Another year, and my sweet niece Mackinzie is another year older.  I took a look back when I photographed her four-year-old photos, and I just cannot believe how much she’s grown!  *sigh*  Take a look at how much she’s changed!

*Note to underage viewers:  Prince Phillip is pant-less in this photograph.  And he is only wearing one shoe.  We’ve lost his clothes, poor fella*

We are currently hosting our second sleepover of the week.  On Friday we had a big girls sleepover & now we are having a little girls sleepover.  I love that my girls are old enough to have friends over for fun events like this.  Cousin Mackinzie is sleeping over while her mommy & daddy celebrate their birthdays in sunny Florida.  She’s spending the night with us tonight because Emma wanted to return the sleepover favor that she showed us a few weeks ago.  Right now as I type they are upstairs playing with all of our princess paraphernalia.  As you can see by the photo of Brooke, we’ve misplaced some clothing, but that doesn’t derail the fun!

This photo is of Brooke with Belle, baby Belle, & Prince Phillip.  She put their clothes on very meticulously, got Phillip’s one boot on, and now they are a family.  It’s so cool to see their imagination during these games.  You also hear a lot of what you’ve said to them throughout the day come flying back out.  Like when Emma says, “What the?” And when Brooke says, “Actually…..”  Don’t know where they get these things!?!?!

Well, I’m off to get some little girls ready for bed.  We don’t have school tomorrow so they’re getting a treat by staying up late.  Night!

Yes, family & friends, it was only a matter of time before a Settlers blog post appeared.  In case you don’t know about Settlers of Catan, it’s a German board game that my family is obsessed about – or, that I am obsessed about winning.  Personally I think it’s like a cross between Monopoly & Risk.  Currently I am on a 3-month losing streak.  And, people, we don’t just play once in a while – we play at least once a week, sometimes more, and even more than one game in a sitting.  I am the official Settlers loser in my family, and I make sure to let them all know about it.  I stink!  I just don’t know why (they could all probably tell you), but I can’t seem to win.  Oh well, such is life.  And it’s just a game, right?

Today after Bert & Laura brought Emma back after her sleepover, we all had lunch at our house & played two games of Settlers.  Congratulations to Mom (Bonnie) & Bert on winning.  (You won’t be invited back, since you didn’t let me win).

In the photo above I’m the blue pieces.  As you can see at this point things didn’t look too terrible for me until Mom came full force with a massive road, cutting the entire land of Catan in half!  And Bert with his stinkin’ castles!  OMG!  How’s a person supposed to win with this kind of competition?  I even have Settlers of Catan on my iPhone so I can practice against highly-skilled computers but I just can’t seem to bring the winning into real life.  I’ll be sure to let you know when my streak ends.

Oh, and if you want to play with us, come on over.  We’re usually up for playing any day of the week, even into the wee hours of the night.  Sroka’s are always up for some competition!

Photos I’ve been looking at:  Melissa C.  She’s a person I randomly found though…you guessed it….Facebook!  I think I saw her comment on another 365 blog & clicked through to her blog & saw her photo of a crossword puzzle.  Immediately I thought of my dear grandmother who loves crosswords.  Melissa gave me such an encouraging comment the other day when I felt like giving up on this 365 thing.  Thanks for the push forward Melissa & I love looking at your work.  Keep it up!

*oh, and we’re such Settlers nerds that we bought Kids of Catan for our children.  Yup, we took it that far.

This is one of my many sisters-in-law, Robin, displaying her winnings as the skee ball champ against Mom at Chuckie Cheese’s this afternoon.  Mom, or Gigi as the girls call her, invited us to come to a lunch date while she watched two of my lovely nieces, Mackinzie & Delaney.  They come down every Monday for some Gigi time & we like to get the cousins together for some cousin time too.  We all got a ton of tokens, thanks to Gigi, & it was personally my goal to acquire as many tickets as possible…cuz that’s how I roll.  Brooke kinda slowed me down, but I’d say we cleaned up pretty decently in the end.

Mom is a pretty darn good skee ball player and challenged Robin to beat her.  (My personal best score was 20,000)  Mom got 23,000 and was ecstatic….until…Robin came back with 25,000!  Ouch!  So, I made Robin climb up on the skee ball lanes & show me her victory face.  But wait!  That’s not all!  As we were turning in our tickets I found a stray coin in my pocket & gave it to mom, telling her she should redeem herself in skee ball.  She quickly ran over & smacked down Robin’s score with a new high of 28,000 – VICTORY!  I told her to get up on the lanes too, but she politely declined…I wonder why?

Thanks for the great lunch date girls.  We had a blast!

Photos I’m looking at:  Perfectly Posh Photography by Nicole Benitez.  Nicole was another participant in Justin & Mary‘s Spread the Love Tour in DC whose business card I snagged (super cute, BTW).  I’ve looked her up, followed her on Twitter & become her Facebook Fan so I could check out her work.  I totally love her fresh, colorful look.  Her style matches her personality – chic, urban, couture!  And, to boot, she’s a mom…of five!  Wow!  If she can do this photo biz thing with 5 kiddos, I think I can probably make mine work too!  Thanks for the inspiration, Nicole!  Hope we run in to one another sometime again.

Mackinzie is my niece…in case you didn’t know.  And every year since she was two I’ve taken her out around her birthday for her yearly pictures.  When she was two we went to Downtown Annapolis.  When she was three we visited Canton in Baltimore.  This year, we were supposed to visit Annapolis again, but it began to drizzle!  So, on a whim, her mommy & I decided to visit Westfield Annapolis Mall.  Oh, and we went on Thanksgiving so the mall was closed!  Never fear though, Mackinzie & I found lots of cool places outside our newly renovated mall to shoot.  And the best part is you can’t even tell it’s the mall, unless you have a super extensive knowledge on what the outside of the Annapolis Mall looks like.  So here is Mackinzie, or Mack-Crazy as we sometimes call her, on her four-year-old debut!

**Oh, and if you’re a Gymboree model scout, yes, Mackinzie is available to grace the cover of your ads with all her sassy & sweetness.  Have your people call my people.