I actually called the store to see if those fees apply if you purchase in store rather than online and she told me that they could have it shipped to the store where we could pick it up (yay!) so I drove over the bridge to the Westchester Mall Pottery Barn Kids to go place my order Saturday morning. I needed some groceries too, so I figured we could kill two birds with one stone and hit the Whole foods next door afterwards.

Let me just insert two facts here:

1) Jeff is away on a business trip and

2) I am getting BIG really really fast. At only 18 weeks I’m already feeling discomfort doing things like putting on my socks, picking things up off the floor – stuff I don’t remember feeling uncomfortable doing until the 3rd trimester with Jasper.

For reference, see last weeks belly picture taken at 17 weeks:

So I’m big and flying solo and to be honest, I’m usually just thankful to have something to do to get us out of the house to pass the time when daddy is away.   But I wasn’t taking into account the fact that a trip to Pottery Barn Kids is not much different than taking your child to a toy store – i.e. last place on earth you want to go with them.

While we were walking around the store Jasper attached himself to a child sized wheelbarrow…which was super cute when he was wheeling bear around in it, but the cuteness wore off when he threw a fit when I wouldn’t purchase it for him!  I’m a huge pushover, and if it were not $69 and virtually impossible to get back to our car I probably would have given in but I couldn’t.  So as I was ordering his bed he proceeded to bring over to me at least 7 other toys that he wanted and I finally had to just buy him an $8 bath toy just to  keep him quiet!

So, imagine my annoyance when I go to ring everything up and find out that they will not ship the full size bed to the store!!!!!! Like I said, I called to ask but no one ever said twin size beds only. Grrr. So in the end I could have just shopped online and saved myself the trouble.

At least we got our groceries – and they even had a cute “make your mom bath salts” craft at Whole foods that Jasper really enjoyed. The  downside is that it’s sooo hard for me to lift  Jasper in and out of the carts now – not too mention carrying all the heavy grocery bags.  I’m torn between wanting to be really cautious about what I do physically but also wanting to do as much as I can NOW before I’m REALLY huge and useless!

While at PBK I ordered (well,back-ordered) their cute grey chevron sheets which combined with the  left over fuchsia pom poms have given me an idea for the girls’ nursery:

Something like that anyway!  We put the pom poms in the girls’ room for storage but I realized how great the color looked with the springy green walls.

I love banners and want to do one for each girl’s name. This cute burlap one is from this etsy seller: http://www.etsy.com/shop/MirtilloShop?ref=seller_info

And the frame of course is from the Organic Bloom – this is a Lucy double stack with Mint on the outside and French Vanilla on the inside.  Here’s another mock up from OB baby room wall guide:

I can see the green being the base that I can use several different pinks to accent with, and the silvery grey from the sheets will just be a nice neutral anchor element.   It’s not necessarily the color combo I would have gone with if I were starting from scratch, but the room color is pretty – or at least pretty enough that it doesn’t seem worth the effort of changing it.. what do you think?

Hope you all had a wonderful mother’s day!

This is what it looked like before (this is the prior owner’s furniture:)

It’s a lovely pink, I totally would have left it if Jasper weren’t, well – a boy.

In many conversations with Jasper about what he wanted his room to look like he always said he wanted a “rocket ship” room.  I knew I wanted one chalkboard wall and we also took inspiration for the first toy I ever bought Jasper when I was only about 8 weeks pregnant with him- a little orange Alien. Well, two actually, one was the one I wanted, the other was the “newborn proof” one that the person who made the doll gave me as a free bonus!

So that’s where the orange comes in. I chose colors from my Benjamin Moore color book and had them matched at Lowes with their Olympic no VOC paint.

Here are the afters!

(Jeff forgot the spot under the desk LOL!)

Above is the spot where his bed will go.  I had hoped the wall color would come out a bit darker and a bit greyer, but as is always my experience with greys, they are never really quite grey.  Oh well, I still like it. Jeff is going to paint a rocket/space mural above the bed…when we get one.

