thanksgiving

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

We spent the holiday with Nathan's grandparents in Oklahoma. Makayla really enjoyed visiting with everyone and playing with the leaves in their yard!!!

Yes, it has been almost 2 months

Here are some pictures of Makayla that I took at the Old Mill in NLR.

It has been almost 2 months since my last post. That is totally a reflection of how hectic our life has been lately.

Here's what has been happening lately:

*Makayla turned 2 on November 1st!

*Makayla's Uncle Ryan was busy playing football, so we all 3 went to a few of his games. Makayla had a blast. She loves football.

*We took some pictures at the Old Mill in Little Rock which is site of the picture that plays in the opening credits of Gone with the wind.

*We have been super busy with work and other activities, so there has been little time for anything else.

*Makayla's school has their thanksgiving feast yesterday. (I don't have any pictures though because I had to work and couldn't be there with her)

Grand Finale

These are some pics from the coast that I took. The view was breathtaking.

Throwing sand

Makayla now has expereinced the joy that can only come from picking up a handful of sand and chunking it at anything that happens to be in the way which was often herself because the wind was blowing.

Coffeshop Actions

I use coffeshop actions to edit my pictures on photoshop pretty often. This is one of my favorite pictures that I took on the beach. I think that it looks great in color of black and white, but I used a few different actions for you to see since I know that many of you use photoshop.

original

classic black and white bitersweet vintage

chocolate
denim

Black and white on the beach

I got the opportunity to take lots of pics on the beach that I thought would look great in black and white. These are by far some of my favorites that I took all week. little feet

Nathan's sister Candice

Kaylie

Kenzie chasing her Uncle Ethan

They were supposed to jump on "3", but Kenzie's "3" was never the same as mine. I still thought that this was an adorable picture.
Candice and her boyfriend-I love this picture.

Nathan, Makayla, and Me

McKenzie is always so vivacious.

Family pics

We went to the coast at Newport, Or while we were visiting family. The kids and grown-ups had a blast. Nathan and his siblings played in the pacific while Melissa's girls went back and forth from the water to the sand. Of course I spent our time at the beach behind the camera while Grandma Lorri managed the grandbabies. The coast was beautiful, but I won't be revealing those marvelous pics until later this week.

I really wanted to take pics on the beach, so we managed to squeeze the tripod into our 1 suitcase that we checked for $20. (CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT WE REALLY DID HAVE TO PAY THAT JUST TO CHECK OUR LUGGAGE?) Anyway, I have never been to the pacific ocean before, so I didn't realize that there wouldn't be much pretty white sand on the Oregon coast. As you can tell we had mud. That is apparently what they have on the coast there, but we used the mud anyway.

These are the pics that I took of the family at the beach.

Melissa with her girls-Mistie (11), Kaylie (7), McKenzie (6)
The whole group-Me, Nathan, Makayla, Ethan, Melissa, Lorri, Candice, McKenzie, Mistie, Kaylie

Me, Nathan, Makayla

Nathan, Me, Kaylie, Mistis, McKenzie who is making glasses with her hands

Nathan with his siblings

nieces

I am glad to take these precious girls as my nieces! They are adorable and full of life. I had so much fun getting to know them better while we were visiting. They are such a joy to be around. McKenzie is the youngest, and she is so energetic. I think that she was lapping the adults all over the place on the beach.
Kaylie is the middle child, and she is a very affectionate, peaceful person.

Mistie is the oldest child. She is very responsible and energetic. Poor Mistie got seasick on the whale watching tour.

Sea Lions

Nathan, Ethan, the girls and I went on a whale watching tour. I bet we had 12-15 whale sightings while we were on the water which is apparently a lot of sightings for a 1.5 hour tour, so we picked a great time and place to go on the tour. It was tons of fun, but I am glad that we didn't eat anything before we got on the boat. Poor Mistie would have been in bad shape if we had eaten first. Sea Lions were also around in the water where we were. Here is a picture of them, but I didn't get any outstanding pictures of the whales because the water was choppy. I didn't want to take a chance of my lovely camera having a chance to swim with the whales in the pacific.

flowers

I can't believe that we actually survived the plane trips. Let me tell you that it was not any fun at all being on a plane with a toddler for 4 hours. Makayla was not a happy camper. This week I will be posting some random pics from the trip. Enjoy!

blackberries

Makaylas love blackberries. They grow wild in Oregon. We are hanging out at Nathan's mom's house today. I took this picture this morning of Makayla and her Grandpa Bob picking blackberries in their back yard. This is what Oregon looks like. It is very green. Sweet Home, OR where we are visitng Nathan's mom is in the Willamette Valley. I didn't realize that meant that there were going to be mountains right around the town. I just thought that there were mountains nearby. The area is very interesting to me because a town this size in Arkansas would have a wal-mart supercenter, but instead the people living here shop at locally owned shops like you see on Gilmore Girls or Everwood. It makes me kind of sad that we have a Wal-Mart on every corner in Arkansas thus making the small local businesses obselete. Anyway we are enjoying our trip and had a relatively good trip here on the planes. It could have been much worse. Makayla did very well considering that we had to hold her on our laps for 5 hours total.

We are going to the zoo in Portland on Saturday and to Newport Beach on Sunday and Monday. I will post pics of that later. I also have to add that I am super excited about our whale watching tour that Nathan and I are taking our nieces on first thing Monday morning.

Going to Grandma's!

We are leaving for Oregon in the morning and will be gone for a week. It will be Makayla's first trip on a plane. I am leaving you with a picture of me as a motivation for me to update the blog while I am gone or very soon after we get back. We have lots of exciting things planned, so I know that I will have a lot to tell you about next week.