Dragonflies...

I captured these photos in my parent's back yard this morning...

And ya, I LOVE my new camera!!!!

the sweetest boy in the world...

I'm not even kidding...Bode is the sweetest child ever!

When we were talking about him getting his Mommy flowers, this is what he said...

"I want to get both my mommy and daddy flowers because I love them BOTH very much! I want to get Daddy purple flowers because purple is his favorite color and I want to get mommy yellow flowers because yellow is her favorite color."

Then when we were picking out the flowers, he was VERY picky about which purple and yellow flowers he wanted to get them. Then he decided to get some green flowers for the baby. At this point we still didn't know if it was a boy or girl. Then he said on the drive to the hospital that his eyes were getting watery and thought he might cry because he was so excited.

He was very proud of the flowers he picked...I must say, he did a good job...

He also insisted on getting his picture taken with this onesie we got for Boone...

He is so cute!!!

This is the face he said he was going to make when he saw the baby for the first time...

And he wrote on a card to put with the beautiful flowers he picked out...

This was the minute Chris came in the waiting area to tell him, "You have a brother!"

So sweet!!!

More pictures of Boone!!!

Cassie ever so politely informed me that it was "annoying" that I hadn't posted any more pictures of Boone. I know if I were home and not here, I would feel the same way, so I will try and do better!

They just got home and are doing great!

He's nursing well and loves the pacifier.

Bode is IN LOVE and wants to hold him all the time and hates it when he cries.

I am doing an official photo shoot tomorrow and will hopefully have a lot of great pictures to post!

In the meantime, I'll keep posting pics when I get a chance...

Brenda and Boone

LOTS of pictures of Boone and the Stewart family...

Bode seeing Boone for the first time...

proud papa...

brothers...

Boone's hilarious toes!!!

It's a BOY!!!

Introducing...

Boone Eugene Stewart

6lbs. 8 oz.

19 3/4 inches long

VERY LOVED!!!!

the big day

So tomorrow (technically today because it's 1:15am) Brenda will go in to get induced at 5am. I am so excited for the big day tomorrow...really, I have no words! I cannot wait to meet this new little baby that I already love so much! Brenda is already dilated to 3ish and hopefully she'll have a quick and painless (HA!) labor and delivery. Bode is about the sweetest thing in the world and is genuinely so excited. I had so much fun swimming with Bode and Chris tonight. I colored and cut Brenda's hair so she looks like a supermodel for her pictures tomorrow. :) She looks great of course! I will post tomorrow the big news on the sex of the baby and its stats and tomorrow night will likely have pictures to post too! Woohoo!!!!

a good cry

I told Brenda that I would pack up some gender neutral clothing items and bring them down for the baby so tonight I opened the "Newborn/0-3 month" clothes box I packed away about 3 years ago. It was only seconds of looking into that box and seeing all of these things...like the onesie Tate is wearing in the picture below that emotion just flooded over me.

It was actually quite unexpected. I AM an emotional person as most of you know, but this was just going to be a quick trip to the basement to pull a few items out of the box for the baby. It didn't turn out that way. The tears flowed my friends...big time. Every item I pulled out brought back a different memory or feeling. I don't even know if the tears were happy or sad or maybe I just needed a good cry. I miss my "baby". Is that bad? I LOVE the age Tate is at (all but the not yet potty trained, temper tantrums in public, talking back to us part!), but I feel like I don't know where the last 3 years has gone! It seems like yesterday, but at the same time, I feel like I can hardly remember him being so little. As I pulled out the Newborn sized onesies he wore, I just couldn't believe those ever fit him! I am so scared that the next 3, 6, 10, 20 years are going to fly by before I know it and I'll have a grown child! I kind of always want him to stay this age (only potty trained! Ha.) and never want him to grow up.

And all of that emotion made me realize that I am going to miss him terribly this next week. This will be by far the longest I have ever been away from him. It makes me want to go crawl up in bed with him and snuggle him until I have to leave.

Strange how a few little onesies brought all of this emotion out...I have a feeling it's going to be an emotional week. I cannot wait to wrap my arms around Bode and my new little niece or nephew! It's going to be so hard to leave them!

Next time you hear from me, I will be an Aunt for the 8th time!!!!

Playing around with Adobe Lightroom

Did you know that you can get a free 30 day trial of Adobe Lightroom 2.7 by going to the Adobe website?
Well you can, and I did!
I have been playing around with it the last few hours and edited several photos.
I've been playing around with making photos look "old".
Below are a couple I've edited.
You can do SO MUCH with Lightroom! I can't wait to try other things too!
I think that Lightroom may end up on my Christmas list. :)
I will be sad when my free trial is up!

I don't know what it is...

but as soon as we got home with my new camera, Tate insisted on me taking pictures of him.
WHAT?!?!?!
He despises getting his picture taken!
Is it the new camera????
I sure hope so! :)
Anyway, I got TONS of super cute smiling pics of Tate...these are unprompted smiles.
And seriously, the quality of these new pics is incredible!
And the ones below were just taken using Auto...nothing fancy!

I got about a 2 hour hands on lesson from a camera pro on how to use all of the other fancy stuff on the camera to make the pictures look even more amazing. That mixed with my old photography knowledge from all the photography classes I took in school and I am hoping I'll be able to get some amazing shots of my new niece or nephew in a couple days. I'll be sure to share all of my Florida pictures with you and plan to be posting while I'm down there. Less than 48 hours and I'll be in Florida!!! Woohoo!

the first picture I took with my NEW Canon Rebel!

