Judge me all you want

So this new child of mine is not exactly a stellar napper. I mostly carry him around with me until he falls asleep in my arms or the sling and then lay him down as I whisper a prayer for him to just STAAAAAAAAAAAY asleep!! So today I plopped him right smack in front of a Baby Einstein video in the playroom (Emma joined him) ... Did it work, you ask? For about a lousy 10 minutes. :)

POOL!!!

When we bought our new house, I'm not sure we were quite prepared for the time & money that would go into our ghetto rundown pool. But after a long road and many many dollars... we LOVE it!! The kids are in it just about every day. :)

BEFORE...

AFTER!!

Reese likes to play it safe on the stairs and drive his trucks

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Our resident handstand expert!

On the road again...

Happy 4th Birthday to cousin Seth!! We made the trek to Iowa again for our annual Seth celebration... and had a great time at his Spider-Man party. The kids played on the Backyard Adventure (call it by the right name or Seth will quickly correct you- it is NOT a playground) and on the Slip-n-Slide and with the teeball set. Wish we could've stayed longer (mostly to avoid the drive back in a 15 passenger van with all 3 kids on one bench and the rest ABSOLUTELY jam packed with furniture we bought from them)... until next July!!

Seth's expression describes his overall feeling of ending his nap to start his party...

Emma and sweet baby Paige (this baby is near perfect- she hardly makes a peep!)

On the Backyard Adventure!!

I love my Aunt Heather... and anyone who holds me

Yes, Reese, we actually CAN take this home!

I'm so big!

Lincoln Samuel is going to be 12 weeks on Monday and he's quickly approaching 16 pounds! We love him in all his chubby sweetness. :) He's smiling so big and sleeping much better at night.

His big bro and sis can't get enough of him!

I pledge allegiance

Josh has been talking about going to DC again for a while now and so for his 30th birthday I surprised him and took him there! Lincoln got to meet his namesake and we toured the city in awe of all the amazing monuments, memorials and museums that tell us about our American heritage. What an amazing history our country has. We packed as much into 3 days as we possibly could. We even got to see our super great newlywed friends Jon & Lauren who were in town on business! Josh stood in line at 6:45 a.m. to get tix to go up into the Washington Monument, we saw the Jefferson & Lincoln Memorials, WWII Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Iwo Jima Memorial, Arlington Cemetery and Robert E. Lee's house, Capitol building (twice) which we also stood in line early for, White House tour, Crime & Punishment Museum, Air & Space Museum, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Natural History, a DUCK tour, Mount Vernon (my favorite!), Library of Congress, National Archives, and I may be forgetting something if you can believe that. We had such an amazing time- just wish we'd had longer! You better believe we're going back when our two favorite places open back up after renovation: Ford's Theater and Musuem of American History.

Can you do anything else but respect the thousands and thousands of men and women who have died for our country??

Lincoln slept through it, but here's good old Abe. What a guy.

Um, yes, that is George Washington's house! 80% original- we even got to see George's bed where he died.

Josh insisted on posing at every last place we visited. :)

The awesome view of the White House from the window of the Washington Monument!

Yes, we go to Florida a lot...

Ya gotta love it when business trips take you to a sunny place like Florida! We went to Orlando so Josh and his dad and bro Mark could set set up a booth at the Wesleyan conference to tell them all about what they do- sell cars at a discounted price to people in ministry! And so the kids and I begrudgingly ;) sat by the pool for a week with Grammie and Aunt Sarah. We got to check out Downtown Disney (including the amazingly huge Disney store and the LEGO store) and the kids totally loved it. We also spent one day at Typhoon Lagoon.

Lincoln was mostly found like this. :)

Reese's feelings about dinosaurs in a word: OBSESSION
You can imagine how he felt about this giant LEGO dino that moved.

Every 5 year old girl's dream: getting sprinkled with pixie dust at the Disney store...

and posing with Cinderella...

This is a poster advertisement for a massive place called T-Rex that is coming to Downtown Disney... in the Fall of 2008. It's a good thing Reese can't read. He would have been heartbroken to have missed this by couple months!

Sweet chubby baby Lincoln lounging by the pool. As you can see, he's having no trouble gaining weight.

Mr. Reese enjoying our hotel's pool.