Phew, between sleepless nights, winter colds and lots of other little things, I haven’t had much spare time for scrapbooking lately! But I finally did get a chance to finish up the recap of our last week in January. If every month flies by like January did, 2011 will be here before we know it!

Close Ups:

Journaling reads:

1) Julia sporting a cute outfit from grandma. 2) Rebekah brought us some more of her delicious homemade soup when she came over for a game night. 3) Gabe wore this awesome new outfit from Auntie Tanya and Uncle Michael to church this rainy Sunday. 4) Every winter I get the butternut squash soup from Atlanta Bread as many times as I can before they stop making it for the season. I can never get enough! 5) Gabe sporting the classic newsboy pose. 6) I hope I am still devotedly learning about the Lord when I am 93 years old, like this wonderful lady in my Bible study class. 7) Chris and I had our last late-night Oreos and milk snack (for now). We are both trying to lose some weight this year. 8) Gabe built a great fort and filled it with all of his “guys” (stuffed animals). Julia was perfectly content to sit by him and watch his every move. He likes having her nearby, and he kept stopping his work to get her toys, talk to her and put a little blanket over her legs. They love each other so much! It was so cute because when he posed to show off his fort for the camera, Julia realized that he was looking toward me, so she followed his gaze and looked over at me just in time for me to capture this sweet photo! 9) We have a great group of ladies in the Thursday night Bible study of Hebrews chapters 1-4. These photos are from January 22 to 28, 2010.

Digital Scrapbook Credits: Papers and embellishments by Shabby Princess from her Harvest Spice and Splendid kits. Brown Paper by me.

I recently got our latest photo book in the mail from Shutterfly. It has all my favorite photos from 2009. I didn’t have the time or energy to make it all pretty and “scrappy” as in the past, so I used the storyboard tool to just add all of the photos and text – easy! For 2010 I hope to go back to the digital scrapbook style I have used in the past, at least for some of the pages. Anyway, if you want to check out the book, click the image below (some pages and/or words have been removed for privacy). Enjoy!

***Congratulations, Chris!***

Today Chris successfully defended his Capstone paper and thus completed his Masters Degree in Systems Engineering – HOORAY!!! He worked really hard on this for the past few years and I am so proud of him!! We are planning to celebrate it officially in the spring after commencement, but in the meantime it is so nice for him to be finished with all the work and have some more free time again :).

The kids have been keeping me quite busy, so I have not had time to finish my “week in photos” scrapbook pages for the past week. But I did get plenty of photos and I will share the scrapbook pages when they are ready.

And since everyone one loves baby pictures, here’s a cute one of Julia from this week which didn’t make it into the scrapbook pages:

Is that too many lovelies? Let me explain :). My original blog, which I started in 2006, was called Lovely Things. It was a great blog and I had a lot of fun with it. That blog was at blogger.com, but I eventually found out about wordpress.com, which I like MUCH more than blogger, so I started this blog and called it Lovely, Lovely Things – cute, right? But I was sad to leave the old blog behind, since I had put so much time and thought into it.

Then, today I learned that I could import all my old blog posts and their comments right here to this blog!!! So that’s what I did :).  The old posts do look a little strange at the moment though, since the images have a light green background and are a little too large (because they were made to coordinate with the old blog) – I will work on fixing them up when I get a chance. I had a fun time going back through some of the old posts today and especially enjoyed the photos of Gabe when he was a baby.

Here is another photo taken by Chris, while I was at Bible study tonight:

While I am at Bible study on Thursday nights, Chris and Gabe bond over a yummy stack of pancakes. Gabe likes to suggest all kinds of fun shapes to challenge his daddy’s skills, and tonight he requested Curious George and the man with the yellow hat. You can see the photo Chris was working from in the lower right corner of the photo.  Pretty good, huh???

Here’s a great photo of last night’s moon taken by my wonderful husband, Chris. He always has his eyes on the sky, so he has been looking forward to testing out our new camera’s ability to capture some of his favorite celestial sights. You may not see as many photos of Chris here as you see of the kids, but don’t let that fool you – I am over the moon about him – he’s my best friend…the love of my life :)!

Here are a few pics I took of Gabe this morning before he went to school (Mother’s Day Out). He likes to run/move around a lot more than Julia, so it can be a challenge to get good photos of him. I find that the best thing is to let him do what he feels like doing and follow him around with the camera until I can sneak a shot :). He loves to cuddle, so these pics of him with Bruiser Bear really fit his personality. And of course he is always building something, so the blocks picture is very fitting too!

Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Psalm 127:3

Here are some pics from today – it was the first sunny morning since the new camera came, so we had an impromptu photo shoot. Julia is wearing a tutu I made for her before she was born. I used some tulle left over from my wedding decorations (I knew it would come in handy some day)! She seemed to like the tutu a lot – maybe too much, since she kept trying to eat it hehe! Doesn’t her hair look almost red in this light? It reminds me of my sister Sarah’s hair when she was a baby.

We are loving life and feeling so blessed. We are praying for the people of Haiti, please give if you can! We are also praying for our friends Ryan (one more chemo to go!) and baby Grey and our missionary friends Adrienne and Brian, who are beginning a new chapter in their lives. On a lesser note, here’s a recap of our week:

“1. I am really into colorful socks lately. 2. Our new camera came in the mail & I am BEYOND thrilled!!!! 3. Gabe looks even more handsome through the new lens. 4. Chris and Gabe assembled Julia’s exersaucer. 5. A bathroom mirror self portrait with my new toy. 6. Julia still gets sponge baths – it’s easier, faster and less tearful. 7. She LOVES it!!”

Close ups:

Here’s a look at our second week of 2010. Thanks for the emails and comments about my last few posts, I really like to hear from you even if I don’t get a chance to respond right away :). Hope you have a great weekend!

Close Ups:

Here are some scrapbook pages about the past week. I can’t believe we’re in 2010, it feels like “the future”.  Ten years ago, Chris and I went to First Night 2000 in Boston together and we thought it felt like the future back then too (remember y2k?). At the end of that night we had this long talk about our future together (we had been friends for 6 1/2 years), Chris asked if I could ever see myself marrying him. I said no. He was not living a Christian lifestyle at the time (trust me, I wasn’t perfect myself). I’m so thankful that over the years, God turned our lives around and now we are married with two kids and loving life!

Close ups: