We have had a pretty rough and long winter up here in the mountains. So needless to say we have a bit of cabin fever! So I decided to put the kids in there swimsuits, fill up the bathtub and color the water a pretty blue, and we pretended we were on vacation in the tropics! I know it sounds silly but the kids loved it!

I also decided to make the kids valentines this year instead of just buying the ones at the store like everyone else does…to all the other mothers this is another one of my ideas that sound good in theory but kind of turned out to be not so fun, I forgot at 2 and 4 they would loose interest pretty fast and I would be the one who did all the work! But I’m still glad I did it and I will probably make this a tradition every year. Both of my kids are amazing and they deserve all the special things I can possible do for them! Taylor picked out a flower valentine that she wanted for her class, and Drake decided to take a fruit rollup and wrap it in scrap booking paper and write “I like the way you roll” on it! We then traced there hands on construction paper and I cut them out and wrote “you deserve a hand” on the cut outs and we glued them to the side of a bottle of hand lotion they bought for each one of there teachers. Of course Taylor had to make four even though she only has two teacher because we made one for the director of her school and the coordinator.

 
They are truly amazing up there at Pitter Patter Pathways, we have such a great relationship with all of them and they all love Taylor to death, most of them even call her Toot! I am really hoping that they decide to start offering classes past pre-school. That would be an answer to a lot of my prayers. I have always disliked the school system up here and Jason will not allow Taylor to go to a private school. But I know he would like for Toot to continue her education under Sarah’s care. So lets pray they do decide to expand!

Ok so I’m not forgetting to update my blog this year, there is just a lot of things going on right now that I can’t talk about! Hopefully in a few months everything will work out fine and I will be able to fill you all in on what has been happing.




But one thing I can talk about is my new endeavor I have decided to work on. I have decided to fallow in my favorite cousins footsteps and try to start my own photography business! I have been looking at her pictures she has been taking over the past couple of years and I have been so impressed! She has decided to upgrade her camera and I am planning on buying her old one from her. There have been a few bumps in the road trying to get the money for the camera (again hopefully I can fill you in in a few months) but I am praying it will all work out and the money comes in time to get hers.



But I have already been scouting out great places to take pictures around Smyth county and I can’t wait to get started! I have been teaching myself the basics of photography and think I’m doing a pretty decent job if I do say so myself! When I do get this thing off the ground my company will be named Amazing Memories by Brooke (that’s diffidently a working title if anyone has any ideas!) I have already made a few contacts to hopefully get my name out there to the community. I have talked to a gentleman at the Adwolf Fire Department and he mentions taking the pictures of the staff this year and I also talked to the director of Pitter Patter Pathways and she has agreed to let me take pictures of the kids and put a sample picture in each of the kids boxes so the parents can get an idea of my work and hopefully call me to do more work for there family! I am so excited about this, I just hope I can hurry up and get this silly camera so I can get used to it and hopefully be able to start working by summer! Wish Me Luck!!

It has been a really rough winter for us up here in the mountains, we have had a lot of snow and overall yucky weather. We are all starting to get a little but of cabin fever! So the other day I decided to do something new with the kids. They put on there bathing suits and I turned the water in the bathtub a pretty blue and we pretended we were on vacation in the tropics! I know it sound silly but the kids had a blast and that’s all that matters to me!

My kids are so funny!

My cousin has a blog and every once in a while she will share a few funny things her kids have said, its my favorite part of her blog (besides all the pictures of her beautiful children of course.) So I thought I would share some of the funny things that my kids say:


Tony has this burnt CD that has some weird purple print on it and he wrote “dirty Christmas” on it. Well because of the purple print on it of course it was going to catch our kids attention, sure enough a couple of weeks ago Drake hands it to me and ask me to play it. I looked at it and told him “sorry son but that’s not for you and Taylor to hear, it’s daddy’s “dirty CD.” and without missing a beat Drake responded “well you can use Taylor’s new baby doll dress to clean it off!” I didn’t know weather to laugh cause he misunderstood what I meant by “dirty” or scold him for offering up Taylor’s new baby dolls dress to be the object to clean it with!

If you follow me on FB then you may have already heard the next couple.

This past summer we had bought a watermelon and decided to let the kids tear into it after dinner one night. (there’s actually a picture of this exact evening on my last post.) some of my favorite memories are of when my parents would put us in our bathing suits and toss us out the back door and hand us a watermelon. When we were done they would just hose us down and off we went to the next thing that caught our attention. So I put Drake and Taylor in there swim suits and let them dive in. after they were done Taylor kept messing with her top so I just took it off of her. About that time the little boy who lives next door (mind you he’s 7) came outside and yelled “Taylor why’d you take your bra off?!

Taylor got a fisher price medical kit for Christmas and she was giving me “shots.” after giving them to me all up and down my arms and legs she tried to giving me some in my face. After about 4 or 5 rounds of yes you do/ no you don’t she finally very sternly stated “otox mommy!!” I’m still trying to figure out where in the heck my 2 year old learned about botox!

A girlfriend of mine from college just had her 1st baby on new years eve and I was looking at her pictures and decided that I wanted to look at the pictures from the day Taylor was born. I came across a picture that Jason and I had taken the day before she was born. I asked her who was in the picture and my sweet little princess stated…”that’s my daddy! And that’s my mommy!…Whoa mommy you had a BIG pot belly!!!”