Another Birthday!

(for those who are the sentimental type...feel free to check out just a couple images...a snippet of our lives)

Happy Birthday Bradley!

You know I love you, thanks for giving me three of the most beautiful babies, and thanks for being the most funny, adorable, loving man that I plan to grow old with :)

Love,

Kate xoxo

(please excuse my ghetto video making skills)

Baby Boy...Now a Man...almostish

In my mind, I was going to make this big huge post with all the gazillion pics I took of Beckett and the kids today.

It's 11:39pm

Soooo...I picked three images that I hope will somewhat satisfy

...for now :)

Happy Birthday Beckett!

You are one of the cutest little blonde haired chubs I know!

Love Mom.

i feel like these pictures are so telling of what my children are like I just had to share.

I just can't get enough =)

P.S. Beckett turns ONE next month!!!

Two posts in one week! (does that last one count?)

Disneyland...I Love You.

I love your ability to make me smile

laugh even...

I love the way you smell,

Oh, and the songs you sing to me.

I love the way you light up.

I love the way I feel when I am in your presence.

Yes, you are THAT good.

Most of you know, we went to the happiest place on earth!

I am feeling "un-funny" (pretty sure that's not a word)

and tired, and so....I'm not sure what my commentary will consist of for this post...we'll see

We got to our hotel, unpacked, and got the kiddos dressed up for the California Adventure trick-or-treat that evening.

Here is Alice in Wonderland, Mickey Mouse, and Spiderman

Love how they all looked...too cute!

Beckett refused to wear the hat longer than it took to take the first pic

Outside our hotel, on our way....

So CUTE

Love them.

Kammy had to take a pic of us :)

We're not in focus...which completely represents the way kids see us anyway :)

Love this shot, but look closely, see where I put the green arrow...

that's where the water once was. weird huh? they are re-doing all kinds of stuff in Cal Advent.

Kammy started her obsession with the peace sign for pics lately...NO idea where that came from!

BUT, I love it, how cute is that? haha!

After a looong super fun first night.

Wearing matching jammies.

Basically, after this pic, some stuff really hit the fan!

I'm pretty sure you all know Jameson woke up at 3a.m. unable to breathe.

Long story really short...

Brad took him to the ER.

he had H1N1 (they don't test for it specifically anymore, but that is what they diagnosed him with)

It was scary, but, after a steroid shot to butt, and a breathing treatment he was Much Much Much better!

Of course that put a kink in our DL trip...but, we made the best of it!

This was during my turn with Kammy and Beckett at the park

(we had shifts, Brad with J at hotel, then me with him)

Cutest sleeper ever!

We actually had a lot of fun! I hope we didn't spread the H1N1 to too many people on that first night ha ha!

I shouldn't laugh...sorry :) hahahahahaha

I didn't get a lot of pics after the first night, not sure why....Pushing a stroller, parking the stroller, holding kammy's hand with Beckett on my hip...hand sanitizer...pump for me, pump for kammy, pump for Beckett, on ride we go. Off ride, sanitize all three again...check! Find stroller... pull out camera (yeah right)

I hope to get some pics up of Halloween before Christmas.

WANNA SEE??

My sister's twins??

click here.

Green is the new pink!

My mom and I gave my sister (she was having twins, boy and girl) a baby shower about three weeks ago. We went all green! Eco-chic! So much fun.

We were amazed at how much stuff is "green" now!

The plates and cups were Bare by Solo

(click the green underlined part for link)

We had all natural soy candles and incense for prizes.

This beautiful cake made by Jami was soooo yummy!

Carrot cake.

beautiful don't ya think?

We decorated the tables with fresh flowers in mason jars.

Mint leaves, then blueberries (for the "boy" Bodhi) and raspberries (for the "girl" Lola)

filled mini mason jars. Pink and blue raffia to complete the jar...

...served as decoration, then doubled as the take home favor :)

We tried to stick to fresh foods such as fruit, spinach dip, asparagus, meat and cheese, and some natural sun chips :)

Luv these coasters...

Here she is in all her twin glory!

I had so much fun researching different ways to go about this baby shower. I came across quite a few cool organic, eco-friendly, or all natural products. One that I am in love with is these diapers:

(the diaper images are courtesy of the gdiaper website)

Aren't these the cutest??

