New New Blog

Please check out my new new custom blog at www.alyssapix.com/blog

New Blog

I may have bitten off more then I can chew but I have started a new blog. I still plan on using this blog for all my personal stuff but I have started a new photography blog to go along with my new website. This week I launch my new website for AlyssaPix.com. Now that almost all my kids are in school I am very excited to dedicate more time to my photography business and have lots of new plans for the upcoming year! If you have a few minutes please check it out and let me know what you think!

Spoiled little birthday girl

I love birthdays! Well my birthday in paticular! I start letting people know that my birthday is coming up at least a month before the date arrives so that everyone has their calanders marked. I thought this year was going to be really disappointing since all my birthday money had already been alotted to my new Coach purse, but I must have forgot that I have the best husband ever! I went from disappointment to total estatic in 5.2 seconds.

About a week before my birthday Addison interviewed me on my favorite singer growing up, my favorite colors ect. I thought she was just playing one of her games but it turns out she took all this information and planned a special birthday surprise. I told her that I used to love Madonna and spent hours preforming "Material Girl" into a brush in my bedroom. Well Addison spent the week researching Madonna, downloading Material girl and Vogue, and learning all the words. She had Ben print out tickets in my two favorite colors and I gave me VIP seating to her concert. She picked out the prefect outfit and even rocked out the 80's hair it was the cutest thing ever!

It didn't end there though. Ben gave me a certificate that said be ready at 12 noon because a limo will be here to pick you up and take you to a 4 hour spa session. I think this is when the estatic came in. I have never had a full spa day in my life. I was jumping for joy....litterally. I got a 60 minute massage, a 60 minute facial, and a 90 minute pedicure and manicure. It also included a nice relaxing lunch. I think it reached up there with one of the best days of my life. It was so increadibly relaxing. I did have Ben cancel the limo though. Although something like that would be right up my alley it was a little overkill pulling up to the spa located next to Walmart in a limo. Ben got propts for the idea though.

But it didn't end there. Once I lazily drove home from the spa feeling as relaxed as one person could possibly feel Ben got a babysitter and made dinner reservations for just the two of us. Can this day get any better? So I got all decked out in a dress I have had for over a year but have never worn that just happened to match perfectly with my blue Coach purse and hit the town with my wonderful husband. I was one spoiled little princess and I was loving it!

But it did not end there. After a yummy dinner and a pit stop for a geleto, Ben thought for sure today would be the perfect recipie for some loving and was anxious to get home. It was the prefect recipie however all that pampering wears a girl out and I rolled over and slept like a baby. Sorry Ben maybe on your birthday!

In other news.... we are signing the lease on our new dream house today. I am so excited to move in. I went to the model home the other day to take some measurments and as I was standing in the house I could not believe that I was going to be living there in a few short weeks.

Something I am not excited about lately is my forever growing rear end. I have gained over 5 pounds since the kids have been out of school and all my pants that I finally fit into no longer look so cute with the zipper not able to do up and all. I used to run every day after I dropped the kids at school and I have not done one lick of excercise since school broke in June. So with the lack of excercise one would think that I would be very carefull about what I eat but one would be wrong about that as well. I have been eating every day like it is the last day I am ever going to have food. It is beyond rediculous but I am at the screw it phase right now. There is only two more weeks until school starts so do I start now and try to loose a few before summer ends so I do not have to wear a moomoo to the beach? Or do I live it up for the next two weeks and enjoy the rest of my summer as the fat girl who couldn't sing. I am torn, treadmil or pizza? Crunches or french fries? chocolate or cake? Do you see where i am going with this? I'll be at the coldstone creamery! Moomoo extra large please!

Last night I finally finished all my back load of editing! I have a two week break before my next wedding so I am excited to clean my very neglected house and spend some time enjoying the beach in my moomoo. Cheers to the rest of summer vacation! The kids start back to school on July 30th and I am counting down the days! Corben is very excited to start kindergarten this year and has been practicing his letters and wearing his spiderman backpack around the house. Little cutie!

