family pictures!

I feel as if because I am a photographer I cannot ever get my family pictures to turn out the way I want them to.  I get a vision in my head of what I want and then entrust someone else to help me pull that off, and it doesn't usually work.  Probably also has to do with the part of me that's a control freak.  But that's another story ;) 

Well this year my friend Elaine, who is also a photographer, made a trade.  My family pics for her family pics.  And I was SO grateful to get to do this.  Elaine absolutely helped us pull off what I was dreaming for our first official family pictures as a family of five.

So we drove about 20 minutes out of town and trekked into an open field right before sunset. 

We did a little loving on our Pax (and a lot of wiping up spit up! The joys of a baby, right?)

Then, to get everyone in good moods, we did a LOT of tickling...

And also some cuddling...

And we were finally ready to get some shots (Nolan is just too much in both of these pictures)

I even got a couple sweet pictures of me with my THREE boys!

And here they are- the winners!  I'm so thankful to not have just one, but several good options for our family picture to put on our Christmas card & enlarge to frame in the house!

And even a great shot of Dathan & I! Ahh! It's been several years since we got a good picture of the two of us!

We had Sean sit in the grass and hold Pax VERY carefully while we took the pictures of just Dathan and I.  When we finished we looked and it was just the sweetest thing to see.  My 3 boys sitting so calmly together!

We, of course, had to bribe the big boys to cooperate during our session (hey- I am not above bribing my children in a situation like this!).  Of course they picked McDonald's Happy Meals as their bribe. Yaaaaay (please hear my sarcasm there LOL). 


Dathan and I snapped this photo of us in front of McDonald's when we got there.  I have to give credit to two very talented friends of mine.  Breanne is the one who cuts my hair, and last time he cut it she curled it for me.  Well, everyone FREAKED out and loved the way it looked (including myself).  So, she was kind enough to curl my hair for me on our picture day, because I knew I could never get it to look like the way she did it ;)  THEN my friend Cheryl is a makeup artist and offered to do my makeup for me.  I was thinking some blemish hiding and eye makeup doing but no- she busted out the big guns... literally!  She airbrushed my face and even put fake lashes on (maybe I shouldn't be saying this so you all think I look this good all the time? haha!).  It was fun to be super girly for a day :)

I'm so excited to hang these prints up on our collage wall! Now I just have to finish painting the frames....

Merry Christmas!!!

Hey look at me! It's like some alien has taken over my body because I am not only blogging, but I am blogging about something that JUST happened.  Technically it's about what happened yesterday, but since I haven't gone to sleep yet I feel like I'm blogging about something that happened today.  I haven't blogged about going to the pumpkin patch in October... or Halloween... surely haven't blogged about Thanksgiving... or my in-laws week long visit in November.  I haven't blogged about how Dathan fell at work and fractured his heel and was off work for 6 weeks or how our car has broken down and we haven't been able to drive it for over a month.  Nope, the last 2.5 months of my life haven't been blogged yet, but here I am blogging about Christmas.  Maybe this is a sign of good things to come??

Every Christmas eve (that we have spent with my parents) we have carried on a tradition that my parents started when I was just a little girl.  My mom makes a big dinner, and the dishes of the dinner have never changed- manicotti, bread, salad, and sparkling apple cider.  In fact, the only part of the meal that's changed is that my mom makes one pan of manicotti with red sauce, and another with alfredo (because she loves me & knows I don't like tomatoes).  I love that the tradition hasn't changed.  This year our Christmas Eve dinner was the 5 Stephens, my parents, my younger brother Timmy, and one of Dathan's best friends who is like family, Ryan (but we call him Swanny).  My mom decorates her dining room table with her Christmas dishes.  It's so pretty!

The past few years we have gone to look at Christmas lights after dinner.  There is a street here (I'm sure every town has one) that every house on the street decorates with BEAUTIFUL lights.  On Christmas Eve they line the street with luminaries and it is just gorgeous.  We have always walked through to look at the lights (because people will sit in their cars and wait in line for over an hour to see them!).  Well, we have 3 out of 3 kids sick with "the crud" as we call it (sniffles, sneezing, runny nose, coughing, etc) so we decided to opt out of walking in the cold.

