My sister-in-law Jenni has been saying for years that she wishes she could have me take her girls’ senior pictures. I kept telling her I could do it when they visited, but Jenni had an even better idea. She and her husband Travis decided to fly me down to Florida to take the pictures of their current senior down there. How could I resist such an offer? So last week we did just that. Violet and I flew into Jacksonville on Thursday and got to stick around until Tuesday. That’s almost a full week! Not only did we manage to take Morgan’s senior pictures at some unique (and very Florida) locales, but Violet and I also got a couple of days of fun in the sun at the beach and the pool. When Travis asked if we could make this a tradition I was practically whipping out my calendar to plan the next trip. The weather was so sunny and warm that it was really difficult to pack up and go home. Fortunately, I did get to come home to sunny temps in the high 50′s, my beautiful girls, and a very relieved husband.

I can’t express how much I loved this idea of getting the chance to take Morgan’s senior pictures on her turf but also get a visit with the Smiths and a trip to Florida out of the deal. Awesome!
I want to share all the pictures I took of Morgan, but there are just too many. Here are just a few of my favorites.
We had so much fun finding little spots. Jenni couldn’t resist the “vintage” pay phone.

I took Morgan down here because I wanted to get the old-style movie sign in the background which ended up not even showing up. Jenni was most thrilled about the vintage bike with one blue tire and one black.

I think that this one is everyone’s favorite. The whole concept turned out perfectly.

Love that I could capture Morgan’s candid smile and laugh here. It was all on account of the people that kept creeping around the corner and getting in the pictures.

This is Morgan’s favorite. She’s already got it as her Facebook profile pic.

For these pictures we went out to an abandoned (and freaky) school. Jenni said she had seen some neat ones taken on the inside, but we all decided there was no way were going inside that place. Shiver. We got some perfectly nice shots on the outside, thank you very much.

Since Travis has connections he was able to get us into the rail yards to capture some more pictures of Morgan. The Smiths got some family pictures there, too.

For the last part of the day we drove out to JAX beach. Morgan was less than thrilled when we made her lay down in the water in her clothes. I think it was worth it though.

On Sunday we snuck out for the last bit of pictures with Morgan and her Violin.

A much needed break was fulfilled by a trip to North Carolina last week. My dad officially calls the state his home now, and we got the opportunity to see his new digs and enjoy a big rise in temps. We had a great time going to the aquarium, taking the ferry over to tour Bald Head Island via a golf cart, just hanging out on the beach, touring the cute downtown shops, and eating some good ol’ fashioned southern cuisine. I have some pictures scattered about on different cameras including one of my dad’s, so I’ll just post some quick shots we got on the beach one day. It was pretty chilly and windy, so we only got a few.

The girls loved spending time with their granddaddy. Violet needed a few days to warm up to him but was his best buddy by the end of the week.

Of course, we couldn’t resist after spotting these in a candy shop.

It came to my attention that Mimi had never had an official birthday party where people other than family members attend (well, last year the Johnsons did come over for a quick b-day get together for Mimi). I decided this year was going to be the year for Mimi’s 1st (except it was her 6th, if that makes sense) birthday party. After racking my brain for theme ideas I finally settled on the Valentine’s theme. I mean, Mimi was actually due right around Valentine’s Day, so what better way to celebrate her birthday. Both girls were on board after I revealed the news to them. In fact, it was all they could talk or think about from that point on (why haven’t I learned not to spill the beans until only hours away from events?!?). Since Valentine’s is all filled with red, pink, hearts, and all things girly, I decided to only invite girls to the party. I’m sure no boys were offended for dodging that hug-filled bullet.

I found so many ideas for Valentine’s parties on the internet, so the trouble was narrowing it to down to fill only 2 hours. I have to say that the Oriental Trading Company is about the best thing since online shopping became possible. It made getting crafts, goodies, and party materials enough for 12 people so easy. However, we only invited 10 people, and only 8 showed up. Hallelujah! I don’t know what I would have done with 2 more girls, since we were squished into my dining room as it was. I banished Mike and Violet from the house, but my friend Julie was a wonderful assistant throughout the entire event. Thanks, Julie! Everything went off without a hitch except that I totally forgot to take pictures of the party set-up prior to the event. Oh well, I think I was able to capture most of what was planned, made, or part of the event. See for yourself.

