The Birth of Samantha

You never realize how amazing giving birth is until you've actually watched someone do it. My son's birth was not what I had anticipated so I never got to really get a feel for what a non-surgical birth is like. I must say that's it's pretty stressful waiting around to get "the call'' to head to the hospital to take pictures. It's kind of like I was waiting to go into labor, only without the almost-too-much anticipation, pain and discomfort...and heartburn. Oh, and the waddling...and the annoying comments like "you look like you're going to POP!".

I digress.

So yesterday I was given the chance to capture little Samantha's entrance into this world. I was touched beyond belief by how her parents handled the labor. They did such a great job, especially Jennifer! She did all the hard work while Brett was right there supporting her every second. I cried right along with them as we all got to see her for the very first time!

(Here's a sneak peek at a few images. I have about a million to edit so I'll post more at a later date.)

Jennifer and Brett, thank you SO MUCH for letting me be a part of this amazing day. Samantha is absolutely perfect!

Build-A-Bear

Let me preface this post by saying "Why didn't I think of this???". Such a simple idea with such immense monetary rewards. For those of you who have never been to Build-A-Bear, it's pretty cool; you pick out an animal "skin" of your choice (and they have many, many choices!), get it stuffed then pay for it. If you want to you can even pick out a little outfit for him! Something that costs Build-A-Bear about $2 to buy ends up costing you $25 and up to own! And that's without the $20 team-of-your-choice outfit! BRILLIANT!


Anyway, so we took Jake to this gold mine- I mean toy experience for his 1st birthday, not that he really cared. We stuck with our monkey theme and got him a...you guessed it- a monkey! His daddy helped him pick it out.

For an extra $3-$5 you can pick a sound to put inside your animal. We chose a monkey sound.

Then we took it over to the nice lady at the stuffing station to get it stuffed. This is my favorite part; you get to watch your animal get stuffed- while that's being done you pick up a little heart cut out and warm it in your hands. Then you kiss it and place it in the stuffed animal right before they sew it up! So cute. Jake was totally enthralled in the stuffing machine.

Daddy hugs!

Jake was amazed watching his monkey be "born".

"It's almost done!! Here he comes....!!"

"Huh. Ok. Well, I guess you'll do for now- I suppose we can be buds."

After he was all done and sewn up we took him over to make a birth certificate for him. We had to pick a name to give him so we went with the most obvious name. Monkey. I'm glad Jake and Monkey can share a birth date! Pretty cool, huh? Jake wasn't so sure...

"Look dude, I'm cool being buds or whatever but I am NOT cool with you riding in the stroller with me."

"Get.Out.NOW."

So I guess he wasn't as excited about Monkey as I was. I hope he gets used to him being around for a while! I'm growing quite attached myself!

How can you not love this face?

While we were waiting in line the little girl in front of had made a birthday bear too, so they took her to the center of the room and let her ring a bell really loud. We all clapped and said Happy Birthday to her. I was so choked up about it I couldn't even talk, I just clapped. I knew there was no way I could do that for Jake without turning into a puddle on the floor so we didn't mention that it was his birthday. I hope he can forgive me.

The Birthday Boy!!

Jake had his 1st birthday party last weekend! Seriously- where does the time go? Since Jake is our little monkey we decided to do a monkey theme. I had fun obsessing and planning for the past 4 months :o) We had it at a local community center with about 35-40 people.

I decorated with the monkey theme in mind. On the tables where people were sitting I used yellow cover, then put 3 balloons tied to a small bunch of bananas set on two small banana leaves as a centerpiece on each table (I forgot to take a picture). For the food table I put a banana print cloth over a yellow table cover for a a little something extra. We served chicken salad sandwiches, chips & pretzels, fruit kabobs on these cute little skewers, meatballs and tortilla roll ups.

The gift table was really fun to do! I made "vines" by twisting rolls of brown packaging paper and hung some monkeys on it. We also put the cake and punch here as well as a little cluster of photos- in the three pictures Jake is wearing monkey related clothes at 1 month, 6 months and nine months old. This was a hit! I borrowed monkeys from my friends to use around the table. We put the gift underneath. We had a pile for Jake and a pile for toy donations to take to the monkeys at the KC Zoo! I'm really excited about that! I think our guests liked it as well.

My Mother-In_law made the super cute cake. I was going to make a banana cake for Jake but didn't have enough time in the end so we just got him a store bought cake (actually it came free with the sheet cake we got.)

We had a bean bag toss... (idea stolen from here)

...and played Pin the Tail on the Monkey! (I found the image online and had it printed at a 24x36 size at Kinko's for $4.50, then I colored it in myself. I have the large b/w PDF if anyone wants it.)

Then I had the kids go around and count all the bananas in the room, write their guess and their name on a piece of paper and drop it into the monkey box on the gift table. I drew a name at the end of the party and whoever got it right first got a prize! Prizes for the games were little monkey banks like this:

After the games we moved on to cake. Jake had never had anything like this before so I was worried he would be really careful with it. I was wrong. He dove right in!

He got most of it in his hair, ears and up to his elbows...

...but he still somehow managed to get a little in his mouth!

He was bouncing off the walls for the rest of the day until he FINALLY went to bed at 8:30. We were exhausted trying to keep up with him! No more cake for a year!!

I know Jake had fun at the party and I think all the other kids did too! It was a little chaotic, a lot stressful and a ton of fun!!! However, next year we'll have a small party at home with the grandparents :o)


Here's Jake with the loot! The stuff on the left is his, everything on the right is for the zoo monkeys!

He also got these two awesome gifts from the grandparents!!

Awesome jogging stroller complete with 4 cup holders for beer- I mean water and a MP3 plug in and speaker....

...and a water/sand table!

Folds up nice and neat!

It was a great 1st Birthday!

If you've made it this far, give yourself a cookie :o)

Baby Jayson

My friend Julie and her husband Mike are celebrating the arrival of their beautiful son Jayson! They were kind enough to let me come see them at the hospital where I was able to get some shots of this little cutie. He was such a good boy, although he didn't appreciate mom and dad waking him up to put clothes on him :o) Mike and Julie are the cutest couple ever. This girl looked AMAZING right after she gave birth- RIGHT after! I don't know why I'm was surprised, she looks great all the time!



So back to Jayson...isn't he sweet?

Funky toe!

Congrats guys!! You make beautiful babies!

Long time no see!

I have a lot of editing to do and have been putting it off for a while now. I'm hoping to have several new posts over the next couple of days.

Stay tuned!