Instead, we made a gingerbread train.  It's a good thing we don't ever eat the gingerbread train because surely the thing is covered in germs, but we had a lot of fun.  Nolan didn't want his picture taken so I only have one of Sean.  I decorated the engine.  For those wondering (because even my dad did), the SNP on it stands for Sean, Nolan, Paxton.  Yep, we are so awesome that we accidentally named our kids with letters that spell out "Snap" (Sean Nolan And Paxton). haha  Nolan decorated the middle car & Sean decorated the end one.  We had fun!

I try to make a "Happy Birthday Jesus" cake or cupcakes every year.  This year I made an ice cream cake.  Nothing fancy, and I have no beautiful photos of a step-by-step process of making it to share with you.  But I can tell you how I made it: 1 Oreo cookie pie crust.  1 carton cookies & cream ice cream (thawed to almost melted. I actually only used about 1/2 of the carton). 1 small container Cool Whip (I only used about half of that too).  Sprinkles are optional.  All you do is spread the thawed ice cream into the crust, leveled on top.  Then cover with Cook Whip.  Then sprinkles.  Place back in freezer until hard, cut & serve.

So simple.

And so versatile (you can try graham cracker crust with strawberry ice cream.  Or Nilla Wafer crust with moose tracks ice cream.  The possibilities are endless really!)

The boys with their traditional one gift from my parents that they get to open on Christmas Eve.  Hmmm.... I wonder what that could be? ;)

What? Matching Christmas jammies? I'm so surpried! haha Just kidding, they get Christmas jammies every year and my mom loves picking out matching ones.  This year was more difficult because Pax is in 0-3 month, Nolan is in a 3t, and Sean is in a 5. So they are in 3 different sections of the store (infant, toddler, and young boys).  But, my mom did it & found them matching ones! 

This picture cracks me up.  They were SO over it.  Sean is such a good sport, Nolan is a typical almost-3-year-old, and Pax was probably hungry ;)

We came home and put the boys to bed, then Dathan & I were busy bees finishing up last minute wrapping until 2:30 am.  Boy do Christmas trees look beautiful at night with the lights on & presents underneath!

God has blessed us so much this year.  We were going to have a very small Christmas since Dathan was off work for so long, which is totally fine & I feel a great lesson for the kids.  But God & several people love us & our tree was filled to overflowing with gifts. :)  It's by far not what Christmas is about but so much fun to see the kids faces light up when they see them!

Speaking of kids faces lighting up when they see the gifts, I armed myself with my camera at the bottom of the stairs so that I could capture the boys expressions when they came down in the morning.  I had visions of these candid shots of excited faces.  Instead I got these two: Sean posing for me (I've trained him well!) and Nolan being super grumpy.  We had actually woke Nolan up, which is usually unheard of for parents to have to do with their kids on Christmas morning.  What's even more unheard of is that this was about 10:15am and we had all just woken up except for Nolan.  Merry Christmas to me! :)

I took one picture of each boy and then put my camera away.  I wanted to be present & in the moment while we were opening gifts, and not worrying about snapping pictures, changing settings on my camera, & fighting with the boys about when to look (or not to look).

Pax's gifts are still under the tree.  He wouldn't ever even know if we didn't give him a single one, but I still wanted him to have something.  Pax did a lot of Bumbo sitting, then crying, then eating, then sleeping while we opened our gifts. Typical 3 month old :)

I had to take a picture of this gift because Dathan did such a great job wrapping it, I didn't want to open it!  It's so pretty & fun :)  What was inside was even better.  I forgot to take a picture (I could later) but he painted a frame with all my favorite colors (turquoise & purple) and inside it put a poem he had written for me.  He wrote the poem on beautiful paper with a calligraphy pen & everything.  Yep girls, he's a keeper!

When we were done at our house we headed to my parents to open more gifts there (which I didn't take a single picture of).

Then we all (including Courtney, my brother Tim's girlfriend) headed to my grandma & grandpa's house to hang out with family and have Christmas dinner.  We had a great time.  There was a lot of little baby loving being done.  I only got a picture of my mom (Memaw) with Pax, and me (surprise surprise!)

He is my little love!