As I'm sure you've figured out from my previous post, I got a new camera. WAY better than my old point and shoot camera...

He acts like it's no biggie, but he's totally excited about all the new, better quality pictures we'll be getting with our new camera!

Guess what I got!!!!

I cannot even describe how excited I am!

out of the mouths of mamas

I've done this before and so I thought I'd do it again when I was reminded of it while reading someone else's blog who posts "out of the mouths of mamas". These are things that I have actually said in the last few weeks to Tate that seemed to make complete sense at the time, but when I look back at them, someone hearing me say these things and not knowing the context in which I used these statements in might think I was crazy...

"Tate, don't let your cheese touch the garbage can!"

"Is that poop hanging out of your bum? Come here right now so I can look to see if that's a poop hanging out of your bum!"

"take your gloves off before you wash your hands"

"stop playing with the sticks of butter...no, that's garlic, you can't play with that either"

"don't pee on the couch, Tate. I'm serious, I will be very upset with you if you pee on the couch. No, you can't poop on the couch either."

"take the blanket off your head while you walk down the stairs"

"get that straw out of your nose. I don't care if you want it in there."

still my baby

While we were on our evening drive tonight, Tate fell asleep.
He didn't want to get up when we got home and I would be lying if I said I wasn't thoroughly enjoying Tate cuddled in and sleeping on me when we got home. This never happens anymore!
He'll always be my baby...always.

happy car ride

We took a drive tonight...just because.
It was especially good because we got yummy Sonic beverages to take along.

MMMMM...maybe we'll make this a weekly habit!

a couple of house pictures...

our living room...well, a corner of it at least :)

our downstairs 1/2 bathroom...

I want a table!!!

So since we moved in, we have not had a table. I had no idea how annoying that would be! We hated our glass top table and refused to use it in this home. We've eaten every meal at TV trays. I am SICK of it! Sean and his brother built an island on wheels for our kitchen before we even moved in, but we had to special order the counter top and we haven't gotten it in yet. We also haven't stained the island yet. However, I'm kind of giddy because I just bought some bar stools online! I've been looking and looking for a couple of weeks, but couldn't find anything. Finally, I found some today!!! Woohoo! It's going to take a few weeks for them to come in though...ugh. So it looks like we won't be eating at a table until mid May. I don't know if I can make it!!!

update

Well I know that the last time I talked about Tate's adjustment to our new home, it wasn't going the best. I am happy to say that he hasn't mentioned our "other home" in days! He refers to this house as our home now and though he's adopted some different habits here when it comes to his sleep, he is doing well and sleeping well! YAY!!!! He now insists on his bedroom door being open when he sleeps which is so strange for him. He used to have to have it closed to sleep.

As far as getting our house put together and unpacked...well, it's going slowly, but it's getting done. I do a little every day, but I hate to spend an entire day doing it because I have found that Tate struggled more when I did it that way the first week or two. Once I started taking breaks to play with him or have him help me make dinner or snuggle with him, he started to act more comfortable here. However, I am leaving in exactly 1 week from today to go to Florida!!! I am so excited! I would love to come back to an organized home though so I am going to work really hard this week to get all of the last minute odds and ends done.

While in Florida, Tate will be staying a couple of nights at Cassie's in Muscatine and another couple of nights in Colo with Nana and Papa P. I hope that his staying away from home won't mess up his adjustment to our new home! I am a bit worried about that and would have really liked for him to be at home while I was gone, but it just didn't work out that way. It'll be good for Sean though because he'll have a busy week while I'm gone.

Speaking of Sean...he has officially switched to the night shift at work and is really loving his job. He works 7pm to 7am 3 days a week. He only has to work 1 weekend a month so that's good. He's managing to get his sleep during the days on those 3 days and then has also been doing a really good job readjusting his sleep back to sleeping at night on the days he's off. We weren't sure how easy it would be for him to do that, but it seems to be working just fine. :)

We are all adjusting well, but still cannot believe we live here! Ha. We are so happy to be here closer to family and only a couple of minutes away from friends who we are spending lots of time with! Thank you DeCooks for having us over all the time! Tate, Ava and Chloe just love playing together (most of the time!) and will play for hours and hours while Sean and James play basketball and Lora and I chat. Sean's ready for some more free time this summer so he can golf a bit more and is excited to try out some new golf courses in the area. It's also really nice to be so close to Mike, Sarah, Leah and Kayla and thank you to them for having us over for dinner and playtime for the kids (and dads!) too! Leah, Tate and Kayla play so well together too! Tate loves being so close to his cousins (now Tyler and Bode just need to move here!) and being able to play with them often.

Hawkeye Spring Practice

Well, we thought it would be a good idea to go to the Hawkeye spring practice/game with DeCooks and the kids (minus Chloe who is just too little). So we did. And for us...it wasn't quite the good idea we thought it would be. Tate was not the most obedient to say the least. He was TIRED from a lack of sleep the night before and had several meltdowns throughout the day. It was a rough day to say the least. Despite that, it was still special because it was Tate's first time in Kinnick Stadium...and the last time for at least a couple of years! Ha.

We got some good pictures though! :)

Lora, Ava and James...

"GO HAWKEYES!!!"

and then this happened on the drive home...

I was thrilled for him to sleep because I couldn't handle another meltdown after the day we had!