on the road

my little family and I have been enjoying some quieter time together this week after a crazy weekend of picnics and get togethers and baby showers and barbecues and oh so much food. tomorrow we're packing our bags and heading off to Seattle for the weekend and then driving to Spokane from there. i'm going to spend some time with my family after craig heads home alone and after a while i'll fly home with my tiny sidekick. the very next day we'll start house sitting for four days and then a week later we're all flying to California for three days.

and after that we're going into hibernation. but really, i'll probably be in complete holiday mode at that point. i'm already making Christmas lists and looking at tiny Halloween costumes and getting oh so giddy for Kahree's first holiday season. and after Christmas i have a very special February birthday to plan for a very special little one's first birthday.

i love life. this is such a blast.

we'll catch up with you soon <3

baby jeans

this is my favorite outfit that kahree has ever worn. she's had some amazing clothes, especially in the 9 month size, but this combo is by far my favorite ever. she handles summer heat so well but i pretend she needs tank tops to stay cool. give me a break, when else will she be able to wear them?

how did my daughter get such blonde hair and such dark eyebrows and eyelashes? i'm not complaining. except for how i'd love to see her with darker hair. she has more of it than you'd think, it just gets so light at the end. goodness knows how much i want a baby with a full head of hair. sometimes i pretend it looks strawberry blonde in the sun. maybe someday. it is in her genes. baby genes. and jeans. because she's wearing tiny, cute baby jeans. see where i've tied this post in with the title? genius.

she's still only pretend crawling, she gets up on her knees and rocks back and forth, like she's winding up for take off. but then she gets up on her feet and very ineffectively tries to get around. i don't really mind though, even though it seems so inefficient. i love that she can still hang out with me all day while we watch netflix and craft after morning chores while we wait for daddy to get home so we can eat dinner and watch the twilight zone. yeah, our life is pretty awesome.

6 months

my little daughter turned six months old this week. six months! she's half a year old already. where is it all going to? i can hardly stand to see her get so big but i adore who she's becoming. for a couple months there i was longing to have my tiny newborn back, but six months is amaaaaazing. it's my favorite stage so far. she's so bright and intense and into life.

she's a big kid. i'm glad she hasn't gotten too heavy for me to carry around yet but some days i swear she's half my size. she's been sleeping in her new crib in her own room all night for almost two weeks now and it's AWESOME. i missed her so bad the first few nights but she seems so much more comfortable now.

a few more things she's been doing lately include eating like crazy every day and, wait for it, crawling. crawling! she did a real crawl yesterday. that's rare though. for the rest of the weeks she's mostly just been wriggling around all over on her tummy, getting up on her knees and rocking back and forth, and my favorite, getting up on her hands and feet with her bum in the air and just staying there. for ages. it's so funny to me.

little kahree is my best buddy. i'm so lucky that i get to spend all my days with her. she's finally getting a little more snuggly and she talks to me all day long. i can't wait until she uses real words and tells me all about the big things she has in her brain. i can't wait to see who she becomes. right now i just love who she is.

p.s. shooting in manual still seems to be working. i figured out how to use my camera's timer today! please be impressed, it was hard.

happy anniversary

yesterday marked two years of marriage for me and craig. i can't even believe it's been that long. i looks back at us as newlyweds and marvel at how different we are, at how hardship changed us, at how becoming parents made us better and fall deeper in love. these last couple months have been wonderful and we're the happiest we've ever been. i'm trying so hard to soak it all up because i know it comes in cycles, time flies, things chance, hard times come and go. but right now i'm just so glad to be in it with these two. you only get to do this life thing once and i'm determined to spend it loving as hard as i can. and i love craig SO hard. i don't appreciate him nearly enough, i don't deserve him at all, but if i keep trying maybe someday i'll come close. i wish i'd have at least 75 anniversaries to try to get it right. if not i'm just glad he agreed to spend forever with me so i can have a few extra chances.

birthday lady

i had to tell my tiny baby when we got to her auntie's birthday celebration that it was not her party but she tried to steal it anyway. she's lucky that her aunt catie loves her so much and let her get away with it. these two have such an adorable bond, i just love it's. they're too special together.

happy birthday catie, one more time, from all of us. i hope you love 19 all over the place!

sour patch kid

this little stinker pulls hair, scratches and bites. the scratches leave me with a constant parade of scabs and the biting HURTS. but darn it, when she's being sweet she's just SO crazy sweet. i've been describing her as a sour patch kid lately, first she's sour, then she's sweet. the sour drives me crazy but i just love the sweet so, so much.

we graduated up to 9 month clothes this week. so many cute summer outfits to rock, so little time.

p.s. that's strawberry, the dinosaur. he's the favorite around here, after chewbacca of course. she's likes to show him who the top dinosaur is around here. she's the top of the food chain.

m is for manual

here are some of the first few successes from my epic journey with learning to shoot in manual, unedited and in all their armature glory. long story short i spent one whole day thursday completely clueless with a full black screen and wondering what buttons helped me adjust my aperture. the next day i read about 10 helpful guides and everything just clicked. haha clicked, get it?

i find that i love the extra light a high ISO provides but i'm not a huge fan of the resulting grainy look for pictures of people [babies], i like it a little more for inanimate objects and photographing my apartment, craig doesn't like the grainy look at all. i need a fast shutter speed generally to keep that thrashing baby from looking permanently blurry so getting enough light in is a little tricky but possible with some tweaking. right now aperature is giving me the most trouble. i finally understand how it works and why and i know that most everyone these days likes having a shallow depth of feild and the nice, trendy, blurry background but i'm not sure it's my favorite look. i've always naturally composed photos so that the background didn't look too busy or cluttered and i just don't know if totally blurred is my thing yet. i'm mostly unsure about it because as far as i know at this moment the only way for me to adjust aperature is to switched from manual to apature priorety and fiddle with it and then switch back to manual to see how it looks. not exactly professional or time efficient. hopefully i'm just being dumb and haven't noticed the easy way yet.

a lot of that might have sounded like gibberish and i'm still not positive i have any idea what i'm talking about. but at least the pictures look okay, yeah? even though the aperture priority and shutter priority settings on my fabulous camera are divine i think i want to be one of those people who never takes my camera of "m," but i may go back on that and let myself use some of my cameras amazing scene settings if i need to take a picture in a hurry. seriously, how can i let 20ish perfectly constructed scenes go to waste? i just don't know if i can.

to market, to market, to buy a fat pig

we don't buy pigs. mostly hummus.

every thursday in the afternoon the wilsonville farmer's market is a happenin' place. we like to go and get humus and tasty snacks. last week we got baklava and salted carmel macaroons and craig got these tiny melty sammiches he really likes. kahree wore her stylish sun hat and i wore my new purple tights.

then we came home and watched the storyteller on netflix to wind down before bed. this is my very favorite summer ever and this time with my family is just so fun and sweet. i want it to go on and on.