VIDEO ROUNDUP.

we take lots of video to keep dave in the know about our daily nonsence. and believe me, they are priceless. i love watching these videos of our normal, everyday life.

hallie will someday be a world-famous singer (haha).

or perhaps a cowgirl on a ranch in wyoming?

and henry will be professionally cute.

the end.

TOOF FAIRY.

well, we recently had a visit from the tooth fairy.

a top tooth this time. very exciting. funny for me though, because i can look ahead to the huge chompers she's going to have. dave and i both have large and in charge front teeth, so she's doomed. or blessed, whatever.

this front tooth was a long time coming. and then finally she wiggled and wiggled until it was juuuuuust almost out. i mean, she could seriously stick it straight forward with her tongue. GAG.

so we put some floss on that sucker and i yanked it out. it took a lot of yanks (and screams) but she insisted and out it came!

with a lot of blood!

lots of blood!

so gross.

and the tooth fairy brought two dollars. say what?! how generous!

(check out those pics...THREE outfit changes? i promise they all were taken on the same night!)

COWGIRL HALLIE.

well, we have a cowgirl on our hands.

and her horse room is (mostly) finished! I will post finished pictures, but here's what we have so far:

i'm realizing now i didn't take pictures of two of my very favorite things! i will tomorrow, for sure. also, the picture above is so NOT a finished product. geesh, keri. (that is hallie's art project, btw).

anyway, she's so into horses that we signed her up for one horseback riding lesson. my thought was that she might be too scared or too distracted to keep doing it.

so we would start with one and see if she liked it. and then if she liked it, we would sign her up.

sign me up, mom, she says.

she is hooked.

HE WANTS A KISS.

and this is how he shows you.

gravy, this kid.

WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING INSTEAD OF BLOGGING.

we are re-doing hallie's room. HORSES. yes, horses. yeesh.

how do you make a cute little girl's room "horses" without looking like a western puked on it? or without going too overboard with the horses knowing that she will change her mind next week?

it's tricky, i tell ya.

her wants: a sky with clouds (whaaaa?), pictures of baby horses and a big horse.

my wants: organization. shelves. a place to put all of her many, many things.

what we did: blue walls, clouds handpainted by moi, a grouped-by-color bookshelf, stuffed animal net/hammock/thing, floating shelves, lots of bins and storage, a new toy chest, painted her headboard and dresser, added a mirror, put up a giant horse decal thing-y, new horse sheets, framed pics of baby horses from etsy and added a storage unit of drawers to her closet.

and it's done....mostly. i stayed up late lots of nights doing lots of stuff. and things are finally coming together. the headboard is still not on and the mirror is not yet hung up. and neither is the stuff animal net/hammock/thing. but it's really, really close.

and here are some pictures of the progress:

i'm not gonna lie - it sucked getting all of these stickers off the dresser to be painted. and sanding the crayon? not my favorite.

book wrangling.

color coding.

new shelves!

storage! organization!

yay for chalkboard labels!

clouds. boo-ya.

SCHOOL KICKS.

here are the shoes hallie chose for her back-to-school kicks.

pretty fly, eh?

these were the ONLY shoes she wanted. i begged her to try on a million others...but nope, she only had eyes for the high top converse. awesome kid, awesome style.

oh, and here's henry pounding a bottle while watching baby einstein.

and yes, he still takes a bottle. go ahead and judge me.

BACK TO SCHOOL FEAST 2012.

i'm a fan of traditions. i am. but man, sometimes it's hard to pull them off. but i love our back to school feasts and was bound and determined to make it happen.

we did it and we had three kinds of pringles. that's right...three kinds. that's the stuff of dreams, people.

we had homemade pizza, homemade cheese sticks, veggies, grapes and pringles. yum, yum.

we talked about goals and making this school year the best ever.

henry threw his food on the floor and was generally adorable.

so, thrown together or not...it was great.

it was perfect.

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL 2012.

wait a second, weren't you just born?

this year was way easy. no tears, no nothin'. just a "have a great day, make me proud," and off she went! she was pretty excited.

you'll notice above she had to have a SATCHEL, not a backpack this year. and a matching lunch box. yeah, yeah, whatever ;)

here's to the first grade!

cheers!

ERIC CHURCH WAS THE BEST CONCERT. EVER.

and i don't say that lightly. i mean it. i have seen lots and lots and lots of shows. and his was the best to date. i mean, seriously. FIRE, peope. there was FIRE on stage. and an amazing video wall, great lightining and of course...the music was fantastic.

i just love his music and he has so much FUN on stage. he does these spastic jerk movements with his arms that are hysterical. you can just tell he loves what he's doing and he wants the crowd to love it too.

and they did. MAN these people went nuts!

AND DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVE.

dave and i are finally the same age again. woo-hoo!

he turned 31 on july 30 and we made it home in time to bake him a cake, wrap some presents and eat some fried chicken with family. it was a nice and laid back, which was perfect, because we were exhausted.

happy birthday, darling!

PICS FROM THE BEST STATE EVER.

colorado.

geesh, this state is beautiful. the weather was crisp and amazing. we slept with the WINDOWS OPEN, people. i mean, really. i could live there.

i could easily live next door to my brother. easily. the pack of kids in that neighborhood are awesome and they run together from sunup to sundown. barefoot, but that's another story.

meanwhile, henry did a lot of this:

and hallie did this:

and we hung out with these peeps:

and this little boy was an angel:

and it was wonderful.