Random Pictures

I had a bunch of pictures on my diaper bag camera that I haven't shared so this will be a long post with lots of pictures!

I go shopping with my mom and my grandmother a lot on Friday afternoons. Ella gets bored in her stroller so she often catches a ride with my grandmother...

(she's not always in a wheelchair, but we rent one for her at the mall because it's easier for her to get around)

A few weeks ago, Ella went through her drawers and found her little bikini from last summer. She insisted on putting it on over her pjs and wearing it around the house while doing chores like taking care of baby, playing dress-up, etc....

On Wednesdays we always visit daddy at work when I pick Ella up from Mother's Day Out...she loves to do "paperwork" at his desk...

On Thursday we officially started summer at our house by breaking out the baby pool and playing outside. Ella loved getting back into her playhouse and playing with all of her outdoor toys. We've been outside everyday since! (Partly because her daddy and grandfathers have been putting together her swing set, but that's another LONG post)...

Her rainbow pool that she picked out herself and talks about constantly...

When Keith and I were in B'ham for our anniversary, he found these little glasses for Ella. She loves them because they're just like mommy's!

One final picture...Ella and Keith sharing some piano time...my two favorite people!

34 Weeks

Only 6 weeks from my due date...I can't believe it! As excited as I am to meet Anna, I really do love being pregnant so I'm trying to remember to enjoy and appreciated every day. Carrying a baby is such a miracle and a blessing! She's still pretty active...more so than I would have thought at this point. I don't see how she's got much room to move around in there!

Keith's Surprise Birthday Party!

Keith turns 30 this year and he has been talking about his 30th birthday probably since I met him 5 years ago. ;-) So I knew that I needed to do something fun for him and I probably needed to do it early if I wanted to surprise him (also because his birthday is May 21st and that's getting awfully close to my due date). So with lots and lots of help from my parents and his parents, I threw him a surprise party this past weekend. It was fantastic! He had no idea and was super surprised. I love that! We had it at Frazer in the activity center so that all of our buddies and their kids could come and have a fun time. Plus, Keith loves anything to do with sports so that's another reason we did it there. Anyways, after months of planning and Keith almost finding out about it two days prior (thanks Chris Myers!! ;-)), it all worked out wonderfully and Keith had no idea. So, now he's had his party and gotten his big present. I guess his actual birthday present in May will be a new daughter! Mom, Dad, Karen, and Kenny ~ thank you so very much for everything you did to help with the party. I certainly could not have done it without you!!

My dear friend Lori was there as a guest and also as the official photographer. As always, she took wonderful images that I will cherish forever. Thank you so much Lori!! Below are a few of my favorites and you can click on this link to see all of the pictures from that day. www.suzannewilliamsphotography.com/keithbirthday

4 Years

Keith and I celebrated our 4th anniversary last week on the 16th. I can't believe how quickly 4 years has gone by! We celebrated by going to Birmingham on Friday and spending the afternoon shopping by ourselves (no Ella) and then finishing off with a dinner at P.F. Changs (our fave) and ice cream from Ben and Jerry's. It was wonderful! I love you Keith and thank you for the most wonderful 4 years!!! :-)

Since we've been married I decided to start a tradition of taking a photograph of our family on each anniversary just to see how we grow and change.

4 Years (33 Weeks pregnant with Anna...Ella is 23 months old)

3 Years (Ella was 10 months old)

2 Years (36 weeks pregnant with Ella)

1 Year (in Sedona, AZ)

On our wedding day

Easter Afternoon in the Country

After lunch and Ella's nap, we headed out to Slapout to visit with Keith's parents. They had all kinds of cool toys to play with out there including a little train pulled by a Gator and another egg hunt. Ella had a ton of fun and was totally worn out by the time we left to head home.

The train they had was so cool. Ella liked riding it the first time, but was too distracted by everything else to get back on later. I enjoyed riding it too!

Ella's Pawpaw did a really good job of hiding eggs...she had to really search for them!

Ella found the Golden Egg!

My parents headed out there with us as well to spend some time visiting with Keith's parents...

Loving the bubbles!

Yes, that's me - 7 months pregnant on a 4-wheeler. Not something you would normally see me do, but it made my hubby happy. :-)

Easter Morning

I'm trying my hardest to get caught up on editing pictures and posting! Here's the pictures from our Easter morning with my parents. Since Keith worked all morning at church, I went with my parents and grandmother. Afterwards we headed back to their house and met up with Keith for an egg hunt and Easter lunch which was delish! Check back tomorrow for more pictures of our Easter afternoon in the country at Keith's parent's house.

Our Easter cross in our front yard...Ella was fascinated by it!

I made the dessert for lunch..."pink" velvet cake with a little birdy nest on top!

Beginning the egg hunt...Ella was thought it was GREAT!

The paparazzi in the bushes...

Oooh! You mean there's jelly beans in these eggs!?!?

Giving daddy a quick high five during the hunt...

Look at all those birdy eggs!

