if you’re interested make sure you do it now.

I would recommend installing the toolbar plug-in. It’s easy to do and then get in the habit of searching everything. If I want to go to Kohls.com then I type it in the search toolbar. It takes a couple more seconds than using my bookmarks, but sometimes I get a swagbuck for doing so. I think the trick to earning these is to do searches as you “naturally” would search. You could actually have your account deactivated for searching too frequently. I find that I get points in the morning, afternoon, evening, and late evening if I’m up. So, good luck and let me know if you won any Swagbucks today!

Another cool thing is you can refer others as well. You will then earn up to 100 extra swagbucks every time they win! Very fun.

6 months old yesterday

(So, I had this post ready for last night and my blog had been blocked. Something about some links I had on my blog, so I removed them and am back in business. I do plan on switching blogs still and having my blog blocked here is all the more reason to switch.)

Well, Easton is now half a year old. It is unbelievable to me that just six months ago I was headed to the hospital to first meet this little boy. Time is going faster and faster as I get older and add more responsibilities in my life. Easton has really brought out the best in me. Like I have mentioned in previous posts the past 12 months or so have been rough and I kind of felt like I let things bother me too much, but since I’ve had Easton, I have been the happiest I’ve been in a while. Don’t get me wrong, Sydney and Josh, both make me just as happy, but there’s something about Easton that really smacked some sense into me that life really is amazing and beautiful and sometimes life is, well life. Things go wrong and days are hard, but I always look at my little family and say, “I’ve got it good.”

Here are a few things about Easton as he enters into the second half of his first year:

-Easton had his 6 month old appointment today and I guessed he weighed 20 lbs, but he only came in at 19lbs 9 oz, in the 83%. He looks a lot bigger to me. He is now 27 inches long, but the doctor said the nurse may not have been accurate on that measurement because he looks longer. I’ll have to try and measure him myself because that is only in the 72%. He does have shorter legs than Sydney did, but they’re still long. He got three shots today. Poor baby. He did fine though and this time I gave him Tylenol before his appointment and I think that helped in reducing the onset of a fever this time. I was worried what Sydney would think about the shots, but she didn’t seem to care. She actually was kind of annoyed that he was crying. My little empathetic girl. She doesn’t realize that she’s getting some shots this year, so maybe she’ll have more sympathy towards Easton crying.

- Easton finally figured out how to roll over onto his tummy. He only rolls from one side though and he can’t roll back onto his back, which kind of baffels me since he has been rolling over so well and spends a lot of time on his tummy now. He even sleeps on his tummy, all through the night. Yay! He actually started sleeping through the night around the middle of April, right around when he discovered he could suck his thumb.

-He started solids a few weeks ago. First I started him with oatmeal, then added vegetables, and today he had some Peaches for the first time. He has loved everything we’ve given him so far, sweet potatoes, squash, peas, carrots, green beans, and now peaches. He loves his food. I am still nursing and 6 months was my goal and he’s still going strong, so I’ll nurse as long as I can and as long as nursing doesn’t make me pass out. Saves money on formula.

-Easton is a smiler. He gives the biggest open mouthed smiles I’ve ever seen, he isn’t much of a laugher though. I have been getting him to laugh a little more lately. He laughs if I tickle around his neck or if I get my face really close to his and make growling noises. I don’t know what it is that really makes him laugh though.

-He has started to make these really high pitched squeals, almost like some kind of raptor dinasour or something. I need to get it on video (Speaking of video I finally found an inexpensive video camera that is really nice, so I hope to get some videos up. I have one of him rolling over and would love to get one of the raptor noises).

-He has really gotten grabby. I have to watch what is in his reach now. I’m scared for when he gets mobile.

-I think he may be getting ready to cut some teeth. He’s been chewing on his fingers and sort of bites when he’s nursing. Yes, feel sorry for me please.

-Easton’s got major reflux.  He is spitting up like crazy all day and all over me. The doctor prescribed some Zantac for him, so we’ll give it a try.

-He is very stable when sitting as long as I am supporting him. I imagine he’ll be sitting pretty soon.

-He loves to play with these toy rings and a crinkly book (Do you love my descriptions). Both things I had when Sydney was a baby. It’s nice to recycle some baby things.

-Easton is really loving Sydney. He always smiles at her and shows interest in her. Sydney is really becoming fond of him too. She likes to rub his fuzzy hair and play with him. She said she will always love him.

Well, that’s about all I can remember for now. I will update again soon with some more of what we have been up to and definitely more photos.

Free Photo Editing class-sign up now

Click here for more info if you’re interested. I signed up, so I’ll see you there!

