Happy Easter!

Hope everyone is enjoying their Easter Sunday!  We had a good morning with a little Easter Egg Hunt.  Owen is so fun to do for and appreciates all the small stuff, it's really cute.  His real gift was a telescope and he's spent all morning looking for moose, snow leopards, and snow lobsters on the mountain...don't ask, I tried to correct him, but, it wasn't worth it....

Also, just a bit of weather news, we broke the snow record here in Anchorage yesterday...yaaay (that's total sarcasm).  With the 4.3 inches we got yesterday, we are now at 134.5 inches (11.2 feet) for the season, beating the record set in 1954-1955 of 132.6 inches and with more snow predicted through the rest of the month.  What the hay!!  According to the article on the Weather Channel Website (http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/anchorage-record-snow-season_2012-04-08), thats about twice our average snowfall.  I'll try and remember to take some outdoor photos so you can see what that looks like in April!  We still have a good three feet in the yard.  I am SO over it!!!  I have to tell you, I have no sympathy for those of you in the Lower 48 that the national news says is "suffering" with early seasonal allergies...I'd give anything for seasonal allergies due to warm temps about now!  At least there's drugs for that! ;O)

I haven't taken any Easter pictures yet, but, hope to today while Dave is home to help me with the poses.  I did take these shots of Olivia yesterday though with Owen's help.  She's two weeks old already!  I'd like to say time flies, but, I honestly can't remember much of those weeks...there were feedings, diapers, and naps, how does that add up to two weeks!! ;O)

My sister wanted pictures of Olivia in the ladybug outfits she bought her.  I meant to do it the other day in the first outfit, but, Olivia peed all over it before I could!  I swear, at least you get a split second warning with boys...girls you get nothing!  Dave and I have been through so many clothes due to this stealth system!  Anyway, this outfit has a cute little lady bug on the front of the shirt and I thought it would be cute with the quilt from her Grandma Diana in the background.  But, the little turdlette wouldn't put her hands down and totally covered the ladybug in every shot!  It's like she knew what I wanted!

You can see a little flash of jealousy from Owen anytime I try to do a little photo shoot with the baby.  Suddenly, he WANTS his picture taken.  Hello, he had five years with me following him around trying to take his photo...where was the cooperation when I wanted it! ;O)  Anyway, since he's never dressed how I'd want him to be, we do lots of kissing photos...hides his clothes that way and Olivia likes the attention from her brother!!

More Pics of Our Little Girl...

We are slowly getting into a routine and Olivia is slowly becoming more cooperative, so, I hope to have better pictures to post soon.  But, in the meantime, here are some snapshots of her with family and our attempted photo shoot from earlier this week.  My kids do not sleep hard like those newborns they were posing in all the YouTube videos I watched!!  So, she's wide awake through the whole thing and not happy with me at all!!  

I saw this amazing picture of a baby on a stack of towels dangling a teddy bear from his hand that I wanted to try and recreate.  Unfortunately, my kid refused to allow me to pull her arm out from under her, so, this is really just a weird picture of a baby on a stack of towels next to a stuffed monkey! ;O)

Just a close-up, still can't believe she's got blue eyes!  Can't wait to see what they turn out to be.

This was towards the end of the photo shoot and she was less than amused with me.  But, I wanted a shot with the quilt her Grandma Diana made her.  Don't you love the colors!!

This wasn't a planned shot and is really blurry, but, I wanted you to see what we are dealing with here!!  While I was trying to reposition things she decided to look around and see what was going on.  She is SO strong.  I don't know another baby that lifted their head this high at this age!  (I went back and looked, this was taken when she was 12 days old, I keep telling people 5...)

She's Here!!!

Olivia Laray FINALLY arrived two days past her due date and on my sister's birthday!  I blame Shawn for this, she told me to wait until she got back from her conference in Reno...so, we did...Shawn's plane landed around 11pm and we called her at 3am the next morning to let her know we were on our way to drop Owen off and head to the hospital! ;O)

Just 17 short hours later (thats sarcasm!), we had a healthy 8lb 10oz baby girl who was 20" tall.  She beat out her brother by 4oz and both the midwife and nurses assisting actually laughed about what a chunkeroo she was WHILE I was trying to deliver!  I didn't get very big, so, they all assumed she'd be much smaller...I knew better!

