This gets me everytime!!

I cannot believe in just a few short hours my baby will be turning 7.  As I have been thinking about this tonight, I have been realizing on how much I don’t remember from my kids lives. I have alot of friends and acquaintances who are pregnant and are talking about feeling their babies move, or they are excited about finding out the sex of their baby. I wish I could remember being pregnant with Ava. The only thing I remember is how miserable I was and how I just couldn’t believe that I was having ANOTHER baby. I was only 22 at the time and I already had a 2 yr old and a 1 yr old….oh wait correction 21, I turned 22 a couple weeks after I had her. I am only going to candidly speak about this bc I know there are others out there who have felt this way. I was sad when I found out I was pregnant with her….even mad! One thing I distinctly remember from being pregnant is bringing the pregnancy test in the car with me (I took the test at someones house and I wasn’t going to dare leave it in the trash to be discovered) and getting so mad that I threw it out the window.  I remember thinking horrible thoughts on how if something happened that I wouldn’t be sad.

Today remembering those things make me cry and feel so much guilt that I cannot even explain it.  I absolutely cannot imagine my life without her. She truly is the Joy of my life. People like to joke and say that she is my favorite. This isn’t true. However, I guess it is easy to assume that since she is the only child that wants anything to do with us It is easy to love her, she is a lovely child. People stop to watch her, she has so much favor in her life ( and not mostly from her parents) that it is almost not fair.

Tomorrow we will celebrate her 7th birthday. Celebrate a great mistake. One of the best mistakes I ever made….. Only she wasn’t a mistake, She was a blessing, she was a plan of God, She was one of the things I needed most in life but I didn’t know it…. God knew. I thank him everyday for my kids. To be honest none of them were planned. And most days I want to…ummm…. beat them (did I just write that out loud) even Ava (third the golden turd is what her brother calls her).

So on days like today when I feel like a failure as a parent, and I wonder how I will make it another 10 years without seriously screwing up these kids, I am reminded that God gave them to us, not to ” Better Parents”

And to quote Chandler Bing…. “we will screw them up in our own specific way” okay hopefully not.

***Please excuse the ramblings…. and enjoy these old pictures and random sanpshots

This is one of my favorite pictures of her ever. Excuse the old scanned film. This was taken at Blue Bayou when she was maybe 2.5, when we went to Blue Bayou a couple weekends ago, she rode this ride about 5 times. I think it is more geared towards 2.5 yr olds, but she didn’t get the memo.

I didn’t originally have this picture in the post but I had to get it off the little point and shoot camera to add it

The top two pictures are from Dance when she was 3 or 4 I can’t remember for sure (go figure) and the bottom left one is from Easter time when she was maybe 2 or 3; the bottom right one is from Blue Bayou the same day as above and I only included it bc I had to show that “nu-nu” when I look at her I still see that 3 yr old with the nu-nu.

Next week I am giving away 3 free sessions. First come first serve. Has to be scheduled during the day. Tell your friends!

Have a Happy Tuesday!

Between the hosing off, feeding, watering and cleaning up poop from the baby ducks I haven’t had much time to blog. So if you have missed me Thank the little guy below!

I saw this on someone else’s blog and thought it was hilarious! 

This  kind of scares me a little and I am typically a cat person

she says, I wonder why my keys are always popping off

This is totally unrelated to photography, so if you were expecting some really cool images, you can stop reading. I have been trying to get to the gym for a while now. My life has been pretty much insane since mid April. I have been a couple times, but not nearly enough or consistent. I have been trying to make it to my friend Kim's exhale class (yoga). Yesterday I finally sat in my hammock for a few minutes and read the last issue of Real Simple (I love that magazine) and there was a part of the magazine that people wrote in to tell how they get motivated to go to the gym. One writer writes "When I don't feel like exercising, I remind myself of all the health benefits and emotional experience- that doesn't always work or we would all always exercise. So when that fails, I get naked and jump up and down in front of my full-length mirror. That little trick always seems to get me moving."