At the park

Sammy loves the swings, he was born a thrill-seeker, and has always loved been thrown up or going down slides. It is nice when he is in the swing because I can leave him there while I give Tommy pushes or rescue him from the top of the playground.

Tommy has been able to climb up and over the park's climbing wall ever since he could reach the first handhold

He has so much upper body strength! I need to put him in gymnastics or swimming or something to harness the power.
If I look away for a minute he has climbed up something, he can always get up, but usually needs help getting down

So we totally think we can dance

Some of 'my girls' and I get together to watch 'So You Think You Can Dance' at Candise's house. She tapes Wednesday's episode and then we watch it on Thursday night while she tapes the result show. It ends up being a really long night, but we have so much fun! As you can see we are all wanna-be b-girls, so last night Nikki taught us a sweet stall to add to our repetoir. Ya, this is the stall. If anyone who sees this wants me to be in thier 'crew' I could probs fit it into my sched.
This is Nikki and I in our sychronized stall.
Candise added her skills in helicopter spins to our breakin sesh.

This was us later that night chillin' on our block.

Best Friends

We try to brainwash Tommy and Sammy into thinking they are best friends by saying it all the time. In reality they do have a lot of fun together, it just gets pretty rough sometimes, with a fair amount of crying (from both boys - Sammy scares Tommy) and whenever it is time to go somewhere Tommy suggests we leave Sammy at home. We'll see, hopefully if we keep telling them enough that they are best friends it'll catch on.I didn't think I would want to dress them matchy-matchy, but I can't get enough of it!Now that Sammy started crawling around Tommy thinks it is an invitation to go on a horsie ride. Sammy is a pretty good sport about it all, he just likes any time Tommy plays with him.Sometimes Tommy squeezes a bit too tight.

A touch of Tommy

Tommy is 2 1/2 and I can't believe how fast he is growing up. He speaks really well, so he can tell me exactly what he is thinking, which is often pretty funny. Yesterday in the car he said "I feel sick, I'm gonna frow up" - it turned out it was just a ploy to get me to take him to Old McDonalds (what he calls the restaurant). How can you resist when he is so smart about it?He also has a hilarious sense of humor and makes kids jokes about mommy being a goat and stuff -I think it is pretty funny. Here are some pics of him doing whatever he felt like doing at the time.
He slept in his car seat like this for almost 2 hours. They are so cute when the are sleeping. No, it wasn't raining, and actually we weren't even going outside, he just wanted to wear it.
There was a crusty old chocolate on the floor and Tommy found it and was about to eat it when I said "don't eat that, it looks like poop!" So then, he took off his pants and undies and clenched the chocolate between his cheeks yelling "it's poop!" I told you this kid was funny.
I found him like this - blanket and all - at about 5:00 pm, apparently it was a rough day.

Mr. diaper head
Reading books with Moses Smith. It was about the only time they were together where they appeared to like eachother - but as soon as they were apart he couldn't stop talking about his friend Moses.

Sammy these days

Sammy is 9 1/2 months old and can stand all by himself. It is really cute - when he lets go of things he puts his hands up in the air like he is riding a roller coaster with "no hands!" He is still super smiley and happy and chubby and everyone that meets him loves him instantly. He is a bit more of mommy's boy than Tommy was, which I love! - it's nice to know he likes me.This is him standing all by himself!Such a giggler. This was at Cohen Rhulman's birthday, Tommy hated wearing his hat so Sam got to wear it the whole time.If he is ever sad we just let him grab onto daddy's hair and it makes it all better.

At the park

Now that it is a little warmer we go to a park as often as possible. There is a little park just across the street from us where you find us most days, and some days we venture out a bit. On this particular day we met up with Candise and her girls Jordan and Hayley. I realize that it might still look pretty cold in these pics, but at least it isn't raining!
Sammy was a bit sick this day, so we bundled him up good, and he was a pretty good sport about it all.This was the extremely high slide with very little railings. Dangerous? perhaps, but I'm not the kind of mom who stops her kid from having fun just because they could be seriously injured.

Hot tubbin'

After we bought this house Jesse couldn't remember anything about it except for the fact that it had a hot tub. He goes in it at least once everyday. Sometimes instead of a morning shower, sometimes after basketball, and sometimes to play with the boys. Tommy loves jumping in off the edges, and doesn't even mind letting his head go under. Sammy loves to splash and gets so excited by all the noise and commotion Tommy makes.This is Tommy jumping in.And this is Sammy splashing around - can you find Tommy drowning in the background?

9 months old

When Tommy had his 9 month birthday I decided to do a little photo-shoot of him because it was such a beautiful day and he was looking so cute. So when Sammy had his 9 month birthday I decided I should do the same for him, unfortunatley it was like the hottest day EVER and we were all so sweaty and the sun was glaring everywhere. oh well, he still looked cute. Here are some pics of the boys at the same age, you can decide if you see any resemblance. Sammy is the thumb-sucker.

This is Tommy - it's hard to remember he was that small.

Our beautiful backyard

This was our yard just a few weeks ago. And yes, that is Jesse driving the bobcat. When we moved in our yard was really high-maintenance and low-fun, so we did a big overhaul. The biggest part was leveling it all out and building retaining walls. I was a little worried that Jesse had taken it all on himself, but he definately suprised me! See for yourself.
Obviously all the nail-pounding had some bonuses.

Tommy loved the giant pile of dirt that got dropped off. He called it his "mountain" and was very happy and very dirty the entire time it was there.
This was Tommy being super helpful while I was being the master turf-layer herself. My background as a professional landscaper is pretty obvious I think.

I am so excited to play in my new backyard!

Good Weather

As soon as the sun came out Tommy's clothes came off. We are definately the ghetto family on the street - with Tommy playing in the front yard in just his tighty-whiteys but who cares? He was having the time of his life.
















Daddy and Tommy got some big muscles from shoveling dirt - but unfortunately it seems, no tan.
When we got in we had ice cream cones, Sammy's first ever. It began as Jesse's ice cream cone, but Sammy liked it so much that he tore it from Jesse's hands.
He obviously enjoyed it.