Celebrating 10 years of marriage! :)

Today is our 10 year wedding anniversary! I simply cannot believe 10 YEARS have gone by this quickly! In certain ways I feel like it has been so fast, and in other ways I feel like I have been with Rusty my whole life! (in a good way!) Today we are having our pictures taken at the very place where we met 10 years ago! I'm so excited and can't wait to have this day documented! This has been 10 years full of wonderful memories and I am so thankful God has kept us together and continues to bless our marriage. I have made lots of mistakes and done lots of learning and growing up over the years and I am so thankful that Rusty has stuck with me! I truly mean our vows that we said to each other so much more now that I really understand them. I thought I meant them then, but I was 19 when we married. I couldn't wait to be Rusty's wife...and I don't regret marrying young at all...but I have learned so much since those days and understand what we vowed to each other so much more now! Our communication is so much better with each other today than it was in 1999! ;) Our love is stronger every year that passes and I am so grateful for the day I met Rusty!

Here are some photos from our little anniversary trip we took last weekend.

walking along the Strand...




We have stopped and taken a picture in this place before...I wish I could find the old one to post...but it isn't on this computer.


being silly ;)


Having a snack at Starbucks on the Strand...


I love this silly man ;)










We were in Galveston and the blue mark above Rusty's head is the water line from when Hurricane Ike hit....It was so strange to be walking along the streets that were once COVERED in water...


We love to go to all the antique shops out there. I found these letters for sale in a basket and put them all together like this ;)



We stopped at one of the souvenir shops to get the kids a little something. This big shark was on the wall and Rusty couldn't resist.... ;)


I took more photos on the Strand, but I don't have time to go through them right now.

Happy Anniversary Russell Wayne! :)

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Updated to add:

Well, we were SUPPOSED to be having our pictures taken on our anniversary today...BUT little Miss Maggie is throwing up :( Levi started the bug at the beginning of the week and now it is Maggie's turn. I am scared to death because Rusty and I are photographing a wedding on Sunday and I am terrified we will get sick!!! Everyone please pray right now that if it be the Lord's will that we would be able to photograph this wedding without being sick! If it must happen, please let it be before or after the day of the wedding!! I'm so scared! Anyway...poor little Maggie Rayne. She's such a little trooper. She didn't even cry. Mia on the other hand is about to have a heart attack. She is so freaked out! The minute Levi threw up the other day she was bawling, and now with Maggie sick it's almost too much for Mia to take!!! She was screaming in the living room while I was with Maggie in the bathroom! She's not even the one that is sick but she is being the biggest handful right now! lol She gets scared so easily. She knows that when a stomach bug is around that usually means we will all get it and she is not excited about that. Neither am I!!!!!

So....anyway, happy anniversary....celebrating at home with puking babies....isn't that the story of life!? ;)

~m

My boy's best friend...

Levi loves his stuffed cat. Actually he loves 2 stuffed cats. They are twins! ;) When we went to Tennessee a few months ago we brought these 2 cats back for Mia and Maggie. They were pretty happy with them, but they ended up at the bottom of the stuff animal pile on their bed! Levi somewhere along the way became really attached to these little cats! He calls them both "Mow" and wants to have them BOTH with him at all times and especially in his bed at night! When I'm rocking him he wants to hold them both (along with his "PupPup") and he will hold the tags and feel them with his fingers. (Maggie used to do this with everything!) Anyway, I finally got a few pictures of him carrying around his little best friend Mow. ;) If he has one in his hand the other one isn't far from him! When I get him out of bed in the mornings he wants to take them both with him! He says "Bye Pup Pup..." but he will grab both of the cats and say "My Mow" and hug them with a huge smile! :)



kisses for Mow...


If you notice, one kitty lost his whiskers so they aren't identical twins anymore! ;) I think they were removed by a certain little boy...but we'll never know for sure I guess!


He had been walking around in a hat for no real reason at all. He loves putting on hats. He will grab one and say "OH HAT!!!" and put it on and give a silly grin! If you look closely you will see Mow in his hand! He is so stinkin cute! :) For Halloween we had these little buckets that my Aunt bought for the kids to carry candy in and he only wanted to wear his on his head!!! lol



Just a side note, he has started to talk quite a bit! My absolute favorite thing he says is "I lull loo too" :) (I love you too!)

~m

Happy Halloween :)

Because I will never have the time to do anything with these pictures the way I would want to, I'm up at midnight posting a few snapshots to the blog from our night! (BUT at least I get to set my clock back...so instead of 12:45, it's 11:45!) ;)

Anyway, this year we all dressed up! Rusty's side of the family had a little get together and everyone was supposed to dress up. We had no idea what to be, but Rusty suggested that we go as Loretta Lynn and her hubby Doolittle! We always joke about some of the lines that came from that movie ("Stop a-makin' that noise, you're growlin' like an ol' bear or somthin'") and so we thought it would be funny to dress up as them! I look RIDICULOUS, but it's all in fun! ;) Anyway, we grabbed a quick family photo: (are you ready for a good laugh?!)....



