Exciting News!

par·ent (pâr'ənt, pār'-) noun: One who begets, gives birth to, or nurtures and raises a child; a father or mother.

On October 6, Aaron and I will happily be classified as the above noun.

Easter Weekend in MO

We had a great time in Missouri over Easter weekend! We really enjoyed being at home and seeing everyone.

It did take us 3 1/2 hours longer than usual to get to MO. We were stuck in a traffic jam in St. Louis due to flooding. Grr - we were aggravated, but not a thing in the world we could do but sit and wait.

We went to the town Easter Egg hunt on Saturday morning. I was assigned to go with Kelsey since Kaden and Khara were also in different age brackets.

All 3 of them really raked in the candy! They loved it (and I did too)!

And then the fun part - dying eggs!
"Patiently" waiting for the colors to be mixed.


Happy Easter!
(I took individual pictures of Karson. I'll post those later, or they will be on Jana's blog.)


I looked behind my shoulder on Sunday night during church and saw this - Kaden holding Karson. It was so cute, I had to snap a picture (without flash of course).

Have you hugged your plumbing today?

If your house smells good and clean - hug your plumbing. We are now very grateful for clean air. On Monday of this week, we noticed a very unpleasant smell as we both came home from work. After further investigation, we discovered it was coming from the basement. We went down to investigate and discovered standing "water" in the basement. I didn't think it was a huge problem, because it was raining SO hard and had been for a while that I thought the water just couldn't drain fast enough. However, as the evening wore on the smell got worse (as in MUCH worse) and we knew something was dreadfully wrong.

I emailed our dear maintenance staff and they took a look at it first thing the next morning. To make a long story short, the pipes were clogged and sewage was backing up in the basement - YUCK!! The 3 apartments in this building house 6 people, so you can imagine the smell. RotoRooter was here for several hours with no luck, so it fell the lot of our maintenance staff to dig it out.

This job was bad enough in itself, let alone the next catastrophe that occurred. The rented machine ended upside down at the bottom of our steps! Thankfully, no one was hurt (you can always replace machines; you can never replace people). So, the next series of pictures are over the course of the 3 hours it took for the tow truck, the bob cat, maintenance staff, several students, and many onlookers to right the machine again - all of this in the rain which turned to snow.

The view from our front porch.

making progress. . .

The slew of onlookers - our porch was full too. :-)

rain - turned to snow

finally!

Yearbook Ad

Since I am a photographer and yearbooks are full of . . . PICTURES I'm a huge supporter of yearbooks and I like to take out a full-page ad when I can. Kevin Moser designed this page for me.

Cute as a button!

Hannah came over recently for her 3-month baby pictures, and of course Matt and Erika came along. :-) She is such a cutie - here are a couple of my favorites.

Music Man

The Music Man is one of my favorite musicals and last night Kristin and I got to see it live at at Indian Hill High School. It was an amazing production and they did a fabulous job. They obviously have quite a bit of $$$ at that high school because the props, costumes, and auditorium were all very nice.

The Library scene was so funny.

The front porch.

Meeting at the foot bridge.
(I loved the shadows and the moon here.)

The Mayor's wife with all her "fine acting" at the social.

And now the "band" . . . finally being directed by Prof. Harold Hill.

Teddy Bear Owner

It's true. I am now the proud owner of a Vermont Teddy Bear. Never thought I would be since they are outrageously expensive, but getting one for free sure is nice.

I love entering contests and you can't win if you don't play, right?

During the week of Valentines, a local radio station had an online contest where you had to describe how you met your spouse. The requirement was 50 words or less - which isn't much at all. I told them how Aaron and I met at third base playing softball, started dating, and then 3 years later he proposed while standing on third base at the very place where we had first met. My story must have been a "hit" as my little engineer bear arrived today. :-)

I am so hooked!

OK. I've been doing this now for 3 weeks and since I'm now really hooked, I thought I'd share with everyone else. If you enjoy saving money - read on.

I love buying groceries on sale, but I don't like not knowing if the sale items are "good" or if it's just a gimmick to get you to buy. I also like using coupons, but dislike paying more with the coupon then the "everyday low price at Wal-Mart." Well, this website has solved all that for me: www.thegrocerygame.com.

