Christmas Pictures

Today Brian, Maddie and I went out for a quick Christmas-time photo shoot. I have TONS of pictures of Maddie that I have done and that are framed through out the house, but I am sad to say, I think the only good picture of the three of us is the picture that was taken for the church bulletin a couple of years ago and I am not crazy about it either. Studio portraits are not my style, and since I take pictures, I have a hard time wanting to pay someone to do the exact same thing that I can do.

But, today, after church, Brian, Maddie and I went out to take a few pictures of us for Christmas. I took all the pictures that I am NOT in, but for the one's that I AM in, I asked my mom to take over. I set the settings and I explained the vision of what I wanted. She did a great job. She has a naturally artistic eye, (I guess that's were I get it from) and I have talked to her a little bit about photography over the years, so she was excited to do it. Here is what we came up with:

Arboretum

Last Wednesday Maddie and I got invited to spend the afternoon at the Arboretum with some friends and we had a great time walking around and looking at the different flowers and plants and exhibitions they had set up. This time they had a Cinderella theme with her carriage and different fun facts about the history of the fairy tail. It was all really cute and Maddie was able to get into it since she has seen the movie a couple of times. Thank you Jamie for letting us tag along with you and Brylee!

Whats down there?


High Five!
Maddie wanted to climb that tree.

Halloween

This holiday was really fun for the Edwards' bunch. Maddie has literally been asking me "is it Halloween yet?" multiple times a day for about 3 weeks. I was SO ready for Halloween to get here so I can finally say "YES!!" and "Stop asking me that question!" For a while, Maddie has been telling me many different things she would like to be for Halloween, but I got an idea from Pottery Barn Kids that I tweaked and made myself. And I think it turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself. This year she went as a strawberry.
I was just telling Brian tonight that I was glad Maddie had several opportunities to wear her costume. She looked SO cute, and I worked on it for a while, so I wanted the time I spent on it to be worth it. Or even if I had spent a lot of money on it, like the previous years, if she can wear something more then once, the better.
This year Maddie started Halloween off right with a costume parade at preschool. I was one of the many mom volunteers who passed out candy as the kids walked by. They were all SO cute!

Chapel after the parade


Later in the afternoon, the kids had a Halloween party.


They got to make caramel apples. Maddie didn't care for hers. Probably only because she wanted cake. Because to her, thats what you have at parties. But I enjoyed the apple.



After that, on Sunday, we had Trunk-or-Treat at church.

And thirdly, tonight, we went trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. This year was the easiest so far for trick-or-treating. she carried her bucket by herself the whole time, and she would have ran ahead of us to each house if we had let her. She was very excited about getting more candy, but she was also very polite to each person who came to the door. Can I say: #proudparetingmoment. :)

Checking out all her loot. She actually has about twice that much from preschool and from church. She will be eating candy for a while.

Pumpkin Patch 2011

Maddie needs a pumpkin for preschool on Tuesday, so I thought yesterday (Friday) was a good time to take her to the pumpkin patch down the street for some yearly pictures and she could pick out a pumpkin to decorate for preschool. We have been going to this pumpkin patch since she was 7 months old, I forgot to go when she was 1, but we have gone every year since. So here she is in all her cheesy-ness.

This is Maddie at 7 months old

This is Maddie at 2 Years



And now at 3 years




They also had a Hay Maze. It was really fun to go through it, Maddie would have stayed all day.