We are leaving tomorrow afternoon for DC to spend V-Day with Ryan's bro and fiance.....so excited.

So eat our dust Lynchburg....we are out of here. Anyone have any tips on flying? We haven't flown in 3.5 years and I know all the rules have changed and I am dreading reading all the crap that Expedia has been emailing us regarding regulations.

Oh and if you have been neglecting your duties of checking the Kellan blog (tisk, tisk) then you missed Ryan's photoshoot of me. I tried my hand at fake eyelashes and they were much easier than I thought. I had to trim them back a bit because they were a little too showgirl for my taste, but they look really natural...two thumbs up...bringing two with me to Vegas to have those "come hither" eyes for Ryan. He will not know what to do with me being able to free my mind from the mom schedule in my brain that runs in 1-3 hour increments of changing diapers, feeding, napping, etc.... I only need to focus on him. About time!

Shazam....look at this sweet old bus!

and the eyelashes

The rest are on Kellan.

Smell you later.

Feel free to shove some money in my bra for all the great tips! I am not above that.

I was actually going to record myself on video pleading with you to understand that although my love for you still exists I am unable to show you in physical ways. We may need a little blog marriage counseling. I have several drafts started and saved telling of our lives over the last three weeks but i just can't seem to finish them.

I have tons of pictures edited ready to post and I just can't seem to sit and do it.

What should I do? I was going to declare blogging bankruptcy and just start posting from this day forward instead of feeling guilty about not posting from the past. I mean I still have Chloe and Lucy's b-day pictures from November left to show you!!!!

oh...it was her party and she cried if she wanted to! ( and not the pretty feminine kind)

or my all day Ikea trip with my girlfriends

or our two days away in DC spent with Ryan's brother Dan, Joe and his fiance Joanna.

All I can do is ask for your undying devotion. On the count of three poke your finger with a needle, wipe a drop of blood on the screen and take a blood oath to solemnly swear to be faithful during my unfaithfulness. Ready? One, two....three.......

Good, now we have our commitment re-established...let me share something exciting from today.

We have been featured on The Brides Cafe!!!! Whoo hooo......this is such an awesome, well known and respected bridal planning blog. They are featuring our New Years Eve shoot of Ryan's brother, Joe and his fiance Joanna.

Images like this....but see this is where this blog sucks because I can't post them full size....this is why I push the Kellan blog so much. Let the pictures take you away.....oh and it totally rocks when you leave comment love on the Kellan blog, makes us feel popular and fulfills that junior side of us that needs a little attention.

and many many more on The Brides Cafe and of course our original post on Kellan.

You can also check a sneak peek of our new logo on the homepage of The Brides Cafe....see this is where all our time and energy is right now, getting our rebirth of Kellan ready!!!! This is our baby and right now we are in full blown 3rd trimester pregnancy. You know third trimester wipes you out and you can't focus on too many other things...this is why I can only post on the Kellan blog right now....so if you want to see pictures of my ridiculously awesome kids....then go over there. See I still exist....just not on Filtering Life right now.

So there it is, true confessions by Kelly Portnoy. I will try to pick up where I left off. I can only recommend you check the Kellan blog as much as you check here, chances are you will get more frequent updates over there!

Thank you faithful readers.

Now I need to shamelessly direct you to the Kellan blog to cast your vote on the "Besties" of 2008. This is by no means an exhaustive list of favorites, but just some that have grabbed Ry and I over the year. I need a good number of votes cast so that we can truly pick a winner to bless with a Christmas enlargement. There is nothing lamer than having a contest and nobody votes...whant whaaaaaaa. So please

CLICK HERE PEEPS

and cast your ballot for what image grabs you and maybe tell us why. We love feedback and we love that you guys are so awesome at directing traffic our way. MUCHAS GRACIAS!!!!!!!

I really really really want to order some boots. I love the boots over the jeans trend...comfortable, sassy, love it! Thinking either these

or these

Anyway, I have what doctors would call "pear shape syndrome". This has only been exaggerated by my recent piggyback pregnancies. Sigh....it was worth it!

