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). :-)