Speaking of which, I’m having such a hard time deciding on what to get.

First of all, a twin or a full? A twin would obviously take less room space, but a full would be nice for when one of us lays down with him, or he has a friend sleep over and also because he FLOPS LIKE  A FISH in his sleep and I feel like he needs the room.

We could also get him a twin size bed with a trundle underneath from Pottery barn.. I’m having such a hard time with this decision for some reason!

Also, I cant figure out which color.  White makes sense with the white room trim and the whitish dresser, but it also doesn’t pop off the wall at all and I really love how darker wood looks so crisp with a white comforter color.

I’m drawn to the Pottery barn Navy, but it’s sold out in the twin size bed that I like (and not coming back) and selling out fast in the full size so I have to decide fast!

Here are the options, I’d love your opinions!

a) Pottery Barn “Chestnut”

b) Pottery Barn “Espresso”

c) Pottery Barn “Navy”

d) Ikea Hemmnes in White (would have to get maybe navy comforter??)

e) Ikea Hemnes Black

Please help! If any of you have been following that long, you know that we designed Becoming Home mostly by public consensus.. I don’t know how to do it any other way ;)

Have a GREAT mother’s day weekend everybody – hope you all get pampered in the style you all deserve!

I decided I NEEDED a photo to remember this, also so that the girls would be able to see it one day and know how much their brother has always loved them (even since they were dinosaur eggs!)

Over the past year a local photographer Monika Eisenbart and I have been in touch mostly online (she was a blog reader before I met her!) but also in person once.  I have loved watching her work evolve and she also has a son so I figured she would be the perfect person to do a “Mother’s day session swap!”

Monika decided to bank her session for another occasion, but on Sunday she met us at a fabulous location and took some images of our family.  Originally when I picked the date I thought Jeff was going to be away on business, but he was there so we got family images as well as some of just Jasper and I – even better!

Monika mostly took images with her gear and I haven’t seen those yet, but for the last little spot we shot at she used my camera and lens (the 70-200 of course!)  so I had immediate access to process and post these.  What you see is Monika’s lovely camera work combined with my gear and post processing.. I can’t wait to see and share what Monika shot and will edit – but that will be another post :)

For now, here is what I have from the shoot – with my wild woman hair and all!

What I will always remember most about this shoot was how Jasper was running, tripped and fell and tore up his elbow pretty badly. It was bleeding all over and he was crying.. I thought for sure there would be no more shooting. But my boy, my brave tough little guy had a cracker, a sip of water and kept going.   Words can’t even describe how proud I am of him!

Speaking of which, I couldn’t resist seizing the opportunity of us being dressed and in a beautiful spot to get this shot of Jasper I’ve had in my head ever since we found out for sure about the girls being girls..I can’t say it’s a “gender reveal” because well, we already revealed, but lets just pretend k?

What lucky little girls they will be!

And what a lucky woman I am to have someone like Monika to take such beautiful pictures of us.. thank you Monika! We will treasure them always.

It was definitely a lot more work, not only because I didn’t have any other bridesmaids to share the workload, but also because having it at a house means a LOT more decorating!  It was also our first time entertaining at our new house – AND I chose a theme “Shakespeare in Love” (a nod to Alexis’ great appreciation for the Bard) that has possibly never been done as a party theme before.. I mention this only because it was the first time I’d ever thrown a party where I couldn’t find a SINGLE idea or inspiration from the internet!

The only idea I had at first was that the food would be named after different Shakespeare characters and the one that popped immediately to mind was “merquichio” which was perfect because Alexis played Mercutio in our 8th grade rendition of Romeo & Juliet.    That was all I had to go on!

I decided to do a brunch (I admit in part so we could have quiche!) but also because it seemed like a manageable meal to handle… but it did mean that the party was called for 11am, so we had to be super duper prepared and get most everything done Friday night. Which we did  manage (in terms of decorating) thanks only to the heroic efforts of my mother and Jeff who I most definitely could not have done this without.