So we are getting our pictures taken in about a week and a half for our new Kellan blog coming in January (it is going to be so awesome!!!) and then Vegas in February. So I want to look trendy but not foolish. My biggest fear is looking like an upside down drumstick.

Here's the pinch. In order to really wear the boots over jeans you have to wear skinny jeans which I swore off! (nobody likes when you try to fold regular cut jeans into little pintucks and shove them into boots.) I know Old Navy makes my size/height in skinny jeans so I could buy a pair to wear with the boots....but again...this image of a drumstick from behind haunts me. Not to mention my short legs. So hard to know and I don't want to waste money.

Opinions? You won't hurt my feelings, really. I am a realist that not all styles are for all people and I need to let somethings go.

So should I go for it or just let this trend ride out it's time?????

It has taken much research and discussion to find a name that is unisex, brings us peace and closure, and keeps our hearts reflecting on this child with the right attitude and with hope that we will be united one day.

So the name for baby #3 is

Jory- "God will uplift" -Hebrew definition
Lee- "Healer" - Celtic definition (also my middle name)

So, Jory Lee Portnoy

God will uplift and heal.....so perfect, so true

November 21st we will now remember the passing Jory Lee into the presence of Jesus awaiting our arrival someday soon.

I am on Twitter peeps. So if you feel the need to know all that happens in my ultra ultra glamorous life...then please, come follow me at

http://www.twitter.com/kellyportnoy

Blind leading the blind. Gotta admit, it is fun and way less commitment than blogging. Like wearing red lipstick on a special occasion. I can handle that!

See you in Twitterland......

On to Vegas....we need help!!! We are going to WPPI February 15-18th to take in some of the most celebrated photographers and gorge on photography products. We will be joined by these two knuckle-heads.

Our besternet friends and super talents behind Emblem Photography, Dustin and Christy. If you are in western Canada...you MUST MUST MUST have them come shoot for you. Not only will you laugh your butts off, you will get some killer images!!!!!! We love these two and often have Skype dates talking for hours on end. I am still recovering from our 12:30am chat from last night....but totally worth it. Christy and Dustin, we are gambling with YOUR money...you owe us for suffering with the time change on all our chats!

So...here is what I need help on. We are trying to book our flights/hotel but we have no clue where things are in relation to each other and we also don't know what is super reputable! We need help. It is definitely more financially wise to book flight and hotel together. The best deals put us at either the MGM Grand, Las Vegas Hilton, Caesars Palace, Planet Hollywood, or Paris Las Vegas. Those are in our price range. WPPI will be at the MGM Grand so it may just make sense to stay there or maybe we should be a little bit away. Advice, advice, advice!!!! Is everything in walking distance, will we need to rent a car for the four of us???? Amy Martin, didn't you go to this....help a sister out. Anyone else we know going?

ALSO......to all readers who have written to us "IF ONLY YOU LIVED HERE I WOULD TOTALLY BOOK YOU." This is your time!!!!! If you are in the area and would like to book a session in Vegas or the desert we would LOVE to book some sessions while we are there. We will definitely be shooting our brains out and would love to book some sessions instead of shooting each other the whole time. IF you are interested in having Kellan or Emblem take solo, duo, groups, weddings....whatever....please email or comment and I will send a price sheet your way! Make it worth our while peeps. Valentines gift? Do you want us to make you look like this?

But with some desert or Vegas lights in the background.....come one, you know you want to invest in your inner blue steel!!!

So please, comments, advice, book us...help feed our children! Look at Bennett his just skin and bones

Read this whole post before commenting. Let me share the one and only picture.

This is, was and will always be baby #3.

Was, that is a hard word to write. Was because as quickly as we found out, they slipped away to be with Jesus.

