The other day I raced though dinner so that I could go out and get our yard mowed before dark. I am notorious for mowing yards as the sun is going down and you can hardly tell where the cut line is. I successfully got the grass cut and a few other yard items taken care of before it got dark. As I worked around the yard, I kept finding Emily in windows and doorways keeping tabs on me. Nowadays, whenever she sees a mower, she points it out and talks about watching Mommy or Daddy using the mower. So the grubby Mommy came in the house and headed straight for the shower to clean up. I caught my reflection in the mirror – work shorts, t-shirt, old shoes, dirt stained socks, carelessly swept ponytail, plenty of sweat, and earrings. Earrings? I guess I wanted to keep a fashion sense to my yard attire.

Julia joins me every morning when we go and get Emily dressed. We keep talking about Julia joining Emily in her room for bedtime with Emily and she has started to ask about Julia at night when we go to bed. Other than the side effect of each of them waking the other one up I think they will transition in this next step really well.

I don’t know how we could be more blessed by our daughters! May God grant them this sweetness and joy with each other for all of their lives.

We had some fun with curlers and Emily’s hair. I actually questioned whether Emily would let me put them in her hair at all, or how many she would allow me to get in. To my surprise she let me do her whole head. The video that we watched probably had a lot to do with our success. We left them in for about an hour, which was the point that she started to pull at the curlers. For being dry hair only that was in curlers for an hour, it added an amazing amount of curl added to her hair. We might try it again soon for real instead of play and see how it goes. She is two, so, who knows.

We borrowed Elena’s really cool purple hat! Thanks Elena for sharing!

Julia is hanging out with Daddy!

Our side of the square had an extra dancer.

Go-Bubbles-Go!

We had our annual church Barn Dance and Chili Cook-off. Last year Emily loved dancing and didn’t want to quit even when Mommy’s arms were tired. This year she liked the dancing, but was far more interested in playing outside with the other kids and toys. Julia had a blast riding around in the front pack. She did some dancing with Mommy while Daddy and Emily played. Emily could have chased bubbles for the whole evening if she had been allowed to. The only sad note from the evening was that we didn’t get any photos of Emily and Daddy dancing to the hokey pokey. They had a blast even though Emily didn’t quite get the idea of sticking individual body parts in and out of the circle. Her favorite was the whole body and hopping in and out of the circle.

We took the girls to have their photos taken yesterday. For Julia, it was time for a six month photo, and we also wanted to have some photos taken with both Emily and Julia in them.

Emily, being two years old, doesn’t relish the idea of sitting still and looking at the camera these days, so we’re learning to be creative in our attempts to get her to pose for photos. While Julia was having her individual photos taken, Emily was busy scouring the studio for all the most interesting toys. One item Emily took a particular interest in was the set of alphabet blocks, so we used them as a prop to get Emily to sit long enough to get a photo taken with her sister. Actually, as you can see in this photo, both of our girls were quite entertained by the blocks.