My mom shopped with me all day Friday, stayed late Friday to help us finish decorating AND she handmade all the wine charm favors!  Jeff stayed up until midnight Friday decorating with me.. even trying his hand and puffing up the paper tissue pom-poms, which are really tedious to do- and he even put his illustrator skills to use in making the chalkboard welcome sign.   Love ya babe!

Last minute inspiration came when I found this Shakespeare paper dolls book on Amazon-perfect for decorating the table with and matching the various foods (i.e “Beatrice’s Bagels”, “Romeo’s Rugalah”, “Shylox” etc.  The only downside was that there a) were no perforations so I had to cut out everything by hand and b) I had to scan and print multiple “dolls” because I needed more than one to be in the various costumes.. Lets just say I spent many hours in front of the TV cutting out card stock!

Here’s how the elements came together:

COLORS/FABRICS

The colors were Kraft brown/burlap and pink and red – the burlap being a nod to the the “old” and the pink and red being the romantic “in love” part of Shakespeare in Love. We got the burlap by the yard at Joannes – loved that we didn’t need to hem anything!

INVITATIONS:

DECOR

THE “CAKE TABLE”

THE FOOD TABLE

FAVORS (handmade wine charms)

Most importantly, guests and the beautiful bride-to-be enjoying themselves!

‘

I even remembered to have my mom take a picture of Alexis and I together (yes, my dress does match the decor!)

GAMES
I didn’t have much to go on here (trying googling “Shakespeare games” and you’ll see what I mean).. I tried to put together a “he said she said” game which requires the bride and groom to answer questions like “what did you think about him/her after your first date” and then the guests have to guess which one said that. But Alexis and Scott didn’t have time to answer the questions, so I was left with two activities:

“Name that Shakespeare Quote,” a multiple choice game in which everyone had to match the quote to the Shakespeare play that it was from. This is just the front of what was supposed to be a 5×7 card that I had printed at my lab but it didn’t get here in time, so I had to print front and back on one sheet of paper. But this is what it was SUPPOSED to look like!

The other game was  “Write a Sonnet on Marriage”  which people did while Alexis was opening gifts. I provided a sample sonnet (for structure/meter reference!) and gave instructions that each guest should write a line and fold the paper so the next person could only see the line before their own. I honestly wasn’t sure anyone would participate, but at the end of the gifts we had at least a 15 line sonnet that I gave Alexis to read that was funny and charming – I wish I could print it here but someone took it home for her!  I’m glad she’ll be able to keep it as a memento of her shower.

So, that was our crazy Saturday!  I wish I could say I could breathe easy now about the wedding, but now I have to write my maid of honor speech. Yikes!!!

You’d think that we would take it easy Sunday, but nope – Jeff had to run a ton of errands for a business trip and I scheduled us for a photoshoot. More on that tomorrow..

The cover of my PDF album

I love the idea of giving my clients not just a PHYSICAL album, but one that they can also enjoy and take with them on their mobile devices (hello marketing!)

There are tons of different directions you could go with this idea, including actually designing album pages just like you would a real album (with several images per page or other design elements etc) but for the purposes of this tutorial I’m keeping it REALLY simple – an album with one image per page and a cover image with your branding information.

First, I’m going to give you a link to the resources which include 2 Lightroom print templates, one for iPad2 and one for the higher resolution iPad3 and a PDF album that I created: http://assets.arianafalerni.com.s3.amazonaws.com/iPad-album.zip

You can also access just the PDF to check out how it looks in iBooks by navigating with your iPad to: http://assets.arianafalerni.com.s3.amazonaws.com/AF-valentine-album.pdf and click on “view in iBooks”.

