I love this photo (iPhone 4s, Instagram)! Zachary found his love for Play-doh a few months ago, and it’s greatly increased in recent weeks. We do Play-doh every day now (sometimes more than once a day). I enjoy this time for him to be creative and use his imagination.

What crafty toys do your kids enjoy playing with?

I hope all of you had a very Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas!

We have really enjoyed celebrating Hanukkah with Zachary the past week now that he is old enough to understand lighting the candles and says the prayers with us.

Here is my favorite photo from the last night of Hanukkah, which we celebrated last night. He is going to be so disappointed tonight to realize Hanukkah is officially over. I can’t wait til next year though – we are going to have so much fun!

photo taken with iPhone 4s and Instagram.

Hope you all have a wonderful Hanukkah with your families this week! We are enjoying the holiday very much!

Captured with my iPhone 4s and edited with Camera+

Today is Zachary’s 3rd birthday, and we celebrated his party yesterday with our close friends and family members. The party theme was Angry Birds (his favorite game), hence his Angry Birds t-shirt in the photo below. Party pics are forthcoming!

We can’t believe that we have such a grown-up little boy now, and the three years since Zachary’s birth have simply flown by. We are so thankful to have such a happy, thoughtful, and creative child. At three years old, Zachary loves to play with us, hug us, tell us how much he loves Mommy and Daddy, and he is constantly singing the most adorable songs. He is the happiest kid we know, and an absolute gift. It’s been so exciting to watch him grow up, and I love watching his personality and interests develop.

Happy birthday to our sweet boy with lots of love from Mommy, Daddy, Maya the dog, and your whole family!

We had a great Halloween week! Two days before Halloween, Adrian and Zachary carved the pumpkin (the first one we’ve ever carved!), and we made delicious toasted pumpkin seeds after clearing out all of the “pumpkin brains.” :)

Zachary was very excited about carving the pumpkin and drawing the jack o’ lantern’s face with Daddy!

Touching the “pumpkin brains” was a new experience. At first, Zachary thought it was yucky, but then he got into it! Another “first” was trying candy corn. We had a bowl out as a treat while we carved the pumpkin, and Zachary loved trying it! I remember how much I loved candy corn as a kid, but it’s definitely much too sweet for me now that I’m older!

Then it was time to carve the pumpkin. Adrian handled the carving while Zachary ate candy corn and I separated the seeds from the guts!

Zachary had a fun evening carving his first pumpkin with Daddy, and afterwards we all enjoyed the glowing candlelight emerging from the carved face.

Zachary loves Halloween! between our jack o’ lantern and our colorful Halloween lights, it was a very festive mood at our home!

Finally, Halloween arrived! Zachary was so excited to wear his Spider-Man costume and go trick-or-treating, that I was only able to snag a few photos since he was jumping up and down and would not stay still due to the anticipation! He was definitely the cutest Spider-Man ever!

We took Zachary to the pumpkin patch again this year, and he was so excited! He loves anything to do with pumpkins (much like his mommy) – and even loves eating pumpkin flavored food (also like me!) – so he was pretty thrilled about our trip up to Bedner’s Farm and pumpkin patch in Boynton Beach. We went on a weekday, but if you go on the weekend, Bedner’s offers hayrides and other activities. It’s a great farm &  farmer’s market, and a fun activity to do with your family here in South Florida!

Here is one of my favorite images, but you can check out all the photos on my Karen Lisa Artistic Photography blog!

As my little boy approaches 3 years old, I thought it was time to do a photo shoot with him to celebrate the end of summer and the beginning of the cooler (or as we might say here in South Florida – slightly less warm) weather. You can see the complete set of images here on my photography blog, but I’m including three of my favorites below for this Wednesday post.

I haven’t posted a really substantial post here in a while, but as I was making dinner last night I realized that Zachary is turning three in just over two very short months, and I have not made time to write an update about all the amazing things going on in our lives! He is such a fabulous little boy learning so much every day and doing the most fun things, and I’ve always made a point to use my blog as sort of a baby book to make sure I record my favorite happenings and special moments. I’ve been so busy lately editing weddings and portraits and putting together print orders and albums for my clients, that I haven’t taken too much time for myself.

As you’ve probably gathered from some of my recent photo posts, we recently came back from an amazing summer trip to Vermont! We went out of town for two weeks. The trip was planned because I booked a wedding in Burlington, VT, so we planned our entire vacation around the wedding photography schedule.

We drove through 12 states (FL, GA, SC, NC, VA, MD, DE, PA, NJ, NY, NH, VT), visited 5 capitol cities (Washington DC, Montpelier VT, Richmond VA, Raleigh NC, and Philadelphia PA – which was the first capitol of the United States!). We also made a point to stop in Bartlett, NH in honor of our favorite TV show, The West Wing. :) In every place we stopped, we saw all kinds of interesting historic and patriotic sites, and we were able to see several friends and some family members during our trip! Our total mileage driven was 4,070!

