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.

Our new invention

The double toddler bed:


I have no idea if this is really a new creation or if one already exists on some obscure website somewhere, but out of desperation and sleep-deprivation Marshall merged Jacob & Cole's separate toddler beds into one. Ever since they transitioned to toddler beds from the cribs they've insisted on sleeping together. While it's very sweet to see, they're really too big to share a small toddler bed and they wake each other throughout the night - which of course leads to sleepless nights for us. We tried separating them and putting their beds right next to each other, but they wouldn't have it. Thankfully their beds were really easy to merge - all it took was a cheap trip to Home Depot for some support beams and a little carpentry work. Tonight will be their first night in their new "king size toddler bed" and we're all hoping it goes well.

And tomorrow they turn 3...party pics to come!

Meet Luke! {and other winter fun}

Meet Luke, our Elf on a Shelf. Our boys named him, so yes, he's Luke as in Luke Skywalker. He's been around for a few weeks already, and each night while we're sleeping he makes his way back to the North Pole to give Santa an update on the kids' behavior. The kids adore him and have so much fun searching for him in his new location each morning. This morning we woke to find him riding one of our reindeer stocking holders...silly Luke!

And of course the obligatory shot of Diego...world's most tolerant and cooperative dog. :-)

Last Friday night we took the kids to see Santa. The same evening we got a good bit of snow - such perfect timing! This was the view from our front door that night. The kids stayed out playing until almost 10pm.

They were back out by 7:15 the next morning. It's not much compared to the snow we got last year, but they were happy and anxious to build a snowman.

Working on the snowman:

And here he is: the most pathetic snowman ever. Notice they used most of the snow from the front yard to build this little guy. They were happy with him, and that's all that matters. Cole insisted he have a carrot nose "like the song".

This morning was Owen's kindergarten Christmas program. The boys were wooden soldiers. They all looked adorable and did a fantastic job!

Halloween Eve

Tonight we went to a Halloween party at our friends' house - thanks for a fun time Lisa & Jay! Marshall will be working tomorrow and will miss trick-or-treat, so I wanted to get some photos tonight just in case things are too hectic tomorrow night.

Owen as Wolverine

Jacob as Batman

Cole as Superman

Marshall as Les Miles

And a rare photo of yours truly as a glamorous witch.

The other day I realized that it's been 15 years (almost to the day) since Marshall and I became enamored with each other at the 1994 Tallulah Academy Halloween Carnival. That's over half my lifetime! I had gray hair at the time (that box of temporary black hair dye lied!!), which he loves to remind me about each year as Halloween approaches. Anyway, we started dating soon after and, as they say, the rest is history. :-)

The little things

I am constantly amazed at how fast time goes by and how quickly the kids grow & change. To think that Owen was younger than Jacob & Cole are now when they were born, yet it feels like they arrived yesterday! Today while they were napping I grabbed my macro lens to try to capture some of the little things that I love about them.

Each of our boys has a lone freckle on the left side of his body. Jacob's is on his toe:

They all inherited Marshall's lashes:

Look at those eyes!

We've had some sleep issues lately and I came up with a reward system involving pirate coins and a treasure box to encourage them to stay in their own beds all night. While we still aren't getting as much sleep as we should, the coins & prizes are definitely good motivation for them. Today was a prize day and they chose temporary tattoos. Of course they all wanted them on their arms "like Daddy". They're so proud of them - I dread their reaction when they realize they have to come off!

Jacob with his fish tattoos:

Cole the rock star...very fitting!

Owen sporting 2 tattoos on each arm - pirate skulls and octopuses:


We had Owen's parent/teacher conference last week. He's doing excellent in school and had all S's on his report card (that's the best grade they can get right now). He loves learning and it looks like he may turn out to be a bookworm like his mom since he's reading anything he can get it hands on.

Jacob & Cole are still attending mother's day out twice a week. They love going to "school" and have really started to pick up on numbers & letters since Owen is pointing them out constantly.

Decorations

The kids are so excited about Halloween this year. Their costumes are ready, the pumpkins carved, but Owen insisted we aren't ready until we have decorations. Today we made spiders and ghosts to hang around the house.

Cole working on his spider:


Jacob showing off his spider. He used an entire glue stick on this one:

Jacob working hard on a ghost:

Owen and his spider "Sammy":

Cole:

Jacob:
Our finished decorations: