funny pictures.

last night there was a carnival for the kids and we got some really funny pictures! clara looks like she is harboring nuts for the winter (she is on the right) and adam has yet to take a serious picture, but i'd still say these are keepers!

We have arrived.

we are here in upstate new york in the beautiful adirondack mountains on a vacation with my family. we rolled in yesterday after staying the night in albany and having dinner at a favorite, red robin. we are staying at a little place called camp of the woods. i think I blogged about it last summer. i love this place. it is peaceful and fun and the highs are in the upper 70s! holla! here are a couple of pics i snapped today. we are here for a whole week and i am pumped about hanging with the family, playing on the beach, and having more campfires where we wash down s'mores with chocolate milkshakes. perfection.

smiles.

i love these smiles!

Lil' bit.

here is my little bitty. i put her in cole's portable high chair the other day while i finished up washing dishes and just burst out laughing at how tiny she is. oh, elise, you are so cute and little.

getting ready.

we are gearing up for vacation this week. on friday, we leave for new york for a week with my family in the adirondack mountains. we are so excited! packing, as always, is going to be a challenge. apparently I also need to find a better fitting hat for the girls because this infant size seems to be made only for infants with extremely large heads.

i am definitely not looking forward to traveling through busy airports again with the kids. and the 3 1/2 hour flight is not going to be relaxing either. but the kids continue to surprise me with their adaptability so hopefully this vacation will not be the exception!

stylin.

so i really have not bought many clothing items for the girls because we were given so many cute things and we are on a budget. but i have over the last couple months bought a few things that i couldn't resist for the girls when the deals were too good to pass up.

i love zulily.com and found two of these things for the fall.

and these for next spring/summer.

then i went to canton one weekend (you texans know what i'm talking about) for their huge sale and i found these adorable dresses also for next summer.

then a friend told me about a huge sale of smocked clothing that i went to last night. 

heaven help me. they had so many cute things.

here is what i ended up with.  a cute owl dress for now that may be their dedication dress in september, their christmas dress, a dress for their birthday and one for next fourth of july.  

they were such good deals and so cute that i couldn't resist!  

(plus i had gift money for the girls and knew getting these special dresses would be a perfect way to use it!)

here is clara girl modeling her new dress.  

how cute is she???

i knew having girls was going to be trouble!  

5 months old.

the girls turned 5 months old on sunday!  

wow.

they are still teeny tiny.  we went in for a weight check on monday and clara weighed in at 11 lb 9 oz and elise weighed 10 lb 13 oz.  

now prepare yourselves once again for cuteness overload.   

i take way to many pictures.

growing up.

since when is my baby allowed to have shave time with daddy? this is happening too fast people.

however, i do love that cole is such a helper these days! he loves to help with everything he can and we had a great time making, and eating, banana bread together during our special mama and cole 'by yourself' time. my baby is less like a baby each day.
sniff. sniff.

date night.

today is our anniversary! we actually were able to get away from the kids for a couple of hours for a date to eat some really yummy food and have entire conversations revolving around adult topics. so fun!

i am so lucky to be married to this man and am thankful to spend my life with him. there is no one else I would want to go through this journey of life with!

a sad day.

today we said goodbye to our dear, sweet scooby doo.  

on wednesday, we noticed that scooby was not looking good and that he had a lot of swelling.  yesterday, he looked worse and when brenner took him to the vet, the doctor told us that he either had cancer or a liver disease, neither of which was good with his symptoms.  brenner brought him home for one more day of spoiling and love before saying goodbye to him today.  

i hate that it was so fast. 

but it was bad and i am so glad that he did not have to suffer.  

but my heart hurts.  

losing a pet is like losing a member of the family, at least around here. 

he enjoyed several hamburgers from sonic and a final peanut butter sandwich on his final day to make it enjoyable.  and while the kids napped he and i were able to snuggle on the floor for a couple of hours, since that was his favorite thing to do.  

he was our one dog that never got in trouble, never caused us trouble and actually obeyed us most of the time.  and he would have turned 11 on tuesday. 

i will miss you, sweet scooby doo. 

  

sister cuteness.

so cute.

bye bye baba.

well, the day is here. this week cole said goodbye to his pacifiers, otherwise known as babas around here. he has only used them during bedtime for over a year but i definitely wanted to get rid of them by the end of the summer. i was going to wean him off of them by the time he turned 2 but he showed an interest in potty training first and I was much more inclined to get him potty trained than to get rid of the baba. anyways, he has slowly been chewing up his pacifiers and last week he was down to just one. we told him when he chewed up the last one, he would not get anymore. well, he chewed a hole in his last pacifier and that's it. when he asked about it night before last and we told him that they were all in the trash and he couldn't have anymore, he responded, okay! well if I had known it was going to be this easy i would have done it a long time ago! once again, my good boy surprised me by being so good!

sweet kisses.

sweet daddy kisses for elise.  

ranch doings.

here is my final post about our time in oklahoma.  i meant to get this done on friday but since we got back, things have been so busy!
up in oklahoma, cole was able to enjoy so many more things than last summer.  

i LOVE the age that cole is at right now,  as he says the funniest things and his personality is developing into such a funny and thoughtful child!
he also understands so much, and loves to try new things, so he really enjoyed fishing for the first time with brenner and my dad and horseback riding for the first time (which i did not get any pictures of because i was not there either time brenner took him! so sad!)  but here are a few pictures from their fishing expedition, which i also was unable to go on but brenner took the camera to capture the first fish this boy caught!

