Baby Kayla

This was probably my best photo shoot ever!! We didn't get many smiles out of her but she was just content the whole time. We were able to do a ton of different poses and got some really fun shots. I think the pictures turned out so great. The lighting was awesome, I did better with my focus, and aperture. I learned a bunch too. I really like to take pics of babies, they are my favorite. Newborns are special and really tricky, but this age is so fun. I have so many favorites, if you want to see more you can check them out at

savannahwilliamsonphotography.blogspot.com

Let me know your favorite:)

Family Photo shoot

Hey I want to practice taking family photos. Would anyone like a free family photo shoot? I'll take the first 3 families.

You would be able to use the pictures on your blog, print for your home, print to give away, or even use for your Christmas card. Leave me a comment if you would like to help me practice and we will work out the day and time!!

I {heart} goodwill

Look what we found today!!! Brand new. $6...yeah we were excited.
After I took that first pic, she wanted to pose herself...
Give us a princess twirl.



We all got some things at Goodwill today. I got some sheets for photo back droops and a cool black chest thing for a photo prop. Gracin got a "Cars" bucket to put all his cars in, a lightning McQueen ball cap, and a big truck that makes noises. Rhylan go an Elmo metal lunch box to start her "collection" (for preschool) and this Snow White princess dress to add to her dress up box!

Midsouth Fair take 1

This week there is another fair. This time it is right across the street!! So we went last night for FHE and had a great time. I brought my camera this time...and now I have a TON of pictures. So, I am going to be posting for a couple days, because I always have a hard time choosing pictures. Plus I want all these in my blog book.

The very first attraction was the Cow Milking Station. Rhylan and Gracin got to pet some cows and feed them hay. Then we got some feed for the goat, and milk the cow.
Rhylan was more brave than the 16 year old boys!! She got right up there with no help.
This was my first time too!

WORDS

Gracin talks all day. He can't say too much but he is trying so hard to communicate. It sounds like a lot of mumbling, with facial expressions and hand gestures. In church today he had a full 30 min conversation to a friend of ours during Sunday School.

Here are his words: mamma, bud (that is what he says for dad,) ba-ba, bye-bye, bite, mine, bath, boom boom, ball, kick, up, down, eye, kitty, plane, bug, yum, and can sign "all done."

Baby blessing photos

My friend asked me to take pictures of her baby in his blessing outfit. Here is one of my favorites. I put a few more over on my photography blog, so you can go check them out if you want to. We took some fun 4 months shots too.

catch up

I have a few pictures I took last week that I wanted to remember!

Rhylan and I had a beautiful tea party Sunday afternoon!

I caught Rhylan in the act. I love looking around the corned and finding her totally engaged in playing with her toys. Here she use her bean bags and little books as animal beds... I think.
Playing with daddies iPod. I think they look the same size here, Rhylan just has longer legs and arms.

Rhylan was teaching Gracin how to play memory on Riley's iPod:)
We made a DOUBLE RAINBOW!!!-- I tried Gracin working on his first craft...we will try again later. I chose this one because he could eat the craft, but he started taking the ones off the glue to eat.
But Rhylan had so much fun with this!
Rhylan can draw butterflies all by herself!!! I had nothing to do with this:) I was so proud.
This was the afternoon of his seizure, he was so worn out he just leaned up to Riley and watched a movie. I caught him making this face several times that movie and a few more times during this week! I think it is hilarious.

Preschool--lizards

Last week was a crazy, stressful week. We only were able to do a few days of preschool. We learned about lizards...can you tell she loves animals?

Art/ Language: L is for lizard. I drew this very beautiful, very artistic lizard. Then Rhylan used L stamps to decorate it. She loved trying out all 4 stamps and had to use all three ink pads. Stamping is a skill, she picked it up quick:)
Science: Cold lizards. I froze several toy lizards in some ice. It took me a few days to get 8 lizards frozen in different levels. Then we learned that lizards liked warm weather and needed to get out of the ice. At first I asked her what we should do to get them out she had a few ideas...cut them out, smack them out (hammer). She thought the hammer idea was working pretty good until we tried cool water, warm water and salt. We eventually took it out into the sun.

She got so excited when she would set a lizard free! Afterward we ate popsicles and I quizzed her on what she learned. Here is our little convo word for word, I wrote it down:)

How did we save the lizards?--with hot water
What else did we try?--hammer, salt
What worked better, cold water or hot water?--mmm, hot water
What happened when we poured hot water on it?--it get out huh?!
What happened to the ice when we poured hot water on it?--it melted
Why did we go outside?--cause it can warm up
What did you learn about today?--ice
What did you learn about ice today?--we melted it, we go outside, we have lots of fun today huh?!

And our field trip was to the pet store. I had planned to go to the zoo, but with two fevers, I didn't think an outside outing was a great idea. At the pet store we looked at all the animals but we talked about lizard and found all the lizards in the store.
--sorry no pics--

Gracin Update

Last night went well!!! We actually found him getting cold and had to put pj's on him in the middle of the night. We went to the ENT Dr today and his ear infection is gone. The antibiotics are working great. He is still a little cranky and tired but no fever.

The worst thing ever...again.

Yesterday I rode in an ambulance to the ER with Gracin. He had a high fever since Sunday night and most of Monday I was trying to keep it down with meds. We gave him his last dose at 11:30 pm. Then, Tuesday morning we heard him over the baby monitor having a seizure. I called 911 right away. We kind of knew what was going on because 2 years ago, Rhylan had a febrile seizure. Gracin is actually only 1 week younger than she was. We were so lucky Riley hadn't left for school yet, another 10 min and he would have been gone!

