Sneak Peak

Wow, I have been so busy this week! I have been designing Christmas cards for families, and I have been putting together a photo book for my parents & my in-laws for Christmas. This year I decided to design all my own pages... I had no idea what a project that was going to turn into! I have stayed up almost the entire night 2 times this week because I can accomplish so much more when I am alone. I am still only about half way done - I have way to many pictures! Anyway, for my secret little blog stalkers, I decided I needed to post something this week. I am such a slacker, I know! So here's a couple pages from the photobook that I am doing. Shhhh, don't tell mom & dad. :)

Now the white borders won't be there in the printed book, they are just for ease of viewing here.



I hope you are all enjoying your holiday season!!

Happy Birthday to Me

It was my birthday a week ago, and on Friday I got one heck of a birthday present. Drum roll please.... I got a Canon 5D! Yeah!!! I'm doing cartwheels here. :) I LOVE it! I got the girls out of bed on Saturday and bribed them with making cookies so I could have a few minutes to practice with it on them. Here's my first couple shots:



Thanks babe, I loooove it! (and you too :))

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are leaving to Utah in about 12 hours, so while the house is quiet I thought I'd jump on here and wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. I know my life has been so so blessed and I am just so grateful for it. Thank you to those of you who actually still check my blog after my long abandonment. :) Just a few of the things I am grateful for:

My husband
My daughters
My health
My family's health
My prosperity
My freedom
My faith
My parents & siblings
My body that took my 13.1 miles
My optimistic mind
All the challenges I have faced
All the people in my life who have influenced me to become the person I am
Photography :)
Good food
Good friends
Love
Laughter
Tears
Make-up
Crayons (you'd be amazed how many hours they entertain my girls)
Heros - people who really make a difference
Car dvd players
Good music
Sleep
Learning
Guidance
Cute shoes
Convictions
People who stand up for theirs
All the little moments in life that make me smile and think "This is what it's all about"

Have a great holiday everyone... I am so grateful for you too.

Here's a picture I took that I am grateful for

Personal Triumph

So I have to toot my own horn here for a minute. Last weekend I ran a half marathon in San Diego. I haven't been training for it, but I do run 3 days a week with a couple girlfriends. One of them runs marathons and half marathons all the time, so she convinced us to do this one with her. I wasn't real worried about it because the weekend before we did an 11 mile run and it was no problem. Well I was in for a little surprise. :) I, of course, wanted to see how fast I could do it, so I ran at a faster pace than we ever do. At mile 10.5 I wanted to quit so bad! I was so done mentally. I did slow a little, but by mile 11 I got a bit of a second wind and picked up my pace again. I was so happy to see that finish line, wow was I happy. I finished the 13.1 miles in 1 hour 46 minutes and 55 seconds. This is my official time from the web site.

11/11/2007
San Diego CA
Silver Strand Half Marathon
Bib: 239
Name: Noel Warburton
Gender: F
Age: 30
Place Overall: 309 out of 1731
Women: 66 out of 888
F 30-34: 16 out of 142
AgeGrade: 61.15%
Place: 272
FINISH: 1:46:55
pace: 8:10
Chip Time: 1:46:55

I have to say I was pretty proud of myself. I have NO idea how people double that distance and do marathons. AHHHH Maybe someday if I actually train for it.

Head in the clouds

So Makenna says to me the other day,
"Mommy, we don't have space helmets."
I tell her, "We don't need space helmets, sweetheart."
She says, "Why?"
I say, "Because we're not going to space, babe."
Then she says, "When we die and go to heaven, will we have space helmets?"

Just typing this makes me smile. I love this kid!

Little Miss Chubs

Don't you just want to squeeze her?!!

Where did it go?

Time

Where did it all go?
Britlyn starts kindergarten in five days. Wow, five days.
I don't know if I am ready to "lose" her to the world.
I know that we will still have a huge influence on her,
but... she'll definately be influenced by others too.
She is just so so sweet and kindhearted; I don't want her
to lose any of that, or for others to take advantage of it.

Lately she's been real clingy. She really wants me to hold her
and rock her a lot. She tells me she doesn't want to grow up.
I remember doing that as a kid too. She's nervous to start kindergarten.
Well, that is until I bought her a bunch of new school clothes,
now she's excited. True girl!!

I wonder if I've stopped enough times to just play, listen, teach, read, comfort, enjoy. With all three so young, I always seem to be busy with at least one of them. Keeping up with it all is a challenge, but it's a challenge that I love. My girls are just the highlight of my life. They make me laugh, cry, sing, dance, lose my mind, and fill my heart. We really do have it good. I am so blessed with my family. I just want to bottle them up and keep them young forever. With Britlyn starting kindergarten it is the begining of a whole new phase in our lives. It's exciting, but I also like how it's been and don't really want things to change. I hope I can always keep the relationship I have with my girls open and safe. I never want them to even second guess telling me something. I'm their mommy and I'll love them unconditionally no matter what.

No pictures this time, I just wanted to let my feelings out. Thanks for listening.

Time for a change!

Okay, so my blog was in terrible need of a makeover. Nothing fancy, but a nice change. We are going out of town for a week starting tomorrow, so I will be MIA again for a little while. We are just taking a road trip to Northern California and maybe into Oregon. Nothing real planned, we're just going to see where it takes us. :) I just had to leave you with this though.

I laughed soooo hard when I saw this! She actually burned her finger on a plate at a restaurant and this is how she was showing me her burn. Her finger is fine, but the picture is priceless!!

What's that you say???

I just had my very first birthday!!!

Yep, it was Ellie's birthday on Thursday. So, my baby isn't a real baby anymore. :( I had bought this adorable party hat for her with all these grand visions of cute pictures, but she wasn't having it - at all! I would put the hat on and not 2 seconds later it was off. Then she started crying. I couldn't torture my baby on her birthday, so I had to quit. I did manage a couple shots, not the greatest, but good enough I suppose.



