31Dec

Christmas 2021 – Skipping The Holiday Traditions

Okay, so perhaps “skipping” is too harsh of a word because we didn’t skip Christmas entirely, it was just not a priority this year to keep with all the traditions since we had just welcomed our baby earthside and were running on no sleep and not accepting any visitors. My level of commitment this year was that the tree was UP—there were no ornaments, not even a topper or a base—but to be fair, I
22Dec

Baby Boy Is Here!

He’s here! He is absolutely beautiful, strong (and strong-willed just like his sister!), and born at over nine pounds and growing so fast! You can read all about our birth story too, but for now a big thank you to our photographer, Lisa Johnson, for these amazing keepsakes from our first portrait session as a full family and I am so excited for our matching frame to arrive from our previous session when little miss
04Dec

Our Birth Story

On the eve of my due date, the contractions officially started. Thankfully they subsided right as I was wanting to sleep, and I fully expected them to start up again early the next morning like the last time. Nope. But they came in full force that night as I settled in to sleep. Great. All through the night, waking me every 10-15 minutes, well into the next evening. Consistent, but not close enough together to
05Nov

Stephanie & Alex’s Maternity Photos In Almonte

For those of you who know how physically demanding this pregnancy has been, you may be surprised to see that I waited so long to do our maternity photos this time around, but I am so glad that we held out until the fall to get to enjoy our warm fall colours, and that we could have them done in our new forever home town of Almonte was a big bonus. Our photographer Bry Marie
02Nov

When Experiences Matter Most | Halloween 2021

This year for Halloween, we kept to the traditional sense of things, but still made sure to focus on the experience rather than things. Little miss enjoyed herself so much this weekend because she got to dress up as her favourite food, take several walks around the block (even the dark, which she looooved!) over the course of a few days, learn to blow bubbles from a wand, and make pumpkin goodies from scratch with
27Oct

The Second Pregnancy Hits Different

I quite enjoyed my first pregnancy, only had a couple of weeks of nausea (which was solved by strawberries and cheese bread!), and didn’t feel too much pain in the end and would have happily gone the extra two weeks. But this pregnancy has been really hard on me, physically and emotionally. The morning (ahem, all day and night) sickness ripped through me for months, and when I finally rid myself of that side effect,
31Aug

We Moved! & How We Dealt With Homesickness

For the first week at our new house, little miss asked us every day to “go home” and it broke my heart. Most of the time it was when we said there was no internet and therefore couldn’t watch her episodes, so I was hopeful it was a rebellion thing, but not always… After about a week of settling into the new house, we then took our annual trip to visit my grandparents in Northern
09Jul

We have BIG News!

The last three months of our lives have been what feels like the longest and the fastest stretch of changes of our entire lives. We decided to sell our house, we cleaned and packed up as much as we could and listed in record time, sold it after a long ten days of invasive showings, and have been slowly packing up the rest since. After visiting a handful of amazing homes in our ideal location,
27May

We Unknowingly Gave Up On Our Marriage

I wasn’t completely oblivious—I kneeeew the pandemic had robbed me of so much, but it wasn’t until my husband and I shared our first happy moment in a long time that we both truly realized that it actually was our first happy moment in what felt like forever. Apparently, all it took was trying to sell our house and being forced to drive around or take family walks to the park while people were visiting
02Mar

Crossing The Line Into Secondary Infertility

We were lucky that our first was so easy to conceive and carry to term, so I cannot help but feel extra disappointed that I would be giving birth next month had it worked out again on the first cycle, but instead I find my empty womb… So every time we embark on another cycle, that has so far always ended in tears, I try to take a moment to appreciate what I have—a beautiful