Well. the house is not getting any cleaner as I sit here so I should go make myself useful. At least I did stick with my commitment to blog more this summer! Aloha!

Open butt insert horseshoe....

Well I should have known that things were going to work out even better than I ever imagined. So glad this horse shoe thing is working for me. Yes you guessed it, we found a new place to live. However not just a house but a bigger better perfect house for the same price. If we were to purchase this house we would have to dish out $1 000 000. No you are not reading this wrong that is 6 zeros in a row! Our back yard over looks the 7th green of the Arnold Palmer golf course. It is 2800 square feet with hard wood floors through out, granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, 5 lanias,(also known as a patios or balcony if you do not live in Hawaii), upgraded painting of the entire house, recess lighting, This house is amazing! We have a huge balcony off the master bedroom on the second floor also overlooking the golf course. The people who live there now have there treadmil out there and a TV mounted up in the corner and I am going to do the same thing. What a view to have as I sweat off the pounds! We will be moving in on September 1st. Pictures will be posted then on September 7th. As you can imagine the decorating ideas are swirling around my head and I cannot wait to get in there and start making it our own. All of it just seems way to good to be true, and to make it even more unbelievable the guy is willing to let us sign a three year lease at our set rental rate so we know we will live there long term (for us 3 years is very LONG term) and our rent will not go up as long as we live there. So in the ned we got an even bigger, even better house and lived in Hawaii rent free for two months, I'd say we made out like bandits on this whole forclosure deal! Not that I am one to celebrate over someone elses loss but woo hoo!!!!

If you go to www.gentryhawaii.com then click on new homes and then on Haleakea you can view the model home. We are the #4 floor plan.

We had a great 4th of July. We decided last minute to book a hotel in Waikiki and spend a few days being tourists. We had a BBQ with some good friends during the day and then headed to Waikiki in the evening. Met up with some other good friends down town, and headed to the fireworks on the beach. After that we went to one of the hotel pool side bars and had a few drinks while the kids cut a rug (or piece of pavement) on the dance floor. Spent the next day lounging by the pool which was located on the roof of the 10th floor and then made out way home the next evening. It was a great little escape with the family.

I am also very very excited to be typing this post on my new 24 inch IMac. With all the editting I have been doing lately we thought it would be nice to have a comfortable area to sit and work other then slouched on the couch with my laptop in my lap. Our home desktop was going on 6 years old and was about to peter out so we decided to go with a new apple since that is what the kids learn on in school. I had switched to Apple a couple years ago with my laptop and have never wanted to turn back to PC since. Even Ben who is a PC avocet is thinking about switching to apple for his laptop. We also plan to switch to the Iphone when our contract is up in November so the Turner's are going to be Mac'ed out!

I hesitate to write all the good things that happen to me because 1. I feel like it is to good to be true and one day I am going to pay big time for all my good fortune, (and by fortune I do not mean material things but my great husband, and beautiful healthy children, and waking up t the smell of sea salt, these are the things I am grateful for) 2. I feel like people might think I am being showy. So I just want to say that yes I may have been a bit spoiled in this life and sometimes I take all my blessings for granted, especially my husband, but I do truly appreciate everything and when I share all these things it is because I am so excited, and dumb founded, and I cannot believe that this is really my life.

Well get this....

Well remember that horse shoe I had tightly wedged up my butt, well apparently it has wiggled itself free and fell out. Last night while enjoying a nice glass of red wine and watching quality TV (The Bachalorett) we got a knock at out door. Who in the world would be knocking on our door at 9:30 pm you ask? Well let me tell you. It was an officer who was delivering a rather important tidbit of information. It turns out that in 30 short days our house is going to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. It turns out the the owners of this house have been skipping out on their mortgage payments and the house is going to be foreclosed. The house that just six short months ago we moved into. The house that I spent hours painting and decorating. Did God not get the memo I sent that said I AM SICK AND TIRED OF MOVING AND PLAN TO KEEP THE SAME STREET ADDRESS FOR MORE THAN TWO YEARS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY MARRIED LIFE? Did I spell something wrong? Did I not put it in big enough letters? Did I not put enough smiley faces with my explanation points? I seriously cannot believe I will be packing my bags yet again.

What did we do next you ask? Well I poured another glass of wine of course. I mean the world just looks better through cabernet glasses does it not? After I downed that next glass well the whole thing just seemed kind of comical and we made homeless joke for the rest of the evening. We did get ahold of our property manager and she had no clue that any of this was going on. On the plus side until the house sells and the new owners take over which will probably take a couple months we do not have to pay any rent. So that will save us thousands of dollars. We also got on the internet and started looking up new houses. There are no houses that I love as much as this one but, but hopefully something will come up. In the mean time if anyone has any empty boxes they are not using send them my way.

Surprisingly I am taking this very well and am not living up to my title of drama queen. However when it comes time to hauling boxes I am sure i will take up my crown and let the drama comence! I will keep everyone posted.

Oh and on a side note to Kelly T this now makes two blogs and you must put me back on your blog roll. Not to mention that I am sure there are going to be some good blogs coming out of this situation.

Oh and on a totally different side note before we found out our house was being taken over, our house had already been taken over by another creature. Bugs! Little tiny crawling bugs! That was the disaster we were dealing with before this whole other disaster started. Let me back up a bit. Camryn has been waking up with bug bites. Little itchy bites would appear every day. A few days later it spread to the other kids and I was starting to get concerned so i did some research on the ol' internet and discovered the culperate that was attacking my family. Let me back up once more and tell you how there has been a bird nest hosting two baby birds in one of the tall pillars on our front porch. the kids have enjoyed watching these baby birds every day so we thought ah how cute and never thought any more of it. Well it turns out that along with baby birds come baby bird bugs. Apparently there is a little critter known as a bird mite and that is what has been crawling and feeding off my children. So white trash I know. So yesterday we got some great footage of Ben removing the birds nest and birds from our patio and we have drenched the whole place down in Raid. Fortunatly these little mites cannot live off of humans and in a few short weeks, 6 to be exact they will die off. I guess I just found a new way to entertain my kids over summer break. Give them each a pen and have them try to connect the bug bites and see who can make the best picture! That should keep them entertained for a couple hours. We could also play a game of who gets kicked out first, the bugs or the Turners. I swear this is never a dull moment around this place. Stay tuned for more on the days of our lives.

Has it really been 5 months???

Wow time flies when you are a wife, and mother of four, and running your own business, and keeping up with all my shows, and trying to work out so that I don't look as old as I am, and running kids to all their events, and hosting dinner parties, and camping, and cleaning , and laundry, and and and. So before you all get on my case for not jotting down a few words lets remember that there is only so much one women can handle. Okay yes there has been a few moments where I probably could have sat down and shared my thoughts but sometimes I am just plain lazy. SO where do I start. I feel like I am always starting my blogs that way lately. How about this. How about I try to make it my summer goal to blog more. Maybe then Kelly will put me back on her blog roll since apparently she to has given up on me and kicked me off to make room for some more important people who actually blog....go figure.
So instead of going back 5 months and recapping I will just share the latest and greatest and go backwards until I run out of thoughts. So the newest and biggest and bestest thing happened yesterday. That was the day that my wonderful husband was convince, or more like put under my spell by the blinking of my blue eyes, and purse-waded that I don't just want but absolutely NEED this purse:



Take a moment to revel in all of it's gloriousness!!! I somehow convinced my husband that this was not just any purse, but an investment in my future. It just happens to be the same color as my photography business website and in creating an image for myself and my business I needed this to be my signature purse. Makes complete and total sense right? Okay so maybe that was not the reason my husband finally broke down. It was probably all the whining, and feet stomping, and telling him how this purse would make me even more fabulous then I already am, and if I am fabulous then everyone is happy. I also had to forgo any birthday money (for the next 10 years), and go several weeks without nagging.(that one might be hard to uphold) Luckily my husband suffers from long term memory loss and will never remember all these little deals I made. I practically signed over my left kidney but it was worth it.
Summer break officially start today so we should all stop for a moment of prayer. "Dear Lord Please turn my children into little angels for the next 6 weeks. Let there yes be yeses and there no's be non existent. Let mommy keep her sanity and not get any new grey hairs. Oh and Lord thank you for my new purse! Amen"Okay you might need to come back and pray that one every day, just to make sure....
Actually I am excited about summer break. I will be spending many many hours at the beach, and the water park, and look forward to late mornings, and hopefully laid back days.Goals for the summer.......1. book lots of weddings and photo shoots. 2. get Camryn to perfect riding a bike on two wheels so we can start riding bikes to school in the fall. Yes she is 7. We have failed her as parents. 3. get a great tan 4. lose 5 more pounds 5. get good at surfing. 6.keep my patients with my children and enjoy them! 7. stop making goals for summer, this is supposed to be vacation.
My little Corby will be starting kindergarten this year. Obviously he did not follow my strict rules of not being allowed to grow up. Kids....... they never listen these days. I am looking forward to being down to just one child home all day but I am going to miss my little cuddle bug. When the girls started Kindergarten it seemed like they should be but he just seems so little and and he should stay home a few more years.
Well after 4 years of living in Hawaii we finally broke down and bought a surf board. Now that we have gotten to the point where we can actually stand up and ride it I am bummed that we wasted four years of surf time. It is allot of fun and a great way to spend the day out in the water. In the last couple of weeks we have gotten the girls into it as well. They took lessons and picked it up much better and sooner then we did. They make it look so easy as they pop up and ride every wave. I to rode every wave to the shore, I just happened to ride in and under the wave upside down. I am starting to get half way decent at it and hope to perfect my skills over the summer. We got the girls the cutest little surf board ever, check it out:
Okay it is taking forever to load so you are just going to have to see it on my facebook.
I am getting really excited about my photography Business. We have revamped my website and am really hoping to take it to the next level. I have always treated my business as a hobby and now I want to make it a career. I am taking some photoshop classes and am constantly learning new tricks and techniques. I love what I do and I want to be the best I can be so I am going to dive into this head first and hope to become even more successful this year. I also have to give a shout out to The [b] school blog. Becker is a very successful photographer who has decided to pay it forward and is launching an online site for upcoming photographers to learn to grow their business and network with other photographers. It is really great and I am so excited about it. he has really been motivating me lately.

Addison turned 9 last week. Where does the time go? We had a really fun mommy daughter day filled with Starbucks, and shopping, and hair salons, and we had so much fun! She is sporting the cutest little haircut. We went to Borders and flipped through hair mags and decided on Katie Holmes bob with bangs. Too cute! With three siblings she does not get allot of one on one, and let me say she thrives on being center of attention(the apple does not fall far from the tree). It was a fabulous day.
Londyn continues to give me a run for my money. She to is sporting a new hairdo except her's was created by herself. yes Londyn has taken scissors to her hair, not once, not twice, but THREE times now. She has little hairs sticking out everywhere. I have to wear her hair up in pigtails and spray down all the little sprigs every day to try and mask the disaster that has become her hair. I will continue this until it grows out unless my prayers come true and the mullet makes a come back!
Londyn is also sporting some princess panties these days and for the first time in our married lives we are diaper free! You know what that means, all the money we are saving on diapers can be used to pay off bills. just kidding....more shopping!
Ben is loving his new job out of the military. He is three classes away from his MBA. We will be so excited when that is over and done with. He also has been keeping busy designing websites for a few different companies ( as well as mine), I don't know how he does all he does and still finds time to be the best husband and dad. Okay yes I am still working him for the new Coach purse, but he really is good to me.
Okay I am going to stop here before i write a whole novel. I promise not to go 5 more months without writing again. Happy summer vacation to you all!

New House Pictures are up on Facebook...go check them out!