Friday, November 21st we said goodbye to our third child. We didn't know it at the time, but we know it now. I thought I was experiencing my first period after having Bennett and boy was it a doozy! I have never ever experienced cramping like that before, it literally rivaled labor on the pain scale. As I lay for hours in my bed praying my Tylenol would help take away the pain I also was running to the bathroom and changing my pad every 30 mins because it was soaked through. In one hour I passed three plumb sized clots....scary stuff, especially because I have never passed anything like that before. I finally took a muscle relaxer so I could get some sleep and to numb the pain.

The next day I felt much better, even shot an 8 hour wedding. Sunday, no problem just regular bleeding like a period. I just chalked up Friday's episode as some horrible 1st day of a period. Monday morning I woke up with more cramping and some severe bleeding. Hmmmmmm......so weird for a fourth day. I called my mom and explained what was going on. After a long pause she said, "Are you sure you are not pregnant and miscarrying Kelly?" WHAT????? Pregnant and miscarrying....ummmmm...no way. She encouraged me to call my doctor just to run everything by them. As soon as I talked to the nurse on call she changed her tone immediately and told me to take a pregnancy test as soon as possible to confirm if I was/am pregnant. Cue tears, fear, confusion, shock. Was this really happening?

Ryan rushed home immediately with a digital pregnancy test in hand. As you can see from the picture I indeed was/am pregnant. SHOCK. This is not happening. If I am pregnant, then what was Friday night all about?

One hour later, sitting in the waiting room of my OB, scared, sweating, confused. I can NOT believe I am pregnant. The sheer lack of sex around our house is almost laughable. It is truly a miracle pregnancy. My mind and my heart were at battle. On the one hand the thought of three kids under three made me want to puke. I can not imagine physically going through pregnancy AGAIN..three times in a row, finances, insurance, Kellan, oh my word...God was going to have to do something huge to provide for us and to give me the ability to go through another pregnancy. On the other hand, this is our baby, our REAL baby inside of me. No matter how difficult physically, emotionally or financially it is only temporary. No we did not remotely plan this, but my word, I don't want to lose a child, our child, the thought of this made me want to puke. Both scenarios had their share of fears and guilt tied to it. It was just so much to process in just a couple hours.

Ultrasound showed an empty womb but my uterus was definitely enlarged and thickened showing all signs of pregnancy. Off to the lab for bloodwork and HCG count. A few hours later we were told my count was at 1875...a good count...but nothing to compare it to to know if it went up or down since Friday. All we could do was wait 48 hours and come back in for another draw to get our answer....pregnant or not.

Monday night=hard, sad, lonely, helpless, clinging to Jesus. Tuesday=fairly easy emotionally, no tears, pretty peaceful, my mind would not rest on one scenario or the other, holding Bennett and Chloe a little closer. Wednesday=scared, sad, sick, more clots and bleeding, yet nauseous. It took forever for 1:00pm to come for my next blood draw. We had to wait for hours to get the result. We also had to take Chloe to the orthopedic for some x-rays and examination of her right foot/hip (all ended up okay with this). I was dreading this appointment after her shenanigans at her two year exam. All things were coming at once.....her appt., waiting on results, her appt., waiting on results. We were in the waiting room when the phone rang, the nurse told me my count was drastically down to 800 HCG, I had indeed experienced a miscarriage. Nothing but numbness covered me. The door opened up and Chloe was called in for her appt. I couldn't really process anything until we were back in the car.

Then the tears started and boy did they start. I think I really thought I was going to keep this baby despite the trauma of Friday night. I bled with Chloe and Bennett, although never to this extent....so I had that hope that maybe, just maybe, they would survive. My girlfriends were praying round the clock for me (thank you all, I just love you) My mentor, Mary sent me one of the most beautiful word pictures while I was waiting for my results. This is the lady who lost her one and only daughter in labor at 9 months, still born. She also lost one son at 3 months old to SIDS. She knows loss, she knows grief, she knows trusting God in the hard and uncertain times.

