The Fun of Christmas pictures.......

I was looking through pictures trying to decide what to write about that will update the last 2 months in the Berry house. Many things have happened but today I want to write about the fun of taking Christmas pictures for Christmas cards. As I looked through past pictures, I was reminded of all the fun that  parents go through to take a good picture of their kids. The more kids you have, the harder it gets. Now that we have three kids, we have to find the shot where all three look great.
I think I need a really expensive camera like the one in professional studios that take 20 pictures a minute assuring of at least one great picture :) This did not work when we took the kids to Portrait Innovations early December though. I feel it is important to document through pictures the kids growth each year. I absolutely love pictures. Throughout Liesel's first year of life, I took her to JCPenney to have her picture taken every month. That is a little extreme, but babies do change so much that first year. Two more kids later and Jensen has had his picture taken professionally 3 times since he was born. Wow, how things change! This last session, Jensen cried the minute we put him next to Liesel and Caedmon. By the time it was all over, we were just glad we got one shot of Jensen where he was not screaming. We had to forget about the thought of a smile. I really do hope he moves past this for his sake and mine.
Back to family pictures at the house.......Craig and I took 17 pictures and we never really got that GREAT shot I was looking for. Here is a funny look back of all we went through.
I like this picture because it shows Caedmon and Liesel's personality. However, I could not get Jensen to even look up.

When it was time to sit in front of the house, I used a ball (Jensen's favorite toy) as an attempt to get him to smile. The ball does not work so well when you can see it in the picture. LOL! When we took a family Christmas picture when Liesel was this age, we used an ELMO doll near the camera. Aww, memories!

This picture is sweet because Liesel is either comforting Jensen or telling him "Get used to it little brother, this happens a lot around here!"

Jensen is still slightly disturbed and now Caedmon is trying to comfort him.

Jensen has clearly reached his limit since the tongue has come out. Liesel and Caedmon are giving a "Mom you are crazy" look. "Can we please be done?!?"

After all that, this is the only picture where all three kids are actually looking towards the direction of the camera. Caedmon and Liesel clearly have a forced smile but I WILL TAKE IT!!! LOL!

On a positive not, when I just wanted a picture of Jensen by himself I had much more success.

 We did get some good family shots as you can see from the new one at the top of the blog. I don't know why those went better. I think next year we will skip Christmas cards altogether. I say that now but will probably not go through with it. It may be stressful but Christmas card time brings stressful I mean fun memories we will remember forever.

Happy Birthday Liesel!

Liesel turned 8 on December 10th. For her birthday, she got to pick a few friends to come to her party. I had to limit the amount to just a few this time because............she wanted to have a sleepover. OH MY! Liesel has been asking to have a birthday sleepover for a few years and I just did not feel that Mommy she was not ready for that. LOL! She has had a good amount of sleepovers before with Kayleigh and Aubrie. That is only 3 total girls and I can handle that. This was going to be 7 total girls. She was allowed to pick six girls. The funny thing is that only 3 girls ended up spending the night. Since Liesel's birthday is in December, people are always busy. 3 of the girls could not spend the night due to having commitments the next morning. I really don't understand why a parent would not want to pick their daughter up to go somewhere after an 8 year old sleepover. HaHa!! Sense the sarcasm?!?!? It definitely turned out well for me and Liesel both. She was sad that more girls could not stay but she had a great time. All of the girls came, but just did not spend the night.
For her party we decided that we would take the girls out to eat and then to go shopping. After we priced places like Crazy Glaze and Build a Bear, Liesel agreed that shopping would be just as fun. Jeni, being the good friend that she is, agreed to go with me to help manage the girls. We went to CiCi's Pizza first. After the girls were full, we went to Five and Below. I told the girls that they could each pick out their own party favors and could not spend more than $10 each. Some of the girls had never been to this store. One little girl told me she loved the store :) There is a lot to look at in there. The popular item that night was nail polish. I am sure the people in that store were not too excited when they saw 7 hyper girls coming in! Overall, the girls were very well behaved. I was a little stressed trying to keep an eye on all of them. Keeping track of who spent how much money so far was also a fun challenge :) Jeni was very helpful, but at one point, I could not find her and she was off looking at her own stuff. I told her that she was here to help, not be another girl to keep up with. LOL!!!! We still laugh about that today. :)
After the joyful shopping experience, we headed home. Here is the entourage arriving at the Berry house(greeted by Dunkin of course).

Presents time!!! I always love to watch how fascinated little girls (and Caedmon too....hehe) are at the presents . There was a lot of oooohing and aaaahing!

Yeah, more Barbies.......Liesel already has a gazillion, yes really a gazillion!

Liesel always pays great attention to detail when she is opening presents. She reads every card which is very sweet.

Bella gave Liesel a kit to make headbands. This is a great gift for Liesel since she loves crafts and loves headbands. We have already made 4.

The whole cake situation could be a whole other blog in itself. The past few years, I have really been trying to make more stuff from scratch. I have made some good homemade cakes for a while now but for some reason, this one did not turn out so well. Then, at some point in the past year, I lost the recipe to my favorite buttercream frosting recipe. I cannot seem to find it again online. I tried a new recipe and it was awful. I iced the cake anyways and was not pleased with it. I can be a slight perfectionist at times and was so worried the night before her party that Liesel wold not like it. She was very sweet and did seem to like it. Problem solved right? Not really. The next day I could not ignore the inner voice that said I needed to do something better. Ha! So my mom helped me make cake pops. I should have done them all along. Liesel was ecstatic and could not wait to show her friends. My dad joked that it took us 6 hours to make, which was an exaggeration. It did take a while though. The girls loved what they looked like. They took a few bites, put them down and ran off to play. Wow! That was a lot of work for only a bite. Lesson learned........the cake is not important to them!

We survived the sleepover with only a few moments in which I got stressed and/or upset. Getting out nail polish and painting nails on Liesel's carpeted bedroom floor is not going to work!!!! Thank goodness, no polish was spilled but I think I scared them enough to not do it again. HeHe!!! Craig arrived back to the house with Krispy Kreme donuts soon after mommy lost her cool and everything was better :)
Hope you enjoyed your birthday sleepover Liesel.
As part of her birthday present, I bought tickets to Disney On Ice Tangled. Liesel and I had a fun mother/daughter night that next night.

It was cool to watch Rapunzel and Flynn fly through the air.

Here is a picture of the finale.

It is hard and sad at times to think Liesel is 8 years old. Time truly does fly when you are having fun and learning how to be a mother. We have had our challenges over the years. Liesel is a lot like me and I think that is why we have issues. I have made many mistakes as a mom to her but I hope that she knows how much I love her and that some day we will be best friends. Right now, my job is to be her mother and continue to learn what works best for her personality. It takes time and patience. I have learned a lot about myself and hope to get better each and every day.
Lately, she wants to grow up so fast. She is always talking about what teenagers do and tries to emulate them. The big thing this year for her is she is allowed to carry Jensen around the house on her hip. I told her all along that she had to be older and Jensen had to be older to walk around with him. It still makes me nervous sometimes watching it but I know he is tough enough now to survive it. It makes her so happy! She asked me the other day: "Mom, how old do I have to be to carry Jensen down the steps in the garage?" Oh My! "18 Liesel!" LOL! She also asks a tremendous amount of questions these days. I know she is trying to learn and explore on a different level now, but the sheer amount gets to me after a while. I asked her the other day why she asks so many questions. Her answer was: "I guess I was born with a question brain." Too funny!
This past Saturday she woke me up and asked me if I would come upstairs to her bathroom. She had set up a spa. I dragged up there slowly partly because I was still asleep. This is what I saw.

She had set up a cute place to sit and the basket is to prop feet up on. Very creative I think. We took turns doing each other's fingernails and toenails. She also did my makeup and hair. Craig loved what I looked like. Ha! It was a sweet memory that we needed. I am really glad I woke up to such a treat.

I wish I could slow down how fast she is growing up. Since I cannot, I am trying hard to enjoy the ride!
I love you Liesel!

Happy Birthday Caedmon!

Caedmon turned 5 years old November 28th and Liesel turned 8 December 10th. I will get to her birthday post when I finally finish with Caedmons. Where does all my time go? Can someone tell me please??? We decided not to do a big party like we did last year. The night of his birthday we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant in town with my parents. The waiters came and put a huge sombrero on his head and they sang to him. I thought for sure he would be embarrassed but he looked and smiled at them as they sang. Last Sunday the 4th we invited Scooter, Jeni and the kids as well as his favorite friend from church and his family over for lunch. We had lunch, kids played and we had some cake and ice cream. After all that fun, we all went to the Fuquay Varina Christmas parade. Wrapped the whole evening with dinner out because Jeni's birthday is the 5th. So many birthdays to celebrate :) I did not get my camera out once the whole weekend. I don't really know what I was thinking.
I want to use this post as a trip down memory lane with my sweet son Caedmon. It makes me sad that he is already 5. It feels like he was just born. He is such a fun child and it has been a joy to watch him develop into a smart, kind, joyful little boy!!! He is no longer little anymore :(
I have put together some......(many actually ;).....pictures of Caedmon. I think it is fun to look back.

