All smiles

Sometimes I feel like my kids make it too easy to take thousands of photos of them. They have the greatest expressions and often just have tons of joy and excitement in them. Don't mistake me...they have their days--those days when they do nothing but whine and make me want to pull my hair out--but those are rare days when lack of a nap or a new tooth is strongly influencing their mood. For the most part, they are the reason for my smiles and laughter, because well, they smile and laugh. Love my sweet family.

Such a happy boy. It's reallllllly hard to be studying another language when this cuteness is sitting next to you. He's just eating puffs, but one glance from his mama and he's smitten. Please say they will always be this smitten with me! And his teeth are really showing now!

Try to disregard the huge mop on my head. I didn't realize my ponytail was so propped up on the chair when Britton decided he wanted to take a photo of our fun. I don't really care though because of the sweet sweet faces on my sweet sweet boys. We had a cuddle moment with lots of tickles and enjoyed just being together.

You can disregard the mop of my head in the previous picture but do NOT disregard the pink and white Minnie mouse swim cap on Britton's head and the blue and white checkered swim cap on Caden's head in the below photo. The pools here require everyone to wear swim caps (not a horrible idea to keep hair out of the pool). We didn't have any swim caps, so our friends brought some for us and this was all they could find at the store. Gotta love it. I feel like they've never looked more alike than they do in this photo...same exact look (forcing a smile!). Also, love the background. So beautiful.

Grady and I opted out of swimming and chatted with the other girls instead. Love his crystal blue eyes. Everyone here loves his super white skin.

I don't know why, but I love this look on Caden's face. It's like he's pondering life. I find him so handsome even with his picnic checkered hat!

We had a picnic afterward with our friends. It was on concrete, but we had blankets, hot dogs, and a Frisbee. That's the closest thing we've had to a picnic in 2 years! The kids loved it too. Just a great time together with friends and family.

We had a week where we were all sick off and on, so one day we didn't have tutors come in and our house helper stayed at the house to clean while we got the boys out hoping Caden wouldn't puke everywhere. We went to our closest play area and let Caden ride all the little 'rides' outside. Grady also got to join the fun, and they both fully enjoyed it.

I love this strand of videos. There's several, but they're all short The first is of Grady being a major flirt with my tutor. A girl was obsessed with taking his photo one night at KFC and kept batting her eyes at him and now he tries to do the same. The second one is of all of Grady's talents. The third is me having fun scaring him. The fourth is Grady enjoying our touch lamp and the last 2 are of Caden and Grady riding their little rides (I love in the second one that Caden tells Grady to sit down and watch the movie on the little screen).

 

Monsters

It's hard to believe I was a sophomore in high school at my state cross country meet when I saw the first Monsters Inc. movie. I remember sitting next to my coach enjoying him laugh like a little kid as much as I liked the movie. Who knew a decade later I would be taking my husband and almost 3 year old little boy to see the second movie?! I told Britton when the movie finally came to our city that I wanted us to take Caden because he loooooves the first one. Grady is way to mobile to go to a theater, so we dropped him off with some friends and enjoyed the movie just the 3 of us again. The movie was really cute, but I enjoyed watching Caden watch. This was his second movie to see in a theater but his first in our city. I especially enjoyed hearing him when Mike Wazowski threw something across the room and Caden said, "Ohhhh, he's mad!" My little boy is growing up fast and is really cracking us up these days. A fun day. I look forward to many more.

Waiting to go in.

 Still waiting and enjoying the paraphernalia. I love hearing him say, "Mike Wazowski." It kinda comes out like "Ice-ka-kowski." Too cute.

 Getting his College ID. They grow up so fast!

 The movie was in 3D, but Caden hates wearing the glasses. The movie is a little blurry without them, but he didn't care. Of course, he dropped them, broke them, and we had the joy of paying for them. Souvenir!

Photo Shoots

I've really been enjoying my new phone (as already mentioned in nearly every post!). I told Britton that it was almost worth every penny just to have the convenience of the super awesome camera. There are other obvious perks to the phone, but I love capturing moments of life if at all possible. I also downloaded an awesome app called 'Pic Stitch' that allows me to make collages and has some awesome editing tools to turn a normal photo into what I think is a great one. Here's some of my fun.

This was Grady at 10 months. I can't believe that he's already 11 months today!! I took several photos of him for about 5 minutes and was very pleased with what I got.

 He's as sweet as he looks. That's the elephant we gave him when he was born.

 I recently printed this out to go on our wall at home after I realized we had NO photos of Grady anywhere in our home.

 These are some fun spots in our city. On one of my reflection days I did some walking and pr-ying and enjoyed the sites of our city.