Miss you, Daddy!

Josh left this past Friday for his "long trip" (aka deployment). We miss him so much already! I plan to post lots of pictures and clips for him to see while he's gone so I apologize in advance for an abundance of us :)

Here are Josh & the kids spending time together before he left--
My two handsome men

Daddy, Alex wanted you to see her new dress from Grandma:

We love you thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much!

Bye Bye Curls

Sniffle, Sniffle :(
Alex had her first haircut last week, and all those sweet curls are gone. The stylist went quite a bit shorter than we had discussed, but now her hair is all the same length so I guess it will be easier to grow it out with just trims now and then.
She looks like such a big girl now!

You know you're in Idaho...

When your fence blows down and you get to know your "neigh"bors :)

What we've been up to...

We've been busy soaking up all the family time we can before Daddy leaves for his long trip. Daddy has also been busy working on the lawn (having been away for 5 weeks made it a big job), fixing our fence that was damaged from a wind storm, packing his bags, and as I type he's recording videos of him reading books for the kids. Here are some recent snapshots--

Derek at the park. The swinging lasted about 30 seconds before it started to downpour! Good thing there is a covered picnic area there.

Alex had a blast at the local carnival.

We had a little birthday celebration for her as well. This is the message she has for all the people who sent her clothes for her birthday. Just kidding!! She was goofing around and saying that she is just one year old. After we took a picture we showed her the right finger to use. :)
Presents!

She's 3!!

I can't believe that our sweet little girl is three years old! She actually doesn't know that she's three yet-- we're celebrating this weekend since things were chaotic on Monday. Alexandra is so beautiful, funny, tender-hearted, and loving. We are proud to be her parents (at least most days!). Here are some pictures to reminisce on how fast our baby is growing up...

It's so good

...to be home!!! We made it back from our 5 week excursion to Alabama. Ahh, the wonders of living in a house with different rooms, separated by actual doors. Right now, both of my kids are napping-- in their own rooms, away from me! It's a little piece of heaven :)

Here is a shot of our room. Sadly, the room actually looks bigger in this picture.
Our little (messy) kitchen.
Some of the crew at Play Park (Corban, Collin, Kaelyn, Derek)
Alex and her good chum Corban swinging at the Vaughn Road Park
Little man is on the go! (okay, not really but he looked cute sitting in the car)

More posts to come!

Brother & Sister

One of the sweetest things about our two kiddos is watching them interact. Derek is absolutely in love with his big sister. He just lights up each time he sees her. She makes a beeline to him in the morning (admittedly, a very short beeline since our room is quite tiny) to say "Good Morning Derry!" and get the reward of his huge smile. Their seats are closer together in our rental car and they have started to hold hands while riding along! So precious!

A few pictures

Here are the few pics I tried to upload earlier...I'll post some more soon. These are from the beginning of our trip...I can tell because despite frequent applications of sunscreen, now Alex is looking like a brown little Indian.