Monday, May 26, 2008

Catch Up

Okay - here's a glimpse of our lives in the last few months... captions will be few, pictures will be plentiful. I'm sick of playing catch up so here goes nothing!

Easter - 3/23/08
Easter also fell on Addy's birthday this year but since we had her birthday party the day before she was pretty oblivious.

This year was neat though because with all the hype about Easter we were really able to talk to Addy about what Easter is not about (Easter baskets, pretty dresses, Easter eggs, etc.) and more importantly, we were able to plant some seeds in her head about what Easter is about... celebrating Jesus' death and ressurection for the forgiveness of our sins. By the time Easter was here she had it down!

But that doens't mean they didn't get Easter baskets... :)



John Michael's cute hat:



John Michael chose Easter to make his debut in Dr. Mario.. yes, the original NES game.




a poor attempt at an Easter picture... Thats M&Ms on John Michael's mouth.

'''


John Michael's favorite position:




Addy & John Michael's cousin, Ajai, wasn't able to be at Addy's birthday party so he stopped over with his cousin with some cupcakes and candles to have a mini party for her. She loved it~







This was one of the first nice days we had outside.... it was probably last week. haha.. just kidding - i think it was the end of march/beginning of april.




Addy complaining that she didn't want me to take her picture...




But here she is cooperating in her new house she got from GG & Bampa Bampa for her birthday. She loves this house - and especially loves to pretend she is a pig and someone else is the big bad wolf coming to blow her house down.



Here's John Michael taking a crack at the teeter totter with me.




not too sure.....





ahh... this is fun!






this year addy's finally mastering the art of bubble blowing.





A quick picture from Julie's Shower out here. This is "the family" that was there. Shannon has since had her baby as you read about several weeks ago. :) I can't believe Julie gets married in 5 days!!





Daddy bonding time








Addy has this funny habit of pretending to sleep when we go to get her out of the car seat. She thinks its so funny... so we always play along and tease her by saying things like, "Oh, how sad! Addy's sleeping, now we're going to have to go eat dinner without her." Then she will open her eyes and giggle.




John Michael thinks its funny too. For months he's been watching Addy do this and now he is trying to play along.... but he can't seem to keep his eyes closed very long so he usually just ends up turning his head away. :)




Some pictures from our trip to the zoo






John Michael is such a stinker.... One of these days I'd like to write about all the stinker-like things he does. It reminds me so much of Johnny... Here he is being silly and making faces for the camera. I didn't quite capture the moment but thought i'd post it for my own memory's sake!




John Michael also loves cars. He loves to get in th van and pretend like he's driving and he is rather obsessive about his Uncle DD's motorcyle. (I'll post pictures of him on the motorcylce soon) Here he is at a park playing with the pretend car.





this picture is a bit haunting to me but I kinda like it. :)




A few more from atlanta.

So, for whatever reason my kids, who really aren't picky eaters, never quite took to steak.... but when we were in Atlanta my sister and Adam made this awesome beef steak-ish thing for dinner... and made the kids chicken. But they both kept wanting to eat the steak! Thats when it occurred to me.... they always like my steak... they just don't like it when its their own... Why is that I wondered? And it occured to me that I always order their steak medium and mine medium rare... and probably because of the size of a kids steak, theirs usually ends up more like medium well... So, since then I've been ordering their steak medium rare and they DEVOUR it.

Here are some pictures of them in Atlanta enjoying their new treat.



she'll kill for posting this one day.... hehe



Thats it for now! Happy Memorial Day everyone!

Monday, May 19, 2008

new blog

well, i finally caved in and took the advice of a lot of friends and started a photography blog! I wasn't sure this was really in my best interest considering my update history on this blog over the past several months... but it will give me an easier way to display my newer work without overtaking this blog or having to udate my website all the time (which proves to be a lengthy process...) So, without further ado, please allow me to introduce

Michelle Hamstra Photography Blog

Here's a taste of some new looks going on....




Enjoy!