They are cloth diapers for those who are not sure if they can fully handle cloth 100% of the time. And they are all natural and environmentally friendly :) NOt to mention the cute factor...seriously those ruffles?!! LUV THEM!

Check them out here.

I am considering them for Beckett...we'll see. Let you know if I do.

Oh! I can't forget this....

Lola on the left, Bodhi on the right.

They are beautiful! I am so grateful for the opportunity I had to be in the room during the c-section to capture some awesome images for my sister.

Thanks Leslie... I love you!

For those who have facebook and have seen my many posts about this...

I'm sorry.

For those who don't, this may be new to you.

I have been struggling with some skin issues on my face for not quite two months now. I hadn't changed anything in products nor in my diet. It started out by feeling like my upper lip was burnt...or like I needed some chap-stick asap! Then I started noticing dark circles under my eyes. I of course being the female I am started freaking out and pointing it out to Brad EVERY morning. It went something like this:

Me: "oh my gosh Babe...look at me! I have dark circles! What? Me? OMG, I need more sleep. It must be from lack of sleep from Beckett wanting to nurse and just the exhaustion of having three now right???????"

Him: "oh, bummer...I don't know" back to t.v. or phone.

Me: "Do you see it??? I can see it, that's bad, oh man this is weird"

It sounded like that for quite a few mornings. Then one day I was headed over to my friend Megan's house and I felt my eyes burning and my forehead was itching and again my lip burning... Huh, weird.

Well that all progressed into full on flare ups. Every week to two weeks I go through a cycle, I can feel it coming on because of said symptoms above, then my eyes, forehead, and lip get super red, itchy, weepy, and dry, scab up, flake away...repeat cycle.

I don't mean to sound vein, but I am a girl and when it comes to my face...well, I am. This has affected me a lot. I don't feel like people realize just how much and that is ok, this is definitely not for pity :) I will not go into the depths of my emotions...I will spare you all that drama I'm sure you have enough of that yourselves ;)

I started googling my symptoms...pretty depressing. Seems that hundreds, probably thousands have these symptoms and have yet to find a cure. This is literally driving people crazy. People have done everything trying to figure it out...replaced everything, switched this to that, got rid of their mattress (wowza!) seen allergists only to have their allergy tests come back negative, have doc after derm, after doc after derm prescribe oodles of medicines and creams only to mask the symptoms and not solve them.

So what do I do???

Facebook it of course.

I have received some really awesome tips from friends on facebook and here is what I have tried:

no makeup...yikes

switched laundry soap to method free and clear

use castile Dr. Bronner's soap

only Vaseline on face during episodes...no other lotions or moisturizers

cleaned makeup brushes

new eye makeup

organic produce

and the latest is probiotics...highly recommend these...seems to really be helping out with the eczema on my hands!

So this weekend I had the worst outbreak yet...started on friday... peeked on sunday, still around today so I hopped out of shower, smothered on Vaseline...no makeup, threw on sunglasses and went to the dermatologist hoping...PRAYING that SOMEONE could look at me while I still looked like a monster.

My prayers were answered. Someone had just called to cancel and I got in right away!

Here is my diagnosis:

Perioral Dermatitis

Hmmmm...Interesting, considering the main issue is my eyes AND forehead AND upper lip...nothing around my mouth. BUT, I am desperate to try anything at this point and she swore up and down that is what I have. She prescribed Tetracycline antibiotic for a month and said I can know longer nurse... I was not ready for that. She said there is other less aggressive treatments that may or may not work so I could continue to nurse, but, I am on the brink of a break down with my self image at this point. I held myself together, grabbed the white slip from her, put my shades on and left. and cried.

I was not expecting to be so emotional over not being able to nurse anymore, Beckett is six months now and we had a good run while it lasted. I am VERY grateful for lasting that long and feel good about that, but I guess I wanted to give up nursing on my own terms and not so abruptly. I will take a week or so before I start the meds to indulge in a few more nurse/snuggle sessions and then call it quits. I just feel like he may be our last and I am not ready to nurse for the last time...sounds silly to some, but hard for me.

Anyways, I will keep you all posted on whether this works or not, I am EXTREMELY skeptical, but trying to keep a positive mood/energy. Thanks to all for your love and support and listening to me complain on and on about this :)