Shutterfly Holiday Cards

We have used Shutterfly for our holiday cards and birthday invitations for a few years and have LOVED every experience we have had working with them.  They have an awesome new selection of holiday cards this year and I can't wait to order our new  Christmas cards this year!  If you are looking for a special gift or just some fun gifts for yourself you should check out their special offers page.

I mean, how cute are these cards??!

 Thank you to Shutterfly for the opportunity to share you cards with my readers.  This has been a sponsored post courtesy of Shutterfly.

Such a Ham

Bella has become such a little ham in toddlerhood.  She really just cracks us up all day long.  Our camera is still broken so these are a lot of cell phone pictures but let's face facts, at the rate that Bella moves from one thing to the next I would never have time to pull out the camera for half of these photos, thank goodness for cell phone photos!  A note on all the "closed eye" pictures below: this is what Bella does when we tell her to smile, she smiles so big that she completely shuts her eyes. So funny and cute, but we will have to work on this before she has to start taking school pictures :). On another note she is pretty much totally potty trained aside from naps and night, still working on that and still working on her willingness to use the potty when we are out but she can seriously hold it for hours, its crazy! We are so proud of our big girl!

** not sure why the images are coming out with that grid effect....one day I will figure out technology...**

Twin Girls!

This picture is me at 18 weeks with the twins.  We were very excites to find out we will be adding two more girls to our family. Lots of bows, tea parties, dress up (and probably drama lol), but so fun!  Rowdy is very outnumbered but he is such a good dad to girls! Can't wait to meet Bella's new little sisters!

Twins!

It's about time we finally document on here that our family will be growing exponentially very soon! We are thrilled that we are expecting twins in January 2013! (the picture of my belly below is at about 12 weeks)

Hawaii 2012

Our camera is broken and blogger seems to have made some changes do that is why this has taken so long and will probably be such an unorganized post. But, at least it will be blogged! We went with my parents to Hawaii this year and had so much fun! It was Bella's longest flight she has been on and I would say for the most part she did great. Ultimately she is still a busy 2 1/2 year old on a 6 hour flight but we didn't have any extreme meltdowns during the flight (only one during our layover) and she only yelled at the top of her lungs "I need to poop!" a handful of times during our flight so.... I'd call it a success. :). She absolutely loved Hawaii and still asks to go back frequently, or just assumes that, of course,we can go to the beach today. Shelved staying in a condo with my parents, and I really think she believed we were all just going to live together forever, which I think would be ideal to her :) I mean, who wouldn't want grandma to make you french toast each morning and have grandpa to take you on walks and play on the beach with each day?! Ok, I'm sold, let's all just move to Hawaii together:). We really just had such a great time relaxing, going to the beach, going to the beautiful pool, eating, eating and more eating ;). Rowdy and I also celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary while there with a wonderful dinner at the Four Seasons. The view was AMAZING, as in, we were basically on the beach, and the food was delicious. Since I can't seem to figure out how to label each picture right now,the pictured just the beach at sunset was literally our view from our table. So gorgeous! We had such a great time and can't wait to go back next year, wink wink, lol! Ok probably not next year, but maybe the year after:). Thank you to my amazing parents for making this trip possible for us. We truly loved every minute!!!

We love Shutterfly and Contests!

We use Shutterfly all the time for prints and photo books and always love what we order! Shutterfly contacted me with the opportunity to share a promotion they are currently running on Facebook. Here is a little more information about the promotion: "Long Live Summer – Facebook Photo Contest details - 7/9 – 8/12 Multi-week summer sweepstakes with instant win prizes. Go here to submit! Win a trip for four to The Bahamas and a professional photo shoot so you’ll remember your vacation forever.  All you need to do is upload your favorite photo and caption based on the theme of the week.  Get a gift from Shutterfly just for entering! You can enter at any point during the 5-week sweepstakes period." PHOTO THEMES •       Week 1(7/9): Americana •       Week 2 (7/16): Great Outdoors •       Week 3 (7/23): Water Fun •       Week 4 (7/30): Sports & Activities •       Week 5 (8/6): Parties & Celebrations PRIZES •       Instant win prizes just for submitting a photo! •       Weekly prizes (contestants can enter one time/week) •       Weekly featured photos: up to 5 weekly entries will be selected from the gallery and featured on the Facebook fan page and awarded a $500 gift card on Shutterfly and a copy of the new Lonely Planet travel photography book. Follow this LINK Submit your photos and hopefully win some fun prizes!!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

My dad has a birthday on Tuesday April 24th and Bella and I decided it would be fun to take Grandpa out for a date. We took him to As You Wish to make popcorn bowls for when Bella is over at their house (which is often). We figured they can have special bowls for when they watch movies and play together. Grandpa got a big bowl and Bella got one more her size, and I made an extra in case they allow guests, like Grandma, to have some popcorn too! I knew Bella would be into the painting part because when we paint at home (which is multiple times per week) she can paint for a very long time. Well.....what I didn't really anticipate was that we would be walking right past the splash pads, and all the kids running and playing in the water. I think that was when our whole plan got derailed. She liked painting for a few minutes, until she realized she could still see all the kids playing in the fountains through the window. Then, she only wanted to do one thing, play outside. So we quickly painted our bowls and Grandpa took Bella outside. I finished up the bowls and tried to decorate them so they all had some cohesive look to them but I left Bella's painting on the inside of the bowl (pretty much the only part she painted before getting distracted). I think they will look really cute though. So then we played in the fountains for a while. I have never seen Bella so excited about anything. She absolutely LOVED playing in the water and she just loves to watch other children play too. It's so cute to see her interacting with other kids. After our fun in the sun, we went and got some ice cream, enjoyed our treat, and headed back to Grandma and Grandpa's house so that Bella could tell Grandma all about her day. I think we had a lot of fun and we may have to make this an annual thing. Grandpa/Momma/Bella day!

Grandpa and Bella painting their bowls

More painting, Bella was decorating her bowl with dots of purple and pink

Our crazy table after the bowls were painted, you can sort of see them. They are mostly purple, blue and brown.

It's true :-)

Pouty face because I asked her to take a picture before going outside to play in the splash pad

As you can see....she cheered right up as soon as she was allowed to play in the water. The next few pictures will display just how much fun she had. Just imagine her screaming with joy as she moved from each fountain to the next and giggling when one of the little girls kept splashing her, that pretty much sums up the next few pictures :-)

I realized this isn't the greatest picture but I had to document her cute little whispy hair getting longer

Since she went in the fountains with her clothes on, and we weren't really planning on going in the fountain, we didn't bring a change of clothes, so Bella worked the "nothing but my diaper" look while eating her ice cream. These are definitely some sleepy eyes in this picture!

Bella took Grandpa's ice cream from him and kept it for herself!

Such a silly girl, she had so much fun with her Grandpa!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!!