as i have mentioned a few times, while we were there, i took a break from running and just walked each morning.  i really wanted to take in the beauty of my surroundings.  okay, that and i would have to run uphill for a mile starting out and that did not appeal to me at all at 6:30 in the morning.
so i walked.  and all of the dogs came with me.  they loved it more than me.
here is jake looking happy since this is the place that he gets the exercise that he really needs.  this dog runs the whole time we are here.  it is the only place we ever see him tired. 

beautiful plains from the top of the hill.

in the evenings after our evening walk, the girls and i would hang out on the porch.  since it didn't get dark until about 9:30, it was a nice time to enjoy the sunset and cool temperatures before bed.  and we were close to the smores as they cam off the grill.

some of my activities included making sand plum jelly.  i have posted about this before, two years ago, when i made 4 batches of jelly.  well, i did not have time to do that this year, but i was able to make 2 batches, which yielded 12 jars.  yum.  this stuff is tasty.  i also made plum dumplings a couple of nights and brought a few plums home with me to make them again tomorrow night. 

picking them is the worst part.  

fashionable ain't i?

 cole liked to help pick too.  meaning, he would ask daddy to find him one to eat while mommy did the real work. 

but the end result was worth it!  

my family is very happy that i made jelly this year.  they enjoy the fruits of my labor, literally. 

windmill beauty.

we are on our way home today, back to waco and real life. everyone is extremely sad in our car right now that we have to leave, even the dogs. they are sniffling as we speak. but as we drive, i thought i would share with you some of my favorite pictures from this trip.
so i have a slight obsession with taking pictures of windmills. we have a windmill on the ranch on the road leading down to the house and i can't help but take pictures of it as i walk by on my morning and evening walks up here. one of these days i am going to get some of my pictures on canvases to hang up on our currently bare walls of the ranch house. here are a few of my favorite pictures that i took, including one of cole from the windmill park in town that he LOVED. i think the boy has taken after his mother and her love of windmills.

little man in the spotlight.

my sweet and wild cole.  

what an incredible joy you are to our lives.

and what an incredible ball of energy you are.

seriously, this kid. never. stops.
i know you expect this of toddlers, but when sunday school teachers who have taught for a couple of decades, and mothers of 6 children and preschool teachers all tell you, 'wow, he has a lot of energy', that says something. 

but we love this little guy more than life itself and he is teaching us to be better parents and better people every day.  

cole is quite verbal, shocking since he has such quiet parents.....  

here are some of the funny things and situations that have made us laugh recently. 

around easter, we talked a lot about Jesus and his rising from the grave to conquer death.  we talked about the cross, and some about his death, but mostly focused on christ's rising.  so i thought that i would teach cole the phrase 'christ is risen!' to say on easter and to tell people about the true meaning of easter.  so, we practiced a lot and around easter we used the phrase 'christ is risen!' a lot.  then after easter, it came up a few times but much less frequently.  i did notice it was often around lunch but didn't think much about it.  then one day, i pulled out some craisins to put on my salad and cole saw and yelled out, 'cole wants some christ is risens!'  it took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about.
apparently, cole thinks that craisins, which i guess was my snack of choice around easter, are actually called 'christ is risen'.
i am so glad that understands the true meaning of easter.

a couple of weeks ago we went for a family walk after dinner and i pointed to the sky and said 'cole, look at those big clouds.'  he responded 'actually, mama, they're beautiful'.  


we don't let cole play with coins because they are considered a choking hazard and i had a friend whose son swallowed a penny which was pretty scary.  they are one of the things that i have deemed 'a choking hazard'.  but he does like to look at them and he knows what a piggy bank is.  the other day he saw a couple of coins and i could tell he was struggling to find the right words to say as he thoughtfully compiled a sentence of 'mama, i put the choking hazards in a guinea pig'.  hmmmmm....couldn't quite find the right words.  
no one else would know that translates to coins in a piggy bank.  

he makes us laugh as he is constantly recounting past events and talking about things from last week and even last fall.  his memory is amazing!  i am in awe of his long sentences and how he sounds so grown up.  
last summer he would say 'day-day' for dangerous when we saw a fire extinguisher and last night when we were grilling out, he turned to brenner and said, 'that fire is very dangerous daddy, cole can't touch it because it's too dangerous'.  


he is also pretending a lot more and since going to several baylor baseball games, he has been pretending that he is a baseball player.  while eating breakfast yesterday, he was swinging his spoon around and when i asked him to stop he said, 'mama, i  am swinging the bat really hard and am hitting the ball really far past the camera and the fence'.

when we were working on our shapes puzzle, he picked up the circle and told me, 'that's a circle, not an octagon.  octagons have 8 sides, murray taught me that.'  

thank you sesame street.  i had no idea he had picked that up!

we also says 'watch this!' and 'look at me!' moments.  

someone likes to be the star of the show!

here are some other things that my boy knows and will tell you all about:
he can count to 18
he knows his birthday
he knows brenner's cell phone number
he knows he lives in waco, texas
he knows most of his letters, and when singing the alphabet song, says 'm and m oh me' instead of l m n o p
he knows all his shapes and colors
knows he is 2 years old
he is learning right and left.  
sings jesus loves me.
can tell you all about noah and moses.  


he loves all things construction, trucks, cars, trains, planes and boats.  he never misses anything interesting on the road!  
elmo has taken a backseat to mickey these days, but he still likes sesame street.
loves all animals.
loves to help daddy work outside and mommy cook in the kitchen. 

so there is a little bit about our boy!  sorry to go on and on about him, but this is my blog and i will do whatever i want :)

we love our little man more than anything and are so proud of the sweet, energetic boy that he is!