happy new year! :)

sweet 16

As usual, I'm behind on my blogging!  :-p  I'm working on getting caught up.  :) I might go slightly out of order but oh well.  

So somehow I blinked and my sweet, cheerful, joyful little 8 year old 3rd grader, who would bounce down the hallway at 7:15 every morning and greet me with a happy "Good morning, Miss Hallquist!"...

...just turned 16!!

One day I drove her to the airport to pick up her best friend who flew down for her sweet 16 party...and  just a few days later, she drove herself back to the airport to take her friend to fly home! Sheesh!  :)

Waiting with a few excited butterflies in her stomach...  

Finally!! 

 Lauren met Dani at camp where they were both counselors this past summer and quickly became best friends.  :)

The next day was the party...with lots of friends, yummy food, fun music...so fun!  :)

And of course that would be a Leah cake.  :)

Ok, so I'm being lazy and not fixing the red eye on this pic.  :-p  My brother, Daniel, was the DJ for the party and did a great job.  :)

Yes, yes she did.

Her grandmother had recently bought a new car and gave her old one to Lauren. :)

Even Abby, Emily, and Claire got to come!  And looked amazing, I might add!  :)

These two crack me up!  They are so much alike.  

Yup.  My family is crazy.  Both immediate...and extended.  Lol.

Lauren's brother Josh - in his awesome shoes - and his girlfriend, Jessica.  

Lauren and her dad.  :)  He really does know how to smile...  :-p 

Lauren, you are still sweet, cheerful, and happy.  :)  You are an amazing 16 year old and I am loving watching as you grow into the woman God is creating you to be.  You are so mature and responsible for your age but still know how to have fun and just be at teenager - you already have a huge heart for the orphan and I can't wait to see what God does with that as you grow up...but you also love things like Justin Bieber music and shopping.  :)  You are an awesome big sister to your younger siblings (all four of them right now!), my favorite little sister ;)...and definitely one of my best friends.  

HAPPY 16th BIRTHDAY, LAUREN!!

I LOVE YOU!!

best christmas present EVER!

This is my precious friend, Rebekah, her wonderful husband, Nathaniel.....and their SON Isaac!!

They all got the best Christmas present EVER - Rebekah and Nathaniel got to hold/squeeze/hug/kiss/love on their son for the first time...and Isaac got his forever family!

I love love love LOVE this picture!!  I guarantee it will be hanging up in my house...whenever I get one next!  :)  This picture represents so much - so many prayers, tears, trust, faith, love, patience, smiles, and laughter...and a faithful God who has promised:

"I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you."  John 14:18

I will share more of this story later.  There are reasons I haven't shared this particular adoption journey with you like I did with Caleb.  :)  But I just couldn't stand it today and had to share just this one picture.  :)

what do you think?

So many people have told me that baby Eli looks like me!  Everyone says it's our eyes.  The day I took him to his two month checkup, I was out in the lobby feeding him his bottle and a lady came up to admire him and said "Wow, he looks just like his momma!!"  lol  I just smiled and said thank you.  Too long to explain.  lol. 

So I found a baby picture of me and one of him...

We definitely have different skin tone...lol  although my pic was taken inside with a flash and his was taken outside with no flash and the sun was shining.  I guess people are right - we both have dark eyes. and maybe our noses look similar...and our lips...hmm...maybe I'm part hispanic!  lol  :)

What do you think?  

christmas story

This is something I did with my kids from the first Christmas I was with them when Little Miss Sunshine was only 3 years old.  At that point, I told most of the story and she filled in some of the key words.  Since then, she has re memorized this story each Christmas season.  I'm sad I'm not there to help refresh her memory on it this year.  This is from last Christmas...  :)

joy

So you've already had a sneak peak at my latest photo shoot of baby Eli in my blog header. :)  I did this shoot while Catrina was gone for a week.  It is not the most professional looking set I've ever done.  It annoys me when I see so many things that should have been done differently...but I'm not sure how I should have accomplished that...well, without an actual photo studio.  :-p  Oh well.  We had fun (Lauren helped me of course.) and the kids are cute no matter what, right??  :)  I might have edited a few of them more than usual just because why not?  :)

Don't you just want to kiss his chubby little baby cheeks???  :)

We were racing against the late afternoon light at this point so these next ones turned out a lot darker than I wanted.  Sigh. Oh well.  :)

This little just-turned-two-year-old is hard to catch being still! I never did get a great one of his cute little Christmas shirt!  :)

Check out these adorable Santa Huggies diapers!!  :)  So fun!

GOT MILK???

little mouse and little bear

This is a popular photography location!  :)  We had scheduled this photo session the week before but had to postpone it a week.  The day called for a 30% chance of rain, but the week before had had the same forecast and the sun had ended up coming out, so we went with the thought that hopefully the same thing would happen.  Yeah. No such luck.  :-p  So we did as much as we could while dodging raindrops!  But they were all such good sports and were up for whatever.  The rain did slow down a couple times, which helped.  Anyways!  Meet Little Mouse and Little Bear's family...  :)

This little mouse is so quiet and sweet...and so easy to photograph!  :)  And I hear that today is her birthday!  Happy birthday, little mouse!  :)

This is little bear.  He is all boy - but so kind and sweet!  He met my kids last spring and my Little Miss Giggles had so much fun with him!  :)  

And apparently climbing rocks here is a must for boys.....

...cuz that's exactly what Michael did when he explored this place with me.  Ha!

My friend somehow has a family of serious smilers.  As in, they don't smile very big! lol  But we finally got little bear to crack up.  :}

Daddy here said "just one kiss!"  

I said "Oh yeah right!  Like any guy is going to limit his kisses to 'just one'!"  :}

You have a beautiful family, my friend!  Thank you so much for being willing to do this in the rain!!  :) We can do it again in the spring when there are flowers - and sunshine!!  :)

goofballs :)

A few weekends ago I got to stay with my kids for the whole weekend - from Thursday when I picked them up from school until Sunday evening.  "Four whole days!!" as Mr. Happy squealed after bear hugging me again when I picked him up.  :)  We didn't do a whole lot of activities...just enjoyed being together again.  I might have woken up sometime in the middle of each night with a certain four year old curled up next to my back...  :}  I hadn't done an actual photo shoot of them in quite a while (I don't even remember the last one!) so that is the one thing we did do - after eating lunch at the Tomato Head, one of our very favorite restaurants.  :)

Doing photos of these three is always amusing.  It seems like every time I end up with more individual photos of one out of the three because the other two are just in a goofy mood, which is totally fine, just funny. 

This time Little Miss Sunshine was on a roll!

I love her 7 year old self!  She is so quirky and funny and kept us laughing the entire time!

I think he will always have my heart!  :}

They have the same eyes!

He needed me to take a picture of him being cool.  Cuz he is.

Michael and Wendy, this next one is for you....

...thought you would both appreciate that! lol  I was talking to one of the other two and glanced up at LMS and this is how I found her. Ha!  :)

Hey Wendy, I miss my kiddos!!  Isn't about time you and Dinny went out on a date??   ;)