Just a moment in time

 

Emotions are flying everywhere around here sometimes, but OH, how I could drown in those chocolatey pools of brown!

Summer

Weekday Mornings 'Round Here

Most mornings the girls wake up before Dusty leaves for work.  Sometimes I think Natalie causes herself to wake up early from anticipation to see her Papa and to open the door for him as he leaves. 

The girls like to wave goodbye and watch Dusty drive away.

We are so thankful for a husband and father who joyfully labors so hard for us at work and at home every day, all year around.  You are our Superman in every way!  We love you, Dusty.

A Happy Ending to our camping trip

(on the drive home)

Oh my goodness, I've been trying to upload this forever!!  I sure hope it works this time.  It's a little out of order but worth all the wait to get it uploaded.  I could watch this a million times.  I hope you enjoy it too.

A New Trick

Apparently...

We don't feed her enough.

Apparently.

Hi and Bye

"HELLO!"

"GOODBYE!"

Ladybug Girls

Camping highlights continued

Hartman family

Getting wet at the lake

A boy and a girl

Happy camper in the mud again

Caught having some quiet, alone time

Helpful big sister

We had a great time hanging out with our friends and were pleased that the girls did well and stayed warm.  Thankful that everyone came back in one piece (minus a few bites taken out by mosquitoes).

This was Natalie on our way home after we had been driving for about one minute.

A little birthday celebration

So I'm bummed because Blogger won't let me upload my video of singing Happy B-day to Maggie and her eating her cupcake so I guess you'll just have to enjoy the pics and come to our house to see the video. : )  For the record, Maggie did enjoy her cupcake but she's a pretty chill baby toddler and so it was kind of anti-climatic.  She analyzed the cupcake for a moment and then dove took a nibble and then proceeded to eat the cupcake until it was gone.  But of course I think she looked cute doing it.  And Natalie was pretty cute too because she was pretty excited that her cupcake had frosting on it.  There was a sweet moment in the video where Natalie gives Maggie a kiss while we are singing the HB song.  But without further ado, here are some pics:

I made chocolate vegan cupcakes from Martha Stewart's cupcake book to share with everyone in celebration of Maggie's birthday.

Ah, those second children.  Natty never got chocolate anything before she was, oh, I don't know.  In her defense, I didn't give Maggie one with frosting. : )

Two peas in a pod.  I took these pics one right after the other.

A sweet friend, Judah

River

I'm one!

Love our sweet one year old.

Bathroom with a View

We went camping for the first time with the girls this past weekend up by Long Draw and Peterson Lake.  Not many babies get to celebrate their first birthday with a camping trip.  We went with 5 other families from our Life Group (one family missing from the pic).

We had 10 adults and 11 kids, ages 1 to 6, plus one 8 eight year old.  We were prepared to stay two nights but ended up only camping for one night.  The girls had a great time, especially Natalie, but 1.5 days seemed to be plenty for Maggie.  She did great, but even being the able walker that she is, it was hard walking on the uneven, muddy terrain and she would get frustrated from falling down often.  Besides, for some reason I was so cold that first night and constantly worrying about the girls even though they were fine and so I got very little sleep.  It was a fun first try but I was ready to get a full nights sleep in my bed (and I did!  I slept like the dead!)

When we got there, Dusty made this handy dandy potty seat for Natalie to use.

   

And it had a beautiful view looking across a valley!

She used it once with success but for some reason she didn't want to use it anymore after that.  We knew she needed to go potty that evening but she still didn't want to use the outdoor make-shift toilet.  She kept telling Dusty, "I'm going to keep it in my body and wait to use the toilet at home."  I don't think she understood that we were not going home for a while.  Finally with a little bit of coaxing and bribery (a Red Vine), Dusty got her to go in the fully assembled potty seat in the back of the pickup.  We didn't want to have to keep cleaning the potty seat bucket out in the first place but we were just happy that she went.  She did go a few times in the great outdoors later.

Here are some highlights from the trip:

We saw two moose on the drive in

Checking out the stompin' ground

Homemade teeter-totter

Mac hanging out

Enjoying some dinner grub

It's getting chilly, put on your warm hats.

First toasted marshmallow experience

She liked it. : )

More pics to come...