Seasons of Change . . .

Last week. . .

Friday my sister, mom, and I loaded the kids up into two vehicles and headed to our Grandparents for the weekend. A beautiful ranch that sits at the foot hills of the Crazy Mountains. I love it up there. My cousin is raising two lambs for 4H and the kids enjoyed seeing an actual lamb and listening to it baa. Isaac touched them and showed the least amount of fear.

I will have to post additional photos from this trip because there are tons. Some great ones of all the kids; my angel of a niece, my fun loving nephew, and my adorable son. But today it is a sad post on how this is the last week my dear sister will be watching Isaac. If you could only see tears, good thing this isn't actually paper as my writing might smear.

Isaac loves his cousins so much. Each and every morning he gets to spend with them he lights up saying their names. It will be interesting to see how much they will actually see each other once the school year starts. The three emigos!

Look at the twins below. They are really close to 2 months apart and can fight like sister and brother and then turn around and love each other more. I love this picture.

As we were walking away from the lamb barn I noticed this wall. Same color as Brinnley's shirt. So we stopped and took quite a few photos before heading to the house. I love this series of photos. The kids were so good and we got quite a few great shots.

The little angel. She is going to be trouble in high school. Her sweet little voice that says "hello" in the mornings. So soft you can barely hear her, so sincere. I love her smiles, her hugs, and her little girl attitude just makes me smile.

My sister - an amazing mom, sister, and aunt. We have grown pretty close since she started watching Isaac having to learn the rules of daycare etiquette - sick kids, pay, food, we made it work and it was always nice having the same days off.

She is amazing with kids and I'm so excited for her to start her own preschool with her good friend. Together they will be teaching three classes 2-5 year olds. She is finally doing something she loves to do and I am proud of her.

Plus this next stage WILL be good for Isaac, but change stinks. I hate change, but I guess welcome to life - full of changes. Next Monday will stink - I'll let you know how Isaac does. I'm sure in 1 month it will be old hat and he will have not just 2 great cousins for friends, but a whole 2 year old class of friends.

The only other thing that stinks - selfish me, is I won't get to see my sister at LEAST three times a week. She will work be working on days I have off and I will be working while she has off. Even if it was a 10 minute catch up, it was always a good 10 minutes.

Heidi thanks for the past 1.5 years of watching Isaac, he loves you tons and will miss you even more. I will miss you too.

Golf

This is a cute clip of Donovan and Isaac watching golf. Isaac loves to watch golf with his dad. If the player makes a putt, it's "nice shot" if he misses, it's "MISS"!

At least they can enjoy watching tv together.

Cleaning off our Family Memory Card

I always find photos from months ago when I clean off Donovan's little camera. So I'm going to update you with some fun photos over the past couple of months.

Isaac's new Mickey chair, I think it is adorable how he sits in it.

We had a picnic on G&G's new kitchen floor. Donovan helped Dave with some yard work and Isaac hung out at the house for a morning.

Trysten and Tycen spent the night a couple of weeks ago and Isaac loved having them around. They played a mean game of basketball that morning in the kitchen, it was cute to watch them. They are so good with Isaac always including them and such loving kids.

Gage spent the night at our house for Isaac's birthday. He did a great job and we had such a fun night and morning. Thanks for making Isaac's birthday special Gage.

Our Family 2009

A little update on our family. We finally had the chance to update our family photos and Chelsea Winterholler did a great job. She is a photographer that just moved to Nebraska. I went to school with her older sister and we got together this summer and swapped photo time. I love how the photos turned out - Thanks so much Chelsea.

Isaac is a kid all his own. He is very determined and independent. If all the kids are playing in the sandbox and he doesn't want to, he won't go along with the crowd - he knows what he wants and does it. Nice, but frustrating if what he wants isn't on the agenda with us. He communicates really well and finally we can talk through wants and avoid most tantrums. This just started last week - hopefully he had terrible twos before he was two!