Basically, the list tells you items on sale at "rock bottom" prices AND they match up these items with coupons from the paper, which obviously means you get some really good deals. Yesterday my bill at Kroger was $71.30 BEFORE I handed the cashier my stack of coupons (and yes it was quite a stack). After he rang all the coupons, my bill came down to $46.70. Now that's saving money! This is the 3rd week I've done this, and every week I've saved over $20.

In fact some items are completely free - really! For instance, this week at Kroger, 8 oz of Daisy sour cream was on sale for $1 AND I had a coupon for $1 off any Daisy product. Ta da = I got my sour cream for free. Of course the free items are the best, but I've only had 2-3 free items per week.

And yes, you do have to pay for the grocery list, but it's completely worth it to me. Right now I'm still in the "trial period" which is only $1 for 4 weeks. After that, it's $10 for 8 weeks (or more depending on how many stores you select).


It does take a while to cut out all the coupons, organize, and file them. But, if I can save this much money on our grocery bills, I'll happily keep clippin'.

The Big One-Five

Happy 15th Birthday, Cameron!

The restaurant of choice for him this year was Maggianos - YUM!!
Even the desserts were to die for!

We got him this frame w/picture along with a Reds hat for his bday gift.

Do Dogs Smile?

Do dogs smile? Who can say, but it sure looks like Cocoa is smiling here! Especially when you compare it with the second one.

I snapped a few pictures of Matt & Erika's dog when I was taking Hannah's newborn pictures.

How Would You Be Described?

We have the greatest group of young adults at our church (Kenwood Bible Methodist) and I love it when we have parties. We met at Jeremy and Emilie's last Friday night and had a great time eating pizza and playing the Bowl Game. Aaron is sure the game has a "real name" - but everyone I know calls it the Bowl Game. So, that's what it is.

Emilie started it off by explaining how the game works. The first round you describe the person you draw out of the bowl by using only words. Second round you only act, and the third round you can only say one word.

I see that hand, Jennee. Did you have a question?

The acting round is always the funniest part to me. I can't remember who Jeremy is trying to act like, but it sure was funny.

A very perplexed Ron.

Aaron and Josh sure thought something was funny.

It's really hard to describe someone you don't even know, which is what happened to Jenn. We got real creative with some names. :-)

Brent - a ready-made actor.

If we could get Holley to stop laughing long enough to act, she did really well. :-)

I absolutely love this game. We had all kinds of people: presidents and other famous people, church people, Strawberry Shortcake, Winnie the Pooh, bible characters, Paul Harvey, GBS people, and many more. We laughed at how people were described and the actions people chose to describe them. Later on that night I was thinking and wondered what would people say to describe me or how people would describe Aaron. Hmm. . . food for thought.

How Cute!

Last week I took pictures of the Frederick children. They are always willing to let me try something new on them and we have so much fun in the process.

I love taking pictures of siblings - especially when they are as cute as the Frederick's!

Pretty in pink!

I just loved Christi's boots and socks - so of course I wanted them to show in the picture.

Sled Time

The latest addition to my collection of photography props . . .


No, I really didn't need 4 - I actually only wanted 1. However, the cool thing about auctions is you sometimes have to bid on a "lot" when you may only want one thing. So, here are my 4 sleds. It's probably a good thing they came all together, because I'm not sure which one I like the best. I'm anxious to try these out on some kids for Christmas pictures this next winter. . . if I can wait that long.

Together we will What??

Newport on the Levee is a fun place to go. We hadn't been for while and after we got there wondered why in the world we don't go there more often.

They had a mime out in the common area that was extremely entertaining. I could have stood there forever and just watched him. He was acting like an electronic mannequin and was moving in very real jerks. It was fascinating, but kind of a little unnerving at the same time. :-)

We ate at Dewey's Pizza and wanted to try their dessert, but didn't want to order individual portions. So, we decided to get one piece of Bon Bonerie cake and just split it. It didn't seem weird at all when Kristin and I ate are portions. However, we died laughing when it was time for Aaron and Mark to finish off their halves. You don't typically see two guys sharing cake. :-)


After we were full of pizza and delicious chocolate cake, we walked right by this fitness center. We had just been talking about exercising and this sign clinched it (you have to click on it to enlarge the picture so you can read the sign). Of course, the picture was not complete without the pizza box. After this picture, we promptly marched into Cold Stone Creamery and ordered ice cream. What a way to top off the evening!