Celebrating

It's Christmas Eve, and as we're gearing up to celebrate Jesus' birthday and open lots of gifts, I thought it would be a good time to update our family blog. On Thanksgiving our elf, Luke, returned to help Santa keep an eye on the kids' behavior. In the first picture he's wearing a party hat - he returned from the North Pole with it just in time for Jacob & Cole's 4th birthday party.

Jacob & Cole each requested very specific birthday cakes, which meant mommy had to bake (and I am NOT a baker or cake decorator!).

These next few are from Jacob & Cole's preschool Christmas program. We were a little nervous they would get stage fright, but they sang their little hearts out the entire time. We're so proud!

This year we tried something new for decorating cookies. We had the kids help paint them with a mixture of egg whites & food coloring. They LOVED it & it was so much less messy (and more sanitary) than having them help with icing.
They did pitch in & help decorate their own "person cookie" with icing last night. Can you guess why we only want them to use icing for their own cookies & not the ones we leave out for Santa?






Here are Cole & Jacob singing one of the songs from their Christmas program.

September already?

Without fail September sneaks up on us every year. The entire summer seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, which is saying a lot considering all the kids were home full time and I was trying to maintain some sort of sanity while being a full time mommy and running a business from home. Thanks to a trip to the beach, lots of time in the pool & several weekend trips to visit my mom we survived & had a great summer. Now that the boys have all been in school for a few weeks we're settling into a routine - it's good for all of us!

Of course the approach of fall means facing the always-stressful task of finding pants that will fit our tall & skinny boys. Jacob & Cole have always been so hard to fit. They need a 12-18 month size for the waist, but a 3t or 4t for the length. Last year we tried on about 20 pairs before finding some that worked, and even those weren't great. This year, our search is already over. Gap now has a "Mini Skinny" jean that fits them perfectly! They're a little long, but the cuffed look is in style right now and this way they'll last through spring. If you have tall, skinny boys I highly recommend them! Here's the link: Gap Mini Skinny Jeans

And here are Jacob & Cole modeling their new jeans (& shirts!) after the package arrived yesterday:

Jacob wanted to spin to show his off:

Aside from the thrill of getting stylish, well-fitting jeans for our little guys, yesterday was also exciting because it was Marshall's birthday!

Signing his card:

Here's a shot of the birthday boy (aka the best daddy & hubby anyone could ever imagine)! We had a fun, low-key celebration complete with cookie cake & burritos. :-)

After dinner the kids were on a mission to save some bugs & return them safely to their mommies, so we all ended up outside. It was a gorgeous, breezy evening...not quite cool enough for jeans & long sleeves, but Cole was not going to take his new clothes off.

Owen's newest obsession is with anything Army. His shirt was a souvenir from PawPaw-Mar & Maw-Gala's recent trip to France, and he wears it almost every single day after school. He'll probably wear it to school tomorrow since it's free dress day (I better go start some laundry!).

This may be my all-time favorite photo of Jacob. Laying on the grass for a picture was completely his idea. Look at those gorgeous eyes!

After a few minutes the kids were bored rescuing bugs & decided they wanted to play photographer. Owen had been watching some photography videos with me earlier in the afternoon, and he was determined to recreate some of the posing suggestions given by "the man in the video". He set up this entire "sniper" shot, complete with the gun prop. Then he proceeded to take a tack-sharp photo of Jacob at f2 with my 85mm on my 5D completely unassisted...impressive!

Then Cole decided to be the photographer and snapped this of Owen. I was nervously hovering beside him ready to dive & catch my camera, but he did great!

Jacob took this shot of me. Excuse the lack of makeup (and that's a pink camisole you see...not my bra). :-)

First Day of School 2010

After what seems like a whirlwind summer, school started this morning. It's hard to believe we have a first-grader and 2 preschoolers. The kids were all very excited and we had a fairly uneventful morning getting everyone to school.

The kids remembered taking these pictures in 2009 & insisted we recreate the moment this year.


Our big first-grader:


Cole, who insisted on tucking his shirt into his "soft shorts" (the only kind he'll wear these days) so he could be like Owen:

Jacob, demonstrating that Owen is starting first grade:

Our handsome preschoolers:

Vacation 2010

Happy Friday!!! It's been a busy week for us with an even busier weekend to come. Nevertheless, this morning I finally got around to putting together a slideshow of our vacation pictures. I was planning to do separate blog posts about some of the activities we did, but there are just too many photos to sort through. Here are a view of my favorites.

