Bored on a snow day!

Are they cute or what!  They had such a good time playing together today and we got a great photo of them.

This is for the grandparents and great grandparents.  I love it!

Noah's classmates will be receiving this shameless advertising :)  He looks very cute though.

Caleb and Elijah let me take a bunch of pictures of them.  They are too cute.  Caleb loves to hold his baby.  Problem is E does not want to be held very often and he is almost as big as Caleb these days.  I LOVE THIS PICTURE!!!

I took some of Noah's buddy and neighbor.  They played all day together today and played well.  No fighting!!!  It was a good day.

Noah is so sweet!!

Caleb is loving this :)

E is trying to figure out how to get the plastic off that sucker.

OMG it's cold out.  Well, Noah was home from preschool and the roads were not great, so we stayed home today.  I wanted to take a picture of Noah for his Valentine's cards, so I made all the boys and the neighbor pose for me.  These SO capture them!  I love these images.  Anyway, it gave me something to do today and it was fun.  Tomorrow I have a 6 month old coming over for pictures.  They are coming from Wentzville, so we'll see if the weather keeps them away.

My New LOGO & Cool shirts!

You can see the M.O.B. (Mothers of Boys) shirts at www.cafepress.com/juliehammond.  They are great!

Thanks to my fantastic friend/neighbor artist, Julie.  She has a store with Peanut Grins shirts and stuff.  There is also new M.O.B. (Mother's of Boys) shirts they are great!  Check them out and pass along the site to all you're boy mom friends. 

Arch shoot

The first Saturday of January my good friend Kim and I set out on a chilly shoot with her daughter and a couple of her friends.  It was a fun and VERY cold time.  Here's just a few of the images from that day.  I have so many of them and am excited to get through them all, but I've been crazy busy lately.  I need to get some sleep!

OH the Eagles....

It was a nice day in Alton.  The eagles were everywhere.  I love these pics of the eagle taking off.

After we saw the eagles and ate lunch at this drive up fish place in Alton, we went fossil hunting.  I had to get some photos for the boys birthday invitation.  I got a good one and have been working on the invitation.  They are going to have a great birthday.

Saying good-bye

Ready, aim, fire.....this was very moving.  It was well deserved.

This is the last picture taken of me and my Grandpa :(  The nursing home shaved his head.  He always had a great head of hair, but they didn't want to deal with it.  He looked SO different.

This is Grandpa meeting Caleb for the first time.  Grandpa was not much of a kid guy, but I always wanted him to meet all my boys.  Sorry E never had the chance.

A week ago this past Monday I went on a NILMDTS call.  It was a hard one.  This beautiful little girl was a week old and passed just a little before I arrived.  Heart breaking.  I checked my phone when I got in the car and saw that my uncle called.  I was already in tears and called him back.  I found out that my Grandpa Brown had a day to a week to live.  I totally did not see that coming.  So, I was up the next two nights to work on the session I just did so the parents would have images at their daughter funeral.  Thankfully I have a wonderful photographer friend (yeah you, Kim) who let me pass the editing of that session off to her so I could finish up a few other things.  I was up til 1am Tuesday/Wednesday morning and got the call that my grandpa passed at 1:30am.  It was a hard night.  I did not sleep much after that.  Kim and I together got the images to the NILMDTS parents on time.

Saturday my brother, my mom and I got in the car and headed to Ohio.  The drive was OK until about an hour and a half outside of Cleveland.  The road was covered with ice.  We had to stop, so we did.  It was early and there was no where to go so I went to bed early which is what I needed to do.  We finished up the drive the next morning.  It was good to see my Grandma Burge and my uncles and aunt on my moms side.  Then we headed over to my dad's side of the family.  That was good and bad.  I don't get to see my Aunt Jan very often so it was good to see her and the rest of the family.  It got bad when we had to sort through all Grandpa's stuff.  Greed showed up and that was not cool.  Can't go into it, but it was a hard time.

The funeral was Monday morning.  The service was nice.  It sure made me proud to have him as my Grandpa.  He had a 21 gun salute and the navy did a service with flag presentation.  He was in 2 wars and was proud to serve our country.  My favorite memories as a child are going to my grandparents house for the holidays.  We had SO much fun.  After my grandma passed away things changed and my grandpa moved to a small apartment.  We could never all stay together at his place again.  Anyway, once I started having kids it was really hard for me to see him.  I felt so bad about that.  Noah and Caleb got to meet him, but Elijah never did.  All year I felt a pull to go see grandpa. In October I was able to visit him with my brother.  It was a short, but nice visit.  I was sad when I left him and kind of knew that would be it.  I know it was a God thing.  God is SO good to have sent me there before it was too late.  Anyway, I'm not feeling much like blogging, but I just thought I'd give a quick update.

What a cutie

Here's a few images from a session I had over the weekend, enjoy!

Quick story about Noah.  Byron came upstairs, laughing, to tell me what Noah said.  He said, "Not to a Master of the obvious, Daddy, but you always get a treat when you come downstairs."  He is TOO funny!  We have no clue where he had heard something like that.  It was cute.

A Fossil Hunting we will go!!!

Here Noah is on our way to fossil hunting.  He was so very excited.  He wore his hat all morning and on the first fossil hunting stop.

Caleb in the car.  He was hiding from me.  He's so cute.  He would say, "You can't get me."

Noah put on his protective eye wear for when they broke up rocks.

Caleb crashed out before we arrived at the first stop.  He got up early this morning.  It was funny this morning he came in our room about 7:15am with a bag of cereal.  Then I heard the TV on.  I have no clue when he got up!  He just went down stairs, turned on the TV and got something to eat.  He's too cute!

Elijah just watched Scooby Doo while Noah and Byron were out hunting for fossils.  He was in the zone!

It was cold at this stop, but it was a good one.  We found a lot here and we had tools to break up the rock.  That is what Noah is holding.
Daddy and Noah talking about their finds.

We headed to lunch after the first stop.  We had Mexican and it was great!  Caleb was up for the second stop and he really enjoyed his first fossil hunt.  He even found some pretty cool things.


These are some interesting fossils we found, but couldn't take.
E got in on the action at the second stop.  He liked it for a very short time and then he realized he was very hungry and we had to leave.

I LOVE this photo of Caleb!

E talking about the green rock.  Then trying it :)

I love this photo of Noah!

Here's some fossilized shells we found.  We couldn't take this one either.  We got some pretty cool things here.  I found some bone, of what I'm not sure.  It's pretty big though.  As E get's older we will be able to do this more often and for longer periods of time.  It's going to be great.  So anyway, that is our New Year's Day in a nut shell!