Family Photos 2011

Hello!  I'm alive!  Things have been pretty crazy around here lately, and it won't be letting up any time soon.  I just thought I would share these family pictures we had taken last week.  Enjoy!

They're just from JCPenney, so they aren't all that great.  But we paid the exorbitant price they asked for the CD with copyright rights, so if any of you family members would like copies, let us know!

First Pigtails

Sarah's hair has been at a very awkward length for a while now.  We try to keep clips in it to keep the hair out of her face, but she pulls them right out.

It's just barely starting to be long enough to put into pigtails. :)  Whenever I can get her to sit still long enough, that is.

Here are a couple pictures from the first time we did it:

I'm still pretty bad at it, but I guess I'll get lots of practice in the years to come!

Funny Girl

Sarah was throwing a tantrum in my lap while I was sitting at the computer yesterday, so I looked around to see what I could do to calm her down and saw the camera.  I grabbed it, and Sarah immediately stopped crying and gave me a cheesy smile and said "cheeeeeese!"

I quickly changed the mode on the camera to video to see what she would do.

Here's my squirmy little girl:

My favorite part is when she said "Ba-Pa" for Grandpa.  She said this one for the first time when we were Skyping with my family on Sunday.  It's so cute. :)

Baseball in the Backyard!

Ask James and Paul what their favorite part of the new house is, and they will both probably tell you the same thing: the backyard!  We've got a lot of work to do on it before it looks good.  The "lawn" isn't much to speak of, and there are weeds everywhere.  But that doesn't keep us from having fun!

Yesterday we had a laid back Labor Day.  We started the day out right with fried rice for breakfast and then baseball in the backyard!  What could be better? :)

 Happy spectators, ready for a good show:

A few helpful tips from coach:

Ready...

Swing!

Our proud little baseball player to be:

And Sarah, our cute little bat girl, shagging balls with the best of them:

Hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day!

And So It Begins

Today James and I embarked on the adventure I have been dreading the most about motherhood...*dramatic pause*...potty training. Yep. I have avoided it long enough under the guise of waiting for James to be "ready".  Fact is, James would be happy to stay in diapers for years to come.  He couldn't care less that he's a late bloomer in this area.  He is, however, ready...and probably has been for some time now.

What with vacations and moving into our house, this summer has been too crazy to take on potty training on top of it all.  But we're here now, and we're settled, and frankly, I've run out of excuses.

Our first day in this new world had ups and downs, but fortunately mostly ups.  This morning we pulled out the Thomas the Tank Engine underwear and went for it.  We set a timer for regular intervals, starting at 10 minutes and gradually adding time.  We settled in at every 20 minutes, stretching up to 30 at the very end of the day.  It seemed to work pretty well.  We only had one accident, and there were even several times where James told me of his own accord that he had to go before the timer went off.

He filled up his sticker chart (which he has been working on since our very first feeble attempts at potty training many months ago) and earned himself a new book which he can read all by himself!

Sarah was pretty proud of her big brother, too:

All in all, it was a good first day.

Let's hope day two (and day three and day four...) goes just as well!

Hooray for summer...

...and corn on the cob! :)

Today was Sarah's first experience with corn on the cob, and we're pretty sure she liked it.

 
James, did too. :)

We're alive!

Can you believe it?  I'm actually posting on our blog!  I'm pretty certain I have never gone quite that long without updating before.  We have had a BUSY summer.  It's been full of trips and family and moving into our first home!  I haven't been able to get good pictures of the house yet, but I will definitely get to that soon.

One of my biggest excuses for not posting on the blog is the ridiculously bad luck we've had with computers and technology lately.  Our computers all decided to die at the same time.  Even Paul's old laptop that we always used as a back up decided to give up the ghost.

Even now, the only reason I have a computer to blog from is that a coworker of Paul's was kind enough (brave enough?) to let us borrow a desktop of his that he wasn't using.  We still have to figure out our situation, but until then, here's a cute video of my daughter who is growing up way too fast: (Please excuse her nasty face and shirt.  She had just eaten lunch and managed to get it everywhere.)

Isn't she cute? :)  Hopefully you can see past that disgusting shirt to that adorable face.  You'll be happy to know that the stain from that lunch came out completely in the laundry.  Thank you, Shout! :)