A Cocoa Daisy Layout--His Will is Strong

The pictures I hurriedly snapped this past rainy Monday (see this post), reminded me of a layout I had yet to post.

I am still amazed it rained on the first day of school. The rain plus the fact I was dropping all three boys off at three different schools made taking beginning of the year pictures difficult to take. To save time I decided to just use my phone to snap a couple before the boys got in the car.

Carter picked up Jude who was running around in the carport. Jude LOVES "side" as he call the outside. Anytime we go outside he is determined to get down and take off. So this time when Carter picked him up so I could get a shot of all three of them, Jude was not a happy camper. In both pictures he is wiggling, squirming, and protesting in an effort to get down.

His squirmy protests reminded me of a few months ago when the same thing happened on the last day of school. On that particular occasion, I was lucky enough to capture a few good shots with my big Canon camera. But then I tried to get a few pictures with my phone to share on Instagram and Facebook. The layout below shows the resulting chaos.

For this layout I used the May 2014 "Here I Am" Cocoa Daisy Kit . I also chose the title after considering Ronda Palazzari's One Little Word for May 2014 "Will".

This layout makes me laugh and is such a great snapshot of Jude at this age and how his brother's react to his new need for freedom. Jude loves to outwit the big boys and to wiggle and whine just enough to get his way with them. The big boys, as you can tell, find this behavior quite frustrating.

Oh how these boys keep me on my toes! Luckily, I usually have my phone close by to capture our everyday crazy.

Back to School

Towards the end of July the five of us begin to get tired of one another. By the time the middle of August arrives we are crazy tired of being together. Since Jess and I both teach, we spend all summer at home with the boys, which gives us so much time to make memories, but eventually the summer gets long and we are all ready to head into a more structured schedule.


 I am always amazed at how much my boys grow and change over the summer break. All three of them grew taller and after Carter's physical (he is going to play football for the first time) I realized he had also put on almost 7 pounds. No wonder my grocery bill has been going up! We have entered the "They will eat anything that doesn't eat them first" stage of boy raising.. Fabulous.


 Each year I take a beginning of the year shot of the boys and a last day of the year shot of them. It is always fun to look at the two most current photos and see how much they have changed. In this case the end of the 2013-2014 school year in May (daycare, 2nd, and 4th grades) compared to the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year this past Monday, August 18th (daycare, 3rd and 5th grades).

The first picture was taken on the last day of school and the second picture was taken Monday as we all headed back to school.

This year it rained on the first day of school, in August.. Weird. I can't remember a time when it has rained in all my years of attending or teaching school. So this years annual back to school photo was taken in the carport instead of by the dogwood tree in the front yard.

Taking these type of photos are a reminder of how quickly time passes. On one hand I want the school year to pass quickly so I can have a summer to spend with the boys. But on the other hand I hate feeling like I am wishing my days away. I treasure each and every moment with these three and the idea of them growing up and driving, having girlfriends, and then moving out and leaving makes me sad right now. It all seems to go by so fast.

It really is hard being a Mama with her heart walking around outside her body in these three.