Sassy Girl

This photo very much represents Sydney’s personality lately. Sassy. And she knows it too.

Did you all register for that digital class I posted about? I think she’s already on day 8 and I just started Day 1’s assignment. It’s really fun. I’ll definitely be taking more of her classes in the future.

A Brand New Friend

We bought this Elmo doll a couple years ago when there was that whole craze over Tickle Me Elmo. We didn’t buy it because we were crazed about getting one, but we were going to sell it at a profit. Unfortunately we waited too long and then it was to the point that we would lose money on it. Live and learn I guess. So, we wrapped it up to give to Sydney for Christmas. She liked it for a little while, but it kept running out of batteries. Three years later and we finally put some new batteries in and it’s a whole new toy for a whole new baby. I think he’s a little bit interested in it.

I love this one. He’s actually looking at the camera. So is Elmo!

Sydney was quite amused as well, but made a run for it each time he started moving.

I’d love to chat some more about this past weekend as it was a whirlwind, but I’ve got some work to do tonight, so hopefully I’ll have time to post tomorrow. I’ve got tons and tons of photos I can’t wait to share. I’m so sad to have to send this lens back, but someday I’ll have saved enough to purchase one of my own. I’ve set a goal for myself.

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!