Ari is 7 months

 It has been a bit since I have done an official Embrace The Camera post even though I have been making sure to take pictures with the kids. So this post is my official one for the week, although Anthony is the lucky parent this week that is embracing the camera....I love you honey!:)

Ari turned 7 months on January 30th. He has not felt very well though so I did not take his monthly photos until today. When he does not feel well he is just a crabby little boy! Needless to say it is now a workout and required the help of his older brother. He is on the move and nothing stops him so to get his usual comparison pictures for each month I literally had to put him on his stomach have Eli hold his arms for a second while I got ready and said Eli let go! Then I got what I could. He is halfway across the bed before I could even get a nice sharp focused image.  These would be the results..........

 


His top two teeth have popped through in the past couple of days. He also is trying to stand on everything. He is fast as can be and very vocal. He also decided to sit up fully on his own. He could sit up if I put him down. On his own he would always prop himself up with one arm until yesterday where out of the blue he started just sitting up. He loves his brother and sister and they love him. I can't believe he is 7 months already! I have yet to do his official "6 month photos." There is a reason for that and I hope to have them done this weekend:) I am waiting until I get my new camera to do all the kids photos as I need to be able to practice and get use to it. Soo the goal is to get it on Friday hopefully I am able to. Ari also has another appointment with the urologist on friday. I can't believe it has been 6 months since we saw them last!! When I scheduled it I thought it was so far away! Sadly, it has flown by. We will know more after that appointment.

 

The kids played Candyland with Anthony tonight before bed. I worked on bouncing my flash and am pretty impressed with how well it turned out. I should have worked on that a year ago. I love natural light but at night I need my flash inside and always avoided it until now. 

 

Take time to Embrace the camera with your kids!

Christmas Crafts

We are linking up with Emily at The Anderson Crew   today and embracing the camera. 

Anthony had today off and he is always so good about playing with the kids. I caught him playing with Ari....

 

 Let me preface this by saying I did not come up with either of these crafts. The first has been going around Facebook so I decided to do it with the kids. The second was posted on Facebook by another mom friend as she was looking through blogs. So they are not original. 

I made the ever popular felt tree for the kids. For less than $6 they each got their own tree so no fights. It has kept them busy and they loved watching me make them.

The second craft that took a lot longer and cost a bit more money was a homemade advent calendar. Instead of being filled with candy or toys it is filled with Bible Verses and things pertaining to that Bible Verse telling the Christmas Story. This is my version. Which is two ideas combined. 

Every night at dinner we read the verse for the day. Eli knows when we get to the bottom right big box pictured above it is Christmas. He loves to see what is in each box at night. Lilliana does not quit understand but she enjoys that we open the boxes and gets excited. 

I will say if you are going to do this some tips.............Get a coupon for the Canvas. I kicked myself for not grabbing my 40% coupon for Hobby Lobby. I wish I would have. They do have an app for your phone where you can get coupons I learned after the fact. Also you might need more paint for the canvas. I wish I had more as I didn't get the edges done so improvised with ribbon. I just didn't feel like driving the 30 minutes back to Hobby Lobby. It worked though. Here are the links to the original ideas for this.

http://howsweeteritis.blogspot.com/2011/11/advent-calendar-teach-true-story-of.html

http://modpodgerocksblog.com/2010/11/diy-big-box-advent-calendar.html

Last but not least Larry was captured last night by the military men. They must have suspected he was up to no good..............

Have a wonderful Thursday. Embrace your Cameras today.

Embrace the Camera

It has been a couple weeks since I have actually blogged an Embrace the Camera photo. I still have been doing it. I just have not blogged. Today we are linking up with Emily at The Anderson Crew. 

 I would like to say we had grand plans today to take some photos and just play which we did. I actually had plans to make some Christmas crafts with them.  Then last night I ended up with a very sick little girl. I already have had little sleep the past two weeks due to Ari being up a lot from teething and extra work just needing to get done. The kids are also getting up an hour earlier. I had plans that I would be in bed by 8:45 last night. That did not happen. This was what I was doing at almost midnight.........

This poor little girl could not breath or stop coughing so we gave her a vapor bath. All she wanted to do was sleep. She was not happy I put her in the bath until I gave her colors. Needless to say I was up literally all night. We slept downstairs in the chair. As soon as I would fall asleep she would start coughing and crying. It 

 was a long night. I actually thought we would be headed to the Dr. this morning. I try to wait and see if we need to go, but she felt awful so I thought we would be on our way bright and early. Thankfully after a night of cuddles and elderberry syrup I am seeing improvement so at this point we will wait a bit longer.

I might add that photo was taken with my phone using the Adobe Photoshop Express app which is free. I am pretty impressed. 

Regardless of being sick I still have two other little ones to take care of. Gone are the days of being able to be up all night and sleep with the sick babe the next morning. Somehow we will survive today. Thankfully there are some new Christmas movies laying around that I think we will be watching. I plan to baby gate many areas and just take it easy. It will be a lazy day. I am exhausted. 

I did still manage to get Larry moved last night......................

Silly Elf got in my make up and some jewelry................

The other accomplishment I have gotten to this week was the kids Christmas pictures. I have to say that these pictures you see done always look so cute. Last year I bought the wrong lights and so they did not work. This year I didn't actually know if I would be able to do them. I know I needed a lot of room in order to get good bokeh. Plus I figured I would need my ISO a little higher than I like on my camera and was afraid I would have some noise. Surprisingly they turned out great. The kids all did really well. Eli was posing himself. There are some outtakes he really wanted taken. They are silly. Lilliana is busy but I got her to sit still for two minutes literally and Ari well he is easy.

All in all it has been a good week. I am caught up and for that I am grateful!If the worst thing is that we lay around and watch movies all day.........oh well. I just hope nobody else gets sick.

Spider-Man and Raggedy Ann

It is Thursday so time to Embrace The Camera. 

We have never done Halloween with the kids. This year we decided to do it. I had originally thought we would do Raggedy Ann and Andy. Eli didn't really want to do that and I didn't feel like spending $40 on a costume. Instead he was Spider-Man and we used cousin Chloe's costume from last year for Raggedy Ann for Lilliana. Ari and Anthony were too sick so they stayed home. 

We started off the evening with opening the annual Halloween card from Grandma Gloria and Grandpa George. They always send them and as a kid I got one too. 

Then we headed outside to take a couple pictures. The kids were great and posed and smiled etc. for me. Eli was so excited he could hardly contain himself. He kept asking when we were going to go and if we liked his costume. Lilliana was just excited because of Eli plus she loved her fake hair. 

After pictures I loaded the kids up and we went to Aunt Toni's house. Lilliana figured out the "trick or treat" part before Eli did. Eli was just being stubborn about it I think. Either way they LOVED every minute of it.

 

After Aunt Toni's we went to Grammy's house too. That was the extent of our Trick or Treating since they still had a mild cold.

We all had fun and for their first Halloween I think it was a hit. Eli told me it is the funnest thing he has ever done even better than Christmas. I don't think that is really the case but he was very excited about it.