Some mornings start with two little boys crawling in bed with you.

And some days end with this kind of silliness.

(Alaina is always so sharing!)

Three pretty boys.

Well...um.  Two pretty boys and one....uh...hairy one.

The boys are sharing their hair with laina.  She looks good with short, blond, half-straight/half-curling hair.

Happy Birthday to ME!

44 years old.

Yikes.

Well, to ease me gently into this good year, I woke up early to hear the cheerful clanging of pots and pans.  I walked down stairs to see my lovely daughter make orange rolls for me.  Orange rolls!  It's not even Christmas!

Well...I guess it was here.  Christmas in September.

And to make things even better, Austin was making piles and piles of crepes!  What a wonderful way to wake up!  I choose to have my Birthday every day of the year.  

Jason made me this awesome card.  It took me a second to figure it out.  The cake has four candles under the 'tens' and four candles under the 'ones' or won, as he wrote it.  It was the very first time that I liked common core math.

To help top of my day, we rode 10 minutes down the rode to Lake Lanier and went swimming for a couple of hours.

Look at this crazy group.  They are standing on the yellow rope.

And...now they aren't.

Twinnies.

My sweetie, boy.

And the lover.

Rob and Austin, hangin' out.

The Rob train.

And when we came home, we got to chow down on these lovely rolls.

Best.  Birthday.  Ever.

September

Before we knew it, September was upon us.  

We managed to do some of the important things, like bottle a million bottles of applesauce.

Play with play-doh.

Get in the last swim of the season.

Lose, yet another, tooth.  (watch out Jason...soon you'll run out of teeth!)

And finally,  we got to get decked out for crazy-hair day.  Actually, only Jason had crazy hair-day.  Emmett just joined in for the fun of it.

Once school started, we were able to get back into the swing of things.

Emmett had a playdate with Teddy.

Ethan went to Jekyll Island for a track meet.  We weren't able to join him but we did see pictures they posted on Facebook. 

Emmett got a new calendar so he could count down the days until Daddy would get home.

Ah.  Worth the wait.

Emmett asked me to make him a scarf.  These were the colors he wanted.

The little boys and I took an afternoon walk through the park.  They are fun kids to hang out with.

The end of summer left us with this single, lonely flower on our tree.

At the end of the day, the sun put on a pretty spectacular show.

Home Again!

Finally.  After a long summer of sun, fun and family, we made it back to Georgia.  

We were greeted with a newly permitted driver.  (I won't say I was scared...but I was scared!)  It turns out my fears were for nothing, because Ethan has turned out to be a pretty good driver after all.

It was worth a small celebration.

And then...two days later...we had the 1st day of school.

First, the twins went off.

First day of High School.  9th grade.

Then Jason went for his first day of 1st grade.

A week later, this guy started his first day of 10th grade.  (so big!  so handsome!)

A few weeks later, this little guy went to his first day of pre-school.  I'm not crying.  I'm NOT crying.

sigh.