By the time I started snapping pictures the girls had already played with their cootie catchers, exchanged their valentines via their personalized mailboxes, colored their shrinky-dink heart pendants, and played Valentine Bingo using large conversation hearts as tokens. At this point, the girls are chowing (or not chowing) down pizza.

The table decorations included glass dishes full of various candies and the lovely, framed art piece that my thoughtful sister-in-law sent for just this occasion. (Thanks so much, Sara!!) Of course, it was all set on a tablecloth full of red, pink, and purple hearts. You can kind of see the personalized mailboxes. Notice the empty dish in the second picture. The Hershey’s Kisses were apparently a hit. I made heart-shaped pizzas that evidently only two of the girls and I liked to eat, but at least it was heart-shaped. Unfortunately, I also spaced taking pictures of those, but I’m sure you can imagine what a mom-made heart-shaped pizza looks like (read not that great or convincingly heart-shaped).

Polyhedron, anyone? I couldn’t resist making these when I saw them in some pictures of another Valentine’s party. They were actually quite easy to make once I got the hang of it.

A Valentine’s party is not complete without a heart garland. Am I right, or am I right? Ha, notice I covered the glass in the china cabinet to hide all the unsightly junk inside of it (this produced a HUGE eye roll from Mike).

And, lastly, I couldn’t resist serving Valentine-labeled, red sodas. We had to search hi and lo all over town for those durned things. Of course, most of the girls were not too keen on engulfing a full bottle of diabetes-inducing liquid. But, oh, how cute did they look?!?

After the food was eaten it was time to play a quick game before presents. I purchased this inflatable octopus at Oriental Trading. It was almost actual size from the picture shown on the website, but the girls still managed to have fun with it each taking 2 turns.

Mimi received a lot of fun gifts (that Mike hates, hahaha) including a Liv(?) Doll, Barbie Doll, Tea Party Game, manicure/spa stuff, princess mirror craft, Zhu Zhu Pet Castle, Legos, PlayDoh, an American Girl ballet outfit, and a mega princess gear pack and a 6 pack of princess shoes. As you can see Mimi was beyond ecstatic!

Finally, it was CAKE TIME! Mike spent the evening before making this all by himself. I decided to throw some fondant into the design, and Mike did a wonderful job working with it and coming up with a fun idea. I must take credit for the overall design idea though.

I’m so glad I decided to do this. Just to see how lit up Mimi’s face was the entire day made it all worthwhile. If I had waited another year or two, then I don’t think there would have been as much excitement and magic in the event. Thank you to all the girls who attended and helped Mimi celebrate, and thanks again to Julie and Mike for being such a great help.

While home for Christmas break Mike got busy making jelly from all the juice made this summer using our garden blackberries (and someone’s grape orchard). A few months ago I noticed we had no pitchers left to make beverages even though there were no beverages in our fridge. Upon further inspection I realized all those pitchers were housing the gallons of juice in the freezer that Mike had processed. As you can imagine, the juice containers took up quite a bit of space in our freezer. It was a relief when Mike finally had the time to make the jellies from all that fruit extract. In the end he ended up with about 35 pints of blackberry, grape, and blackberry/grape jellies. He was quite proud of his work and set up his own photo shoot.

Speaking of blackberries, Violet loves them. Here she is at lunch yesterday eating almost an entire container of blackberries.

In other news, we are truly grateful for neighborhood pals. Most of the days during break the girls have spent playing with their friends from the ‘hood. Even though the O kids were in my house most of the day yesterday including during lunch it made the girls quite happy and kept them OCCUPIED.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with some pictures of my pets. I got a new point and shoot camera recently and felt compelled to test out some shots of the animals. Lucy is looking really old these days. Somehow I think she will be with us until the end of days though. Sadie just looked so soft and cuddly last night that I had to get a picture. Mike wants to make mittens out of her paw fur. It would take a lot of Sadies to do that.