We take a family picture every year on Christmas day.  I need to find the other ones to compare.  But these are SO funny.  I was so busy being "in the moment" that it was like 8:00pm and we were about to leave my grandparent's and I realized we hadn't taken a family picture yet.  The boys (all 3!) weren't having it at all.  I am literally holding Nolan's head next to mine with my hand because he wouldn't look at the camera at all.  And he never got out of his jammies today because he didn't want to.  Well, because we pick & choose our battles with our kids and that was one Dathan & I didn't think was necessary to fight.  Shoot... I would have stayed in my Christmas pj's all day if it would be considered socially acceptable! Ha!

So Merry (late) Christmas everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful day!

the big brothers meet pax

Ok everyone, I'm going to need you to put your imagination hats on.  And then I need you to pretend with me that Pax will NOT be 2 months old tomorrow and that he is only, say, 1 week old.

You got that? Ok, now read on.  Thanks.

I was so excited for Sean & Nolan to meet their new brother.  It was fun to be pregnant this time because Sean was old enough to comprehend more of what was going on, and he was so excited about it.  Everyone is so concerned about Nolan being the middle boy.  We keep telling him he has a special job of being both a big brother & a little brother... nobody else in our family has that job ;)

The boys had stayed the night at my parents' house the night before Paxton was born.  I was on the waiting list to get called in for an induction when they had an opening, so we brought them over just in case I got a call in the middle of the night (I just had a feeling that we would need them to be over there that night).  Paxton came SO fast that my mom was still feeding the boys breakfast when he was born.  So we had to wait a bit for them to get the boys dressed & get them to the hospital.  We had kept Pax's name a secret and didn't want to share it until we told our families first, so we could not wait for everyone to get there!

It was fun to see how each boy responded (side note: all of these pictures are taken by somebody else with my camera, because I was limited to laying in the hospital bed).  Sean was just enthralled.  He had brought one of his little Lego toys to share with his new baby brother (you can see him giving it to Pax in the picture below).  Nolan, on the other hand, was not sure of what the heck was going on (which you can also see in the picture below).

It wasn't even 5 minutes that they were there before Sean asked to hold Pax.  It's still one of his favorite things to do.  And it only took Nolan 3 days before he asked to hold Pax (ha!), and he has only held him 1 other time. But he tries to cuddle with him all the time while he's on the swing.

This picture cracks me up! Sean: "I'm saying cheese & smiling but I'm not taking my eyes off the tv!" Nolan: "Don't take my picture! I don't even know why the heck I'm here or what in the world is going on!"

He was this serious all day long. And wanted to sit right next to me for a long time. He needed his momma to comfort him during all this confusion ;)

We got the boys "new big brother" presents to give to them at the hospital after Pax was born.  Sean loved his new Star Wars figurines & Transformer.

And nolan LOOOOOOOVED his trains.  Of course. :)

My mom surprised Dathan & I with the shirts the boys wore to meet Pax in (they said "Most awesome big brother") :) Sean was also dressed in Nolan's shorts.  I was trying to figure out for 5 minutes why Sean's shorts looked so weird on him.  May be because they were size 24months... and he wears a 5! haha!

Paxton Ryder is here!!!!

After being pregnant for 41 weeks, I am SO happy to say that our sweet baby boy is here!!!

Paxton Ryder Stephens

(meaning: Peaceful Warrior)

Thursday, Sept 22, 2011 @ 8:11am

9lbs 8oz   21.5in

His birth did not go anything like I had expected it to, yet was everything we knew it would be, if that makes sense.

I was on the list to get called to be induced for Weds the 21st.  The way it works here is they "schedule" 4 women to get induced per day and then call them in the order they are scheduled whenever they have an available bed.  I was #3 out of 4 on the list.  A friend of mine waited 3 days for them to call her and even when she did go in, she ended up calling them.  So, we didn't "announce" to anyone except a few close friends that we were even on that list, since we didn't know how long we would have to wait.  All while praying that I would go into labor on my own (I had a really strong feeling that I would. Some people thought I was crazy or just had wishful thinking).

