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 :-)

Baby and me...

I decided to scrap those awesome 4D u/s shots we got recently by showing what both me and baby looked like at 31 weeks. I'd say baby is faring a lot better than me LOL! This is a Fancy Pants layout, and the patterned paper and transparency are both from the Road Show line. Those alpha rubs are some of my favorite FP rub-ons ever! And that flower near the photo of me is actually from a set of FP rub-ons from way back when, and I thought it worked perfectly with the color scheme - was trying to incorporate blues and pinks ;-)

Thanks for all the supportive comments about us not finding out baby's sex. You'd be amazed how many people make it clear that they think we're crazy lol. To each his own, right? Oh, and Jessica asked about names. So far we have Lucas and Emma in first place, but knowing Tony and me, we could change our minds at the last minute... we did with Chloe! We didn't know her sex either and had decided she would be Maya if she were a girl. Well, at the last minute, we changed to Chloe, and poor Noah was so confused. For the first few weeks of Chloe's life, he was calling her baby Maya!!

Happy Friday, everyone! Had a great day here visiting with old friends with high school that I haven't seen in years. So much fun! Hope you all have a fantastic weekend :-)

Getting ready for baby...

I LOVE not finding out the sex of my babies. It truly is an amazing experience for us, each and every time. I know being surprised isn't for everyone, but I wouldn't do it any other way for us. However, one of the challenges is not being able to really set up the nursery before the baby gets here. I am not a gender-neutral kind of gal, so I usually wait until I know my baby's sex to buy the bedding and decorations. Since our babies always stay in our room for awhile, anyway, it's not such a big deal, but I do get eager to get things going ;-) This time around I decided to make this sign for baby's door. I thought the blues would work if it were a boy, and I thought the flowers and beads would make it work if it is a girl. Of course, Tony things it's way too feminine, lol, so I think if it's a boy, I may have to take the beaded hanger off ;-).
Papers and letters are American Crafts, stickpins are Jenni Bowlin, and I got the wooden plaque and beads at Michaels.

So, it's CHA time! I'm so jealous of my friends who are there, as I had a blast at the winter show! Maybe next year! I'm loving lots of the peeks i'm seeing, though, so I can't wait to get my hands on some of the new stuff coming out :-)

Hope everyone's week is starting off well!