Oh by the way..

..Dax is potty training. It's going as well as you'd expect it to go with a busy, opinionated, stubborn, jokester 2.5 year old boy. Not TERRIBLE, but not as smooth as Ada was ;) I wasn't ready to do it, but he insisted after watching friends use his bathroom. And there is no quitting or turning back... Yet :)

Happy 5th Birthday Ada Grace!!!!

HOW is this precious girl 5 years old!?!??!?!

She is the most amazing, sweet natured, tender hearted, witty, creative, beautiful, hilarious, perfect little girl ever.  And she's ALL MINE!  

Throwback to her first birthday party-

And now heading to her 5th Birthday Party!  

A Karaoke Party fit for a pop star at Sweet and Sassy!  

(I made her shirt- it says "five" with a mic as the "i")

(Yes that's a pig-in-a-blanket necklace she chose to wear to her party)

Blowing out the candles on the cupcakes she help make herself!!

Holy BIRTHDAY PRESENTS!  Mimi and Steve MADE her this Barbie dollhouse bigger than she is!!!  From scratch.  It was wood floors and tile, for Heaven's sake.  Where was Steve when I was 5!?!?!?!?!?  

She got SO MANY amazing presents from family and friends.  This girl is ROTTEN you guys.  

Here are some videos of her party :)

This is a short one- I just love her face at the very end!

I love this video- I love her faces, her dancing, her hand gestures, just HER!  You can really hear her friend Marielle singing RIGHT into the mic, but you can catch a little of Ada's voice now and again! :)

And on her ACTUAL birthday she chose to go to the zoo.  Her very very sweet friend Eli (who wasn't really Sweet and Sassy material, you know) was able to meet up with us at the zoo with his mama where we all had a great time!  I think this was the best birthday ever in the history of the world. :)

This is Ada with the huge gift shop gorilla at 9 mos and 5 years. I feel like they were both yesterday. But only one of them was!!! 

Videos of my Life :)

These videos make me laugh :)

At the park. Ada the horse appears out of nowhere, neighs, Tate neighs back (you can hear him screeching behind the camera), and then Dax can be seen lurking in the bushes.  

This is Dax singing his favorite terrible pop song right now.  

Don't recognize it?  Watch the real version here.  Of course we only hear the edited version on the radio :)

And this cute one of Tate just a-bouncin' away!!!

Photo Dump

Handsome boy!

 Pulling up.  Yay.

 Crawling through his big orange tunnel-

 Shirtless brothers at dinner!

 Eating his fingers for lunch-

 This one below is the only one I'll overly describe :)  Last night the Texans were playing a late Monday Night Football game- Casey and I stayed up to watch the end of the game and Tate woke up for the 4th quarter (not awesome- we've got some sleeping issues.  Teething?  Hopefully?).  

He and I sat on the couch and literally had an entire conversation made of up different tones, volumes, pitches, whatever else adjective describing sound for a good 10 minutes!  

It was the sweetest thing ever.  He got such a kick out of it- and I think REALLY believed we were discussing something!  

 I love her in her funky kitty cat shirt she wore with a blue lacey skirt and glittery gold knock-off Toms shoes!  My little fashionista :)  She even asked if we could put these big wavy curls in her hair.  

GOD I love her.  And sorry I lied about over-describing only one picture. 

Park Trip | Tate's First Swinging

It was only like 91 degrees this afternoon!  So we swung by Sonic for happy hour slushies, detoured by home to change into comfies, and hit up the park down the street! :)  It's been a while since we've had that kind of afternoon.  And Tate swung in the swings for the first time!  He LOVED IT!

Betcha can't guess what's got his attention...

 ...the Bigs!  As usual! 

 OMG Favorite picture EVER!

 Everyone in one shot :)

Ada's First Day (of her last year) of PreK!

I cannot believe I only have one year left with Ada before she begins Kindergarten.  ONE YEAR!  This is Ada on her first day back to PreK at Sonshine.  She is so precious, and I missed her terribly that first day!  We are ready to get back in the swing of things and have a routine- but summer sure was amazing this year.  I think it's safe to say it was the best one yet!

 Just exactly how does one get CUTER as they get older!?  Ada's pulling it off-

Tate- 6 months

Wow- this is a week overdue.  The good news is that I DID take these pictures and videos on his 6 month birthday, just took me 7 extra days to upload them all!  

Anyway.  HOW.IS.HE.6.MONTHS.OLD!?!?!?!?  It makes me sooo sad to think that the next 6 months will probably speed past just as quickly as the first 6 have.  I SWEAR I was just holding a 3 week old widdle guy- I blink and he's crawling and sitting and eating food and carrying on conversations like he knows what everyone is saying!  (Which is SUPER CUTE by the way.  He does it best with me and Ada.)  

He and Dax are also becoming better buddies (you know Ada's been his mother hen and BFF since day one).  Tate thinks Dax is a real hoot- and Dax enjoys putting on a show for him.  And Dax has been a SUPER big brother.  Not getting too mad if Tate grabs toys or bites or whatever.  He seems to comprehend Tate is a (super duper cute) baby.  Not an equal.  YET.  :)

So here are our few pictures I snapped of our 6 month photoshoot.  One picture even remotely resembles a 6 month photoshoot.  The rest are of Tate crawling around, chasing Dax, eating his sticker, etc!

 Peace out. mama!  You can't make me stay, now!

And here's another video of Tate crawling.  He's getting more efficient and coordinated by the day  (it's hard to coordinate those 4 appendages!  Plus he gets distracted easily and ends up crawling in a circle, ha!)- and in the last week he has pretty much become a master crawler.  I find him all over the place.  He is SO MUCH HAPPIER being able to explore, too.  He's been waiting his whole life to have this freedom! 

UPDATE: I found these videos below that I took of him at exactly 5.5 months- Have I uploaded these to the blog yet?  If so, you get double the viewing pleasure :)  Look how hard he was working!  Look how cute he is :)