Happy Birthday Princess

Brinlee turned 2 on Aug 17th! I cannot believe that my baby is 2! She is so much fun and is LOVING playing with her babies and pushing them around in her new doll stroller. She keeps us laughing and singing as she loves to sing You are my sunshine and itsy bitsy spider - over and over and over again! We love you Brin.

my Favorite Photography web site.

This lady has AMAZING abilities to capture emotion, her name is Erin Drallos. The reason why I love her work so much is because she started a foundation consisting of multiple highly talented photographers all over the country called http://www.acpcg.org (the American child photographers charity guild) they go to photograph families with children who are sick or terminally ill. You have to check out her portfolio - bring the Kleenex - some of the shots are of parents holding the newborn they have just lost or a child that just "got it's wings" I cry everytime. But her work is inspiring and I love reading about good people using their talents to do great things for others. Her site is now listed under my fav photography sites on the right. I have been following her work for over a year now and I just kept forgetting to blog about it. You gotta check it out. http://www.footprintsphotography.com/index2.php

back yard cont.

So here are some more lovelies from our back yard endeavor. The boys worked so hard, and it was so blasted hot. We dropped 10 trees and had only 1 fatality...my bedroom window! I figure with as close as those trees were to the house and fence line( I don't even know if I would have been able to get another company to try it) that's just the cost of doing business! We had to chop off half of the deck to get one of the stumps out! Kyle liked that part. They seem to enjoy sawing and hacking things apart - especially when they are connected to MY house not THEIRS! They did awesome.


Here is a tuckered out Dustin at the end of day 1


Back yard after finishing the first round!



Thank heavens I have connections to people who own excavators...I don't want to think of how much it would cost...



The only mishap - alas, we were planning on replacing all of the windows anyhow so ...not such a big deal.


Dustin's bottom way up in the top of the tree.


Kyle sawing my deck to shreds.


And Dustin tearing it away from the house.

My Brother

This is my brother Dustin. No he's not in special ed. And he doesn't usually dress like this - but he was doing me a HUGE favor! He and his two sidekicks Lyle, and Brandon came over to the house today and took down 10 huge trees from our back yard. We have had these trees in the middle of the yard and no lawn since we moved in of course and I have been wanting a nice lawn and area for the kids to play forever. They worked all day in the heat to take the trees out and I just hope they know how much I appreciate it because it will make my life so much better when the kids can play in the back yard! Thank you Thank you Thank you - we owe you! I couldn't believe how well it went off because we don't have a huge back yard and so these trees were dangerously close to not only our fence but also our house! They did an AMAZING job. Thanks again guys - and we love ya Dust.


Dustin before taking down the first tree.

oh yeah baby!



Dustin is on the left, and Brandon (who I will always think of as a monkey from now on - he climbs trees faster than anyone I've ever seen) is on the right.

the garden

Oh our little garden! We finally decided to get a garden going this year and I took these pictures last week of our tiny tomatoes! We are pretty pumped about having this actually work - we even had a salad the other night with lettuce from our one garden! yay!

guitar

So I am sorry but my heart melts when my Husband plays the guitar, and now - after much begging from Parker, he is teaching him. It is the cutest thing and it is also wonderful because Parker doesn't usually have much of an attention span with anything for any length of time. He will play guitar with Dad for hours. I love it. I told Danny that he was too young and that we should wait, but now that I have watched, I can tell Parker loves it and hey - if it means quiet peace...I'm on board! I think we will be getting him a child's practice guitar that will actually fit him.

Breaking Dawn

So I just have to throw this in...I did of course go to the midnight party to get my one book and it was so fun with my two partners in crime Amanda and Sarah (who will henceforth and forever be referred to as Edna.) Anyways we got home around 12:30am on Saturday and I started reading and I finished it sunday evening! It is AMAZING. Total surprise and that is what I liked best. There is no way you could see any of it coming. Awesome. Even my Husband is into it (who was making fun of me when I first started reading twilight.) He is almost done with the third book and can't wait to start breaking dawn. I am so glad that I am happy, I was a little worried that I would be hating it or something but it is fantastic! My all time favorite books ever.