easter festivities

today was another awesome day.

maybe the sun was a little too bright.

makes me look like one of those bloggers that doesn't post pictures of their child's face.

baby girl was all up in this tree... got every last egg.

we went to the egg hunt in my in laws neighborhood.  it was legit.  skittles, starbursts, these sugar coated lifesaver gummis...  loving the eater candy.  baby girl liked it too dangit.

easter bunny

honey and i posed for this family picture sans brady.

for some reason baby girl didn't want to actually bounce in the bounce house but she loved standing at the base of the slide and watching the kids go down.  she looked precious in a sad sort of way.  made me laugh.

happy easter from the hilliers!  we're starting to look like a real family!  just wait til we add our next five kids.  juuuust kidding.  three more will probably suffice.

abigail likes to know what the words say on all of her clothes and brady's.  chris was unaware of this tonight when i was at the young women's broadcast and he was at home with the kids... apparently a humorous and confusing situation went down when abigail repeatedly pointed to brady's shirt while telling chris "it's you big guy!"  "it says it's you big guy!"  ha.

 

 

 

mother son picture.  i know it's silly but having a son makes me feel so special.  not sure why but it 100% does.

hard at work

 

 

 

baby girl came to me sooooo thrilled that she put on her shirt all by herself!  (she's been dressing herself more and more lately and is getting really good at it!)  she excitedly looked down to show me thomas and... umm... immediately became frantic that she couldn't see him.  ha.  

don't worry.  i helped her remedy the situation.

and we all lived happily ever after.  ps- i got her these pjs in 2T for christmas.  they shrunk a lot after the first washing.  luckily they went on clearance and i picked up bigger pj's for $3.  let the pj love live on!

honey woke up at 5:30 or something insanely early to play drop in hockey this morning.  then he took a nap this afternoon and then he fell asleep tonight sometime around 8 30 while i cleaned up the kitchen and got baby girl to bed.  i may have been slightly annoyed that he went to bed before our kid (to his credit, he actually got brady to sleep tonight before i got home from the yw broadcast!) but i thought it was no big deal since i was about to put abigail to bed anyways.  well, i was telling my sister emmy about this the other day but baby girl's ocd is getting a little out of control lately.  especially when it comes to bedtime.  tonight i made the trek up our stairs probably FIFTEEN times in the space of an hour.  our bedroom is downstairs and it seemed like as soon as i got in bed, i'd hear her on the monitor again.  the main issues of tonight were...

i need another hug

i need another kiss

my sippy cup is making noises (this accounted for at least four or five of the trips upstairs)

i have boogers, i need a tissue! (and then after i wiped her nose it was "throw it in the garbage!!!")

say goodnight!!!! (i literally walked in, said goodnight, and walked out again)

i have tears.  i have two tears.  (needing me to wipe her tears with her blanket... or just instruct her to do it herself)

i need my nightlight on! (because it's been sooo long that the timer reached its limit and the light went off)

the other night i went up and down those stairs three times at 1am with baby girl's random requests and then two times again at 2 am for brady.  i told emmy, this would all be severely annoying if i wasn't laughing at the humor of it all.  i used to go up and down those stairs four or five times a day.  now, it's got to be at least THIRTY.  and when it's between the hours of 9pm and 9am, you just can't help but laugh about it.  i mean, what other option is there?!

here's to another night!

Nuggets in a box

baby girl is growing up

there are not enough hours in the day to do everything on my to do list.  but yet somehow i spent one of those hours today just looking at pictures of baby girl and brady that i've taken over the last year.  i can't believe how much brady has matured and filled out already.  he's still small for his age but he's not the wrinkly, scrawny little newborn he was just a few months ago.  and a year ago baby girl was still just a baby!  now, we have real conversations and her average sentence is about ten words long.  i could go on and on about all the things she does that amaze me every day but i'll just post these pictures and go to bed instead.  lately she seems much less like a toddler and more like a little girl.  she is so mature and still wise beyond her years.

this morning after my mostly failed attempt at taking pictures of brady, i thought it'd be fun to attempt to take a few pictures of abigail.  i used the exact same setup that i used with brady and even had her sit in his bumbo.  she loooves that bumbo.  it started out slow but picked up and we had a lot of fun.  she's a jokester for sure.

check out this awesome setup... i'm a pretty legit photographer.

 

 

 

just keepin' it real.  this was what things looked like when i zoomed out.

and then she look apart my photography studio aka a blanket draped over a cushion propped up by a suitcase.

she was pretty smug about it.

i told her to jump on this cushion and she got way happy.

and she awarded me four cool mom points.

 

 

 

i see baby carrie in this picture too.  anyone else getting sick of me saying that?

 

as if her personality and everything else about her wasn't perfect, she's got these incredible eyes and precious smile too.  she may not have amazing locks, but i still find her breathtakingly gorgeous.

boy in white

i'm not crazy in love with any of these pictures but i'm giving myself a pat on the back anyways for just getting this done!  check it out, brady!  you were blessed!

 

a for sure giveaway that your photo shoot isn't going as planned.  i laughed out loud when i saw this.  somehow i made my terribly photogenic baby look this terrible.  props for me.

 

 

 

i know i already posted this picture but it gets a second appearance because honestly... it speaks to me. 

carolyn... i know this is my child, but when i look at this picture, i see yours.  i still think of benjamin as this tiny.

two words come to mind when i see this picture.  my christopher's nickname as a baby was "the judge" because he was always serious and then he grew into a kid that was actually sensible and wise.  my mother in law always tells me that even when christopher was a kid, she would ask him for advice.  this is my little judge.  i feel like he's reprimanding me.

and that's a wrap.

*my favorite part about these pictures (besides my boy brady... i do love him so) is that this is the same blessing outfit that my honey wore for his baby blessing.  it kind of terrifies me that that means my brady will eventually turn into a full grown adult but it also gives me hope that he'll grow up to be as fantastic of a husband as my own.

"it'll do"

after putting it off for almost an entire month, i finally decided today was the day to have a mini photoshoot with brady in his blessing outfit.

this picture pretty much sums up how it went.

 

i just keep repeating my new mantra... "it'll do."  if i expect everything to be great every time, there's going to be a lot of disappointment and a lot that never gets done.  so whatever pictures i have of him on my computer?  they're good enough... it'll do just fine.

Productive

Today was great. I slept in. I did three loads of laundry start to finish. I vacuumed! I was a good mom. Abigail was sweet and well behaved. Brady followed a schedule perfectly and slept great... 2.5 hour naps, going to sleep without a problem, and not even waking at the 45 minute mark! And I pulled a freezer meal out and had it ready right when my Christopher got home from work. Whew. I am so appreciative of days that I can feel like a success! Here's to tomorrow being great too!