I just realized that it's been a month since my last post! Yikes! Here's a few miscellanous pics of what we've been up to lately...

 

 

Simon has discovered self portraits, and now there's NO getting your phone away from him!

 

Setting up an end-of-summer-clearance pool for their little brother. I love the days when they're willingly helpful, cooperative with each other and things just seem to fall into place.

 

After two years, Sawyer is still missing his two front teeth. The two bottom ones have grown in, so now he's really anxiously awaiting his top teeth too.

 

Sutton is missing his two bottom teeth, and his top two are both wiggly too. He keeps getting mistaken for Sawyer at school by both friends and school staff, and the boys think it's the funniest thing ever when people mix them up. On our way home from school yesterday, Sawyer said, "It's okay if people call me Sutton, Mom. I'm getting really used to it now. People mix us up ALL the time! It's super funny!" Maybe it's just because I'm their mom, but I don't even think they look very much alike!

 

We finally harvested the last of our carrots from the garden. These two loved having the job of picking and cleaning the carrots this year, so we will definitely be adding them to our annual garden roster now that we've found a successful way to grow tons of them.

 

A hose, a graham cracker, and Batman underoos...you pretty much can't get any better than this.

 

"More, please." He seriously can't get enough of playing in water. I change his clothes at least twice a day because he is always soaking wet from the hose/sink/pool/sprinkler/puddle. Every. Single. Day.

 

After five and a half years, Smokey finally jumped up and willingly snuggled with Sutton! Sutton was so excited, and he immediately yelled for me to go grab the camera so that he could show Daddy.

 

This is how Sutton & I spent our sick day today. Believe it or not, this deceptively simple looking haunted house took us over three hours to build! A lot of it was drying time for the glue, but still! We're going to finish up the rest of our Halloween and fall decorating tomorrow since he's going to be staying home from school for at least one more day until he gets his voice back. Fingers crossed that my voice comes back tomorrow too! 

First Day of School Photo Overload

 

Today the big boys went back to school - Sawyer started 1st grade, and Sutton started kindergarten. They were both a little bummed to learn that they would be in different classrooms (their classes are both K/1 combo classrooms), but I think it will be good for them to learn to do things independently...it will, however, be a bigger pain in the butt for me when it comes time for field trips, class volunteering and dividing my time ;)

 



They chose to wear identical uniform outfits today even though they have a choice of two different colored bottoms and four different tops. They're silly like that. They said that they looked "really super cool when we match." I wonder how long they'll try to keep it up.

Sutton checked out his classroom and was happy to see that a few of his old friends from Morningstar are in his class.

Testing out the playground...their school playground rivals some of the best parks in the area! Sutton was SO excited to finally get a chance to play on everything!

He bonded with a new friend over their slimy handfuls of stinky hand sanitizer. They thought it was hysterical for some reason!

Time for a first day of school story, and then Mommy said goodbye. We have minimum days all week long, so I'll be going back to pick him up in just awhile. Hope they both had a fantastic first day!

The Happiest 5k on the Planet!

This morning I participated in The Color Run in downtown Sacramento, and all my guys came along to cheer me on. It was SO much fun! Sawyer especially got into it, showering passing runners with healthy doses of green and purple color. I've promised him that next year he can actually run the race with me, and he's beyond excited!

If you missed out this year, Kearsten and I are going to be forming up a big team to go next year, so let me know if you want to come along!

Lots and lots and lots of people...the race originally sold out quickly at 15,000 participants, and I heard this morning that they had opened up another 5,000 spots in the past few days too. That's a TON of colorful people!

Self portrait right as I got shot in the forehead with a yellow color blast!

Me & Kearsten among the giant color cloud at the finish line

Jackie & I at the finish line

This is what happens when you wear Crocs!

Sawyer told me to "never wash your hair again! It looks so cool and arty-ish!"

See you in 2013, Color Run!

The Great Escape Artist

Houdini here managed to escape from his crib at naptime yesterday, and he chipped his front tooth in the process. Mitch took the front off of the crib, and at first Simon was a little apprehensive about the fact that the side had gone missing. Bedtime was a long and drawn out process, but after playing in his room for awhile he eventually climbed back into bed and fell asleep. He woke up at the crack of dawn this morning and started playing in his room again. Naptime today was a total success with no struggle at all (thank goodness! Knock on wood!), and he fell right asleep. Hopefully bedtime tonight will be just as easy (fingers crossed!).

Now his sharp little teeth are even pointier with that jagged front tooth!

Makeover Time

This kid has been defined by his unruly curls since he was just a few months old. I feel like his entire personality can be summed up in that head of hair - soft and sweet, but wildly independent (and occasionally crazy and unmanageable!). 

I love his curls. LOVE them. But it's Summer, and all that in-and-out of the pool, playing with bubbles and dirt, and just general being-a-boy-ness was really starting to make a matted mess of his hair. No matter how much time we wasted with the brush and detangler, it would end up looking like this after a few hours. So when I took the big boys to a pool party on Sunday, I gave Mitch the task of taking Simon to the kids hair salon...I just couldn't bear to do it myself (but seriously, look at that rats nest up there!). 

TaDa - a todler makeover! Mitch said it was a breeze and that Simon didn't mind having it cut at all. Kind of surprising since he screamed his head off during his first haircut. When Mitch texted us a picture, Sutton's first reaction was, "Who is that?" and then followed by "Is that for real?" when we told him it was Simon LOL!

Sawyer can't stop telling him how cool he looks with his new hair. 

I say he looks like a little troublemaker now ;)

We Love Lucy!

The boys got a new kitten! Her name is Lucy, and she was adopted from one of the local animal rescue groups last weekend. Our older cats have never been too keen on the kids (they were already about 7 years old when Sawyer was born), so the boys are SUPER excited to have a pet of their very own who will love them just as much as they love her. 

...and they most certainly do love her a lot. Luckily she's a very playful kitten, so she can actually give these rambunctious boys a run for their money. She's happy to play with them all day long, but she loves to sit down and cuddle too (which makes her perfect, in my opinion!).

♥