My first Lucas layout (and some more Fancy Pants :-)

Ever since Lucas was born 3 short weeks ago, i've been so excited to dive in and scrap my newest addition. Of course I used Fancy Pants' Road Show line since that is one of my all time favorite FP lines, and it seems to be my go-to collection for any occasion! I covered the naked FP chip letters with Tim Holtz crackle paint and some clear glitter. I finally used the gorgeous flocked transparency, too, that i've been saving (hording?) for just the perfect occasion.

Journaling reads: Before you came along, I didn't even realize what I was missing. But the moment I held you for the first time, I knew. You complete our family. You complete me as a mommy. And I am eternally grateful. I love you, our little Lucas Blake!
This one uses a combination of Road Show and some Kraft Kuts papers. I also played around with my new EK Success punch that I love :-)

And lastly, another layout using Road Show and some Kraft Kuts papers - I told you Road Show is my go-to collection lol. I love these photos of Noah and Chloe! Things here are going well. We are adjusting to life as a family of 5 and trying to establish new routines. Noah is getting used to Kindy, and Chloe started pre-school this week. Lucas is working on staying awake more than 30 minutes a day ;-) I am recovering from surgery pretty well and even just started driving short distances - ahhh, it feels good to get some freedom back lol. I'm definitely sleep deprived, but I know it's temporary (sort of, lol). And he is worth it. Completely and totally :-)

Catching up...

Wow. I go and have a baby, and now I have SO much to catch up on! ;-) I want to catch up with you all, so hopefully visiting friends' blogs will occur soon, I have to catch up on posting layouts (and creating them! can't wait to scrap our newest member :-), I have to catch up on posting photos, and of course, i'm constantly trying to catch up on spending time with everyone in my family while still getting lots of rest and recovering from my c/s.

Let's start with the layouts, shall we ;-) So these are from the August AMM kit. Yikes! I told you I was behind. The September kit is gooorgeous, too, so you can check that out here.

Journaling for Friends with Bellies: It has been such a fun and special experience to go through this pregnancy with two of my closest friends. It will be even more fun to see our babies grow up together!
Journaling for Growing Up: My heart skips a beat when I look at this photo of you and see how old you look. You talk and act like such a big girl these days! There's no doubt about the fact that you are growing up.
This one was a highlight of all the fun stuff we did this summer :-)
When I was your age... stickers were used on paper ;-)
And now... catching up on some recent photos, starting with my big boy's first day of Kindergarten last Monday!!
Some at-home photo shoots of little Lucas:



And with his awesome big bro and sis:

After his first "real" bath tonight:
I can't thank you all enough for the sweet comments congratulating us on Lucas. I truly feel blessed more than words can say for my family, and for the love of my friends - in real life and in blog land ;-) I'm so sorry I have been slacking on blog visiting, but I hope to catch up with you all really soon!!

He's here!!!!!

Well, my blogging friends, i'm so sorry to have been MIA for so long, but hopefully you'll see that I had a good reason why ;-) Last Monday, our new little guy came into this world three weeks early and two weeks before my scheduled c-section date. While I was cooking dinner around 6pm last Monday, my water broke! Lucas Blake was born at 11:57 pm, keeping a birthday of August 23rd by just three minutes. He weighed in at 6 lbs, 15 oz and was 19.5 inches long, which is still shocking to us, as historically, we have made huge babies! Even three weeks early, we expected him to be about a pound bigger. He is a dream baby so far, and we are all totally in love with this little guy. Thankfully, Noah and Chloe are doing great, wanting to hug and kiss on him all day long lol. I'm still wondering if we'll see some negative effects with my little "mama's girl", but so far, so good! And the boys of the house have already formed an alliance since they outnumber us girls. They like to chant, "boys rule, girls drool" (thanks to daddy! lol). I have been teaching Chloe to tell them that two girls are more powerful than three girls ;-) Anyway, sorry to be redundant for those who are friends with me on FB, but here are some photos of our new family of 5 :-)

I hope you all are doing well, and I hope to catch up with you guys soon!!

Photoshoot.

So, I had a very fun second date (tee hee) with Cheryl the other day. We walked around historical Ellicott City which is full of fun shops and cafes (although we learned the hard way that a lot of the stores are closed on Tuesdays!). Cheryl was awesome enough to take some very cool shots with my camera (the ones of me and the kids)... please ignore my complete and utter heftiness. Unfortunately, even the best photographer can't make me less huge right now ;-)




Then I got a few of the kids walking over the bridge. I especially love this back-view one.

And no outing would be complete without a couple of goofballs trying to get a shot together...
Definitely a fun day with a very fun ending in a yummy candy shop.

Last night I had another great date with a bunch of girlfriends from the 'hood. We went to see Eat Pray Love and then ended the evening with dessert at the Cheesecake Factory. I enjoyed the movie and cried through half of it lol (pg hormones or just my innate sappiness? who knows...). And my 30th anniversary Chocolate Cheesecake was soooo fabulous. Of course, getting on the scale at my ob's appt this morning was not so fabulous.

Only a few more hours until Friday... happy almost weekend, everyone!

This is them....

This is totally not a good quality photo, however, I LOVE it. It cracks me up every time I look at it. Yes, they can be all drama and moody and whiny, but the majority of the time, they are complete and utter goofballs. And they totally feed off of each other. They love to make funny faces and dance around and act weird and crazy. And Tony and I love it. I wonder if #3 is going to be as much of a goof??
In between DT work, I've actually been trying to use up my stash (I know, using up my stash is probably breaking some crazy scrapbook law ;-), and I finally dug into Lily Bee's Hello Sunshine line...
Of course, now I've got my hands on the goooorgeous AMM August kit, so i'm having fun digging in. You can get one here if you're interested :-)

So, we're now at 3 weeks, 2 days of the countdown till baby arrives (hence the even slackier blog posting than normal ;-) I have two more weeks of work and then i'm starting my maternity leave. Since I work part-time and am home several days during the week, too, our schedule is getting pretty packed with stuff to do and people to see before baby comes, and before my little man starts kindergarten (ack!!). Let's home I can stay organized in the next few weeks... :-)

My surfer dude....

Is this little guy cute or what? :-)

Ahhh, what a weekend! The kids slept out at my bro and SIL's. I've been away from them before, and Tony has been away from them before, but we've never both been away from them before at the same time (can you believe it?!)! They had such a great time with their aunt and uncle and their cousins. Tony and I got to have a date AND sleep in this morning (bliss!). I did miss those sweet little faces though.... ;-)

Every month at AMM, we have a fun challenge in which you can win a cool prize. Check out this month's challenge here, and you can win a $10 gift certificate to the AMM store plus some cool vintage trims that will be shipped with your order :-)

Catching up on my "boy" layouts...

I try to do an even amount of Noah and Chloe layouts, but I have to admit that it is usually easier for me to do "girly" layouts since I tend to like handcutting flowery, frilly things lol. But, I do enjoy my "boy" pages, too, especially when I have great papers to work with.

This first Fancy Pants layout is mostly Rough and Tough and Kraft Kuts That Boy papers. This photo of Noah is from when he was 2 1/2, and he climbed into our spare fridge in the garage lol.
This layout uses papers from the Rough and Tough line, as well as the Like Father, Like Son line. These are also older photos from when Noah was 2, and boy do these pictures crack me up. Does he look serious about his football or what?!
Lastly, I have a recent (two day old) photo of me at 34 weeks. Not much longer to go!

Having movie time with the kids right now, so "The Incredibles" are calling me :-)