the calm before the storm

so tomorrow is the day. the start of the countdown to homecoming... in the past 3 days we have celebrated our 10 year anniversary, thanksgiving & christmas. one one time, and two a little early. it's been a bit of a crazy week of icky colds and precious moments all mixed together.

today we did our early christmas. stan gave the girls the little gifts he'd picked out for them. each deployment he's picked out a little something extra special for them before he goes. this year he commissioned a friend of ours to make stamped silver bracelets for the girls with a special message just for them on it. what a daddy! and as i type this i'm watching him wrestle with both of the girls pinned down at once  and lots of giggling. it's sort of a magical calm before the storm tomorrow morning. sweet, silly and perfect.

saturday we celebrated 10 years of beautiful imperfection, faithfulness and love. the man who has loved me through every up and down, but more than that...  he has supported me through trials. encouraged me through desperate loneliness. put up with my incessant practical jokes. given me so much more than i ever deserved. to the man of my dreams... i love you with all of my heart. and just for you... 11 is the new 10. {wink}

emma and i spent nearly the entire week under the weather. lots of nose blowing, coughing and resting. it slowed us down a lot this week, but sometimes there is something good about a week of down time. even if it means you can't breath! lol. just as emma and i have been coming out of the fog, torrey came down with the yuckies on friday... so i'm sure we'll be spending a lot of next week behind the power curve. so the perfect excuse for snuggling on the couch and getting a little extra mommy/daughter time on a hard week.

the school put together an amazing assembly for veteran's day. it's such a special day for the vets and the kids. it made it especially special to the girls this year that it fell before daddy left. not only that, but he was able to actually make it to the assembly, too. double delight! the kids presented a flag to each of the vets made up of handwritten names of each student and staff member in the school. i spent a good part of it in tears. mostly for another family in our school who lost their daddy last year in afghanistan. just another reminder of how some gave all for all of us to have so much... that our lives are so filled with blessings we can hardly stand it, if we only keep our hearts open enough to see them.

to all who have served this great country, or love someone who has or who does... God bless you and keep you, and God bless America.

i had such high hopes for today...

but alas, i got sick and got absolutely nothing done! poor emma was super sick yesterday, and last night i caught some of her germies. at four this afternoon i drug my sorry self out of bed to see how torrey's day at school went. so much for a productive day of scrapping! hopefully tomorrow i'll be back up and at 'em.

at least i will have my blog updated before the clock strikes 12! lol. i am hoping to get a year-in-review photo book made for the inlaws (good thing they don't have internet access!) before christmas, but haven't quite got it together yet! how did the year slip by so quickly? at least i've been able to keep up on the 365 shots! :)

thursday was a late night, almost-missed-my-picture-of-the-day sort of day, so i got a shot of some fridge art by emma. it so much reminds me of me as a kid. tons of tiny little life details all on one little drawing. i think my favorite is that her tongue is sticking out while she's drawing the picture in the picture. so so emma! :)

friday afternoon i helped finish up the gift the school is giving to the veterans for their annual veteran's day assembly. i love how this year's project turned out. i'm sure i'll have a picture of it tomorrow when stan gets one at the assembly. it's such a blessing to see so many veterans come to the school and share with the kids. anyway, i got a quick shot of torrey walking out of school for the weekend on friday for our pic of the day.

saturday we had our annual christmas party at our house, which this year was also a going away party for stan. can't help but feel blessed after an evening like that!

sunday morning emma woke up with a terrible fever. so i stayed home from church to take care of my baby. poor little princess was so wiped out all day, and by evening, i'd come down with the same yuckies. so the two of us spent a good portion of sunday snuggled in a living room chair together.

i was feeling very lucky today to have a picture at all. i hardly had it in me to get out of bed, but nonetheless, i did make it upstairs and on the porch to catch torrey after school in the waning bit of daylight. sometimes it's the little accomplishments that make your day! lol. it's 10pm and i'm feeling a little better. the fever is gone for now, and as far as i can tell, i've been able to write a somewhat coherent post. so i'm thinking i better quite while i'm ahead and say goodnight! :)

in the waning light

being one who takes almost all of my pictures with natural light... the changing of the season is sure having an effect on my daily life! it's getting kind of hard to sneak in a natural light picture when the girls get home from school. by late afternoon so much of the light is already gone. guess it makes for a good reason to learn how to use my flash better... today i played around with the lensbaby and the creative aperture disks again. i gave the heart a try today with torrey. thought the irony of her grumpy face and the hearts sort of flying away worked. i did get a bunch of her smiling too here.

we have theis amazing japanese maple in our backyard that turns the most vibrant shade of red in the fall... then gets even brighter when it's wet with rain. i completely missed getting a picture of it since it dropped all of its leaves suddenly one day. well, by golly, i wasn't going to miss it this year! so the past couple of days i ran the girls out there for a few shots by the red tree. there are a few more shots of emma here.

this was one of those i-missed-the-opportunity-to-use-natural-light moments. so i grabbed my flash {nikon sb600}, used my on camera flash in commander mode... and did my best.

on a scrappy note... my very favorite scrapbook store is making bunches of cards for service members on veteran's day this year. they asked if i'd write up a blog post for them... which you can see here. if you're in the area & would like to come by the store to make cards for soldiers on veteran's day, there's a bit more info here. we hope to see you there!

i also have a new layout up on the ella blog along with my fabulous ella friends. the super cute tami morrison wrote the post up. while you're over at ella, check out stacy julian & lain ehmann's latest book "20 simple secrets of happy scrapbookers".

veterans day

have you {kissed} a vet today?

just wanted to give a shout out to every veteran out there today... THANK YOU for your service, your sacrifice, your love of country, your heart. our family is so grateful for every sacrifice you make in service to this great country!

we, of course have our very own veteran here at home, and lucky for us, he's HOME this year. stan, thank you for all you do for our family and the amazing country we're blessed to live in.

GOD bless you & GOD bless America!