jackson james turns 5...farm style.

My son loved tractors from the time he could first express a preference in toys! One of my son's favorite places to hang is my grandparent's hobby farm just a few miles from our home.  For his fifth birthday we combined those two things with a few great friends and family, snacks, bandanas, crawdads, rainboots, a hay ride, smores by the campfire and old fashion cane pole fishin' to throw one heck of a bash to celebrate our little boy.  He had a blast!  Happy Birthday, BooBoo.

vivianne is sharing a room with her sister.

I am currently 6 months pregnant with my 3rd child, a baby girl who we will name Vivianne Lou.  She will be sharing a room with her sister and we are beginning to make additions and changes to the room to accommodate two beautiful girls.  A great friend of mine, Sarah, made "Emilia" in  the same type of letters as shown above and of course Vivianne needed a set to match.  I would like to share the pictures of how "Vivianne" turned out and of course I will post pictures of their room and the furniture makeovers that are currently taking place later.

arizona, nebraska, tennessee, south carolina family visit.

My mom and grandma

My brother (visiting from NE) and son

My sister-in-law, brother (NE), cousin and her boyfriend (TN)

Some of the most important women in my life after I had the chance to host my sister-in-law and brother's baby shower at my home 

(LtoR: my daughter, my mom, my little sister, myself, my cousin, my sister-in-law and my grandma). 

My dad and my kids

My beautiful parents and I (visiting from AZ)

My mom and dad (sunny AZ)

Uncle Scott and Aunt Robin (SC)

Jackson and Matthew (cousin from TN)

My husband and brother

I believe everyone who was visiting is pictured above (we also had the chance to see family we do not often see at my sister-in-law's baby shower).  Summers are a special time for my family and especially my kids because much of my immediate family lives out of state.  All of my husband's family and a large majority of my extended family live right close to us at home in Michigan and we are blessed to see them often.  During the summer we enjoy the large chunk of time we get with "mom's family".  This summer was no exception and we fit in so many delightful memories.  We were able to visit lots of family together, go shopping, ski, be on Lake Huron from multiple, loveable Michigan towns, work together on grandma and grandpa's farm, have a family reunion, have a baby shower, enjoy being together in my home, do sewing and craft projects, go antique-ing, garage sale-ing and estate sale shopping, find out the sex of both mine and my sister-in-law babies and celebrate one another.  It was exceptional! It is also why my blog has been sparse and I will be playing catch up for a few weeks.  I have a long list of blog topics and photos to share.  Thank you to my few, loyal followers who enjoy my updates.  As I have said before, something inside me has always made me a documenter of life's moments and this is one more outlet I get to enjoy.

a home in omaha.

My brother and his wife live in Omaha, Nebraska on an Air Force assignment.  They just moved into base housing and are doing so much with their new place.  I went to visit and wanted to blog about their home's style and what a great job they are doing.  They had only been moved in one week when I arrived and took these snapshots...great work guys!