Yes, we got yet another P&S camera. Mike’s camera broke a few months ago, and I hated to finally admit that I never bonded with mine. I know a few people purchased the same camera as me based on my recommendation, so I apologize for misguiding you. It’s just that it was a bit too slow for my taste since I’m used to my SLR which has no delay. For some reason Mike’s was lightening quick which meant I usually grabbed his most of the time. When Mike’s camera went kaput it forced me to use mine more often which caused a lot of frustration. Mike “convinced” me that it would be a nice Christmas present for us to get a new camera. It just so happened that I already had my eye on a highly regarded compact camera. All the pictures in this post are brought to you today by my Christmas gift.

The family and I traveled to Indiana to visit a childhood friend of mine. Mike hit it off with her husband when they discovered they both have a passion of hunting. It was a fun trip packed with visits to our old high school and the children’s museum.

We did manage to squeeze in a quick photo shoot of Rebecca’s family. Even though it had snowed the day before, the temps plummeted which made for a bitter time outside. K was not pleased.

Apparently, to be completely christened into the Hawley family you must receive a black eye because now all my girls have had at least one. I don’t think I ever posted about it on the blog, but Annie got one while Mike was in Iraq after falling off the couch and hitting her eyebrow on the edge of the coffee table on the way down. I think the reason I never posted about it was because I felt so guilty and like a bad mommy for letting my toddler play on the couch. Then many of you got to see the gruesome pics of Mimi’s shiner. I think it gave some people nightmares. That sucker lasted about 2 weeks, too. Violet has finally gotten her chance to be like her big sisters, and Annie was happy to assist. While playing on my bed (after I told Annie not to put the baby on the bed) Annie bounced Violet off her feet and planted her face right into the footboard. Annie felt so bad, but Violet got over it pretty quickly. By day 4 the swelling and color have already decreased.

Vi and I headed out to the pumpkin patch to snap some fall pictures of her. As you can see Violet was not thrilled to be taking pictures in the beginning. I’m sure she is thinking, “Why am I being forced to sit on top of these orange monsters?”

Once Vi was able to walk around, then I could coax a smile from her.

It was way too bright by the corn field, but I couldn’t pass up a picture by it.

I said I’d take pictures of the girls’ dresses, but we got busy with the new school year starting. However, I received a special request from a certain grandma to present pictures as soon as possible, so I jumped on the ball this morning and shot some quick pictures.

This is my favorite picture, but the sun was directly behind them which made the camera quite mad.

Here’s a better view of the dresses from top to bottom.

I’m happy to report that the girls absolutely love these dresses (they never seemed much interested in the other dresses I’ve made). It really was an easy dress to sew up, and I’d like to make more of them with different color schemes/patterns. We’ll see if I can find another group of cute fabrics and find the time.

As I mentioned before the girls have been away visiting some Minnesota relatives. I was hoping to complete a lot of projects on the want-to-do list, but it wasn’t to be. Instead Vi and I have really bonded this week. She figured out pretty quickly that she had me all to herself and has demanded those exclusive rights most of the day. Let’s just say that Vi’s favorite place to be is on Momma’s left hip preferably being walked around. This doesn’t leave much time for crafts, but I do love me some Violet.

In other news, you may notice a few red marks on Violet’s nose and upper lip. That would be my fault. While picking tomatoes with Mike the other night I unwisely thought Vi could hang out in one of the girls’ folding chairs. I mean, c’mon, it’s only 4 inches from the ground. Nope, Vi took a nose-dive into the stone patio floor and scraped up her lip and nose. Chalk this one up as realizing a 1-year-old is not coordinated enough to sit in a big kid chair yet.

While at the zoo this past weekend I made it a point of sneaking off with Vi to do a little photo shoot. I figured since it was her first birthday and we were in a outside setting that it would be a great opportunity. The most beautiful spots were out in full sun, so I had to settle for a grassy nook.

I was waiting with Vi on a park bench because she wasn’t big enough to go into the free-flying bird zone, and it occurred to me that I could get a cute shot of her on the bench. Glad I tried it.