Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Summer Fun

We had an enjoyable Father's Day weekend which included a visit from Scott's brother's family. They arrived Saturday afternoon, so Scott prepared some delicious "stuffed burgers" for dinner. Prior to dinner, Landen and her cousin Hayes spent some time in the pool and ran wild through the house and back yard. 


Sunday included breakfast from Baked to Perfection (yummmmm!) and some family photo shoots before heading to Maimeo and Papa's for Father's Day gifts and lunch. Later Scott, Landen and I visited my extended family for an afternoon by the pool and my grandma's (and grandpa's) famous burgers for dinner. 


I'll share a few pics from the weekend. Most are from our family photo shoots Sunday morning. Katie and I are pretty passionate about photography and finally enjoyed practicing on people other than our own children. Although, we quickly realized that photographing ANY child that has no desire or attention span to stand/sit still is HARD WORK. The entire shoot lasted maybe 25 minutes because our kids were quite squirmy. :)


Landen and Hayes enjoying some pool time on Saturday.

Katie, Ryan & Hayes...


Our family...and some I shot of just Scott and Landen...





My sweet, goofy, one-of-a-kind, Landy...

Hayes and Landen playing in the yard...

Finally, this is what happens when we tell Landen to give Charlie a kiss...She thinks she has to stick out her tongue too...Never a dull moment with this girl!






Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Super-sized Top 10

It has been a verrrryyyyyy long time since I've blogged. Over two months! Not the ideal situation for me, but after reading my "Super-sized Top 10", you'll see why I've been slacking. April and May were extremely busy months, so instead of writing a super long post, I'll try to condense it into a top 10. :)


1. This one I mentioned in March, but didn't want to say too much. We sold our house and bought a house. All in 24 hours. The sign was literally in our yard for six hours before the deal was done. Everything just fell into place at the right time, and we were blessed to have it all happen the way it did.  


Old house. (Sniff)

New house. :)

2. Scott and I were in such disbelief at our luck with the house buying/selling that we were nervous to start packing up the old house before the papers were signed. In hindsight, this was probably a bad idea since we were getting immediate possession of our new house. This left a lot of packing for the days leading up to, and including, moving day. A little stressful? Yes.

3. Even before moving day we had A LOT to accomplish in the new house. We tore up all of the first floor flooring and replaced it with new. We also painted most of the rooms (including removing some wallpaper borders). It was difficult to tell if everything was going to be accomplished by the time we moved in, but we did it. 

4. One week after moving, Landen moved to the next room at "school" (daycare). This was a BIG deal for Landen. She moved to the "toddler room" in which she now participates in a more structured day with more concrete times for activities, lessons, and even naps. The biggest change was that she would no longer be dropped off to Mrs. Davis (one of her favorites), whom she had previously been dropped off to ever since she started going to school at the age of three months. She was excited to see Mrs. Davis every morning, and I think the feeling was mutual. Some tears were shed that first week by Landen and me. It was hard for us to walk by the room for the first week without tears over seeing/not seeing Mrs. Davis, but we're good now. Landen happily waves at her old teachers when she sees them in the hallways. 

Landen's gifts for her teachers.

5. Update: all of these changes have not been good for the "uh-oh" (pacifier) situation here. Getting rid of the uh-oh is a goal of the summer.

6. We survived the Memorial Day weekend heat wave. We decided to have some friends over to the new house and had to go out and buy a kids' pool and sprinkler for everyone (including ourselves) to stay cool. By the end of the night, Landen was a hot mess (literally and figuratively).

Landen and her buddy, Claire.

Staying cool!

7. I survived the end of the school year! Crestview was THE last school in the area to finish, and after the Memorial Day weekend, we couldn't wait to get out of there. Unfortunately we still had over a week to go. That being said, it's over now, and I'm preparing to finish up the last of the yearbook page shipment tomorrow morning. And that makes me happy. :) On to planning for next year!

8. Speaking of next year, I am changing positions within the school. Instead of teaching English 10 for half of the day and Mass Media, Yearbook, and Web Design the rest of the day, I'll be teaching technology/media type courses all day. What will I miss about teaching English? Shakespeare. Love him. Love teaching him. What will I not miss? GRADING tons of essays! This task got more and more difficult as Landen came along. I'm looking forward to developing my new courses this summer and getting to teach them next school year. :)

9. I'm very lucky to have the opportunity to explore one of my favorite hobbies even more this summer and this coming fall as I will be helping Heather Marie Photography with shooting some local weddings. I'll be assisting her as a second shooter starting in July. So I'll probably be practicing a lot over the next several weeks. 

10. And the biggest event of the past few months...our family is growing! That's right, Baby McCormick is due to arrive in early December. What's more is that we have decided not to find out the gender of this baby. This is not something I would have ever expected to say, but these two "planners" have decided to wait it out....I think. ;) 



So I hope you can see why no blogs have been posted lately. Moving, the end of the school year, and general lack of energy have slowed this mama. The good news is that my energy level is returning and things have slowed a bit around here. More to come soon!