I want you to think on this for a moment. You do not have to worry about
this baby. This child either grows and develops and opens her/his eyes
someday to look into his loving, expectant, joyous parents' eyes .....or
he/she opens her/his eyes and sees Jesus. It's a win/win for this baby.

Do not worry about this baby. He/she is fine.

And as for you and Ryan.......you'll have the joy of knowing this child
in 9 months..........or you are populating heaven.....you have created a
child to worship, serve and praise Jesus. And in what is really a
relatively short time you will have the joy of knowing this child.

When we were waiting on Elam and Ella to
be born.......I could see my daughter, my son and Matt and Charity's 20
embryos cheering Elam and Ella on in the womb. Sorta like cheerleaders standing on
either side of the goal post cheering the football team onto the
field.....except so much better. They were all these darling blondheaded
children from babes to 2 and 3 year olds. I just like to think on that.
I like to think of all of them worshiping and praising God and welcoming
others into heaven.

This child has a destiny and a purpose.

And that's it. That is my comfort and my hope. Our baby left my womb and opened their eyes to the perfection of Jesus Christ. They are waiting to meet us and to spend eternity with us as a family. It is a beautiful and peaceful image and I cling to it. I know for some people they may see this and be able to empathize or sympathize with this pain. Others may not understand why I would be so upset when it was such a short time of knowing. I do not know how some of you that have gone full term with a child and then lose them cope. I can not imagine the grief. A lost child is a lost child. Although the timing scared us poopless, once we got over that it still boiled down to the fact it was our child.

So Thanksgiving was tough. It was beyond tough to have a household full of 18 people 24 hours after finding out you miscarried: cooking food, tending to our children, but my house was full of loving family and that is never a bad thing. By the end of the night I needed to retreat and be alone and have another cry.

My grief just tends to sneak up on me in little waves. Sometimes it is silly little triggers, other times it is big things, like sitting in the doctors office again today getting another draw to test levels having to talk to the nurse about every little sign my body is making as the baby is leaving me. Couldn't help myself, just had another cry. I had to sit there with round belly mothers and I could only clutch my belly and feel a bit empty.

I am more thankful for Bennett and Chloe than ever before. I can't imagine if this was my first child or for my dear friend "C" and her 5 failed IVF's resulting in the loss of 20 fertilized, growing embryos. I have my two sweeties in the flesh to kiss, hug and enjoy. Someday they will see this picture, the one and only picture I have of baby #3 and they will know this story and they will have the joy of knowing that a brother or sister is waiting for them in heaven.

Thanks for hanging in on a very long story. Continue to pray for us but please, more than anything, be thankful for your families and all the blessings around you. We are ALL blessed and God is ALWAYS good.

What I do want to spoon feed you is our latest photoshoot. We are working on a trade-out right now with a local videographer. Our new blog launch is coming soon and it is going to be SAHWEEEEET, modern, funky and complete with an intro video that is coming along awesome. Our end of the trade-out was to take some photos of Brad and his girlfriend Lyndsey. Let's just say these two are smoking hot and loaded with style.....so in many ways we finally got to flex our muscles and shoot what we wanted, how we want to shoot and with total creative freedom. They bought some great clothes and Lyndsey even let me put a faux hawk in to complete the look. Here are some teaser photos, the rest are ...say it with me...."On the Kellan Blog"....I think I may have written that a time or two or twenty.

Also, you guys have been so great about leaving comments on the Kellan blog and Ryan was messing around getting rid of some SPAM and somehow deleted all the comments from the last 15 posts!!!!! So sad and discouraging. So if you are feeling particularly generous and want to leave some love on any posts you enjoy, we would totally appreciate it!

High fives and butt pats!

I'm just sayin....CHEMISTRY!!!!! There are so many great ones, they were so incredible to work with. So if you don't feel too pale and style-less after looking at these go check out the rest.

