September in a nutshell

Where have I been?! Oh my..I am not sure you even want to know. This has been my busiest fall to date. I know it is a very swift season of my life when I have all these early teen years children to haul around from practice to events, but right now....I just long for a day to stay in my pajamas and bake cookies!

September was full of soccer, softball,volleyball, co-op and Bible classes. Greg went to Florida for a week alone to preach and we also had a birthday ( Essies..but we didn't really celebrate it until October)  Here is a recap :

Abby played varsity volleyball for the FHE Hawks this season. The won the MAC high school championship. 

Micah played soccer for a local rec league. He really loves soccer and is so good at it. 

Greg played on the church softball league again this fall. When the game times were early enough , we all went to cheer. 

We went to the cabin for Essie's birthday and spent the weekend with grandma and pawpaw. 

I love how we are all the same height except Sarah and Greg. :)

The same weekend, we also went apple and pumpkin picking. 

Krispy Kreme had Talk Like A Pirate Day to get a free doughnut BUT if you dressed like a pirate you got a free dozen! As you can see.... everyone dressed up and promptly wrote their name on their box of yumminess when we got home so no one else would eat them. Arg!!! 

My sweet friend, Kristy who I met in college came to visit me! She is working on her doctorate at LU and added a few extra days on to her trip to come see me.  We had a good time catching up. BTW...what is up with my hair looking red and larger than normal here? 

Essie had her first big audition for a commercial! She didn't get the part but we had a fun afternoon driving down to charlotte for it. The experience was good for her too. Hoping there will be more in the future.

We were invited by friends of ours at church to their Lake house on Lake Norman for the day. It was perfect weather and we had a great time. 

More Lake Norman fun!

Guess who moved into a big girl bed?! She has been doing great sleeping in it too. She is actually a whole lot happier about it than she looks. 

 OK. I think that is September in a nut shell! I think I will break October into weeks because we did even more then!. I blame Instagram and Facebook for my lack of blogging. It is so easy just to snap and be done with it, but I am going to try to keep up over here too. I miss you guys. :)

Essie's Exciting News

Essie has had an exciting May. We have been told so many times that she looks like a model. With her long legs and arms and beautiful smile...she hears it a lot. I have a friend that actually worked for families whose daughters modeled in LA and she seriously talked to me and told me I should send her pictures in somewhere. So I researched online and found an agency in Greensboro that we could submit photos to. The form stated if interested they would get back to me within four weeks and that they get many children's photos daily and that if we did not hear back then they were not interested.  So I submitted 4 on a Tuesday.

I only told Greg and my best friend Amy about it because I didnt want to get Essie's hopes up if we didnt hear back at all. Well, the very next day, Wednesday, I got an email from the print/NEW faces agent telling me that she liked Essie's look and could we come in on Friday for just a "meet and greet".

Essie was SO excited when I told her! I explained this was not signing with them only meeting them and we needed to make sure they were a legit agency and take it slowly. We even prayed in the parking lot of the agency that God would help us know if this was something He wanted us to do and that He would lead us. 

 We went in on Friday and met the print agent. She was super nice lady from NY. She had worked for Ford Modeling in NYC and LA. She liked Essie and told her that her gut said Essie would be great for film too! She explained that usually the agents would get together once a week and decide as a team if a model was a good fit for their agency and if they could get work for them or not. She said they would email me within 2 weeks if they wanted to work with her.

 They took some digitals of her and then we waited... After a few minutes the film agent came in with the print agent and as soon as she saw Esther she said, "Yes, I want to work with her." They talked a little more about what kind of portfolio we would need and what an audition would look like. Then the print agent said, " I dont think we need to wait to decide, We both would like to work with Essie and think she would do great in film and print. We would like to go ahead and sign her. " 

Oh MY! 

So we took the contracts home and had a few people look over them to make sure what we were signing and then once we felt ok about it, we signed them! Essie is officially a signed model at a real agency!!!

We are now waiting to get an appointment with an amazing photographer to begin work on her portfolio and then she is going to take an acting class or two to get familiar with an audition. I am so happy for her! She doesnt like sports at all and has wanted a hobby all her own. The agents explained ( and we kinda knew) that NC is not NYC or LA.... this will be a hobby not a career and that is perfect for the time we are able to invest into it.  We cant wait to experience this with her though and are super excited for her!

leaving to go to the Meet and Greet

In the car , getting ready to go into the agency!

After being asked to join the team! 

After, I told her we could go anywhere she wanted for lunch. She chose Steak and Shake and got herself a double cheeseburger and milk shake!