I baked her a cake, but realized all my cake decorating supplies have gone MIA since the move, so I improvised and used a ziploc bag. She wasn't real interested in the cake either, I so wanted her to attack it, but once again she really didn't care what I wanted. Oh well, I guess it was her birthday. We all went for a dip in the hot tub ( I should say warm tub) after. She started giving these open mouth wet kisses that night, I was sooo cute! Oh I love my little girls!! Here's a few more from her birthday.

I'm Baaaack

Wow, I've been gone from here forever it seems!! We moved into our new home 2 1/2 weeks ago and things are finally starting to settle down. I've got all the boxes unpacked and everything put in its place, now I've just got the whole hanging pictures & stuff to go. I was without internet access for over 2 weeks and I about went crazy! That's probably why I got the unpacking done so fast though! :) We are thoroughly enjoying our home! Jeremy has been giving Britlyn swimming lessons and she can now jump in the deep end of the pool and swim all the way to the shallow end by herself!! This is coming from a girl who would barely dare put her face in the water before. She's so proud of her self and it's so cool. It's so nice having a front yard where the girls can play too & I don't have to be out there with them all the time. One really great thing since we moved here is it took about 10 days to get satellite set up, so we didn't have tv for that time and the girls totally got out of the habit of watching it, so they rarely ever even watch tv now. I love it, they just play, really play, and it's great! I'm sorry to those of you who read my blog that I was gone for so long! The past while has been nuts! I'm going to be better now though, I promise!! Here's a few pics of the girls playing in the front yard.

I'm SOOOO Excited!!

Yeah!! Today we finally closed a deal for leasing out a new house! Ever since moving to L.A. we've been living in a small 1,400 square foot townhouse, and a few weeks ago Jeremy came home from work and found a naked guy hiding in our bushes. Scary. Apparently he lives right by us too. Jeremy made a police report about it and went to the office of our townhome and complained. They said they would evict the guy, but it hasn't happened yet. So, here we are trapped in our house because I can't let the girls go outside and play anymore without my constant supervision. The L.A. school district isn't the best either, so we decided last week to go look at some homes in a different school district, a better one. There aren't many homes for lease around here. We really only found 2 that were sort of what we were looking for. The first one was alright, but the second one was it. You know when you just feel right in a place, well, that's how this was. The owners were in Europe when we put in the offer and to make a long story short, they almost backed out of leasing it. They decided maybe it wasn't a good move financiall for them. I was about in tears, I want out of this place so badly. Well, today we met with them, got all the paperwork done, and handed over the $$$. They are supposed to be out by July 15 or sooner. I can't wait!! Yeah, we get a home! Here's a few pics of the place. I didn't take them, they just came off the website. Obviously the furnishing aren't ours, but soon it will be our home. I love that we'll have a place that is safe for our girls. Oh, it is in a guard-gated community, and to even get in you have to have the person's name and address that you are going to see. We are also up on a hill with no one else on it. It's very private, and had gorgeous views of the hills and canyon. We actually saw deer running up the hillside right by our house today. Anyway, thanks for letting me share my joy!!!

Why I Blog

Well, Debbie, tagged me a few days ago to write 5 reasons why I blog. Let's see if I can get five!

1. I'm not very good at keeping a journal or a family history, so this is a way to keep some of our families events recorded.

2. It's a way for me to share some of my photography with whoever wants to enjoy it.

3. When I blog, it's just "me" time. It is something I definately need sometimes!

4. I want my girls to be able to look back on it someday and see how much they were loved and enjoyed.

5. Sometimes I need to just sit down and write something out to really see how I am feeling, and sometimes I just need to get things back into perspective.

There, I was kind of reaching a bit, but I think I got it! Thanks Debbie!

A Few More

I've gotten more of the wedding pics edited, so I just thought I'd share a few more.












Isn't it cool how their bodies form a heart?

Zach & Melissa

I've only proofed a few of the shots and have TONS more to go through, but here's a few from the wedding. We almost didn't even make it to the wedding, but that's a whole other blog entry!

Off for the Weekend!

Jeremy's brother, Zach, is getting married on Friday, so we are leaving tomorrow (well, technically now it's today) for Utah. Zach and Melissa asked me to be their wedding photographer. I am so excited! It's always fun to have opportunities to shoot people that want to be shot! Lots of pressure too though, it's not like you can just schedule a re-shoot if you mess up the shots!! You only get one chance to get it right. So, look forward to lots of wedding pics! I coudn't leave without posting any pictures, so here's a couple of Makenna. I realized the other day that I don't have many shots, other than snapshots, of her since like October. How did that happen?? Anyway, here's one of my gorgeous little girls!


You know, she has the most infectious beautiful smile, but I am having the hardest time capturing it lately. Whenever I have the camera out, she absolutely refuses to look at me. I'll be talking and joking with her and she will smile and laugh, but all I see is the top or back of her head. She just will not look at me when I have the camera. Anyone have any ideas on how to break through this?!

She loves her blankie

I think it is adorable that Ellie already knows, at 9 month old, that this is her blankie! Whenever I put it over my shoulder while holding her, she will immediately lay her head down on it and relax. It definately gives her comfort. Notice her hands grasping it!

I couldn't resist this shot too, I see this site quite often on Saturday mornings. Britlyn, Makenna, and Ellie all love being together. Lots of times Britlyn and Makenna will actually even crawl in Ellie's crib with her. I adore it when they are all together!

What's the best thing about microwave popcorn?

The bag!! My girls always fight over who gets to lick the bag once they've eaten the popcorn. It's for sure their favorite part. Crazy kids!