~FREE instructor-led class of 2009 – Photo Editing: Frame-ups & Special Effects! In celebration of our SECOND BIRTHDAY, JessicaSprague.com will host an incredible photo editing class you don’t want to miss! You’ll even receive a stunning FREE KIT by our friends at Houseof3.com!

Curious how to use the digital goodies you’ve collected? Or how about creating scuffy, worn edges or rounded corners on your photos? Dying to know to add swirly borders to your pictures like you see in magazines and advertisements? I’ll show you how easy it is to add beautiful accents to enhance your digital photos, as well as how to add special photography effects using Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

This FREE two-week class begins on July 6, 2009!

Cheap kid movies

I wanted to share this for anyone who may be interested. Cinemark is showing kid movies every Wednesday at 10am for $1. I’m assuming $! for adult tickets too. Here is the link http://www.cinemark.com/summermovieclubhouse/index.htm.

I would love to take Sydney, but we don’t have an extra car, so hopefully you all can enjoy the movies for us.

Oh, and I do plan on updating my blog soon. I am switching back over to blogger as I have grown bored of this blog and find I can personalize my blog more with the other site. So, I’ll post here when I do that. See ya!

The cutest baby in the World

Is that bad to think your baby is the cutest thing ever? I just can’t get over how cute Easton is. I sure love this little boy. He holds a special place in my heart. Cute, cute, cute.

This is probably my favorite out of all of them.

Here’s little Sydney. Why is it that kids love to play with laundry baskets? She thought it was fun to sit inseide and ride like she was on a horse. Then she thought it would be fun to turn the basket over and push stuffed animals through the holes. Such fun.

Here’s her cheesy grin face. She hasn’t been the most cooperative with photos lately.

My little babies. They will be such good friends.

Easton is a little over three months now.
He’s wearing nine month clothes, but is ready for the next size I’m afraid.
He loves to smile. He smiles a lot for me, especially when I’m trying to feed him.
He giggles when I blow on his tummy.
He blows raspberries all the time.
He turns himself around in his crib during his nap.
He’s sucking on his hand now to soothe himself, but can’t quite find his thumb. I think it’s adorable.
The Baby Bjorn is my friend at the store. Easton does really well in it.
He’s starting to grab at things, like the toys over his bouncy seat and various other things we give him.
He recognizes Sydney and smiles for her.

Sydney is my little helper. I’ve been having her clean up her toys and clothes throughout the day and she does a great job. I also ask her to do various tasks for me like carry all the dirty diapers to the trash or folding the washcloths. She loves it. Who knew? She loves getting out to go shopping as much as I do. She’s always asking to go to Walgreens. They have some toys there that she loves to look at. Now that we don’t have a car it’s kind of a treat to go out now. I know, so sad, isn’t it? She’s also very sensitive right now. She asked to watch The Little Mermaid, which she hadn’t seen in a while, so I put it on for her. I was in the other room feeding Easton and she came in with the saddest pout and almost in tears stating that Little Mermaid would be okay in the ocean. I said yes she’ll be okay, not knowing exactly what part was worrying her, but that seemed to help. She also watched Anastasia yesterday and was very upset about the dog and almost cried a few times about it. She has the saddest face now when she’s about to cry. She makes me want to cry sometimes. She’s also really afraid of noise. It’s not just loud noise either. It’s like she anticipates that a noise will be loud and she gets scared and covers her ears. I think she does this too when she is scared about something. I was cleaning today with this steamer that was kind of loud and she did not like that at all, of course neither did Easton.

We are doing well. I got my flowers and planted them and they aren’t doing good at all. Layla dug a couple of them up, but they were practically dead when I got them. So, I will be getting replacements for those. I would love to grow some cherry tomatoes and strawberries. My two favorite fruits.I’ve been trying some new recipes. I have found a couple of really easy and really good ones that I’ll have to share. We have been so good at not eating out. We have always been really bad about eating out. I despise cooking, but I think it’s hard for me because I hate to plan my meals and if I don’t plan them then I’m totally lost. I also don’t like eating the same things more than once a month, if that, unless I really really like the meal. I’m kind of weird that way. Well, I need to get Easton.

Have a great Easter!

And because I can’t decide if I like these in color or black and white I’m posting them twice!

Well, hello there

So, I have had many good intentions on updating this blog for the last couple of weeks, but for some reason it is last on my list of things to do. Unfortunately that puts me very behind in posting the photos I wanted to, so I may just post random photos throughout the week to make me feel better. By not updating my blog enough I start to forget what we have been up to as well. It kind of bugs me.

