I’ve heard the snowstorm that blew through the Midwest yesterday referred to as the Blizzard of Oz. We have crazy weather in Missouri, but this was a lot of snow. As in, a foot of snow. I’m so grateful that I was able to work from home the last two days rather than venture out on the treacherous roads. It made the falling snow much more peaceful. I didn’t even mind helping my husband shovel the driveway this morning. Here are a few shots from around our house.
After looking around on etsy and realizing that purchasing and framing prints for our baby room would be expensive, I decided to make my own! Two of the 12×12 prints are shown below – the third one has the baby’s name so I didn’t want to post it yet. We’re making progress on the room, and we’re going to reveal the gender this weekend at a shower, so stay tuned for some exciting updates! Any guesses on boy vs. girl? (Please don’t comment if you already know.)
I just returned from a fabulous three-day girls weekend trip with some of my best friends! Here are a few photos to recap the trip.
Lodges at Table Rock Lake – the 6-bedroom house we stayed at in Branson, Missouri.
I was sad to miss out on the tasting part of the Stone Hill Winery tour, but I guess it was for a good cause. 😉
We had lots of time to relax, do our nails, play games, and watch movies. Can’t get better than that!
Celebrating Mandy’s birthday with brownies and ice cream. She’s so photogenic – even when she’s in the middle of blowing out candles.
I might have caught not one, but two huge rolls from Lambert’s Cafe – Home of the Throwed Rolls. (Thanks for snapping the photo, Mandy.)
My parents, sister, and myself all got new cats this summer, so we got to experience the holidays with the new additions for the first time. I was surprised our black cat, Emmett, didn’t bother our Christmas tree once. Toby, my parents’ kitten, was another story. He may be full-grown now, but he’s a bundle of energy!
I don’t know about you all, but this is exactly how I feel after Christmas and New Year’s. After all of the celebrations are over and the decorations are put away, it’s still freezing outside and it still gets dark too early. After January 1, I’m always ready for spring!
The post-Christmas blues is part of the reason I haven’t blogged much in the last week. It’s also taken me quite a while to sit down and sort through all the holiday photos. This year, in an effort to not make blogging become chore, I’m not going to set any goals about daily blogging or photography. I’m merely going to blog when I’ve got something good to share. Some of those posts may be quality photos that my loyal blog followers will enjoy, and other posts will be snippets of my life that my real-life friends will enjoy seeing. (After all, the top blog posts of the year where about purchasing our house and re-doing our dining room – neither of which produced great photos.
Happy New Year!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
It’s been two years since I shot photos for this family. When they first booked the session, I though we’d done the photos just last year! Friday was a beautiful day, but still a bit chilly for an outdoor photo session, so we got creative on our indoor photo location. Anyone from the Kansas City area have any guesses on where these photos were taken? As always, I had a great time with this family, especially with the new little addition!
I have really mixed feelings about posting “belly” photos. I have lots of friends and family whom I don’t see regularly and want to see the progress of my pregnancy, but I also have friends longing for babies themselves that may find the photos hurtful. Some of them long for a spouse, some of them are struggling with infertility, some of them have reasons I’m completely unaware of. I told God before we got pregnant that I would be ok with adoption if that’s the path He wanted for us. We tried for several months to get pregnant, and even in that short amount of time, I felt my heart ache a little more each month. I know it’s nothing compared to what others go through regarding infertility, but I do get what it’s like to long for a child. For some reason God has blessed us with a growing baby, and I will not take my pregnancy or my baby for granted – we both thank God for what we’ve been given.
I know that once our baby is born, I’ll want to post photos of him or her on facebook and my blog all the time. Yet I want to be sensitive of those around me, so I’ll try to limit my posts. Please know I never mean to boast about what’s going on in my life, nor do I mean to hurt anyone when I share my photos.
With that being said, please click here if you’d like to see my most recent “belly” photos. My husband and I did an impromptu maternity photo session near midnight in front of our Christmas tree right before the holiday.
Last weekend my friend Julie and I invited over our friends’ four young boys for some Christmas cookie decorating. (Actually, she did the hosting, and I just tagged along for support.) The boys were so active and fun, and as you can see, we had our hands full! Props to both mammas for having energy to take care of these sweet little balls of energy every day.
Merry Christmas to you!
Photographic Rhodes 