This experience was SO much better than what I had with Owen.  I keep teasing Dave that he's lucky it wasn't like this the first time around, we may have had 4 or 5 by now!  He doesn't think I'm funny...

Owen is totally in love and so far, has been an amazing big brother with minimal jealousness.  He constantly wants to hold her or kiss her and even wants me to wake her up so he can see her eyes.  He's so funny, after he arrived at the hospital with Shawn, the first thing he asked was to "see her footies".  He's still coming to terms with her name though.  As far as he's concerned, she's still "Engine" and argues with anyone who says differently.  Even was upset that the staff at the pediatrician's office were calling her Olivia yesterday!

 O.k., so, I've been perusing the internet for poses the past month or so and had all these great/cute ideas for photographs.  However, the point in newborn pics is to see their roly poly bodies.  Olivia isn't having it, she HATES to be naked and throws the biggest fits you've ever seen...  I got this one shot with a crabby baby and the flowers Owen/Shawn brought to us at the hospital.  She's lost a pound already, but, you can still see how filled out she is!!

Olivia looks so much like her brother, its crazy.  But, she has the bluest eyes ever where her brothers were literally as black as his pupil!!!  Can't wait to see what they turn out to be, I have my fingers crossed they stay blue like Dave's mom and sister's!!

For comparison sake....here's Owen....

and this is Olivia...I'll work on better comparison photos later...right now, this is the best I can do!!

Better run for now, I have Olivia across my lap while I try to write and her patience is wearing thin.  Just wanted to get some pictures out there while I had a coherent moment! ;O)

Visit with Santa...

Word to the wise, the best day to visit Santa Clause is on Black Friday.  While everyone else is pepper spraying each other for a $2 waffle iron, Santa is available and there's never a line! ;O) 

Christmas Photos...

Dave bought me some photography lighting for Christmas and I managed to get it out of him early on the pretense that I would put it to good use taking Owen's Christmas photos.   The alternative, is going to Sears and spending $25 on a sitting fee (which is good all year, but, we rarely use it more than once) and if I remember correctly, they make you buy a $150 package in order to get the photo cd with copyrights.  So, see, I'm SAVING him money already! ;O)  One sitting fee and package at Sears should have cancelled out the cost of the lighting, but, because we are here in AK, they take total advantage and the shipping ends up being as much as the light kit itself!!!  So, I'll have to keep forcing photo shoots to make up for it I guess!!

Now I just have to get these on some sort of Christmas Card and get a letter written...I may be sending out Happy New Year cards instead! ;O)

These was one of the two good ones I got from the last impromptu photo shoot (I posted the other one in his 5-year look back post)...

Cars 2 Birthday...

I bribed Owen into another photo shoot this morning...I wanted a picture of him in front of this birthday decoration we had on the wall before I took it down.  He was less than cooperative today and that made me flustered enough that I didn't notice how bad the lighting was...I watched a few youtube videos...but, apparently, that's not enough!! ;O)

I really loved this one, but, the lighting was especially bad...I tried to reduce the saturation so he wasn't so blindingly white against the background!!  I am going to keep working at it, but, thought I'd share it anyway.

I have so many more to fix, I'll share them as I finish them up!!

Owen's Officially Five...

In honor of my baby no longer being a baby, I thought I'd share some pictures that we used for his birthday celebration at school.  I had to provide one picture for each year to show the class while we talked about what he did and what he was like that year.  Here's the pics I used this year:

2 Days Old

1 year-January 12, 2008 (Maui)

2 years-August 1, 2009

3 years-October 8, 2010 (Butte, MT)

 4 years-April 6, 2011 (Disney World)

5 years (Almost)-November 19, 2011