Buried on the beach.

Self-portrait by Jacob.


Cole.



Here is the link to our slideshow:

Vacation 2010 Photos

The kids took quite a few of the photos in the slideshow. Every photo of me was taken by one of the kids, and they took a lot of each other and other random things around the condo. Enjoy!

Deeders

This afternoon I found myself slightly bored for the first time in years. Seriously, the house is picked up, the floors have been vacuumed & mopped, I'm caught up on editing & placing orders for clients, and the kids are watching a movie. What an odd feeling for someone who is usually juggling at least 3 tasks at any given time! I took the opportunity to take a few photos of Diego since he hasn't been tortured with my camera in a while. He tried hiding, but I dragged him from his favorite spot and plopped him on our bed.

Reluctantly posing.

Are we done yet?

I'll sit here but I'm not going to look at you.

Don't feel too badly for him - he was on the bed for less than 30 seconds. We have terrible light in our bedroom (& I was too lazy to go find my flash), so there wasn't much point in continuing with the animal torture any longer.

I've titled this post "Deeders" because that's what the kids have started calling Diego when they speak to him. They are so helpful when it comes to caring for him. They all know how to put his special collar on him to go outside, they can each get him food & water and take it upon themselves to make sure his bowls are full each time we eat a meal. It's a great thing to see them going out of their way to make sure he's cared for!

Big News for Big O!

After about 6 weeks of wiggling, Owen's first tooth fell out this afternoon!! He's been worried for weeks that it would fall out at night & he wouldn't be able to find it. Thankfully it popped right out while we were sitting in the living room chatting with Uncle Todd. Of course Owen's immediate reaction was "I'm going to get more money!!!". :-)

We're back!

Last week we spent 7 days in Gulf Shores. We originally planned to stay only 5 days, but the beaches were beautiful, our condo was great, and the people coming after us canceled out of concern about the oil so we decided to stay a little longer. As expected, we have hundreds of photos from the trip...so many that most haven't even been downloaded off the cards! I'll be sharing more from the trip as I find time, but here are a few taken around our condo. It was located adjacent to a wildlife reservation, so we had beautiful scenery & wildlife right outside our door. (I'm sure Marshall would rather forget about the snake!)

Here's Cole hamming it up for the camera. Yes, he's outside in his boxer shorts.

Owen being his goofy self.

His serious face. Doesn't he look like Dub here????


And now for my favorite part of the whole trip. The first night the kids were out on the deck and we overheard someone say "look at all the hot dogs growing out there". They all got really excited (although Owen denies he did) at this. Curious, we walked out to find them all looking excitedly at the field of cattails next to our condo. Priceless!!


And yes, Jacob was on the trip with us, but he outright refused to be photographed much of the time. You'll see some shots of him as I share some of our adventures. :-)

The world according to Cole

This afternoon Cole had lots of fun playing with our point & shoot camera. There were a few gems mixed in with several shots of the floor. To see this bigger just click on the photo.

Happy birthday big O!!!!

Happy birthday to Owen! Today he is 6 years old. It seems like just last week we brought our chubby, happy baby home from the hospital, but now he's a big kid who reads, can do addition & subtraction, rides a bike without training wheels, and is a fantastic big brother.

Here's a quick snap of him this morning:



Saturday he had his 3rd annual Star Wars birthday party, and all his best buddies came to help celebrate.

Winter Fun

Well hello there! I knew our poor blog has been neglected as of late, but I was shocked to log on here tonight and see that I haven't updated since before Christmas. Shame!

Here are a few shots of our kids playing in the recent snow. They were beyond excited to have yet another snow day this winter, and Jacob was ready to pull all the Christmas decorations back out! (Sorry if you've seen these on Facebook already. We didn't get many shots since the kids were much more interested in running around than being photographed and I didn't want to get the camera out in the snow to get more shots.)

Owen catching snowflakes:

Cole:
Jacob:

Snowball fight!


And here's a little quip from tonight's dinner conversation:

Owen: Who lives in your heart?
Me: Jesus
Owen: But what does your heart do?
Me: Well, it pumps blood through your body.
Owen: Does God have workers?
Me: (wondering where this is going...) I suppose the angels are his workers.
Owen: So if God lives in your heart and your heart pumps blood, God must have worker angels living inside us to pump the blood in our bodies.

Smart boy.