Mia is Queen Esther from the Bible, Maggie is a "God's girl" that is called Princess Sarah (God's girls are like a Christian Barbie and she has Princess Sarah and loves her!) and Levi is Charlie Brown! :)

The 3 of them were none too interested in taking a group photo together (of course) I do have some individuals I will post of them later, but no time to go through all of them tonight.


And last a photo of Loretta and her Doolittle! ;) LOL! I crack up laughing every single time I see this picture!! It is SO funny!! We made silly faces on purpose but I had no idea how hilarious I looked in that wig and hat until I saw this! I'm actually wearing a dress that my Moma wore when she was in a band with my Dad in the early 80's! ;) It's authentic! The hat I'm wearing was my Dad's when he traveled in Canada playing music. Rusty's hat was my Papa's. ;) I didn't keep this wig on all night. It was so uncomfortable! I took it off after a little while and just went with my normal hair and hat! ;) It was pretty funny dressing up with the kids on Halloween this year! Mia loved that we dressed up! She kept wanting us to talk in character and she kept saying "Come on Loretta, let's go!" :)



Hope everyone got a good laugh out of this post! ;)
Goodnight!!!
~m

Update...

So, I haven't blogged in weeks....here's some recent things happening:

1. My glasses broke in 1/2 yesterday! Yes. In 1/2! I kept the old ones, so I've been readjusting to them again!

2. Luke is now an outside pup. I'm much happier about it, but I'm pretty sure he hates it. This makes me sad. He was chewing everything in the house and was not interested in potty training. Our house was pretty smelly. He's cute, but he stinks. He has a nice little home on our deck...but I just don't know if it is working out. We don't have a fenced yard, so we aren't sure what the plans for little Luke are. :(

3. Maggie wants to be a photographer. She asks to take pictures with my camera every single day. I gave her my old camera the other day and let her go crazy with it! She had the best time taking pictures of everything. When I realized that she filled up a card within about 5 minutes I knew she was taking after her Moma! :) I need to go through the hundreds of pictures she took and post some! She has a great eye! ;)

4. Mia is doing GREAT in school! She loves it! We are all having lots of fun with it and despite the daily challenges, it is going much better than I thought it might! ;)

5. Levi wants to play with his "sissies" all the time now! He can be heard through the house calling "Sissy...c'mon!" It's SO cute! Last night they all 3 held hands and ran through the house back and forth for about 45 solid minutes! They were running and giggling and making each other fall. It was the cutest thing ever! They were all HOLDING HANDS! So sweet. He has started to say "Me-muh" for Mia and "Mah-me" for Maggie. Too cute ;)

Here are a few random pictures ;)

A Friday family day in the yard. This was a good day. Perfect weather! The puppy was happy because we were all outside playing with him. The kids rode in the little car Mia got for her bday. They played baseball. They rolled in the grass. Maggie took pictures. We all laughed, hugged, and loved each other all afternoon. Great day!


My babies! :) Mag with my old camera in hand!


Last weekend my big brother and his clan came in for a quick visit. I think this was the first time all of the grandkids were together in the same room! We attempted a few group shots! ;)


I am officially drowning in work. I have NO idea why I am sitting here blogging. I miss blogging though. I miss doing things because I WANT TO. I have been editing every night until way too late. It's not really fun. I love photography and I even love editing....BUT not when I have MONTHS worth of work piled up waiting on me. I hate that. It stresses me out. I can't sleep. I'm constantly thinking about how behind I am. I now know that I just overbooked myself this year. No one person can handle this amount of work and stay sane. It's just so hard to say no when people are asking for me to take pictures! I love it and I hate turning people away! BUT...what I don't love is being in way over my head. (So much that I start to hate what I used to love!) So, I am learning how to say no. My problem is that I am still editing things that I shot months ago, while still continuing to shoot more...just adding to the madness!! I need to get caught up in a seriously bad way and then stop booking so much. period. SO...why am I still writing this blog?! I don't know.

~m

Finally a blog!! :)

Well, here I am on Friday...finally blogging! :) Here's just a few random photos and stories from the last week or so!

Maggie REALLY loves Luke! She carries this puppy around all the time! I am pretty sure they are best friends. (At least MAGGIE thinks so!) If she's not holding him then he's chasing her all around the house. You can hear her giggle and Luke bark and the giggles just keep on! I'm surprised she hasn't dressed him up yet. I'm waiting for that one! ;)


Just a side note...Moma isn't so much in love with Luke anymore! ;) He isn't the best at potty training and I just don't have the patience for that! I'm pretty sure that Luke will be finding a nice little dog house just for him on our deck OUTSIDE very soon! ;)

Mia is such a creative child! She has the most vivid imagination. The other day I heard her talking about her laptop (she said it was a Toshiba!) and how she was going to be playing games on it. I went to see what she had come up with. She designed her very own "play" laptop using one of my old photo albums. She created a video game and pretends to play it all the time. It is the cutest thing! ;) She is writing a story in our school time called "Adventures of Andrew the Apple." We add a little to it each week. She has even written a little theme song to her story! We all sing it! It's really catchy! (Too much really, it gets stuck in our heads and we are singing it in our sleep!) I will be sharing all that more later. She is convinced that when we are done with this book we will be dropping it off to the library for people to check out and read! :) Anyway, I mentioned all that because her video game is about her Andrew character. Here are some photos from this morning of her new creation. (She made one for her little sister too!)