Today is Chloe's official b-day. At 7:38 this morning I told a highly uninterested Chloe that, "Mommy pushed you out of her vagina at exactly this moment two years ago. You owe mommy a huge thank you because you tore her most precious place all up and I thought I would never sit again." She, wanting no part of that conversation, kept eating her banana and watching Curious George. What an ungrateful wench! Not really.

memory from her first b-day

I think the best part is when Ryan brought her into our bedroom and we started singing "Happy Birthday" to her and she didn't even crack a smile. Talk about feeling like a donkey. The last line kinda trailed off...."Happy birthday to.......you...sucka" I think next year it will make a little more sense to her.

She looked a little like this. Her famous stink face. It takes many forms, but every time it is hilarious!

Totally forgot about this one...rubber face!!!

This doesn't even look like her. One of her earliest spottings of the "stink face"

I'd be ticked too if I woke up with this hair.

Stink face supreme.

Flaring the Chicklet teeth, double nasty.

We did an early b-day last night by setting all her gifts up on the dining room table and putting a #2 candle in a piece of pound cake. Ryan brought her down from her nap and we sang to her while her eyes scanned a table full of cheap plastic crap mostly in the colors pink and purple. Too bad cheap plastic crap costs so much money! She has been princess-fied, Dora-fied, and Barbie-fied my job is done.

Just because I thought it wouldn't be "that bad" I scheduled Bennett's 6 month shots and Chloe's 2 year check up and shots at the same time yesterday. This was a two parent job, I am not that crazy to think I could do it by myself. Chloe has always been awesome at doctors visits. Laid back, curious, sweet, cooperative, a breeze. Until, UNTIL....she turned two.

I think we started off on the wrong foot when they decided a finger prick for iron levels should be the first order of business. It went down, like the Titanic, after that. We literally had to restrain her for the ENTIRE check up. She would not cooperate for one minute with any part of the exam. She was crying so much she was gagging herself. (dramatic...just a bit) Me, never the compassionate one, was so annoyed by her behavior, not to mention embarrassed, but what could we do? It was the worst feeling watching your normally pretty cooperative kid act like a total spazz. She overreacted to EVERYTHING the whole visit. She would not even walk across the room to check her gait. No amount of stuffed animals, books, animal crackers, even Lifesavers made her calm down. Longest hour of my motherhood. Has this happened to anyone else with their two year old? She is at that rotten age where she can't reason the situation. She is stripped down, poked, prodded and even pricked and can't figure out why it is happening or why it won't stop. I am hoping by three we can have a little conversation about what is going to happen and that an awesome dollar store prize will await her if she can hold it together. We ended on a high note with a nice shot in the thigh which sent her into another whaling, gnashing and thrashing fit. It was awesome, I mean that in the horrible sense of the word. Best news, we get to come back next month for the second round of the shot and in 6 months for the final round. Goody goody.

So I just have to say that I am astounded by the sheer size of our children. I am not even kidding when I say we bust out laughing when they are plunked onto the scales. My dainty little Chloe Grace is tipping the scales at 32.5 lbs...that is the 94th percentile for weight and 36.5 inches...that is the 97th percentile for height. You ever heard the rule of thumb that you can double a child's height at two years old and get their adult height? For those of you math challenged peeps, 36.5 inches times two would be 6213. Should we just start sending her to basketball and volleyball camp right now?

Oh my word, how ironic is it that me, 5223, could have a possible 6213 daughter....there is a fine line between cool tall and freaky tall! Poor girl, I just don't want her to get made fun of in school, kids are cruel. Totally acceptable for boys to be tall, but girls seem to have a rough time until high school. Bennett tipped the scales at 20.5lbs (87th percentile) and 28.5 inches (94th percentile). Just a little waif of a boy! I feel like I always have to make a disclaimer that my kids are freakishly huge when people meet them because they expect them to act like a one year old and three year old rather than a two year old and 6 month old. There are worse things, I know this. I am just so thankful they are extremely healthy, that is all that matters, the freakish size part will work itself out.

Right? I mean I married a freak.

So that is the latest from the Portnoy Camp. Happy Election Day/Chloe's 2nd b-day!