Ella kept tripping over her dress so we tucked it into her diaper cover...love those ruffles! :-)

33 Weeks

33 weeks...only about 6 or 7 weeks left. Wow! I had a doctor's appointment today and everything is still going really well. I was concerned that she might have flipped into a breech position because I have been feeling hiccups a little higher in my belly. But my doctor gave me a quick ultrasound today just to verify that she's still head down and she is indeed. Yippee!

Anna is now the size of a honeydew melon. She's getting pretty cramped in there!

Easter Portraits

Here's the rest of the pictures we took on Saturday afternoon at Southern Homes...

Waving at the duckies...

Ella got really tickled at the end because my mom was pretending to put my flash diffuser on my head. I don't think I have ever seen her laugh so hard...it was so cute! I couldn't pick my faves out of the bunch so I'm including them all.

Egg Hunt at Frazer

We had a really fun time at Frazer's Egg Hunt this year. At the beginning they had some activities for the kids like face painting, bubbles, and horseshoes, then a puppet show, and finally the egg hunt as a grand finale. Ella had a lot of fun, but she had a hard time getting her mind off the "birdy eggs" that she could see laying around everywhere just waiting to be picked up! Finally it was time to hunt the eggs and after picking up a few for herself, she started to pick them up and hand them to other kids out there. We were pretty proud of her for sharing! :-)

Hmm...what should I do first?:





Waiting for the puppet show to begin:


Watching the puppet show:



Time to hunt!:

One More...

Yesterday we took Ella to Southern Homes and Gardens to try and get a few nice pictures of her in her Easter dress. I was thinking she might surprise me and give me some really good images and she did just that! I haven't been through all of them yet, but here's one of my favorites.

He is Risen!

"He is risen indeed!"

Happy Easter everyone! We have had a fantastic day celebrating our savior and what he did for us...I hope you all did as well! :-) I have a gazillion pictures from today and our church egg hunt yesterday but am just too tired to go through them all, so here's our family pictures that we took and I'll post more pictures of Ella in action later this week.

Our little family:

With Nana and Pop-Pop:

With Mawmaw:

With Meemaw and Pawpaw:

With Aunt Trish (Uncle Kev is in New Mexico for training...we missed you today Kevin!!):

32 Weeks

This week I've felt like my belly has gotten a good bit bigger and heavier. When I compare my picture from this week with last week's I think that's definitely the case. Still feeling really good and starting to get very excited that we'll get to meet Anna in hopefully less than 2 months!

Playgroup Egg Hunt

This morning our playgroup had a small Easter Egg hunt for the kids. We met in the park behind Frazer and they enjoyed playing at the playground and then spending some time hunting for eggs. Last year Ella liked the egg hunts but didn't totally get it. This year she loved it and needed no prompting from me to run around and find eggs. Even after the hunt was over and all the other kids went back to playing on the playground, Ella would not let her "birdy eggs" out of her sight. They were her prized possessions today. :-) Lucky for her she has another egg hunt tomorrow morning and again on Easter! Even though they forecasted rain for today, we lucked out with nice weather and temps, but it was WINDY! That's why Ella's hair looks crazy in all the pictures. :-)

23 Months

I just realized that I forgot to post Ella's monthly picture. Only one more month and we'll have made it 2 years doing these pictures. I think after next month I'm going to stop doing them as she's not changing much month to month in appearance anymore. I may do them every 6 months for a year and then just yearly. Anyways, this past month really has been great. She's talking and singing up a storm and listening and obeying so well. Her imagination just amazes me...she loves to dress up, play with her babies, and tonight she even pretended to be a waitress and took my order on her little doodle pad! Makes me laugh because I know I was the same way as a little girl. She's still sleeping great in her big girl bed and actually taking better naps then she has in a long time. She even did well with taking her picture this month...it only took a small bribe and she sat there quietly and let me snap away (still didn't get a smile though). This afternoon we went to Blount Park and she hopped up on the bench and said "picture mommy!" referring to my taking her picture with my camera phone. Amazing! Has she finally gotten past that horrible no eye contact phase??? :-)

After initially being totally gung-ho about potty training, I decided to back off because I honestly don't think she was really ready and I had a few people tell me that when she sees the baby in diapers she'll probably revert back and I definitely don't want that. So I might try again in a few weeks since she's now showing a lot of interest in it on her own, or I might just wait until later in the summer. Any suggestions?

Egg Dying

I love to dye eggs every Easter and this year I figured Ella was old enough to participate. She thought it was very cool. Since we looked at the bird eggs in the basket on our front door a lot, she now thinks all eggs are "birdy eggs" and really enjoyed having birdy eggs in our kitchen that she could dye pretty colors. Now that they're finished and put away in our fridge, she asks to see them multiple times a day. However, I think her favorite part of the whole thing was standing on the kitchen chair which is normally a no-no. :-)

Just for fun I asked Keith to take my picture dying the eggs because I have one from when I was pregnant with Ella. To compare:

35 weeks pregnant with Ella:

31.5 weeks pregnant with Anna:

Keith couldn't be prouder...

Monday night I mentioned that I wanted to get Ella a little basketball goal for outdoor play this summer. Keith was in the car with it running in about .2 seconds to head to Walmart. ;-) So we got a Little Tykes basketball goal and Ella loves it! I don't know if you can tell this in the pictures, but she's wearing her high-heeled dress-up shoes. She stopped half-way through playing ball to slip them on and then continued to play. Such a prissy little girl!!

31 Weeks

I had my bi-weekly doctor's appointment today...everything is still looking great!

Some Pictures from Yesterday...

Ella's newest thing is giving eskimo kisses....sometimes they're more of air eskimo kisses...

Comparison

I found one of Ella's 4D pics on my computer...

Ella at 31 weeks

Anna at 30 weeks

What do you think?

Anna's 4D

(image is clickable to see bigger)

We had our 4D ultrasound on Friday and it was so cool! I think it finally hit me that there is actually another baby in there that will be coming out in a few short months! :-) She gave us a couple of really good shots and then put her hand in front of her face and said "no more pictures please!" I guess she knows that with a photographer as a mom that the womb is the only place she can get away from pics! I've been comparing Anna's 4D and Ella's to see if there's a resemblance. I see it in some pictures, but not in others. It will be interesting to see who she looks like when she comes out. She was very active the whole time and kept sticking her little tongue out as you can see in one of the pics...pretty cute! Oh, and by the way, she is definitely all girl! We made sure to check that. :-)

My Little American Idol

Ella loves to sing...I mean LOVES to sing. And she is getting so good with singing all the words to her favorite songs. I have to admit, I'm a little impressed! Anyways, about a month or so ago (I kept forgetting to post this pic), we let her play with my dad's microphone (he has one for his guitar playing...I don't think he has ever actually used it) and watch American Idol. She was really getting into it!! Keith was able to find a discarded microphone at the church that she now plays with daily. Such a diva!

The birdies hatched

I think I mentioned in my previous birdies post that they have now hatched. It is so cool to watch the progress from eggs to babies to grown-up birds. I can see through our front door when the mommy bird brings food and the little baby beaks poke up out of the nest to eat. Pretty cute! I tried to get a picture but right now it just looks like a bunch of fur. You can just barely see an eye and a beak. In real life you can actually seem them a lot better but I can't get in there with my camera to get a good shot. The downfall of having a bird nest in your front door hanger? A lot of birdie poo-poo. Yuck!

30 Weeks

Still feeling good, but starting to notice a little bit more fatigue. When I was pregnant with Ella at this point I had starting swelling a good bit and I haven't really experienced that this time so I'm glad about that. I'm sure it's just yet to come though. :-) Anna moves like crazy and is so strong. Sometimes it feels like she's just going to push right through my belly button! And, yes, we have decided on Claire as a middle name for sure. It was Keith's #1 pick and although I really love the name Elizabeth, I have really grown to love the name Claire too. I think it is very traditional and southern which is exactly what I like. So Anna Claire Bear it is! :-)

We have our 4D ultrasound tomorrow which I'm really excited about. We debated back and forth about whether to do one this time or not and Keith definitely could have gone without, but since we did one for Ella and have it in her baby book, I just felt like we should do the same for Anna. Plus I would love the extra clarification that she's a girl. ;-) And, it's so much fun to see what she looks like. We could tell from Ella's that she looked just like Keith. Even in the womb! So check back this weekend for some ultrasound pictures.

Bye-Bye Uncle Kev

Keith's brother Kevin has just accepted a position as a border patrol agent in Texas so he'll be leaving tomorrow morning to head to New Mexico for training until September and then he'll move on to Texas. Latricia will be joining him sometime next year. We are so sad to see them leave, but so proud and excited for him and this new opportunity. Congrats Kevin and Latricia! Last weekend Latricia had a small open house in order to celebrate his new job and to wish him well. We enjoying spending some time with him because we know it might be a little while until we see him again.

Ella and Keith's Aunt Jan:

Keith's mom had a basket of toys for Ella to play with and in it was one of the books that Keith read as a little boy:

And a quick pic of Ella and mommy before church that morning. Ella had just gotten into my dresser drawer and pulled every single one of my bras around her neck like necklaces. It was hilarious and I got a cute pic, but I just can't bring myself to post a picture of all my undergarments! :-)

Nursery Pictures!

Well, we're just about done in the nursery. I'm so excited to have things finished up...it makes it seem so much more real that we'll be bringing a new baby home in a few months. I have just one more spot on the wall that I think needs to be filled with something...please tell me if you have any suggestions! The wall color is like a pale cotton candy pink. Since I don't know if you can tell from the pics, here's the paint chip with the color starred:

We had kind of a hard time getting those knobs into the wall to hang the letters, but I love the way it turned out.

Obviously the frames will hold pictures of Anna once she arrives (black and whites). Also, the bookshelf needs to be arranged a little bit better...maybe another frame or two.

Ella has this same lovie except it's a pig. Hopefully Anna will find as much comfort from this one as Ella has with hers.

One of my favorite details in the room is the polka dots on the outside of the bumper. You can't really see them in the other pictures.

Here's the blank spot I was referring to earlier...over the rocker. Any suggestions? Maybe a mirror or a couple of framed pictures?