I'm Back!

I'm just going to pretend like I didn't neglect my blog since JUNE and pretend it's not already SEPTEMBER... I have no excuses. I just got blogged out. It takes time and we were spending our time having FUN this summer! The only way to post and move on is to share some pictures from our fun summer and hopefully I will continue posting more frequently. I think that will be pretty easy since today was FREEZING! I do love fall, but I can never fully enjoy it because I just know what's coming soon. Yuck. Oh, well, let's reminisce about the warm summer days...

Brendan celebrated his birthday, and I never posted anything from that! He turned 4 on June 13th and had a party at this bounce around place. He loved it and talked about it forever... and 2 other kids have had their parties there now because they loved it so much too. The lighting was all weird in there because it was supposed to look like outer-space, so I didn't get great pictures from the jumping area.

All of his little friends stopped playing for 5 minutes to pose in front of one of the big bouncers...

I was determined to go all out and make these Alien cupcakes I saw in this cookbook called "Hello, Cupcake!" I was pretty proud of myself!

Here is how we made those cool alien cupcakes!! A marshmallow half attached by icing, with a donut hole attached with more icing, then iced to glue them together, and then finally dunked in melted icing. A little much, but I was feeling Martha-ish that day. Here they are on display at the party -- so cute! They tasted pretty good too!

"Happy Birthday To You!"



We swam a LOT this summer. Such nice weather we had almost all summer long, with so many 90 degree days. That's a little too hot for me, but I'm not going to complain!! The sun was shining almost every day, and it was so nice!

This butterfly pool at Nana's is the best -- it's like a playpen -- there's no getting out!
It wouldn't be a summer without seeing how far Jeff can toss Brendan in the air... this started when he was 1!!

Pool mohawk! Brendan made such huge strides with swimming this year. He got so brave and would swim and jump underwater and even went off the diving board with an innertube around him. He preferred to swim with out his water wings because he could sort of doggy-paddle, but I was not having any of that!!


Lounging and working on our tans! My sister is a teacher and didn't get an extra summer job, so she was home all summer and it was so much fun! I'm currently going through Kelly withdrawl since she is back at school...
This is probably the reason for my camera frustrations. Every single pictures looks like this one! I have 25 others that are even worse than this. But it's really funny at the same time... Brooke totally beats up on Brendan and he allows it becaues he loves her so much. He is the sweetest big brother... who would've thought that's how it would turn out when I was blogging during my pregnancy on how he continuously reminded me that he "didn't wike babies..." HE ADORES HER!!

My brown eyed girl..
Brooke is getting so big, it's ridiculous. When I post these pictures from July, I think she doesn't even look the same!! It's weird. That was only less than 3 months ago. And I shed a tear, not because she's getting older, but because she was STILL KEEPING HER BOWS IN BACK IN JULY!! Now, not so much. It is SO ANNOYING!! That baby has had a bow in her hair since the day she was born. I just thought she'd be so used to it that she wouldn't mess with it... whatever, Mom. She rips that thing out so fast it's ridiculous. If I can distract her while I slip it in, I can get 5 minutes out of her before she realizes it's in there. But after that, she pulls it out, and throws it on the ground. Like, hard. Like, she wants to spit on it and step on it after it hits the ground. She probably will one day. Can you hear me crying?! So, I did what ANY mother would do once her little angel won't keep a bow in her hair. I went and got her ears pierced!! OK, that's not really the reason, but OH MY GOSH, she looks SO cute with those little earrings. And she does like them... I know this because she sucks her thumb and with her other hand she plays with the earring super gently. You know how kids play with their ear, or hair when they suck their thumb? Well, she plays with her earring... it's really cute. And she can't pull those out, so we're both happy!

And I wish I could post some pictures of a trip that Jeff and I took in August. JUST THE TWO OF US for 4 days!! But we didn't take any pictures. I'm not sure why? It's like, once you have kids, you don't really care about pictures of yourselves anymore! The whole time we kept saying, "We need to take a picture..." but we never took ONE. Not a single one! Funny. The kids stayed here supervised by their grandparents and Jeff and I drank cocktails by the beach and just hung out. It was SO NICE. And so weird at the same time. Like, 5 years ago vacationing by ourselves was so normal, and then 5 years later, it's like a gift from heaven. We seriously kept saying how we felt like it was our honeymoon all over again, except we enjoyed our time together even more because this time we knew what we were going home to!! In a good way!! But, you know what I mean!

I have been really really BAD about taking pictures lately. I got this new camera that I blogged about and was so excited about, but I found myself very overwhelmed by it and I have been getting really frustrated that I am not getting the fabulous pictures I was hoping for. I still need to take a class on it, but I sort of went on strike when it came to taking pictures. They keep turning out blurry, or it focuses on the wrong thing...I'm doing something wrong. OR maybe it's because my kids NEVER. STOP. MOVING. I have been using the "Sports" setting mostly so the movement doesn't interfere, but my children must be too fast for the sports setting too!! I think I need more patience. I'm the girl that just wants to jump into things without practicing or taking the time to work on it. I just want to do something and have it work and be perfect... I mean, why not?! So I really hope that over the course of the next year, you'll see some progress in my picture taking. And if you don't, well, don't tell me!... here's some I just recently took this week and you will see why I am frustrated!

OK, if you won't sit still, I will stick you in the Bumbo chair where you can't go anywhere! Then I will actually get a picture of your face, not your butt, and you won't be a blur in motion... Oh, wait, she looks cute, but she's out of focus. Let me try and snap that again...

Now that's in better focus, but I'm losing her... WAAAAAAH!

And... there goes the bow. I quit!! And my kids eyes are half closed like this in 90% of my pictures too. UGH!!! To be continued...