apricot studio, spring, st. louis

City in Bloom


Happy Wednesday! We’re having a super gloomy day today, with severe storms heading our way shortly. So instead of getting out and playing outside, we are hanging out at home. I’ve just been scrolling through these pictures from a couple of weeks back and missing the gorgeous weather we had.

On Don’s weekends, we love to get out and do fun things in the city on at least one of the two days. We really enjoy Forest Park because it’s beautiful, free, and there are tons of places for the kids to run around and explore. I was so blessed to have been given the opportunity to take some photos for Lily Jade recently so we took advantage of the all the pretty blooms and I snuck in some photos of the kids as well.

The building in the background of these photos is called The Jewel Box. And nearly 10 years ago, on a day that was equally as rainy as today, Don and I got married in that building while it rained on our guests. Even though we haven’t actually taken the kids inside the building, it’s so special to revisit now with our children.

When the big kids saw this bench, they ran over to sit down on it. Desmond looked so cute walking over to them to join in. Seeing them all lined up like this was the sweetest sight so of course I immediately grabbed my phone and camera and snapped and snapped as fast as I could.

I was so excited when we found these pink trees. I cannot get over how gorgeous they are! And this is why spring is my favorite (along with the beginning of fall!)





Group shots are my favorite but definitely not the easiest. Desmond’s cooperation is hit or miss, even with a sucker in hand. So sometimes I have to resort to handing off Clementine to one of the two big boys and holding him myself. I’m telling you, when he’s in a good mood, I absolutely do not want him to get any older because he is so hilarious and fun. But when he’s in a bad mood, that’s another story. I’m working on not wishing the time away, in the good times and bad.

Clementine’s face in the picture below–I just can’t get over her cuteness. And of course Kai in my giant pink Willy Wonka sunglasses haha. 

The boy needs to work on his posture (much like his parents) but I love that I finally captured a genuine smile. A fun fact for those of you who don’t know, sometimes 5-8 year old boys don’t really have the best “camera smiles” so we usually have to resort to telling jokes for the real ones.

We get a lot of stares when we’re out with all the kids, along with many comments about having our hands full or “are they all yours?” (No, we just found them wandering at the zoo and figured they would want to join us.) But each adventure out is becoming more fun as a big family and it makes me really look forward to the years to come.

**photo credit for the last 3 pictures is Apricot Studio Photography.

And now I’m ready for another sunny day in the city! I hope you all are having a great day! And if you’re in the area, stay safe when the storm hits!

birthday, Blog, kai

Wallowing in Birthday Fun


How do you like that title? A good pun can never be resisted. A couple of weeks ago, Kai (our second oldest,) turned 7 years old. It always amazes me how quickly time goes by. I feel like just recently, Kai has grown up quite a bit. Don had asked me to find a picture of Kai to use for the thumbnail for his birthday vlog. But as I was scrolling through the pictures, I realized how much his looks have changed over the past 6 months. Even a picture from 2 months ago made him look so much younger.

With all the birthdays, I have the kids get a picture on the front porch. I totally slacked this year and didn’t take these pictures until last night. And you may notice something about the door behind him. It’s not teal anymore! We loved our teal door but I was wanting to change it up. And my super kind husband agreed to a pink door (though now he’s acting like he doesn’t remember saying that. Too late now 😉 ) I thought it may look like too girly of a background for his birthday pictures but I kind of love it. Anyway, I feel like these pictures sum up his personality pretty well. He is fun, silly, joyful, and so very loving.

On his actual birthday, he requested donuts for breakfast. We drove to 2 different places that he had picked out and neither of them were open. We ended up at Krispy Kreme, which was not as exciting to me but it made him happy so that’s all that matters. We had to take a detour to the doctor for his brother before we went to the park. We had hoped to see pigs but there was only one super fat pig hanging out so we didn’t stay too long. The big deal for birthdays is always the trip to McDonald’s. As we were trying to unload the kids to get inside McDonald’s, the skies opened up and poured all over us (while Evangeline kept saying she didn’t know where her shoes were.) I grabbed her shoeless self and we ran to the restaurant. But not before I got soaked and my eye makeup ran all down my face.

We ended the evening with his favorite, homemade pizza–aka “mommy pizza” and his dessert of choice, this giant scoop cake from Sams.

This is a caption that I shared that night on Instagram. I wanted to include it here too.

At the end of the night, he gave me a hug, told me he loves me, and thanked me for all of the fun things we did today. You guys. We went to mcdonalds (and we even had to make a pit stop at the doctor to get his brother’s ears checked.) We didn’t throw some party that would be worthy of Pinterest (though those are amazing and I wish that I was able to always do that for my kids.) He loved this day because we were present. He loved this day because he felt loved. He loved this day, not because of what we did for him, but because of what we mean to him.”

He loved his birthday and I loved that he loved his birthday. But he had no idea that we were about to make his dreams come true. You see, Kai has a major obsession with pigs. If you want to have an engaging conversation with the boy, start talking about pigs. I had asked around on Facebook to see if anyone knew where we could find some pigs to pet. Multiple people suggested Purina Farms. So a couple days after his birthday, we told him we had one more surprise for him. We asked him “if you could do anything in the world for your birthday, what would you want to do?” His response “See a piggy and pet it!” So he was extremely excited to find out we were going to do just that. Don recorded that whole conversation on the GoPro but for some reason the audio didn’t work–which is a huge bummer because his reaction was adorable. And this look really tells me the whole day was worth it.

Kai and Kingston have a small brotherhood rivalry–Kai loves pigs/hates dogs. Kingston love dogs/hates pigs. They like to make it known to each other that they do not enjoy the animal that the other brother loves. But even Kingston couldn’t resist the pigs that day.

Sorry for the overload of pig pictures but that was the highlight of the day. It brought him so much joy and it brought us joy to see him so happy. But, of course, there were other animals too. Liam was particularly fond of the bunny.

And Desmond really wasn’t interested in much that day (more on that on the vlog.) He’s just at a hard age right now. 


I don’t think we’ve ever done Easter bunny pictures before but since it was free, we went ahead and did it. You can just tell from Desmond’s face how much he loved it.



We had so much fun and hope to go back again sometime (maybe on a day that it doesn’t end up raining.) And here is his birthday video–which is pretty adorable

Happy weekend!!