I was so scared. I hate seeing my children like that, it makes me sad, terrified, worried, and anxious. Unless you've been thorough it its hard to explain. He didn't start responding to us until after we were in the ambulance. We think the seizure lasted about 1 min and then he was unresponsive for about 5 min. After that, he was moaning and crying, from all the pain from the high (102.9) fever and seizure. I can't imagine the head ache he had. The Dr found it was an ear infection that caused the fever and put him on antibiotics. We were only at the hospital for 3 hrs. We were there for 2 days with Rhylan. The rest of the day we monitored his fever, which was really high the rest of the day. During the night especially. Last night we were up with him most of the night. At 2:00am it was up to 103.9!!!! I was really nervous. We couldn't give him more medicine with out overdoes. All we could do was try and cool him down and pray and give him a blessing.

I took him into his pediatrician this morning. She gave us some more advice. I was ready to go home but I had a flat tire!!!! Really I did. I had to call AAA and wait an hour in the waiting room with a cranky, feverish baby. No fun. But we are all home and Riley was finally able to get back to school to get to his patients he had starting at 1:00pm today. Its been a rough week:)

This afternoon, his fever isn't so bad when I give him Tylenol and Motrin every 4-6 hrs. He also started eating again and drinking milk. Yesterday he would only have pediallight and shaved ice. I offered several things he refused all. And maybe by the end of the week he will wear clothes again.

Thanks friends for helping watch Rhylan and for calling to make sure we were okay. It sure is nice to have great friends when family is so far away.

Bubble Machine

Riley went on a 4 day trip to an optometry conference. While he was gone we had to come up with ideas to keep us busy. We made a trip to Good Will and I found this bubble machine!! We have played with it several times. It makes small bubbles that land all over the grass. Perfect for little pointer fingers!

Rhylan can improvise

After a 1.5 years of owning this bike, she still can't reach the peddles! But who needs to peddle when you have a little brother?

Cool new trick!!

I learned how to fake a macro lens!! I saw it here. Her pics are way better than mine but I just had to try it! It involves taking off my lens and turning it backwards and holding it to my camera while taking the photo. I could get so much closer. Check out the before and after results.

This is as close as I could get before.

After!!

Before

After

Delta Fair!!

Warning: These pics were taken from my cell phone. Pictures may cause you to have blurred vision...


We had a fun family night at the fair! They had a lot of free shows. We wanted to see monkeys riding dogs, pigs racing, ostrich racing, Monkey comedy show, and a dare devil show (we only had enough time to see one because we got there really late). We were going to see the pig racing when we got stuck at the feeding/petting zoo. The kids loved this, especially Rhylan. She fed goats, sheep, a lama, and tried to feed a cow. We got a cup of food for $1 and she skipped/ran from pen to pen feeding every goat in sight. At one point she was so excited she was laughing, jumping up and down and clapping her hands. This was the best $1 ever spent.

Riley kept pouring food on Gracin's shirt and the goats would eat it from his tummy and make him laugh.

Rhylan feeding the lama.

Riley showing her how to hold her hand flat...that didn't stop the goats from nibbling on both of the kids fingers...I guess it just tickled.

Riley fed the big water buffalo, it licked and slobbered all over his hand!

Rhylan and I went on this Farris Wheel. She was so brave, and loved every min of it.

After an exciting evening we all sat and enjoyed a snow cone!

Preschool--Butterflies

Art: She made butterflies out of tissues and band aids. This was great for fine motor, she opened the band aids all by herself. She decorated tissues and added antennae with markers. This turned out SOOOOO cute! we have little Dora and Abby butterflies.
Science: We looked at books and magazines to learn about he butterfly life cycle. I printed out some clip art. Rhylan colored each with markers, and glued them on the paper in the right order!!! I was so proud, she remembered the life cycle. After she finished the page I asked her to tell me about it these are her words "First it the eggs. Caterpillar comes out. It turn into cocoon, Butterfly come out!" ( I know, I taught her the wrong word, it should say pupa instead of cocoon oh well.) Then we used markers to color some pretty butterflies.
Math: I put a paper in the bottom of each cup with some of the letters we have been learning in preschool. Then she sorted the letter beads in the right cups. Then she counted all the letters she sorted. We found they all had 6 letters!--We will bring back this one with different letters--she had a lot of fun. I even caught her spelling out her name (bottom left.)

Language: She practiced writing the letter B. It took several tries but she finally make a butterfly out of 2 B's back to back. Then she dripped pain onto the wings. We talked about how a butterfly wings always match. So, we folded it in half an opened it up for a perfect butterfly!
Here she is studying about butterflies, caterpillars and their life cycles. We found this neat story about a photographer that took 24 years to collect the alphabet and 1-9 on butterfly wings!

Small town Texas rodeo!

Saturday night we headed off to a rodeo! It didn't start until 8:00 pm... the kids go to bed at 7:00 but they did SURPRISINGLY well. The action kept them from being cranky. We left at 10:00pm and missed the bull riders but really liked what we did see. Rhylan even went out for the kids calf chase, she didn't win us the new Dodge truck but she ran as fast as she could:) Riley's family has an exchange student from Germany living with them this semester. She thought the whole idea of the rodeo was CRAZY. She kept asking why? However she also was very entertained.

Gammy C and Rhylan watching the calf roping.

Markee and Rhylan BFF!!

Mom, Dad, and Tine
I think it is funny that Mark is the only one in focus...opps!

Gracin loves this spot.

a hair cut

Randomly today, I decided to give Rhylan a hair cut. I think it turned out really cute! I was pretty nervous but it all turned out okay. I am sure a stylist could have done better but... she's 3!! She doesn't care:)