Saturday Fun

Start the day off right - with a BIRTHDAY PARTY (Happy Birthday Luna)

Nap Break!  (whew)

Shorts or hipster hat?

Finish the day off with a trip to the pool!

New Hobby, Photography

I post so infrequently to this channel but that doesn't mean I'm not paying attention.  I am grateful to my wife for maintaining this record because it gives me a chance to keep up with their day to day and look back on the memories on occasion.  Love you babe - thank you for all you do to raise our children and make my home a welcome place to be.

I don't know if I'm actually going to say much still - but you'll be seeing more posts by me - typically with the shots of my girls and our activities that I really like.  I'll throw in a few of my favorites of other things too but expect that with my new toy I'll be more visually active here.  I hope you like it - but if not - TO BAD!  :-) This is just too much fun!

And so it begins!  -- if you want the full photo stream you can check me out on Google+

First Picture with the camera!  

It took a while to get this - teething children are a tad less photogenic than usual

My old girl... the flash leaves something to be desired

Every Summer

I love this one!

Weigh in - 9 months

I'm a little behind on this month's weigh in and it's because there's really nothing to report.  :-/

I'm now doing Strike class 3 times a week, and I can feel myself getting stronger, but the weight is just not coming off.  I'm not really sure what to do except wait and see. 

I lost 0 pounds this month. Since I started 9 months ago, I've lost 18 pounds, putting me 12 pounds away from my goal of losing 30 pounds.

4th of July: Mira's first fireworks show

As usual, we had a great 4th of July party at our house.  A huge turnout, despite what I thought was sort of "last minute" party plans.  I wasn't sure my little house could hold that many people, but it turned out to be fabulous!  It was lots of fun and I was so glad to see everyone who came.

But this year was a little different for Mira because it was the first year that I felt like she was old enough (and brave enough) to stay up late to watch the fireworks show.  Ellowyn went to bed at her normal time, but Mira got to stay up (till 10:30!!!).  Brian, my beloved pyromaniac who this year wore his shirt that says "Non-flammable? Challenge accepted!", always shoots his own fireworks from our backyard (we are in a narrow strip of land outside of Austin city limits, but inside Travis county where fireworks are legal and our whole neighborhood goes crazy every 4th and also at New Year's).  Mira was tentative about Brian's fireworks at first, she was saying, "I'm not so sure about this..." and making me cover her ears.  But then she slowly warmed up to it, eventually calling out the colors of the fireworks as they would go off and saying, "Sparkly!"  She even stayed up for the professional fireworks show that goes off from the field at the end of our street.  You can easily see the show from our backyard, but Mira said she wanted to walk down to the field with Daddy to get a closer view.  She really enjoyed the professional show.

But try as I might, I couldn't get her to warm up to sparklers.  She didn't want those burny things anywhere near her.  I guess maybe the pyromaniac gene is recessive.