My personal cabana boy

Today has been a great day!  We spent the morning at the park with some of my favorite MOPS mommies and the kids all played really well together.  We hurried home for a quick lunch and then our awesome sitter came and took Ben to the pool for a few hours.  Before Cooper's nap, we played out back for awhile so he could enjoy some sunshine as well.  I, of course, dragged my chair over to the kiddie pool so I could keep cool and ended up with my very own cabana boy who was more than happy to pour water on my toes to help me out!  Today we're Embracing the Camera with the little man . . . and my big feet! (he wouldn't let me get a shot of the two of us so this will have to do!)

We also tried a new way of enjoying the pool...over and over!  So many uses for that one little slide!

Unfortunately after awhile it was time to get out and head in for a nap...but of course Coop needed to dry off in the sun first.

Ah...the life of a stay-at-home mom.  Days like these I would not trade for anything!!!

Strawberry Fields Forever

A few weeks ago my mom and her husband were visiting from Colorado and since our backyard strawberry patch had absolutely NO strawberries, we decided to go to the pros!  Ever since we moved to our area, I had always heard of Getting's Garden but had no idea what it entailed and was a little nervous about going by myself...especially with two boys in tow now.

IT WAS AWESOME!!!  We went on a Friday morning so it wasn't super busy and the overcast day helped it to be a bit cooler.  When we pulled in, we parked the car and were immediately escorted out to the rows by a gator-type vehicle.  To this day, if you ask Ben what his favorite part was he would say riding on the gator where the bar comes down. . . pretty sure we could find something like that around here but oh well.

Embracing the Camera with my boys!

We were then handed flats that we could fill up as full as we wanted from the rows they assigned to us.  Ben knew exactly which strawberries were okay to pick and Cooper jumped right into the task at hand.

As we were finishing up, it started sprinkling very lightly so we decided it was time to taking our pickings and head back (on the gator of course!) to the Getting's cafe where we enjoyed strawberry donut holes and the boys helped me finish off a freshly-made strawberry shake!

This may just turn into a new tradition. . . especially when the raspberries are ripe for picking in August!



Climbing through the jungle

Last week, Ben and I went with some friends from our playgroup to the Omaha Zoo.  Cooper had to stay behind (which was nice for both big brother and Mommy!) so we made it into a "date day."  We left early in the morning, explored the zoo, had lunch and walked around a lot more!  It was an absolutely gorgeous day and I realized how important it is to spend some one-on-one time with each of my boys.  Now if I can just get Cooper to take me to some cool concert!

Embracing the camera with my big boy



Squeaky Clean!

I absolutely LOVE how a baby smells after a bath.  And even better is how MY baby smells after his bath.  I love to wrap him all up in his so-soft towel and just cuddle with him.  Matt finally grabbed the camera the other night and caught a few of these moments for Embrace the Camera this week.  I'm so glad that someday I will have these pictures with me in them (looking young!)

Celebrating Easter

Embracing the camera today with our picture from the beautiful Easter day we had here in northwest Iowa!  We were outside for hours on end that day and definitely took some good naps in the afternoon.

Fun in the "sun"

This is the most recent family picture we've taken in several months.  Even though it's poor lighting and the boys aren't exactly smiling (or even looking at the camera for that matter) I'm very glad we took it!  It shows what the day was like.  Ben was annoyed that he had to stop having fun to take the picture, and Coop clung to mommy for dear life. . . a kind of cuddling I never get anymore!  So here's to Embracing the Camera this week . . . even in our clingy moments!

First timer here...

I've been reading the blog of someone I went to high school with for awhile now and just love looking at her insight to things!  She is the mother of six and still makes it a priority to get in front of the camera with each of her kids on different occasions.  Each Thursday she hosts an "Embrace the Camera" day where people are encouraged to take pictures with their kids instead of just of them.  So now that I have my own blog and have kept up with it for awhile, I've decided to give it a try and link up with her blog.  Sure hope I'm doing it right :)

This is me with my Valentine's dates last month!  Matt was out-of-town for work again so we got all dressed up and headed to Culvers for supper and ice cream - what a treat! Oh...and they all sent me roses - love my boys!