so the no diaper, no underwear potty-training has turned mclayne into a stripper. her outfits of nothing but a hat, a snake around her neck, mardi gras beads, or a pair of fur-trimmed boots have me worrying about her future employment.






snowman in august?! but at least she's wearing clothes



cole learned how to get on all fours and rock. i hope it's a while until he learns to crawl, because this is just too cute.

someone decided to grow a mustache...

no, thankfully not ryan


it looks like cole has been watching the olympics with the rest of the world and is a big fan of the croatian water polo team (how can you not be?!)....



either that, or he is trying to tell us he's ready to play the wii!

forgive me...and please bless all the starving pygmies in new guinea

i really shouldn't be blogging about this on a sunday, so if any of you are trying to have a very uplifting spiritual sabbath you may want to wait until tomorrow {or forever} to read this post.
recently i started singing the "boom-chicka-boom" song with mclayne.
i only knew the first two lines and got curious about the rest of the lyrics so i looked them up and found:
i said a boom chicka boom (echo)
i said a boom chicka boom (echo)
i said a boom chicka boom rocka chicka rocka chicka boom(echo)
Uh huh! (echo)
Oh yeah! (echo)
One more time...style.
then you make up your own style (rock n roll, underwater, slow, animal, etc)
as i'm singing it with mclayne one day we decided on animals. first we did cow...
"...i said a moo chicka rocka chicka milka chicka moo (mclayne repeats)
uh huh (mclayne repeats)on yeah (mclayne repeats)one more time..." i now innocently come up with a simple animal that mclayne is familiar with and say "doggie style!" (and of coarse MCLAYNE REPEATS!)
me:"oh, that's not a good animal for this song. let's pick another animal."
mclayne:"DOGGIE STYLE!"
let me paint the picture for you...we are outside, no longer singing the song, and mclayne is randomly shouting "D...S...!" the more i try to ignore or distract her the more she knows it is bad and the more she wanted to say it. how do you possibly explain to strangers why your 2 1/2 year old knows about that?! luckily nobody but ryan and i heard her.phew. she now only says dog style and only when we sing the song, so if we retire it for a while i think we'll be okay! i'm a little sad because it is a great song. so when we bring it back we're staying away from doggies, missionaries, cowgirls, and cowboys!

thanksgiving point

dinosaur museum

mclayne wasn't crazy about the texture of the sand at the water play area, but she eventually got into it

kylee, braiden, mclayne, + maya at the dinosaur imax movie. we thought mclayne would be fine {even after the warning that it was unsuitable for young children} afterall, she does just fine with the disney dinosaurs...well it turns out that huge 3D dinosaurs on an enormous screen with loud, scary sound effects is just a little scarier than at home....oops! it was pretty entertaining to watch her reach out to touch things and flinch when dinosaurs would "fly" into her. and luckily no phobias of dinosaurs yet...baboons yes, but that's a whole different story!

we couldn't have done it without kylee...what a lifesaver! i am sure her arms + back were feeling it the next day
and last but not least, the highlight of the day for mclayne...riding bullseye. she liked it so much she did it twice, complete with "giddy-ups" and "yee-haws"

{if anyone out there is wondering if there are still actually people that use old-school film cameras, here is proof. my mom will be the last person on earth to go digital. not that you can tell by these scans, but amazingly she gets pretty good shots with her old point-and-shoot!}

sweet cole

{seven months}
still the smiliest kid i've ever seen...and still teething!

mccall

we just got back from a great vacation in mccall idaho. a lot of good food, gas + movie quotes as usual, but we were also able to sneek in a little skiing, hiking, and reading. this was my first year in mccall not pregnant or nursing so i was really looking forward to it. i just hadn't realized how hard it is to "vacation" with two little kids, especially after being away from home for a month! still...what a place!