The reason I included my own album is so that you have an example that you can play with and open in iBooks and see if it’s the sort of thing you’d like to recreate before you go ahead and follow along. If you don’t know how to open a PDF in iBooks – keep reading, we will go over that too!

Exporting your Files from Lightroom

There are several steps to this:

1) Create a COLLECTION in LR of the images that you want to include in your album.

2) Click on that collection so that all the images you want to work with appear in your filmstrip.

3) Switch over to the LR Print Module and make sure that just above your filmstrip you choose to work with “all filmstrip images”

work with "All filmstrip Photos" in the print module

4) In your LR Print module template browser (on the left) right click on “User Templates” which will prompt a fly out where you can choose “import:”

5) This will prompt you to navigate to the file/s you want to import, so browse to where you unzipped my resources folder and import the iPad2 or iPad3 or both templates.

6) Click on the template in the template browser that you want to work with. I created my PDF for iPad2, but if you or your client have an iPad3, feel free to use that one.

7) This will bring up a cell on screen that is the size/ratio of an iPad screen which is more of a square ratio than the native 2×3 ratio that comes off your camera, which means that your images will be cropped a little. The good news is that lightroom lets you choose the position of your photo within the cell and remembers it! So you might want to click through each image in your filmstrip which will pull it up in the main image area and you can use the hand tool to move it right or left or up or down to get the desired crop.  Once you have finished, move to the next step.

8) Click “Print to file” in the bottom right hand corner of your screen and navigate to where you want LR to export these images.

9) Navigate to where you exported your images and rotate any that are on their “side”.  For example, need to rotate the vertical images clockwise. DO NOT skip this step!

You are now ready to create your PDF album!

Creating the PDF itself

**Note: If you want to create a cover image, scroll down to “optional frills” at the bottom to see how to do that BEFORE you create your PDF!**

There are several different methods for creating a single PDF out of a bunch of separate files (in this case jpgs) including using Adobe Bridge. I’ve never done it that way, but if you DON’T have Photoshop CS6 or Adobe Acrobat Pro, you may want to look into doing it that way.  Actually, if you are a Mac user you are in luck because you do something like “In Preview drag all images into the sidebar, then select all in the sidebar, and print to PDF.”

For the rest of us, here are two other methods.

Creating the PDF Using Photoshop CS6 (currently in free BETA!)

1) From the file menu choose “File>Automate>PDF Presentation”.

2) Click on the “browse button and go to the folder where LR exported your jpgs and select ALL of them at one time and click “Open.”

Once you do that, you should see a list of all your files in the top left of the PDF Presentation dialogue box.  Make sure that you copy my settings below, choose “multipage document” and uncheck all the checkboxes under “include:”

uncheck everything

3) Click “Save” which will prompt you to choose where to save your PDF to and what you want to name it and immediate after, will bring up the PDF settings box.   Because we don’t want to take up too much valuable space on our clients’ iPads I highly suggest you at least try the settings I am using here under “Compression”:

I also once had the colorspace go TOTALLY out of whack on me even though I never touched the color settings and it only did it one time, but it was enough to make me resolve to always click on the “Output” tab and use the following color setting to convert to sRGB and use my embedded color profile:

Click “Save PDF.” Done!

You are now ready to share this PDF!

Creating the PDF using Adobe Acrobat Pro

1) Open Acrobat and from the “Create” menu choose “Combine files into a single PDF”.

This brings up a box where you can drag and drop all the jpgs you created in LR.

After they are all there, from the bottom of the screen make sure you choose the small file size and then click “combine” which will prompt you to save your PDF.

Done!

Getting  the PDF to your iPad/client’s iPad

**Note: If you want to create link in your cover image, scroll down to “optional frills” at the bottom to see how to do that BEFORE you share your PDF!**

Probably the easiest way (and one reason it’s important to keep the file size down to something reasonable” is to email it to yourself or your client as an attachment with instructions on how to open it in iBooks. You could also upload it to your own server and send them the link, which would be advisable for larger files!