Here I am 11 days before he was born. He was due December 26th. I had no idea he would decide to make his appearance a month early.

Liesel meeting her new baby brother for the first time.

 I remember looking over at him, realizing something was not right even though the doctors checking him out said he was fine and surprisingly 6 pounds 12 ounces a month early! Call it mother's instinct, but I saw him struggling to breathe and knew he needed help. The nurse gave him a bath after all of the initial tests and agreed with me and said they would take him to the special care nursery to have him looked at further. She told me he would more than likely be right back. This was probably around 8pm. In the middle of the night, a doctor woke me up to tell me that his lungs had not developed enough and he needed oxygen. I was so sad. I never got to hold him. Craig went down there to look at him first so he could prepare me for what I would see. I was just a little emotional! This is the picture Craig took and showed me on the camera.

It could have been a lot worse. He did not need a breathing tube. Praise The Lord! He just needed the extra oxygen in the incubator until his lungs matured some more. He was not allowed to nurse from me, so he had an IV. By the time he was breathing better, he had developed Jaundice and needed to stay under the light. I finally got to hold him 2 days later in his "glow blanket".

He stayed about 4 days in the special care nursery. That was enough for me! He is finally coming home!

Caedmon's first Christmas!

Liesel loved spending time with him.

Good bonding time!!!!!! SLEEP!!!!

Some day they will thank me for taking this picture. HA!

Precious!

Check out that toothless grin :)

Can you find Caedmon?!?

He was a good nurser. Can you see those fat rolls? Oh My!

Caedmon being dedicated at church with family there to support us!

Caedmon was always where ever Liesel was...... Even if it meant playing dress up with her!

He was so excited to have cake at his first birthday party.

Since Craig likes NC State and I like Carolina, Caedmon wore this once when they played each other. LOL! I wish we still had this outfit for Jensen........

Is that a flower on your head?

That's more like it..........fireman!

He went through this phase where if he saw one of Liesel's headbands, he put it around his neck.......sometimes 2 or 3. Maybe he thought they were necklaces :)

Craig came home from work one day. "Why is Caedmon wearing a princess hat?" At least it is backwards, that makes it more cool right?

I don't remember if he got in there voluntarily or not. Either way, he does not seem to be trying hard to get out...HA! Liesel had her fun with her little brother.

Love it!

He had the worst case of hives one time. :(

"Hey there partner, I think you are in the wrong place."

Very often he had a toy on his head like this. So funny!

This is going to be fun to show to his future wife one day. HeHe!!!!

Now that's the life....Daddy is doing all the work.

I think you are supposed to draw on the paper Little Guy.

He wanted to do whatever his sister was doing.

What a sweet face!

Just like his momma.....loving sweets! "YUMMY!"

His love for books began early. Caedmon was always willing to sit and look at books, especially with Liesel.

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow............

Those are some big shoes to fill Buddy.

Where are you going?

I love this one.

On our Disney trip, Caedmon loved looking at the fish in the Nemo exhibit. Finding Nemo was one of his favorite movies at that time.

Liesel got a lollipop from her teacher at her first dance recital. Caedmon tried so hard to get Liesel to share. He kept saying: "Can I get a lick?"

Loving the ocean......

They really do enjoy being with each other.

.....being silly again!

If you cannot tell by his face, Caedmon was not excited about potty training.

They were too funny hamming it up for the camera.

Love it!

This is beginning to look familiar....HA! I think the class clown has arrived.

Yes, he did actually fall asleep this way.

"I said smile Caedmon, not act goofy."

Great picture.

That Christmas, Caedmon looked at every present carefully before moving on. :)

He was definitely going through his puzzle loving phase. That takes some dedication to continue the puzzle missing half your pajamas. As long as you have that Nemo hat!

He slept with a lot of stuffed animals.

That is a good looking boy!

Easter 2010 - One of my favorite pictures of all time of the kids.

Becoming a gentleman like his Daddy.

Caedmon was ready to go to see Toy Story 3 in the movie theater.

"Now this is the life."

I think I am going to end it right there. What a perfect place to end this look back on Caedmon's fun life. He has been a blessing and I look forward to many more moments to be enjoyed.