My Little Graduate - A letter to Jaelyn

Dear Jaelyn,

Today you graduated from Pre-K and stepped your way right up to Kindergarten. You were extremely cute in the little crayon box play you & your friends performed. You were the orange crayon and at the beginning, no one liked you :( and you made a mean face with your "hump" sound. haha, it was adorable! By the end of the play (end of school year) all of your crayon friends loved you & each of you realized that team work gets the job done! I am so very proud of you.

I did get a little teary-eyed watching the pictures flash on the screen while Somewhere over the Rainbow played. You have really blossomed this year. It was rocky in the beginning of the year, you went through a big period of adjustments and didn't quite grasp that things change. But, you caught on and turned into this beautiful little girl with a big heart full of love for everyone in  your class! 

Your intelligence has soared as well. You love books! When I say you love books.. I mean.. you LOVE books! Even your teacher made it a point to say that you can always be found in the little library section looking through book after book. You are definitely my daughter! I can't wait until you can read me a book with a big smile on your face, you are trying SO hard and it will click, I promise.

You are a great big Sister and waste no time letting Abbie know what you are learning about in school. You bring home countless art projects and often times when you talk, I can't keep up with you! You are a little sponge that just absorbs everything you hear. You talked about rocks for weeks. Yes, rocks. But not just a simple 'oh look, a pretty white rock', no.. you went into great detail about how the rock came to be, why it was the shape it was, etc. After that you moved on to leaves, and then the beach and so on. You really do enjoy learning new things.

I know you will continue to blossom and grow as you enter Kindergarten. I can't wait to hear more about everything you learn and just listen to you with amazement. How did I get so lucky? I love you dearly. Congratulations on your big achievement!

The Scarpa Family

Perhaps you remember me photographing the lovely Ashley & her hubby, Brett when she was expecting. No? Well, HERE is a quick peek! Go look, I will wait....

*hears Jeopardy theme*

Ok, cute wasn't she?! Well, I got to meet her little one, recently and photograph her beautiful little family! The little one wasn't all too happy & certainly not in the mood for pictures (but hey, we all have those days right!?). So, we patiently waited and well, I got some pretty cute shots! I just wanted to share a few with you.... just adorable, in my opinion.

Thank you, Brett & Ashley for allowing me to photograph your beautiful family! I can't wait to capture more special moments for you as your grow.

xoxo

Whew... one more photo shoot to share! Guess I have been busy!

Staci & Brian

I had the extreme pleasure of photographing this cute couple! They are expecting (any day now I believe) a new little bundle of joy. What's cool is they didn't find out what, not many do that any more but what a sweet surprise! I know it makes no difference and I am positive their little one will spoiled with love like no other.

Congratulations Staci & Brian!

Best Wishes!!

xoxo

I have more pictures to share with some other photo shoots I've done.

Also, we took our first trip to Sesame Place (first ever family trip!). I can't wait to tell you all about it, we had such a good time!

I just love Summer!! Hope you are having a good one so far!!

Kooky Critters Giveaway

  Introducing Kooky Critters!

I contacted Holly at Kooky Critters as soon as I came across her cute shop on Etsy. These little critters are just adorable and I knew I had to feature them here on the blog to share!

Here is a little more about Holly & Kooky Critters:

started Kooky Critters a while back when my friends and family finally convinced me to turn my hobby for creating quirky plushies into a small business. I have so much fun making these goofy little guys and crack up each time I finish one. My kiddos love giving their input on each new creation and often times have trouble giving their new plush friends up!

I hope they crack you up too!

I custom make my Critters from my own unique patters, carefully creating him or her for each individual customer.

I love using the buttons we find in my grandmother's button box on our creations. It makes each Critter truly unique!

Here are just a few of the extremely cute 'critters' in the shop:

Adorable, right? I know!

