home lately

Soon I promise I will share some photos of the inside of the house (because I know people are curious about that sort of thing).  We're still working on getting it put together. No joke: there are two mismatched curtains on the window in front of me right now.  {If you frequent a Target: find me some Farrah Floral curtain panels on the clearance rack!}

Anyway.  We've been up to lots of great stuff, inside and out, but the outside is a little more photogenic right now and so I take my camera out a lot more.  I'm all about letting boys be boys -- and this place is just meant for that.  They are totally living it up every day.  Being a stay at home mom lately has meant literally that -- being locked in at home while Ben has our only car at work during the week -- but for the most part we don't mind being homebodies in such a lovely place.  It's what the boys want to do anyway: spend all day exploring their domain and doing whatever they please.

A sampling of some of the beautiful parts of life for your viewing and my remembering pleasure...

fall painting with littles

Apologies to all of my dedicated followers for my absence as of late!  Settling into and simply enjoying our new home has been a bit consuming at times.  My camera has been known to sit untouched for days at a time.  And I've partially renewed the blessed hobby of napping with the boys.  But we're still here, still rockin it how we do.

I wanted to let the boys create something big to hang over our couch, so I grabbed a huge canvas at Michael's with a 50% off coupon I had and some fall colored paints.  We collected what we could find outside as painting tools -- pinecones, pine and maple branches, rocks, leaves, twigs, weeds.  And then we made a giant mess.  Ultimate boys that they are, their favorite part was smacking the pine branches onto the canvas.  I barely took photos because I, too, was covered in paint -- but I did manage to snap a couple, my camera suffering only minor flesh wounds.

I love how the painting turned out after round one, but it's definitely a work in progress; we'll add more layers, making more messes and memories as we go.  That's the fun part, after all.

cupcake sneak {first school picture day}

We're slowly settling into a new normal around here.  Each year I have a hard time giving saying goodbye to summer -- to fresh berries, swimming and sprinkler days, nudie buns running around the yard, long days, hot sun, roaming outdoors without worry of shoes or coats.  This year it's a tad easier maybe -- just because I know this beautiful scene of green around me is about to turn an even more gorgeous splay of the colors of fall -- but no, I was lying, it's not easier.  Tonight is the first warm summer night in weeks (or a week, I could be exaggerating) and oh, how I've missed them already.

So, yes.  Where were we?  Aha -- fall, school... we've lived and loved days two, three and four of preschool.  Still a little moment of tears for bob {running for the door}, and a long moment of tears for owen {screaming his head off on the way out}.  Bob says he loves school, but then says he doesn't want to go... he'll get into the swing of it soon enough I'm sure.

At the ripe age of three and three quarters, Bob had his first school picture day {pics above and below}.  Ridiculous.  While we ate lunch after that picture morning, I asked him how his day had been, what did he do?  A grin grew slowly on his face as he worded his reply: "Mrs. D had a special cupcake that someone gave her for her birthday and I asked her if I could have it but she said no and when she wasn't looking I snuck two bits of her beautiful cupcake!"  Hmm.  We baked some blueberry zucchini muffins to bring to the next class.

batman goes to school!