Mountains of New Hampshire (taken on the iPhone)

We had such a fun time on our trip, and the first time we’ve really taken Zachary away on a family vacation that didn’t involve going to visit other family members. :) He got to experience so many different things and learned so much about the world. I really hope that some of his memories from the trip stay with him – and I’ll be sure to print up a photo book from our trip some time soon so that he can look back and recall the fun times that we had. While I haven’t finished processing all of the photos (I’ve only made two posts – one here and one here), I do have a ton of iPhone images that I captured on the trip, and I’ve uploaded those to my Flickr account, so feel free to browse those. I think I took more interesting photos with my iPhone on this trip than I did with my SLR!

Zachary's first time at a creek - Smuggler's Notch State Park, VT

When we got back from our trip, Zachary was pretty excited to start Preschool again. He really loves school and settled in wonderfully! He is such a big boy now and runs right into his classroom to join his friends. I love that he is now old enough to tell me stories about his day and the things his friends are doing in class. He tells me what his favorite things are (he loves to draw & paint, play with blocks, read books, and go on the playground), who he spends time with at school, and loves showing off the things that he’s learned. This week I learned that Zachary can now recite the ABC’s (we’ve been working on that a while but he’s never done it all in one go until this week) and he also knows the days of the week! He has also become extremely caring, very helpful (he LOVES helping to cook and prepare food and help with the dog related chores) and notices the feelings of others around him. He often asks “Are you okay?” when he notices that I’ve hurt myself or that I’m upset. He is such a sweet little boy.

In the last couple months he has become even more curious and adventurous than ever. I think our trip to the Northeast definitely inspired more curiosity in him – he is always asking what something is, why we are doing things, and wants to know all about everything.

He can’t get enough of certain books, loves reading anything about trucks and diggers, and his favorite bedtime story at the moment is Peter Rabbit. He still loves Thomas trains, Hotwheels, the piano, music, and the iPhone/iPad. He has taken to sleeping with his two dachshund stuffed animals, which we’ve named Maya (after our dog) and Penny (after my parents’ dog), and he loves his big boy bedroom which we made up for him a few months ago – complete with a twin bed!

Here’s a fun conversation we had today:

Zachary: Let’s get the mail, Mommy.
me: ok, but I have to hold your hand in case a car drives by. (I took his hand and he tried to wriggle away)
me: No, Zachary, you have to hold Mommy’s hand!
Zachary: Mommy. Be nice to me! I’m a big boy!
me: ok, but you still have to hold my hand!

How cute is that? :) Zachary’s vocabulary has simply exploded over the summer! It boggles my mind that I am now having conversations with my big boy. Well – he thinks he’s a big boy. I know he can stay a little boy for a while longer…. :)

Oh, and one more. In order to have time to write this post, I invited Zachary to sit on the couch in my office and play with my iPhone (he LOVES Angry Birds as I’ve already mentioned, as well as Talking Tom Cat). He took my phone and sat down, saying “OH-kay, Mommy. I’ll play with your phone. I’ll play Angry Birds. AL-right.” I laughed out loud hearing the inflection in his voice since I’m sure I’ve used the same tone of voice with my own mother! Sometimes he talks like he is 3 going on 13! :)

What fun things are your children doing?

Zachary will be turning 3 this November, so I’m in the beginning stages of planning his birthday party. As a typical two year old, he changes his mind often about what he wants – but he really loves playing the Angry Birds game on the iPhone and iPad and has been asking for an Angry Birds party more often than any other theme, so at the moment, that’s what I’m researching.

Although we’re just planning to have a small family party again for his third birthday (as part of our celebration will be Zachary’s first trip to Disney World this fall), I’m still thinking about how I can fulfill his wishes for a fun party centered around one of his favorite games.

How old were your kids when they chose their own birthday party theme?

I’ve found some great inspiration for the Angry Birds party using Pinterest and basic Google searching.

First off, this adorable blue bird angry birds plush toy, which Zachary says is his favorite. Definitely need to get him one of these:

Gorgeous Angry Birds cookie favors by The Cookie Jar:

Fabulous Angry Birds party decorations by Busy Bee Party:

Last but not least, there are some amazing cakes out there! This one is from Little Miss OC’s Kitchen:

“Put the camera down Mom! Can’t you tell I just want to go to school??!!”

Here’s an image of Zachary that I captured right before we left for preschool this morning – the first day of the new school year. Yeah, he was definitely OVER having his picture taken and wanted nothing more than for me to put the camera down so he could hop in the car and go to school! When we got there, he would not hold my hand to walk to the classroom, and he told me that he was a big boy! wow!

He ran right into the classroom (he even remembered from summer where his class would be) and sat down and started talking to his friends, who he hasn’t seen in over a month! I chatted with the teacher for a few minutes and as he saw I was leaving, shouted “Bye, Mommy!”

I’m amazed at how much he’s grown and what a kid he is even at just two and a half. Where did the time go?