Ol' Blue Eyes

Your eyes stop strangers in their tracks, my girl. And I'm so lucky, I get to stare at them all day long! Love your eyes, love YOU more.

Firsts

Can you hear it? Someone in the family is pretty smitten with himself that Lucy has decided that this is her first word.



7 months is a fun age. Still no teeth and she's days away from crawling. *I think* It sure looks like she is ready to crawl....

I just don't think I'm ready.

Just singin'

and dancin' in the rain.

Life as I know it

Is not perfect


Sometimes one is happy and the other is, well, grumpy.
It has its ups

and downs

It is full of laughter (I mean seriously, look at the looks on their faces, how can that not make you laugh)

and tenderness

And wonder. A wonderful life.

Cox Arboretum July 17th, 2009

Multitasking

First, there was this:

Brady's first bath, January 2006

Then this:

Lucy's first bath, December 2008

And now, this and it makes me smile because they BOTH love it. TOGETHER. And it's less work for me, hence, mulitasking.

But wow, where did those little babies go?

(another) Big Big Steam Train

You may remember seeing and reading about a trip we took to Knoxville, TN to ride this Steam Train. I have two boys (well one hubby and one son) that are a bit over the top with their trains. Big trains, little trains, model trains, Thomas trains, etc. So because of this I am always looking for unique train opportunities. I'm surprised at the great things I've been able to find within less than an hour of us. On Sunday, we went to ride the Lebanon Mason Railroad. We've been on this train before, several times actually. However this ride was different because a steam engine from 1930 was be pulling the train. You may or may not know that there are only a very small number of WORKING steam trains left in the U.S. So this indeed was a pretty special event. And was even better because some of our dearest friends, The Allard Family, joined us.

Brianna holding Lucy on the train, she helped me all day. I barely did a thing when we went out to lunch afterwards, she entertained and fed Lucy during our (very) long lunch.

Gisela and Mia, who will be 10 months old tomorrow.

Brady asking me for the 100th time "when can we go to the outside car?"
Mia and Lucy

The fire and the coal! So amazing.

The Allard's and The Zollars'

See Brady?

Isn't this a *perfect* family shot? LOL Oh Brady.
This is the face he makes at the camera about 95% of the time.

Local

I heard about this great little pizza place about 9 miles away from us in a town called Cedarville. I was getting my hair cut and the hairdressers couldn't stop talking about how delicious the pizza was. So we decided to check it out while my parents were here and we all left with very full and satisfied belly's. Mike and I have decided it will probably be our go to for Pizza Friday's. It was charming and the food was delicious. Love finding "local" places, those "Mom and Pop" shops that you much rather support than the big chains. Here are some pics from our evening at Colonial's.

Brady feeding Lucy a "Puff"

My parents!

Laura and I, it appears we were matching.

Pop and Brady. Brady gets his curls from Pop!

After dinner we stopped by Cedar Cliff Falls just to check out "the falls". So beautiful and peaceful. This park is actually a very large county park but we only had time to see one smalll part of it. We plan on going back to take a long walk exploring other areas of it.

Do you see Mike and Brady?

I have a lot more pictures to share of time spent with our families! We have had lots of visitors in the past two weeks and are looking forward to more in the upcoming weeks. Happy almost weekend!

This boy

makes my heart ache with love.

Today was a big day for him. That's picture above is of him after having his renal ultrasound. Some of you may or may not know that he was born with some kidney "troubles" that were found prior to him even arriving into this world. Well today after a series of tests we found out that his kidneys are 100% healed! Growing and functioning just like a little 3 year old should! He was such a brave boy today, last time he did all these tests was April 17th, 2007, so he was just over 1 year old and didn't really know what was going on. Today, at almost 3 1/2, clearly he understand exactly what is going on. I wish I had the CD with me that has all the images on it of his kidneys (they decided to send it to the base to put with his medical records) because even to the untrained medical eye you can see what was wrong and how it has healed in the almost 3 1/2 years since January 31st, 2006 when the first pictures of his kidneys (outside of the womb) were taken when he was just 6 days old.

I am so proud of my little one, my firstborn, my very best buddy.

This was taken later in the day but I posted it here b/c you can see the band-aid on his left arm (it's bright green), it's the only proof I have of the most traumatic part of our day, the bloodwork. Yeah, it wasn't fun. He was SCREAMING before they even touched him!

I took this picture because what was happening in it makes me laugh. Do you see the cars nex to the cabinet? They took a drive and had parked to go to the "horse race" and you can see the My Little Ponies lined up in a row for the race. I got to be the other pink horse after I took this picture, of course Brady's horses won all the horse races. Then the horses went back into the "barn", i.e. that plastic container on the floor, and then we had to drive the cars back to their houses. Thank goondess for the toys the Child Life department puts in the rooms, much more interesting than the books and crayons I had packed!

Family Love

I was so happy to have my parents and sister here for a few days over the 4th of July. It's always a good day when family is around.
I hope that you all had a wonderful, relaxing long weekend, wherever you were.

How do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

If you like her headband and flower visit this great etsy shop here.