Beach Birthday!

Once again I had the BEST birthday ever! Everyone spoiled me rotten...especially Matt and the girls! We spent pretty much the entire weekend at the beach. It was perfect fall weather...80's and not a cloud in the sky all weekend. We were all so happy! Friday night we met Matt after work for swimming and dinner at the beach, we spent Saturday there with friends and the girls played and played and played on the beach and in the pool all day and then on Sunday we went all morning and again after naps! (Matt even took the girls for their naps that day and let me stay at the beach ALONE for almost 2 hours. It. Was. Heaven.). I'm such a lucky girl and so blessed by such amazing family and friends! Here is a great video from dinner Friday night. There was a band there singing and the girls were LOVING the music!!!!

Practicing up for Halloween....

So the girls definitely have had opinions as to what they want to be for Halloween this year. The problem has been, that every single day they want to be something different. Here is a list of some of the things they've told me that they want to be....a pig, a monkey, a banana, a boot (yes, a boot), a cowgirl, a lightbulb and a ladybug.  I figured that as soon as I went more than a couple of days with hearing the same thing...that's what they would be. Well, that never happened and I was already starting to see the shelves become empty of costumes so I made an executive decision and they are thrilled with it. Think that will still happen when they're 16?! Ha! The girls are going to be giraffes with tutus! The costumes are adorable and the girls love spinning around and around. That was the one part of dance class we never had an issue with! And I told them they can wear their ballet slippers so they're really happy about that too!
Last night Matt had tennis so I let the girls try on their costumes and they had so much fun that it ended up not being such a great idea! They didn't want to take them off wand wanted to sleep in them so that Matt could see them when he got home. Once again, Mommy overruled and we hung them up until Halloween! I did manage to get a couple of pictures and a video of them spinning around. I had told my mom I'd send her a video of them when they tried them on.  I hesitated putting the video on here....you'll see why. Although, I figured that this blog is supposed to represent real life and the end of this video is about as real as my life gets these days. (excuse my voice...getting over a cold). Enjoy....Matt and I have already decided we'll play this video at Reagan's wedding. You may want to turn up the volume, but you might be sorry that you did!

Halfway to 3!

Sunday was Reagan and Riley's half birthday....no, we didn't celebrate, but it just blows my mind that they are 2 1/2 already!!! Crazy! We've been so busy lately with school and playdates with friends and going to the beach and just life in general....I haven't had much time to update the blog! Here is just a snippet of what's new in their world!
The girls continue to just LOVE school so much. They ask me every morning if it's a school day! We are on Sabbatical from dance class. Yes, the first one was a huge success but I think we may have used up all of their excitement for it on the first class.  The typical dance class tended to go like this....everything would be fine for about 5 minutes and then Riley would look and see all of the moms staring through the window and then scream her head off for me the rest of the class until the teacher couldn't take it anymore and brought her out to sit on the bench with all of the moms.  Reagan could have cared less that I wasn't there or that Riley left, she also however, could have cared less about dancing. She pretty much spent the majority of the class staring at herself in the mirror and making kissy faces and funny faces at herself. While it was entertaining and hilarious to watch, it also made me question why I was paying money to have her check herself out in the mirror for an hour when we have lots of mirrors at home that work just fine. So....Matt and I decided we'll reevaluate in January and maybe try again. Or not. We'll see....soccer might be our thing instead. Ha!
We are in the midst of potty training. Some days I feel like they've really got it and we're seeing the light at the end of the diaper tunnel...other days (most days) they have absolutely no interest in attempting it. It's definitely a frustrating experience! I think it may be that I'm ready for them to be potty trained and they just aren't yet. Who knows?!?  A lot of my friends have suggested that one great way to insure that the girls won't have accidents is to just let them be naked whenever we're around the house. And it works. They love it but it's just such a weird thing to see the girls playing in their plastic princess high heels with no clothes on (see below...some day they'll kill me for putting that on here! At least Reagan has her pullup on!).  We'll get the hang of it one of these days...until then, just be prepared if you ring the doorbell!
In other news...the Browns are in first place so Matt and the girls are really excited about it (Grandpa David and Stephanie sent the girls new Browns shirts that they never want to take off)! We still go to the beach a few times a week (we've been getting a lot of rain lately though...) and the girls are just as fun as ever. Their favorite thing to do at the beach is make sandcastles with Daddy (anything with Daddy, really) and run and dive in the tidal pools...here's a video of Reagan doing it last weekend! All in all, LIFE IS GOOD!!!!!

Happy Birthday, Great Grandpa!!!

We were so lucky to all get to help Great Grandpa celebrate his BIG Birthday on Friday (the real birthday isn't until tomorrow...)! We got to go out to lunch together, then we all headed back to Aunt Conni and Uncle Ron's beautiful new house for presents and cupcakes and ice cream. Reagan and Riley loved helping Grandpa open his presents! The girls worked hard on making Gramp's card this year...they drew him a giraffe, a monkey, a jump rope and a boot. Pretty special, huh?!? There is a picture of Riley explaining the pictures to Grandpa on here!  Here are some fun pictures from the day! Happy, Happy Birthday, Grandpa...we love you so much!

Rainy Day FUN!

Nana and BopBop got the kiddos all new raincoats and rainboots! It was perfect timing too because Sunday morning was really rainy! BopBop took us out to breakfast at The Sanctuary and then the kids played in the puddles and ran around in their boots after breakfast! They always have so much fun playing together and they LOVED their new boots!

Mini Jack Hanna's....

Matt got home from work the other day and this is what he saw when he pulled up. They hardly even noticed he was there...they were so busy using their "NOCLARS" to see the lizard that was camped out of our front window. They spent a long, long time staring at it and I was watching on the inside of the house and thought it was hilarious....until I saw Matt's pictures from what they looked like on the outside. These two just crack me up all day long. Yes, they are looking in the binoculars backwards. Who knows if they can even see anything! Ha!!!! They are just loving animals, bugs, lizards etc...these days. Thank God they don't pick them up and bring them to me, but they like to look at them. Yesterday I spent about 20 minutes trying to "save" a dragonfly who was flying around our screened porch. They desperately wanted me to get him outside where he came from and I wasn't able to do it. We had to go and check on him this morning and yes, he's still there. I'm hoping they forget about him pretty soon because I'm pretty sure the next time we go check he might not be! Anyway...here are the cute pictures from the other day!

Daddy's Birthday!

Matt's birthday was on Sunday and the girls had so much fun planning his big day! They got him little presents every day starting September 1st so that they could make it a really special day for him! Matt's favorite part was that the Browns home opener was his birthday too (yes, they lost and no, we weren't surprised)! The girls love their daddy so, so, so much and so do I! We love showing him how much we appreciate him! Here is a picture of the girls helping Daddy blow out his candles, and a picture of the girls watching kickoff with Daddy too (YES, Matt's shirt says "This Guy Loves the Browns" with the fingers pointing back at him! One of the stellar gifts from R and R!).