Three on Friday {& Personalized Baby Leggings Giveaway!}

Helloooooooooooooo FRIDAY! It's been one heck of a week. On Monday we got the call from daycare informing us that Caroline (and a few others in her class) came down with some sort of stomach bug and needed to be picked up. That night was super rough as our poor baby was up sick several times. The next morning I flew out before sunrise to Chicago (cue the mom guilt) while Matt took care of sick, fussy minis. He is truly super dad. Anyway, after a long three days, I took the last flight out of Chicago last night and arrived home super late. Soooo, you get three things today...

one // We received our Christmas session photos back from our amazing photographer this week and I am so obsessed with this picture of our minis. I have a ton of other amazing images to show you all but this picture was just too perfect to wait to share!

This year I felt so unprepared for our Christmas shoot. I prefer to stress out for a week or two about outfits, pin poses that I'm hoping will come together on picture day, etc. However, this year things were too busy to plan. So the day before our pictures Matt and I literally ran into baby Gap and pulled two matchy outfits out of the window display for Thomas and Caroline -- a dress for her and a matching plaid shirt for him. The rest of the outfits were pieced together from things already in their closets.

Thomas: Plaid Shirt // V-Neck Sweater // Skinny Jeans // Hi-Top Suede Shoes

Caroline: Dress // Bow // Shoes

two // Oh, and on the way to our shoot we stopped at Harris Teeter for a bag of mini marshmallows -- the perfect, non-messy bribe/reward for the kiddos throughout the photo session. Highly recommend.

three // Last but definitely not least -- a spectacular giveaway!!!! Caroline and Thomas have been rocking their adorable, personalized, matchy-matchy Jennifer Ann leggings a lot recently and I cannot get over the cuteness. We can't go anywhere without receiving a handful of compliments. And not only are they too stinking cute, but the quality is leaps and bounds better than any of the other leggings in Caroline's impressive collection.

Anyway, Jennifer Ann has graciously offered to give away a custom pair of leggings to one reader! Enter below using the rafflecopter. The contest will run through Nov. 15 and the winner will be announced back here on Nov. 16. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Happy weekend, friends! To link up, visit April or Natasha's blog!

Just the Two of Us

Name that song! Throwback, right?!  

A few weekends ago Taylor took our annual family photos. The kids were more mobile than ever this year and as a result required extra attention. Thomas was constantly dipping out of our pictures to visit the nearby horses and Caroline was on a mission to collect every piece of gravel she could find on the farm. It was fun, but as always a little chaotic too.

 

Throughout the mini session I was mentally checking the boxes of all the pictures I wanted to cram into 30 minutes:

 

Caroline + Daddy -- check!

Thomas + Daddy -- check!

Caroline + Mommy -- check!

Thomas + Mommy -- check!

Caroline + Thomas -- check!

Caroline + Thomas + Mommy + Daddy -- check!

 

Though we lucked out with the golden hour mini session, this timing also happened to coincide with our witching hour. So at times Thomas was fussy and didn't want to participate. And Caroline would get bored and wander away. And we were all sweating. It would have been easy to wrap up our shoot at that point but instead Matt and I decided to tune the kiddos out and let them wander (out of Matt's comfort zone) for a few minutes to capture just us. 

 

Last year and the year prior I was too caught up in straightening Caroline's bow, sliding shoes back onto tiny feet and making funny noises to get kids to smile that by the end of the shoot I was exhausted and had completely forgotten to request pictures of just me and Matt. Once again, we'd fallen into the trap of putting the kids first, as always, and each other second (or in this instance, overlooked completely).

But this year Matt and I made a point to capture just us -- our marriage, a special separate entity within our family. It only took two minutes to get a few images that we'll treasure forever. We held hands, locked eyes, smooched and just enjoyed being husband and wife in those brief moments. And we wanted our minis to see us as more than mommy and daddy too. 

It's easy to overlook the handsome man you fell in love with before kids when you're deep in the trenches of parenthood. This stage is hard and it's easy to let the kiddos consume you. But we're trying our best to carve out more moments for each other in the midst of chaos. 

Just the two of us...

 

Our 5th Anniversary!

November 5th marked our 5th anniversary! To celebrate, Matt and I took Friday off of work and enjoyed a day date in the mountains. We are huge fans of weekday day dates because we don't lose our precious weekend time with our kiddos and we don't have to pay a sitter -- a double win. So bright and early we dropped the minis off at daycare, grabbed some coffee and hit the road for Asheville! The drive is about two hours which we didn't mind one bit since it's a rarity to have uninterrupted time to talk.

On our way to Asheville we took a slight detour for DuPont Forest to hike Triple Falls. I have hiked this trail numerous times but Matt had never been so I was excited to hike this beautiful trail with him. Also, the traditional anniversary gift for five years is wood, so we thought it was pretty appropriate to be hiking through the woods.

We sat on the edge of this cliff for the longest time. It was so nice to fully relax in our happy place!

 

This is a super popular hike near Asheville so I was worried it would be crowded. However, we got to the falls early enough that we had it all to ourselves for awhile. And then, out of sheer luck, just as we were packing up to leave a photographer appeared and offered to take our picture...and then took the time to convert my camera to manual and adjust all the settings to capture one of my most favorite pictures of all time.

After our hike we continued to Asheville to eat lunch at my favorite place ever - Early Girl Eatery. If you've been following my blog for 5 minutes you know how obsessed with EGE I am so I won't beat a dead horse. But it was amazing. As always.

After lunch we made our way back to Charlotte with a little time to spare before picking up the kids so I took my time getting ready for our anniversary dinner. As we were running out the door for our date night we asked Ms. Jamie to take a picture of us. And Caroline was adamant about joining. Thomas declined participation as he was too busy devouring cheese pizza.

Matt's parents surprised us with the most thoughtful anniversary present -- a gift card to Capital Grille. We enjoyed the most delicious steak dinner in the very spot we had our rehearsal dinner exactly 5 years earlier. It could not have been more perfect.

On Saturday, our actual anniversary, we ran our usual errands, attended a birthday party, did some yard work, laundry, etc. However, once the minis went down for naps we popped champagne and cut our cake -- our annual tradition. Oh, and Matt presented me with not one but two gifts, which was against the no-gift agreement. He surprised me with a beautiful bracelet and earrings. And all I gave him was a letter.

Later, as we were putting our Halloween decorations up in the attic Matt grabbed my dusty wedding dress bag. I was nervous to open it in fear that spiders or something worse would come jumping out. I carefully unzipped the bag to find my dress, exactly as I had left it at midnight on November 5, 2011 -- covered in stains, dirt and even ripped in places (I guess our wedding was more wild than I remember). Oh and it was 800 shades more yellow than I remembered be but I still let Caroline play in it. And then I felt guilty that she loved it so much and I had done nothing to preserve it soooooo we promptly dropped it off at the dry cleaners for preservation...five years later. 

 

 Does this girl know how to work the camera or what? She kills me.

And that's a wrap on our fifth anniversary celebrations!

Previous anniversaries:

One Year Anniversary Two Year Anniversary Three Year Anniversary Four Year Anniversary