By Weds night they hadn't called us yet, so we took the boys over to my parents' house to spend the night, in case we got called really early to go in.  We came home & Dathan went to bed & I sat up almost all night with pregnancy insomnia I'm sure (and a little bit of restlessness).  Around 3:00 I was finally able to go to sleep.  At about 5:00 I woke up to a contraction.  Now, I had been having contractions on & off for about a month, so I didn't think anything of it.  I got up, went downstairs, & walked around for a little bit.  The contractions kept coming every 5-7 minutes, and were pretty intense.  After an hour I finally decided to wake up Dathan.

Dathan gets up, gets ready, makes coffee, etc.  We are not rushing because my water hadn't broke yet & my contractions weren't unbearable.  On our way out I said "Oh, lets take one more belly shot so we can remember how big I was when I finally went into labor."  Please excuse the fact that I look like a wreck, you have to remember I was going on about 2 hours of sleep, have no makeup on, and was contracting ;)

 

At about 6:15 or so we are driving to the hospital.  It's only about 5 minutes away, but in those 5 minutes my contractions seemed to have gotten more intense.  Regardless, I had Dathan park the car in the parking lot & we walked into the Women & Infants Pavilion, or WIP (as opposed to him dropping me off at the door & getting a wheelchair to wheel me in).  I said "walking helps labor move along faster!"  We left our bags & camera in the car saying Dathan could go get it after we got into our labor & delivery room.  We get inside & there is only one lady working the registration desk (I was pre-registered) and there was a lady in front of us getting registered.  We stood there waiting for what felt like forever, but Dathan said was only about 10-15 mins.  By now I'm having a hard time breathing through my contractions.  I even said something along the lines of "that girl getting registered looks pretty calm, can the registration lady not tell I'm in labor??!?!" HA!  Finally she calls us in & gets all our paperwork, asking me questions that Dathan had to answer because I couldn't speak through the contractions.  Finally she takes us into triage.

The nurse shows us our "room" and explains that they have to tend to the lady who was in front of us first, so it will be about 30 mins before a nurse will get in to see me.  Remember, my water hadn't broken yet so nobody had any cause to worry.  We sit in triage playing "words with friends" and talking in between my (very painful) contractions that are now coming every 2-3 minutes.

After about 30-35 minutes a nurse finally comes in with a student nurse.  They get me hooked up on all the monitors & she gets ready to check me.  She explains to the student nurse that because I was dilated to a 3 at my appointment on Mon, and because I was having my 3rd kid, and because I was quite uncomfortable that I was probably already dilated to a 4 or a 5.  I was hoping for a 6.  She checks me and gets this strange look on her face and says "you are dilated to an 8!" An 8?!?! What?!?! The first words out of my mouth are "is it too late for an epidural?!" She tells me it depends on what my dr says.

I send out a text to my mom. Then I send out a text to some friends.  Then I update my FB status (yes, I am that person) with "In triage and dilated to an 8! Ready or not, here baby comes!" That was posted at 7:40am.  After that point is kind of a whirlwind for me.  We waited a little bit longer (I think for them to get the room ready) then they wheel me over to the labor & delivery room.  I am in pretty extreme pain at this point.  My Dr just happened to be doing his rounds at that time (praise God!) and he comes in all suited up.  I said "it's too late for an epidural, isn't it?"  He tells me yes & I try not to freak out (I'm pretty sure I asked for an epidural about 3 more times, including while I was pushing LOL).  He checks me.  I'm at a 9.  He breaks my water.  I start pushing.

Ok let me just say that after having 2 children with an epidural & having something to compare it to now, all of you women who willingly choose to not have an epidural are crazy! In the best kind of way of course :) Haha!  I don't remember exactly, but it was about 4 or 5 pushes and Pax was out!  I couldn't believe it.  After Dathan cut the cord, he & I kind of sat there in shock as the nurses cleaned Pax up.  It all happened SO fast.  He was born at 8:11am.  31 minutes after I posted my FB status.  How's that for a fast delivery???

Our camera (and everything else!) was still in the car, so we have no "nice" pictures from right after he was born.  The picture at the top was taken with Dathan's phone.

So the pictures on my nice camera went from the one above of me still pregnant to this:

 

And WHAM! Mommy of 3 sons!  Hard to believe!  What an incredible blessing!  I am so thankful for a healthy baby & a quick delivery.  He kept us waiting a long time to meet him, but then once he was ready to come he didn't mess around :)

I just love our family of FIVE!