Holly was kind enough to send me Miss Abigail Applesauce, a tooth fairy pillow to review. I have to tell you, as soon as I opened the package I immediately fell in love with this adorable little critter girl. She is so cute, very well made, and easy to love. She is plush, soft & the colors really POP out at you! You can tell she was made with love & care. Her little pocket is perfect to hold that new lost tooth in hopes of something good being replaced with it by morning. My girls fell in love with it at the drop of a hat! I may need to purchase another one REAL soon.  Thank you so much, Holly for allowing me & my girls to review this adorable critter!

and now for the best part!

Holly has agreed to GIVEAWAY a mini tooth fairy pillow to one of my lucky readers!

YAY! Awesomeness!  Even more awesome,  I am going to make this super easy to win!

Just go to Kooky Critters and leave me a comment ON THIS BLOG telling me which is your favorite critter in the shop. That's it!

Contest ends on May23rd... So get to it.. leave me a message, spread the word and GOOD LUCK!!!

Wordish Wednesday: Bee Happy

I have shared these on facebook and maybe a couple on Instagram, so if you've seen them already, sorry! 

These were from a couple weeks ago, it was a nice day out and I finally decided to get my big girl camera out, haha. It's so, so very easy to just snap pics with my iPhone anymore. 

Anyways, the message of the day is: Bee Happy! 

I couldn't agree more.

Wordless Wednesday Links you may want to check out:

The Paper Mama

and then, she {snapped}

Project Alicia

Jenni from the Blog

What? It's May?/Adoption-type Question

Seriously, when did this happen. How did it get to be MAY already? Holy Moses! This month is such a great month for me though (yes, I am being a little selfish!). There is Mother's Day, yippee! The one year anniversary of our adoption, yippee and my birthday, yippee! So yeah, exciting stuff! Hubby better be out shopping a ton (haha, just kidding!). 

We have been somewhat busy around here, hence my lack of posts. I really need to sometimes take a step back. I want to 'take back' my blog so to speak. I get so tied up in making daily post & joining in with others and linking up that I get exhausted with it. This blog is mine for me to blog about my family and capture moments with my camera to share. So, you might not be seeing to much more linking up but just plain & simple posts from here on out! Besides, I want something to share with my daughters someday so its not about how great my pictures look, what I did on Tuesday, who I linked up with. It's about having something to look back on & smile! 

Recently Jaelyn's teacher sent a note home that we were to send in a baby picture. I admit, I panicked a little. Jaelyn's baby pictures for me start at 16 months when she was brought to us. I can easily access some baby pictures of her but here is my question to some of you readers (please, please, please tell me what you think! I want to hear it!)... should I print out some of those baby pictures (yes, I have them saved) or should I go ahead and send in a picture of when her life with us began at 16/17 months? Technically that is still a 'baby' to me. What do you think? The word adoption floats around our house and we have several books that I sometimes read to the girls but it's not a deep discussion as of yet because well, I'm not sure at 3 & 4 they will fully comprehend it. So, it is more or less and introduction right now. Anyways, should I send the baby pictures (say 4 months old) or send the others?  

If you are an adoptive Mom, I'd love to hear more about when & how you approached this topic with your children. I have no fears of telling them, at all. I just want to do it delicately and at the right time.

And because I think you need to see their cute faces.. some recent iPhone pics!

Easter: Part 2

We had a lovely time at my Mom & Dad's this year. She actually has a very nice backyard in her little Over 55 community! The kids cooperated with some pictures because they knew soon after they would get some good food & get to find eggs, lol! 

The sun was BRIGHT! We didn't fuss too much, just happy to get them all to stand nicely & smile!  

The Girls.. with their "the sun is really in my eyes" smiles. ha!  

Sassy with their hands on their hips!

The Boys!

My Niece & Nephews... such cuties. ♥

The weather has been GORGEOUS here lately so I've really been getting the 'big girl' camera out instead of just my iPhone and taking some pictures. I will post some later in the week probably.

YAY for nice weather!!!