Isaac has the best laugh and makes us laugh daily. Now with new saying and sentences. He new since the British Open is on is "putt hole", which sounds like well you can figure it out. Who says putt hole. It makes me laugh.

He is a mommies boy. Which is good and bad. I love the cuddles, kisses, and pats on the face, but I hate the crying when I go to leave the house. Come on dad is NOT that bad. Plus Grandpa always plays golf with you.

Isaac loves his dad, and the new thing is going to the golf course and putting on the green. He is so cute, he pulls out the flag and putts it into the hole. Picks up the golf ball, puts back in the flag and runs to the next hole. We LOVE have dad around. Happy Birthday you two!

We will end with this photo - Isaac's new thing. I think this photo is funny! We had two year checkup on Wednesday and he weighed in at 32 pounds - my solid little football player, and only 35". Poor kid only grew 1" since January, that just doesn't seem right. But they say they learn to do one thing at a time, so instead of growing up he has been learning how to count, the alphabet, all his shapes, and starting to learn colors. Just the other night I heard him counting up to fourteen. He is getting pretty good, not so good with colors though -isn't that a girl thing anyway?

We hope everyone is doing well. Isaac just woke up from his nap. Gotta go.

2nd Birthday Bash

What a day and two weeks leading up to this party. It still is more for parents probably then the kids, but I think everyone had a great time. Isaac did awesome with all his friends, blowing out the candles, opening presents, and eating ice cream! He doesn't really like cake. I really can't believe he is two, but if you listen to him talk almost 4 word sentences then you'll realize he is two.

This cake is made from 1 chocolate cake mix (the shoe), 1 lemon cake mix and 2 white cake mixes for the club house. The Mickey head and ears are actually Styrofoam balls frosted to look like cake. They were so heavy that we had to engineer them up (Donovan came up with the idea - I was quite impressed). It took me a day to draw up the dimensions, so things were a little to proportion, I felt like an architect drawing up house plans. It took me 3 naps (4 hours) to bake the cakes, which I froze them. Cut the shapes frozen and about 2 naps to frost everything.

Isaac loves Mickey Mouse club house. Sad to say Daisy, Donald duck, Mickey and Minnie were one of his first words. I was floored when he started naming them. This show is pretty neat and the number episode is his favorite, which is why he started picking out numbers at about 18 months. So I came up with this idea, just didn't know how BIG I wanted to make it.

The shoe collapsed 30 minutes after thawing. I guess I didn't engineer that correctly. Oh well, it still tasted good.

The kids that came and wanted to sit for a photo. They are content because they are trying to eat their candy!

I'm really thinking next year I might just buy a cake. I can really see how a second and third child gets neglected. There is no way I could have made this with 2 kids! Happy Birthday Isaac we love you very much.

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July to everyone. I'm sorry I haven't been keeping people updated, but we really haven't been doing a lot of fun family things, just everyday life. If you check out my photography blog you'll see what I've been up to - photos, photos, photos. In June I shoot two weddings and quite a few families and babies. Trying to get all caught up. Donovan has played in a couple golf tournaments and finally we fit in a quick trip to visit the grandparents at the ranch. Isaac will make a great ranch kid-loves to play outside, get a little dirty, and talk with the cows.

Isaac got to throw rocks into the creek off their bridge. This made us nervous at times, but he did really well. I felt really bad for grandma and grandpa M.who came home from AK yesterday and Isaac wanted nothing to do with them. He cried, gave Dave the cold shoulder, and never gave them a chance. He is punishing Dave for not being around for the past two weeks, this has nothing to do with Sue. Sorry Sue! He loved the great grandparents and Aunt Diane. He did great with them.

It was beautiful and so green. Nice to get out of the city and enjoy the country and the sounds of cows and kittens. The ranch has about 40 wild cats right now. They were everywhere. The babies are so cute.

Daddy passing on his love for the 4th of July. Isaac loved these poppers and threw them all night long. He also loved sparklers and fountains, but did not like the loud bangs, which required us to go inside toward the end of our little show.

This is what happens when the sparkler ends.

Happy 4th of July!