I am really excited about Spring/Summer arriving. I love the Winter and all the holidays, but there is something about the warm air that makes me want to clean every crevice in my house. It also makes me want to plant things, which is kind of sad because I can never keep anything alive (plant-wise that is). I started my dreams of a beautiful backyard by ordering some Hibiscus plants off of QVC. They should be arriving this week. The only problem is, I don’t know where we will put them. They actually get quite big, so I’m trying to figure out what we are going to do with them quick. We have also been looking at trees to plant. We looked a lot last summer for one, but just didn’t go through with it, but this year I am determined to get one planted. There are a couple that we think would be nice, so we’ll see. There is a really nice nursery here that had tons of plants and flowers and I didn’t want to leave empty handed so I bought two Columbine perennials that are really pretty. We’ll see how they do. Josh set up a drip line into one of our planters and has it on a timer, so the only thing that could really happen is if they get too much water or too much sun, so I can’t be blamed if they die.

We had quite a scare earlier this past week. Josh was in a car accident on the freeway while on the way home. He is fine and the other people he hit are fine as far as we know, so he is very lucky. The truck is totaled though and so now we are down to one very unreliable car. We are looking at some options right now, but it looks like we will be sticking to one car for a while. Any advice or suggestions on buying a car would be greatly appreciated. I actually borrowed a book by Clark Howard from the library a couple weeks ago and he has a lot of really good advice in there. Anyway, I am very grateful that Josh is okay and nothing more serious didn’t happen to him. I always have this fear that he will die on the way home from work and wonder what the heck I would do, so it wasn’t fun to almost have something terrible happen like that.

Easton is such a cutie-pie. I sure love my little boy. He is really developing a little personality. He smiles all the time, especially for me, which is the least he could do for me. Last night I was getting his pajamas on and tickled the sides of his ribs and he let out this little giggle for the first time. It was so cute. I imagine he’ll be laughing a lot more in the next couple of weeks. He also is really trying to talk to me and carry on conversations in baby language. I love to encourage it because it is so cute. He also likes to blow bubbles as you can see in the first photo I posted.  He does pretty good at night as far as I know. I ask other women in our ward how their babies are sleeping and they’ll say “Oh, he’s sleeping like four hours straight, or six hours straight.” And they’re really happy about that. I don’t have the heart to tell them that Easton sleeps at least 6-7 hours straight every night. Actually a few nights ago he slept from 9 to 8:30 and I didn’t hear him once. Unfortunately Layla woke me up at 6:30, so I didn’t really get to enjoy sleeping in. Of course Easton can not compare to Sydney’s sleep schedule when she was this age. She slept all through the night pretty early on, so I often worry that Easton will always wake up in the night.

Sydney is our little goofball lately. She has been so silly. I can’t even really explain her behavior. She just says funny things and even talks in funny voices to be silly. She has a really big fear of the dark right now. She has a nightlight, but she still likes to have the hall light on and the door wide open. She saw a video that had pictures of some dogs and cats that were growling and hissing and whatever and ever since that she has been so scared. She always says, “There’s no scary dogs under my bed?”. “No Sydney, no scary dogs under your bed.” Josh told her there were only unicorns, rainbows, and princesses under her bed. That seemed to help (although I’m not sure that would make me feel better).I’m dying to get Sydney into Preschool, but I’m pretty sure we won’t be able to afford it right now especially with a car payment in the near future. I’m planning on working on some ideas of things to do at home with her which I think I can do if I can find some good resources. My only concern is her lack of interaction with other kids. She is so shy, but you can tell she really wants to play with other kids. I hope to help her with that as soon as I overcome my shyness with other people.

I am doing great. I’m still slowly getting back into the swing of things. Like I mentioned earlier I am really into getting the house clean and maintaining it. I’ve also been seen decorating and rearranging things and trying not to spend a lot of money in the process. I’m really into learning things. I may have talked about this before. I just feel like learning everything about money and finances, cooking, photography, gardening. Sometimes I get crazy ideas about starting a photography business and then I chicken out. I think I need a little more practice and confidence before I do anything like that. I did take some engagement photos for my sister-in-law’s sister last weekend. Josh was there to help too. I think both Josh and I should do photography together. He could be the personality and I could take the photos.

Well, I better get to bed. I owe Josh a backrub from his birthday last year. By the way his birthday is on Friday, so wish him a Happy Birthday and he’ll be real embarassed, but flattered. Good night!

Here’s my little baby blue eyes. They are still blue.

Here’s mini me. She doesn’t like getting her photo taken much anymore, hence the cheesy grin. I think I had to bribe her for this one.

I can’t believe I’m posting this photo of me as I have no makeup on and look sickly, but I thought Easton made up for that with his cuteness.

Here’s our latest family photo. Neither kid is looking and I imagine that will be how it is for a long time. I like it though.

Sydney trying to hold Easton. She doesn’t quite get that you have to support his head, so she just held on to his foot. He is kind of heavy though.