Sleepover!

Grace had her first official sleepover tonight. Her best bud Dallas got to spend the night so that his mommy and daddy could split up between their newborn twins (born yesterday) who are in different parts of the hospital tonight. One should be coming home tommorow, so then they will just have to divide two ways, but when trying to figure out how to divide three ways tonight the math just wasn't working :) Every time Grace tried to boss Dallas around and he wouldn't do what she wanted she said "Dallas, you're breaking my heart!" to which he would say "sorry Gracie girl!" but he still wouldn't be bossed around. (Two first born's!) We built a cool fort, we read a ton of books, we brushed our teeth in tandom! Grace chose "Hey Dallas your so fine, your so fine you blow my mind" as her goodnight song and Dallas chose a story about a Knight named Dallas and a princess named Grace as his goodnight story. He then told Grace that he was so brave that if a t-rex came he would save God and then save Grace and wouldn't be scared. She told him to close his eyes, apparently not impressed.

The plumber's toilet has a leak...

Ok. So you know the saying about how the plumber's toilet always has a leak? No? Well, it rang true for me today! All I wanted was a picture of my two kids, together. Preferably smiling, but that was not even necessary. As an aspiring professional photographer, I take pictures of other peoples kids all the time. I can always capture that special picture of them looking totally enamored with each other that just melts their parents hearts. Is it too much to ask for ONE of those of my kids? I don't even need the enamored look, just the two of them sitting within five feet of each other without a totally weird or goofy expression would work. Preferably one with no Cinderella panties showing. I had a few extra minutes today with the kids before Steve got home and we were getting a bit stir crazy so we decided to take a walk on the greenbelt behind our house and try for a couple (let's not lie, ONE) cute picture(s). Got lots of cute individual shots:




But the shots of both of them together were another story.


Here I got Noah to sit down, he is ready for Grace


He takes one look at her



and books it.



Probably because this is usually what she does to him (her hugs are ALWAYS around his neck)



He's no dummy. By the time we got home, they were so thirsty that they wouldn't let go of the water bottles long enough to take any pictures without them in the shot. This is the closest I got to a picture of them together...at least it really does capture their life together with each other :)

3 year olds...

Enough said

Labor Day at the Ranch

What a whirlwind weekend! Grandma Terry and Aunt Erin flew in to visit us, and Sat morning we drove (in torrential rain!) up to mom's to spend the weekend on the ranch. I have never seen so much rain. It was noon when we got there, but it was completely dark. Grace was confused and kept asking if it was bedtime. Luckily the rain quickly passed and we got to spend a fun weekend with family and friends. The Smith family joined us and Grace and Noah had a blast playing with their two daughters who are around the same ages. We saw a javelina (which we named Julio), and probably close to 50 hummingbirds. Grace rode a horse for about 2 seconds, but at least she isn't terrified of them anymore, although she still prefers cows. Noah is talking up a storm, and now says that things are "coool." He will see something and go "ook, ook (look)...cooool" It is really funny to see what a 21 month old boy thinks is cool. Mostly cars, trucks, trains, etc. although dad's gym bag also got the "cool" seal of approval!
You can visit www.lindsayhallam.com/laborday for a slideshow of all the pictures from the weekend (I know, it's hard to believe that there could be more than the bazillion I posted here :))

First day of school

Grace started preschool today. She was SO excited! I was worried that she might not want me to leave, but when the time came she walked over to the kids table and started drawing circles with the other kids. She said "mama, isn't it time for you to go?" I asked if I could take one picture and she responded "moooooommm" in that embarassed voice you don't expect to hear until they are 13. She and Dallas go to the same school, Bethany Learning Center, but are in seperate classes. This didn't even phase Grace, she was just so excited to go. Noah and I have had a relaxing morning. He seems really happy to get undivided attention!
One down one to go....










Grace learning how to draw a circle with Ms. Tressa

For Shannon

I was talking to Shannon last night and she was admonishing me for my lack of videos on this blog. It was finally cool enough for the kids to play outside tonight (only about 108), so I took a quick video of them playing in our backyard. We had a bit of a scare...Grace asked if she could play outside for a bit. Since she was standing stark naked I told her she could go outside once she got her pj's on. She got dressed and out she went (I had just done a safety check of the yard 5 minutes earlier). I checked on Noah who was playing in his room and decided to mop up a spilled drink off of the floor. In my mind I was thinking "this is great! finally Grace is entertaining herself and I can get a few things done!" After mopping up the drink which took about one minute I stood up and decided to open the blinds on all of the windows so that I could watch Grace play while I picked up. I opened one blind...no Grace. I opened the second, and third, and ran to the front door where I saw the front gate wide open. I raced outside, noticed Noah's car on the ground as I ran (he must have opened the front door by himself while I was mopping up the juice) mentally did the math and realized that he must be out here with Grace, and now they were out of our yard. I think I now understand the phenomenon of mothers lifting cars off of their infants, the rush of adrenaline that instantly hit me was huge! As I rounded the corner I saw my two kiddos toddling down the sidewalk. Luckily Grace has a healthy fear of cars and the street, and she was herding Noah, telling him to stay on the sidewalk. I rushed up to them and said, "Grace! What were you thinking!?!" She said "Noah and I wanted to go for a walk." And in her mind it was as simple as that. So.....we now have a new rule for playing outside, no one opens the gate except Mama...and I will be installing a new, much higher latch tomorrow!

Ghiradelli Fudge...the San Francisco treat

Someone is going to have to come to my house and eat all of my fudge because at the rate I am going I will double in width by next week :) We just got back from San Fran and had a wonderful trip! Steve had his seminars, so the kids and Nana and Grandpa and I flew out to join him for the weekend. We had a chance to chat with all of our friends and family that live in the area, visit all of our old haunts, and generally relax a bit. On Sat. we went took a tour of Alcatraz, which, even after living in San Fran, I had never seen. It was interesting to see the prison through a child's eyes as we tried to explain to Grace what it was all about. The conversation went something like this..."mama, where are we going?" "to a place where they used to put bad people." "like, in time out?" "ummm...sure, like in time out." she pauses and thinks this over. "is that the time out island?" "yup, that is the time out island." "hmmmm...and where is the spanking island?" In the end, Curt and I took the full tour while Steve and his mom played outside with the kiddos because Noah figured out that the halls in the prison echoed and ended up yelling "BAAAA" at the top of his lungs over and over to hear the sound. Sat after the tour we had the privilege of having our family portraits done by my friend Shannon Cunningham The kids were pretty much wiped out by this point, and then Grace fell and hit her nose on a rock and things spiraled out of control from there. I am amazed that Shannon was able to get any pictures at all, because the kids were in hysterics most of the time...next time we will schedule the photo shoot at the BEGINNING of the trip...duh! We are home safely and now all that is left to do is piles of laundry :)

P.S. For my family that views these blogs through email, you will want to go onto the actual blog to view this one as I put a slideshow of pictures on it :)