sweet, sweet dreams

conversion from the morning nap to the afternoon nap is going . . . um . . . well . . .

okay.

libby . . . why, why, why?

i found this surprise on my way down the stairs the other day.

climbing kids

ethan and his siblings joseph and elise took maria and hudson rock climbing. maria didn't want to even go but once she saw hudson climb she wanted to get up there. they LOVED it. they can't wait to go again.

learning to repel.

on her way up. isn't she so cute?

ready to climb.

look at him go!

natural climber.

not a natural repeller.

held up by uncle joseph. she says this was her favorite part.

and going and going.

maria at the top.

so proud of herself.

two awesome kids . . . and an awesome daddy.

even more kids

and here are some more kid pictures:

love when it rains. and thanks to a ridiculously run-down asphalt driveway, the kids get great puddles. do you notice the nice plants in the neighbors yard? notice the dead (or dying) ones in mine? yea, that's right. that's how i roll.

libby got quite good at splashing.

girls. silly, silly girls.

maria trying to get libby to cooperate.

cute baby of mine.

lincoln's probably wondering why he's seeing spots. oh, that's just mommy taking hundreds of unnecessary photos flashing an extremely bright light in your eyeballs. that's what you get for being so cute. deal with it.

baby's are just so wonderful! don't you just want to squeeze those cheeks and then kiss them then squeeze and kiss them again?

have i mentioned before how much i just love cute little pudgy toes?

handsome pair they are. hmmm. now i sound like yoda: "confront yourself you must." nap time it must be. for talking weird am i. more sleep must i need.

kids

here are some recent kid pictures. they sure are growing fast!

maria. she has such a beautiful smile. she is doing really well with school. she loves playing the piano and is completely self-motivated with her practicing. sometimes she gets tired of waiting for me to teach her new songs so she just figures them out herself. she's looking forward to when grandma and grandpa nuttall come for thanksgiving so she can play some christmas songs for them. silent night is her favorite. she's memorized it.

lincoln is getting so big. i love his laugh. it's more like a chuckle. he laughs at me all the time. in his eyes i must be the funniest person in the world. he laughs at everything i say. he's my biggest fan. he's such a cutie. he's rolling over really well, although, oddly enough, he's better at rolling from his back to his tummy than his tummy to back. he's just starting on baby cereal and seems to enjoy that. he really, really hates baths. every other baby of mine has loved baths. he screams and screams then laughs when i finally take him out.

libby loves to hold lincoln. she'll situate herself on a chair or the couch then every so sweetly say "pees?" which means she is asking to hold lincoln. it only lasts about 20 seconds before she's done. lincoln is very patient with all her hugging and kissing and loving.

hudson and libby. cute kids. play together a lot. drive each other crazy a lot.

handsome boy. he's growing so fast! and he's finally potty trained! wohoo! cannot tell you how exciting that is for me! only two kids in diapers now! my potty training method for hudson: prayer. lots and lots of prayer.

hudson is learning to read. he's picked it up really fast. faster than maria did. but maria wins in stamina. hudson's attention span is like a nano-second long. i know, i know, he's only three. but really. a nano-second? is this a boy thing or is this a son-of-ethan thing? if i can get him to focus he can read three-letter words. and he can do them really well. i really have been amazed at how quickly he got to this point.

hudson put his hat on lincoln. lincoln often has this bewildered expression on his face in our pictures.

more cowboy lincoln without the bewilderment.

cowboy hudson. he loves to wear this hat. it is most often accompanied by the cape his grandma nuttall made for him - that's what's tied around his neck. he's kind of like a super cowboy i guess. he love that cape. he'll often put it on just to wear, not necessarily to play with. he'll just wear it around the house, wear it during school, etc. trying to convince him not to wear it in the bathroom.

brothers. they love each other. hudson loves to entertain lincoln and lincoln loves to be entertained.

(sigh)

can't i read for 15 minutes without something bad happening?

this is precisely why we have a rule that the bathroom door must be closed at all times. unfortunately, the newest potty user in the house has trouble remembering this rule.

libby did this before i found her. i was reading and realized the water in the bathroom sink had been on for longer than anyone washes their hands. i went upstairs to find libby using hudson's toothbrush. apparently she'd sampled all of our toothbrushes. then i found that wonderful surprise in the toilet, although, i admit, it could have been worse. there could have been something that wasn't disposable in there.

ah, libby. you are a busy girl.

pretty cute, tho, isn't she?

trying on maria's new shoes. she's a sucker for pretty shoes.

can hardly ever get her to pause long enough to get her to look at the camera and smile.

what a smile. how can i not forgive all the madness?

and if you didn't pick up on the sarcasm in the last post, i'm fairly certain this is the reason for the computer mysteries.

wait a second. why is the toilet flushing? again? and again? all the potty-trained kids are downstairs . . . "LIBBY!"

computer mysteries

lately all sorts of mysterious things have been happening to my computer.

i never see it happen, i just sit down and things on my desktop will be different.

like the one day that my calculator mysteriously vanished from my dock, never to be seen again. it somehow disappeared so well that i can't find it anywhere on my computer. weird!

or often times my files decide to rename themselves, things like "?040;" or "4308482183_a5a2a7c04f_0" or even "3". and then there's my favorite "28650_435744297463_530762463_6108035_5949397_n". isn't that interesting?

but the most mysterious is when i found this picture suspiciously sitting on my desktop:

apparently the computer managed to open a few files and then take a picture of the whole scene, sort of like mocking me in a neener-neener-catch-me-if-you-can kind of way. so strange!