Sixteen

Last Saturday, my beautiful daughter turned 16 years old. It's been such a joy to watch this girl blossom. She is wise beyond her years. She's smart as a whip, quick-witted, and oh so talented. She puts me to shame when it comes to art. Almost every free moment she has is devoted to sketching, painting, playing the piano, or strumming the ukulele (her new obsession). On a side note, she received the ukulele for Christmas, and by sunset, she was strumming out familiar tunes. She'd never played a string instrument before. It's kind of annoying how she makes us all look talentless. ;)

Audrie loves words and word play and continues to challenge me almost daily with some sort of game involving rhymes, or haikus, or synonyms, or riddles. And I love every minute of it. She is super sweet, and good big sister (most of the time), and just a delight to be around. I don't like to think about how in two and a half years, she'll be leaving this nest. I'm not ready for our family dynamic to change. So, until then, I'm going to cherish this time we have while our nest is full, and continue to remind her of all of the great colleges we have just right down the street.

Happy birthday, sweet girl.

I love you so.

xo

Mom

15

*blink*

My baby girl turned 15 yesterday. 

Be still my heart. 

I want to scoop her up and hold onto her for as long as I can. 

I know, at this point, things move at light speed until you take a breath, and wave goodbye as your child leaves the nest. 

Be still my heart.

Audrie, you are beautiful inside and out. You're kind and hilarious, sweet and witty, smart and ever so talented. I'm amazed by you each and everyday.

Happy Birthday, lovely lady!

xo

Mom

Halloween 2015

I was asked quite recently when I was going to post on my blog, to which I responded, "What blog?"

The other replied, "The blog you've been writing for six years..."

Me: "I have a blog??"

I looked it up, and apparently, this is my long since forgotten blog. Who knew I had a blog?

Okay, seriously, I have not forgotten that I have a blog. In fact, I think about this little blog quite often, and with those thoughts comes an enormous pang of guilt... when I think about all of our adventures we've taken, all of the projects I've been working on, and all of the growing that my kids keep doing despite my best efforts to keep them little, and I've missed journaling them. Yes, I have evidence of these moments in the form of pictures and videos and artwork, but my blog held the stories that accompany those events. But all of those adventures combined with day to day life plus illustration jobs times homeschooling divided by three kids multiplied by the square root of...well you get the idea. I've been a little busy lately.

So what's a girl to do when an extremely long update post is necessary, and the thought of writing said post is so overwhelming it's migraine inducing? She says, forget it, and instead posts a bunch of Halloween pics.

I present to you, scenes from Halloween 2015 featuring a spider web, a ninja, and characters from Fantastic Mr. Fox:

How's that for a comeback?

xo

nessa dee

14

It's funny how a time in your life can seem like ages ago and yesterday all at once. 

Today my sweet little artist, this beautiful little face, turns fourteen.

What a joy it's been to see this tiny girl blossom in to such a beautiful, talented, intelligent, and hilarious young woman. 

Happy birthday, my beautiful daughter.

I love you.

xo

Mom

Hay Bale Jumping...

It's a must when we visit my hometown.

Plus it makes for some pretty neat pictures.

xo 

nessa dee

Christmas Pictures 2014

Cloudy with heavy drizzle and fog....not the ideal weather conditions for an out door photo shoot. I have a knack for scheduling my photo shoots on the most inopportune days. In this case, though, I actually checked the weather [I usually don't] mainly because Monday's blustery cold front caught me off-guard. Thursday, though partly cloudy, would be pleasantly warm compared to the other days, and I was relying on that weather report [as much as you can rely on a weather report] to hold true. But, as fate would have it, the heavens opened up and saturated my plans. I called my mom to get the weather report in her area [the location of the shoot], and it hadn't yet started to drizzle. A ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy forecast. Instead of taking a much needed shower, I herded my children into the car and sped to Taylor to beat the rain [within the speed limit, of course].

I still had to get my children ready.

When they were dressed to perfection, we jumped in the car to head to the downtown area, and we were met with, not the expected drizzle and gloom, but bright, smile inducing sunshine. I'm pretty sure I heard a chorus of angels singing at that moment.

I've written many times about the challenges of trying to get good pictures of three children together whose age differences mean drastic differences in height as well as the ability to cooperate. Getting all three to look at the camera and smile at the same time is near impossible, especially when you have one who loves to talk, another who likes to make silly faces, and a third who just wants to pick up rocks, or run away, or start an impromptu game of tag in an alleyway. But what I find when I scroll through the hundreds of pictures I've snapped is that the ones I favor most are not the ones that are perfectly posed. I love the candid shots that capture what happened in between the times of trying to get that "perfect shot." Hidden among the "in between shots" are the twinkling smiles, the familiar expressions, and the wonderful moments that, if you just keep clicking, you might be lucky enough to catch. 

xo

nessa dee

Three Zombies and a Robot

I love this picture. I love it when my kids unknowingly settle themselves in order by height. They do this quite often, usually in age order. It's quite easy for them since there's 5+ years between each child. Their ages aren't relevant in this case, though, but somehow they've managed to stair step themselves into another perfectly posed position... a great opportunity for a photo, even if it is of mindlessly basking in the glow of a television.

And here's a little guy I've been working on. He's not quite finished, but I'm growing fond of him, so I had to share. I bought some old Bingo cards from my favorite store, Cherry Tree Creative, and I've been searching for an opportunity to use them in my paintings. He was one such opportunity.

I think I'll call him Bingo, Original, I know.

He'll be available for sale soon, so if you're interested in him, leave me a comment.

Have a great weekend!

xo

nessa dee

Pumpkin Patch

Jonathan and I finally got around to taking the kids to the pumpkin patch. We had a hard time coordinating our little venture because, according to the website, the pumpkin patch closed at 5 PM, well before Jonathan gets off of work. So we decided to get there when it opened at 8 AM before Jonathan went to work. We got the kids up and dressed for pictures, drove there in separate vehicles, excitement welling up in the kids, only to find that the pumpkin patch was not, in fact, open from 8-5, but rather from 12-dark. Perfect.

There was no way I was going to try to coordinate outfits another day, so thankfully, part of the mass of pumpkins were kept outside of the fenced area, ideal for photo ops. We snapped a few pictures...

And rode a few pumpkins...

And went home empty-handed.

Thank goodness our grocery store has a nice selection of pumpkins and is open til midnight.

xo

nessa dee