Augustine's Birthday!

Augustine turned 3 yesterday!

August Cabin Trip

Ah! I keep forgetting to post pictures of our last trip to the cabin... like 2 weeks ago... :)

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!

Someone got into Aunt Nikelle's syrup...

Catching

And releasing (Augustine's hair is hilarious!)

Ella was not enthused with the creek

Discovering the wondering of the Etch-A-Sketch

Friday's Antics

This was one of the results of having all the girls (and their kids) over on Friday:

I seriously get a good laugh out if it just about every time I look out my sliding glass door. 

Ooooh children... ;) 

First Day of Preschool!

It was this little guy's first day of preschool at Miss Molly's

"The Smirk"

It took me a few tries.... or more.... ;)\

This is actually him at the Open House

I love how his hands are still slightly pudgy :)

 And he's of course going with his best friend, Eli!

Andrew says I may be a little more excited for him to go to preschool than he is. Not because I want him out of the house, but because I'm so excited for all the fun he'll have, the friends he'll make, and all the things he'll learn. And I can't wait for all the little parties and "homework" activities! Can you tell I was only able to teach 1 year of preschool (I ironically stopped because I had Augustine ;)

Tracking Daddy ;)

Augustine has had a pretty rough time with Andrew being out of town. I think this is the first time that Andrew has been gone and Augustine has actually comprehended that his daddy is going to be gone for a while. On top of that, he seems to be understanding so much cognitively right now that he's having a hard time coping emotionally. So this means we've been working though meltdown after meltdown after meltdown. Something I've bee trying to do to encourage him, though, is to make a simple calendar (and I do mean simple) to help show him how many days he has left until he sees his dad. 

My hope today was to be able to track Andrew's progress on his way home. However, our printer doesn't work (evidently you need to have both color and black ink for it to work... Not just color... Don't get me started...). So I made a ghetto map of the US by tracing one off my computer onto tissue paper and then taping it onto craft paper.

Ghetto? Yes. But it works ;) Now time to stalk Andrew on iCloud as he makes his way across the country with our good friend, Adam! Drive safe, guys!

Visit with Lauren

I took a little road trip with the kiddos today to visit my good friend Lauren in Prescott. I was able to see the new house she and her husband just bought and take a tiny tour of the town they live in. I'm in love with both the house and the town! I've only driven through part of Prescott before so I've never been able to see the downtown area which so happens to remind me a lot of the area Lauren and I grew up in. The weather was even similar! I unfortunately forgot to bring my camera, so we had to make due with iPhone photos :-/ 

Walking around down town. Ella looooove Lauren!

At the lake. Lauren did a pretty good job at keeping Ella from eating rocks ;)

Throwing rocks in the water. Of course.

I really need to get out of the habit of asking him to say "cheese"...

Yeah, definitely need to stop

Oh my

Practicing walking with Lauren

She evidently liked to look up at Lauren through her shirt

Beautiful Lauren and exhausted Ella

The car ride home. I think we wore him out.... ;)

Lauren is so good and patient with my kids. I can't wait to see her become a momma in January!

Oh Yeah, I Have a Blog ;)

Whenever someone asks me how we've been doing I say, "busy" and then realize, "oh wait... I'm always busy... and so is everyone else!" I've realized "busy" has become my new normal; it's just a matter of if I'm just busy or super busy ;) Anyways, I've been hustling about a little more lately so it's been hard finding a time to sit down and write a post. I normally schedule out time to do extra projects late at night after the kids go to bed. However, that time as been preoccupied with other things lately. For example, this:

Editing photos for the swim school's new website. Most of them aren't boring like this one but I'm assuming I'm not allowed to post pictures of our students' bright, shiny (and wet) faces on my personal blog ;)

But alas, I'm done editing (for now) and Andrew is in KY for almost a week so I have a tiny bit of spare time at night to write some posts. Here's a little snippet of what we've been up to:

We're getting ready for Augustine to start preschool. He'll be going to a in-home preschool with his best friend Eli. It'll be interesting adjusting to having a kid in school on a regular basis. I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. Good thing he'll only be going twice a week ;) Augustine will also be turning 3 at the end of this month so I need to get a move-on with planning his party!

Augustine's new backpack :)

Little Ella is hitting some new milestones. For example, her first set of pigtails:

Oh yeah, and she's also learning to wave, clap, and I got her to take a couple of steps the other day ;)

We've continued to have our girls' hang out on Friday mornings where us girls chat and our kids run a muck in my house. For almost a year now we've had 6-8 boys and only 1 girl over to play on Fridays. I think Ella is excited for her girlfriend, Audrey, to come home! A couple of us moms were laughing about starting to make blog posts dedicated to the shenanigans the boys get into while they are here. They're almost always up to something!

This is a small example of how the house looks after the little wolf pack of boys have ran through it ;)

The rest of this week is full with visiting my good friend Lauren up in Prescott, going to meetings for preschool, welcoming Andrew home (hopefully sometime Thursday) and then going to the cabin for the weekend.