You'll see that Luke has gotten a hold of this a couple times and chewed on the end!


She's so cute! :)


Maggie is growing up...look how old she looks here! Don't you love her hair? lol She has a new love of wearing her hair DOWN. She always asks to wear it down now. It doesn't do so great down! ;) It's just a "little" crazy! I'm not sure I know quite how to tame that head of hair she's got! I've had nothing but straight hair my whole life and I have no clue how to handle curls! She's SO cute no matter what though! :) I think the crazy hair just adds to her personality and I love it! :)




Daddy with all the babies one morning last week. That's our favorite chair because almost everyone fits in it at one time! ;)


My little man. He's growing up fast too! I love this boy ;) He was watching it rain one day last week. He loves to go outside, but unfortunately the mosquitoes have been SO BAD. We can't even open the door without being attacked! Poor baby! The weather is beautiful today though and we will be playing outside!! :)


Last one for now...the 3 kiddos sitting in our chair early this morning. Sometimes they actually like to sit together and be sweet! I love those moments ;)


and there's your weekly Fuller update ;)
~m

Still alive...

Yep, I'm still alive.

Do I have time to blog?

In the famous words of Levi...."Nope!" ;)

I will try to figure out a way to blog more often. I was considering doing a "weekly" update. I'm sad that I'm not blogging more. If I don't blog, then my precious daily memories will soon be forgotten and there will be nothing to put in our memory book for the year! Perhaps every Friday do a blog post? That's better than nothing right? Rusty is normally off on Fridays and that would give me a little extra time to get a blog in I think. Right now, I'm drowning in work...I have 6 weddings and 2 sessions waiting on me...and 2 sessions this coming week and another wedding next weekend. Can you say CRAZY? Yes. I can too. CRAZY!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, so I'm thinking about Fridays being blog day. We'll see how that goes. In the mean time...sorry for the lack of posts. I'm sure that for most, life isn't too incomplete without a daily dose of the Fuller Funny Farm...but I do know a few people who actually miss my updates! ;) (Sorry Mom!!) :)

I'll see if I can come up with a picture to post later tonight. I know I have TONS just sitting in my computer never getting touched because client pictures always have to be done first.

We'll see.
~m

We've got the...Sneezy, Snotty, Coughing, Sore Throat Blues...

Welcome to my little world of cranky babies! ;) The girls started getting sneezy a couple days ago and now are officially feeling sick. Rusty has sneezed more times than any of us could count, so this is one sneezing household right now! I had to miss church last night because I didn't want to bring my germy little ones to spread more sickness around! Mia cried! She was feeling so awful and hadn't been herself all day. Still when it came time to normally leave for church and we didn't get to go, she said "MOM, Wednesday is my FAVORITE day of the week! I LOVE going to class and Mrs. Angela is going to be SO SAD that I'm not there!! Why do I have to be sick right now?!" Poor baby! Maggie is sick and coughing right now too, so that just added to my reasons for keeping them home. I hated to miss church too! I'm really interested in our study right now and I really enjoy the fellowship we have at our church. I was not very enthused about being stuck in the house with 3 cranky babies, but you do what you have to do! ;) I have always felt strongly about trying to keep my sick ones home to try and prevent spreading the sickness around! Anyway, a few snaps of the girls feeling very "blah" this week...

Maggie has been snoozing alot! She will be asleep in random places at random times during the day. Mia covered her up in this picture. She's going to be the most amazing mother! She is so caring and nurturing to her siblings!



Mia wanted to snuggle up on her little couch and watch a movie early this morning. She said she didn't really feel like getting out of bed and doing much. She's coughing really bad today. I suppose we will be making a trip to the doctor soon!



Where is little brother you might ask? Well....at least one child in the house is still smiling...for now anyway ;)


He was sitting happily in his high chair munching on a snack! He has started to say "I love you" alot lately! It is the cutest thing in the world and melts my heart! It sounds more like "I lull-loo" but I know exactly what he means! :) I will try to get that on video soon.

Anyway...that's what is going on in our crazy house lately! Well, all that and a mountain of editing work! Aside from our sickness issues, school has been going great and we are all really enjoying it! :) (Just in case anyone was wondering about that!) ;) Mia is one smart cookie and loves learning! Maggie has really started to impress me with her coloring skills in the last week or so! If she is in the right mood she can color so pretty! Very impressive for a 3 year old. Most of the time she just scribbles everywhere because she is being lazy...but if she takes her time she does a great job! This week she has been trying really hard and writing all of her letters on her worksheets! I need to take some pictures of their school work to share. I will try to do that soon. (In my spare time!) lol

Anyway...I hope everyone out in blogland stays well and that we get over this mess soon! My throat is really scratchy today, but I'm choosing to ignore it in hopes that it doesn't turn into anything! lol ;)

~m