Getting the PDF to open in iBooks is as easy as clicking on the email attachment and letting the PDF open in the email client.  Once open, click on the little swoosh arrow in the top right corner and choose “Open in iBooks”:

This stores the PDF in their iBooks library so they can enjoy it anytime just by clicking on it’s icon!

The great thing about iBooks is that it will automatically rotates the  images as you flip your iPad around.. so this vertical image would fill the screen if turned counter clockwise, but once the ipad is turned horizontal, iBooks rotates the image for you and shrinks it accordingly:

The other cool thing is that if you tap at the top of the screen and access the iBooks controls, you can click the “list” button just to the right of “Library” on the top left that will give you a thumbnail view for quick access to a particular photo!

You can scroll through these thumbnails vertically.

Optional Frills

Creating a “cover image”

You might be wondering how I created the fancy “cover” image for my PDF. All you need to do is create an image in Photoshop that has anything in the world you want on it..just make sure that you create  your document to these dimensions:

iPad2: 1024 high x 768-pixel wide at 132 pixels dpi

iPad3: 2048 high x 1536-pixel wide at 264 dpi

Then, save for web as a jpg into the SAME FOLDER where you exported your images from LR.  BUT, and **this is important** make sure you name the jpg something that appears alphabetically BEFORE the other photos/images in the folder! So for example, when I exported from Lightroom I choose the file name “valentine” and LR appended a suffix with the image # so that my folder had valentine-1.jpg, valentine-2.jpg etc so I choose to name my cover image jpg “albumcover” because I know that A is before V in the alphabet so it will appear FIRST alphabetically which aslo means that Acrobat will also AUTOMATICALLY make it the first page of your album. Make sense?

Here’s how my folder looked:

You can see that the cover image is first. If your cover image is NOT first, rename it AAA111 or whatever you have to do to get it to be first. It’s a lot easier than trying to rearrange it later once it’s been PDFd!

Creating a URL link to your website from the cover image

Here’s another optional frill and to be honest, I’m not sure if you can do this if you don’t own Acrobat Pro, but just in case you do, read on..

1) Open your album PDF and choose “Tools” from the top right, then expand “content” and click on the link tool:

2) Copy my settings:

Click “Next”

Then, when prompted, put the URL for your website like so:

Click OK and RESAVE your document and close it.

PHEW!!!! Done. Maybe my longest tutorial ever. If you are a DIYer like me and like control of every aspect, you will find that this is a fairly simple process and once you’ve done it one time it really can just become another quick step in your workflow.

For those of you who are overwhelmed, there are also vendors like Sticky Album that is more of an automated solution.

Whichever way you go,  I think your clients are going to love it!

Enjoy :)

Saturday Jeff had to do a lot of yardwork.  Because my allergies are out of control this year I normally would have stayed inside, but I couldn’t resist the temptation of trying to get an image of Jasper blowing a dandelion.

This is the first year he has enough lung power and breath control and he was SO excited! In fact, he blew away all 12 or so we had in the front yard and then got really pouty when they were all gone.

I had a lot of fun editing these trying out a new program called “Camera Bag 2“.  If you love instagram and vintage camera effects like I do, you have to try it out.  There’s a 30 day free trial and it’s only $29 after that if you fall in love with it like I did!

There are so many vintage effects and even frame borders. But the best part is that you can preview and mix and match all the different effects so the possibilities are endless!

Here’s another treatment I did:

Above is the soft black and white mixed with the Helga and the white paper border.

I also really love “poolside” for color photos:

I wouldn’t use these on a whole client session images necessarily, but for getting a vintage treatment on one particular shot  it’s PERFECT!

Oh, and while you are at their site you might want to enter for their 5D Mark III giveaway. All you need to do to enter is edit a photo with camera Bag 2 and post it somewhere.   Sweet!

Which is alarming because I am rapidly becoming aware of the fact that the window of normalcy in a twin pregnancy is TINY.   In a singleton pregnancy you feel at least semi-functional until around the 8 month or so, but with twins (from what I’ve read) the max is about 24 weeks.  That’s around the time when a twin pregnancy is the size of a full term singleton pregnancy. I’m having a hard time even wrapping my head around the idea of feeling full term pregnant and THEN going another 10-12 weeks (god willing).

Not only that, but I’ve been living under this illusion that we will do all these great things “BTA” (before the twins arrive) because we sure as hell won’t be able to do them once they are here. At least not for a few years anyway.

For example, I had the fabulous idea of meeting our friends Jay & Sarah and their two girls (who live in FL) half way between FL and NY for a beach vacation in July. I would be about 26 weeks.  Sounded ok to me, being the naive 14 weeks that I am.

Until I posted on the multiples message board on the Bump.com and everyone said no FREAKIN WAY they would have felt up to a 12 hour road trip at that stage.. thinking back to being 41 weeks pregnant with Jasper, I can see why.

Not only that, but many Doctors don’t even want you traveling more than 1 hour away  after 24 weeks (this seems to vary doctor by doctor). At first I thought it would be OK if we went somewhere that had a high level NICU, but then someone mentioned the frightening scenario of the twins being born very early and needing to spend weeks-months in the NICU at a hospital far from home.. you would be stranded there!

Summer vacation plans aside, the other thing that needs a lot of attention is the house. I have yet to get my “office” into any semblance of organization, Jasper’s room is pink and has no furniture and the “nursery” is an excess furniture storage room at the moment.

But instead of tackling these projects head on, I seem to be paralyzed by indecision and lack of motivation, which will only get WORSE the bigger I get so I need to snap out of it!

Even decorating has felt like a chore. Thank god I have my wall guides to at least help visualize what we should hang  on the walls, otherwise those might go bare for eternity too.

Yesterday I designed this grouping of beach pics for our dining room:

Unfortunately our REAL dining room doesn’t look quite this fab, but I do like the wood paneled walls, this is what it will look like (I scaled it down a bit from the above):

I figure this way we can add to it after our cape cod trip (for my best friend’s wedding in June) or pics of the twins’ first trip to the beach.

I only have like 4 other giant wall to go!

Perhaps once we find out 100% sure the twins’ gender next week that will get me excited about designing their nursery.. god knows I need SOME spark.  (I sure hope that my nesting instinct doesn’t decide to kick in in the 3 trimester when I will be too big and uncomfortable to do anything!)

Motivational comments greatly appreciated :)

For the last couple of weeks we’ve been doing bubble baths at every bath which Jasper really loves.

Fast forward to a few days ago when Jasper tells me “Mommy, I peed in my underwear.”

Not a full pee mind you, just like he “leaked” a little…leaving a circular wet spot in his underwear, not normally even spreading to his actual pants. The first time it happened I figured he just held it in too long.  Then it happened again the next day, and again the following day. Maybe 3-4 times in a 3 day time period.

This is super unusual for him. He was a bit late to the potty training game, but once he got it he REALLY got it, he’s only had maybe 3 accidents ever and always in the middle of the night.

Last night before bed he told me he had to pee.  Which is normal except that he had peed maybe 10 minutes before downstairs before we went up to bed. Then he got back in bed and immediately said he had to be AGAIN but when we went to the toilet only a drop came out.

At this point I was beginning to suspect a UTI, even though from what I know they are very rare in little boys. At least MUCH rarer than in little girls. Plus, he wasn’t complaining of any pain during urination, but he has said his tummy hurts  a couple of times over the last few days. Also, he’s a pretty tough kid in terms of pain, I think his threshold is high (even the worst boo boos usually only elicit a minute of crying tops.)

My googling on the subject turned out all sorts of conflicting information about UTIs and boys (particularly if there is or is not an increased risk in uncircumsized boys over the age of 1) but one thing that caught my eye was the mention of bubble baths.