 

 This picture kind of sums up how the boys are reacting to Pax- Sean is SO excited & into him, and Nolan just couldn't care less (we finally got him to hold Pax for the first time yesterday... it only took him 4 days to want to! ha!)

Pax was a "big" baby, but not as big as Nolan was, and he doesn't seem that big.  He is so sweet and laid back, nursing great & sleeping great.  I am thrilled.  And so in love.

 

God gave us a promise when I first got pregnant that this baby would bring peace & restoration to our family & to the lives of others.  About 4 years ago God gave Dathan a promise that restoration would come to him, but not in the way he had planned.  That it would be long awaited for, but then would come suddenly.  God also told us that Paxton would come when He told him to & not on anyone else's time frame.  

I think that Pax is already fulfilling those promises from God :)

mini family reunion

I mentioned a couple days ago that we had a little family reunion at my grandparents' house.  My cousin Steven & his son were in town (Dathan had never met him so it had been awhile since we had all seen him) so we planned a big bbq get together.  Almost all of the family was there (my brother Brian, his wife Candace, & their son Canaan couldn't quite make it from England) and we had a blast.

These are the two responsible for this whole motley crew!  I'm pretty sure my grandparents are the cutest. Ever.  Their names are Joyce & Troy, better known as Grandma & Grandpa or even more better known as Big Hair & Pops (or No Hair).  Don't worry, those are terms of endearment & they love them! ;) 

Because of them, at this party there were their: 5 kids, 3 son-in-laws, 7/8 grandkids, 2/3 step-grandkids, 3/4 grandkid-in-laws, and a whole lot of great-grandkids!  How fun of a legacy do they have?  They have been married 57 years & are still very much in love.  My grandpa has a picture in his wallet of my Grandma when they first started dating.  Still.  He has kept it there through all these years :)

Almost everyone spent most of the day swimming.  Nolan swam for over 4 hours.  Longest amount of time he has done any physical activity for, but especially swim.  He would get out and eat a snack, then hop back in.  Then an hour later get out & eat another snack, then hop back in.  He was in heaven & cried when we said it was time to get out for dinner.

My mom is probably going to kill me for posting this picture but it's just too funny.  My mom doesn't drink.  But one of my cousins asked her to hold their beer bottle for them so they could jump in the pool to cool off.  The sight of my mom standing there with a beer bottle in her hand was too funny not to take a picture of.

Ok I accidentally sized this picture too small, so I apologize.  But I am too tired to go in & change it ;)  Just some family hanging out.

There were LOTS of people in the pool.  I believe we counted 18 people at one point.  This picture you can see 14, and I know you aren't able to see everyone.

We did manage to get a quick 4 generation picture with Big Hair, my mom, me, & the boys.  We were all tired but it's still cute :)

I am thankful to have gotten to see so many family members & spent that fun day together celebrating everyone!  What a blessing family is (no matter how crazy)!

look this way!!!

Last week we had a BBQ at my grandparents house where almost all of our family was there- meaning my grandparents with their 5 kids, 3 sons in laws, 7/8 grandkids, 2/3 step-grandkids, 3/4 grandkid-in-laws, and all but 2 of their great-grandkids (My brother, his wife, & their son weren't there because they live in England! And then of course our little guy was "there" but not there yet. Ha!).  Whew!  There were also some significant others at the party.  I think 30 something people... what a blast!

We tried to get a photo of my grandparents with all of their great-grandkids that were there.  Boy was that a job!  Considering there were 9 of them. And the oldest was 6. And 7 of them were boys. Not to mention my grandpa was as bad as the little ones trying to get him to look at the camera too.  Sooo... even with a gazillion parents & grandparents standing behind me trying to get all the kids to look (forget smiling too- just looking was a hard enough job!) these were the best shots we got...

... And they are HYSTERICAL.  Please pay close attention to the 4 boys in the front (my two plus my cousin Mandi's two, Jacob & Aaron)... we were rolling!!!!

And this one was the "winner" of the whole batch! Ha!

Gotta love it!  We sure do!