Summer Time!

With raising a baby I have found there is not much time you want to waste away from your family. I find it hard to continue school, work extra, shop, ect. When I am away I feel a constant want to return. I don't want to miss anything that my child may do.  Its unfortunate but there are things that I must do. Things like working, Working pays the bills and secures the financial future of our family.

I have been blessed recently with a new job. After 11 years as an employee at Cobb Emergency I have departed in a way. I started working with the Enterprise Support Team in the ED.  I now float to all Wellstar emergency departments. I fill in where staffing is most critical. I find my assignment at 05:30 AM and then go to work and work hard until 7pm. The good news is more money. This allowed me to quit my second job. Now I only have to work 3 days a week and can spend more time at home with this little man!

With the newfound time we have had blast so far this summer! We have taken him on a few boat rides

A trip to the GA Aquarium

A trip to Destin, with 2 more planned in the next few months

And of course a few trips to the neighborhood pool!

A few children play dates with my friends I grew up with

Next we have some family friends coming down next month for a visit.

With all this fun we are having it does this to us!

With staying busy the one hobby that I have always enjoyed and continue to pursue is photography. Many moons ago my friend Nick  and I dabbled in it, and made a little money. I was never really impressed with the way my photos turned out.

Last week I reluctantly accepted my first paid gig a very long time!  A coworker's photographer backed out at the last minute. She saw I  post cute pictures of my child every now and asked if I could shoot her engagement photos. Sure I said, but I am bring my wife and kid. ( Goes back to my first paragraph)

My wife is a very creative soul and researched engagement poses and we went to work! I have to say I was impressed with how they came out Maybe my wife and I can pursue this hobby together and fund the children's college fund!

As you can see its been a very busy summer! We look forward to many more memories to be made this summer!

Transformations!

There are a lot of transformations going on in the Stokes household these days. First my son who just turned 15 months old is starting to look like a little man! Its hard to believe that in a few short months he is going to start going to school two days a week. Its hard to believe is 15 short months he has went from this

To this! 

Another thing that has transformed is my office. My wife and I have been planning an office remodel from about 6 months. I don't think any project we have done to date had more planning then this one. (I don't think we planned as hard when we built our house)  Well after about 2 months of planning and three weeks of work

My little helper

We can call it complete!

Another DIY project in the books and one my wife and I are proud of!

The last transformation going on is our back yard. Remember when we moved in our house our yard looked like this

To last year looking like this

Then our big project this year was to add a little patio

We are loving the back yard, we spend a little of every day out back with our little man making memories!

What boy doesn't need his first run in the sprinklers 

He loves his cats and they love him!

 So as you can see a lot is changing at the Stokes house. We are now looking forward to a fabulous summer!  ( We are going to have so much fun I quit my second job to have more time at home)