DING DING DING.

I’ve always known that bubble baths and GIRLS are bad news for UTIs, but I completely failed to make the connection that it might also increase the risk in boys. There’s not too much info out there about it in connection with boys, but I can’t help but feel like the timing of us starting the bubble baths can’t just be coincidence.

We have a pediatrician appointment today where we have to try to get him to pee in a cup. Yeah, that should be interesting on many levels!

Wish us luck, and please share any experiences you’ve had with UTIs, particularly with boys as the information seems scarce!

Most of you have heard me talk about Clickin Moms before, but for those of you who haven’t, here is why it’s my favorite photography forum and why you should join!

1) It’s kind and supportive.  If you prefer snarky critique, CM is NOT the place for you. The admins are incredibly active and rude or unkind posts are simply not tolerated. That doesn’t mean you won’t find constructive criticism if you ask for it, it’s just that it will be given in a fair handed balanced and respectful way.

2) Education. Just browsing or searching the forums you will be amazed at the treasure trove of information at your fingertips, but there are also more formal avenues for education in the form of interactive e-courses and the new “Breakout Sessions” given by various CMPro members (actually, you don’t even have to be a member to take advantage of these!) Topics range from just starting out, to business strategies, post processing and so much more!

3) Community. There is something so wonderful about sharing your hobby/profession/passion with other like-minded women (and men!) around the world.  If no one else in your “real life” gets your obsession with the beautiful bokeh or the perfect prop, you appreciate finding a community that shares your same interest.

Yes, it is a paid forum, but the monthly cost is so minimal – believe me you get what you pay for and whole lot more!

If you are curious, now is a great time to try it out and save 10% using the discount code FRIEND at checkout. The code is good for new signups only and expires April 30th, so get clickin!

Unfortunately I left my “real” camera at home, but that didn’t stop our special guest photographer (Jasper) from commandeering mommy’s iPhone to document the occasion!

Before I get to Jasper’s pictures, I have to post one of him in his cute little Yarmulke.. he apparently liked the word yarmulke alot because at one point during the evening he got up from the table to jump around shouting “Yarmulke, Yarmulke, Yarmulke!”

Now, onto Jasper’s photographic interpretation of the evening..

Pop-pop.

Jeff & I from a very unflattering angle…

The chandelier

My grandmother and Aunt.

Not sure why I was covering my face??

Auntie Diane and some wine

An  extreme close-up of my eye (he discovered the zoom function)

A very nice still life.

And a selfie to finish up.

Personally, I think he’s got a documentarians eye.. I hope he keeps it up will someday share my love of photography!

Saturday morning Jeff & Jasper worked a bit in our garden, which Jasper likes to call a “farm”.

How cute are my “farmer” boys?

Sunday morning (Easter) Jasper woke up to find this:

And proceeded to have a little egg hunt around the house.  Jasper is DEFINITELY a big fan of Easter now, being that chocolate and candy play a pretty prominent role in it’s celebration!

Thankfully the Easter bunny also left some candyless gifts such as the dinosaur stickers above.

Speaking of stickers, Jasper’s new thing is to put stickers on my belly for the babies:

In fact, if he continues to treat them with as much love and attention when they arrive as he does now, he will be the world’s BEST big brother! He’s always hugging, kissing and talking to my belly. The other morning he woke up, sat straight up in bed and said “Hi cute little babies!”  It’s pretty darn cute.

Lastly, speaking of the babies, I felt them MOVE for the first time yesterday!

I had been snacking on Jelly Beans and M&Ms which must have sent them into a sugar-induced frenzy of activity because I very clearly felt that unmistakeable snake like push and slither away feeling from the inside AND outside when I put my hand on my belly. Jeff’s cousin Janine felt it too and Jasper later as well!

I’m not surprised because they are super active on the ultrasounds – just like their big brother. Never sitting still.

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday weekend whatever you celebrate!