The latest...

Once again, it has been quite some time since the last post! And as always, I am going to blame the busyness of life as of late! For myself, things have been extra busy as I prepare for the upcoming MOPS year to begin. MOPS stands for Mothers Of PreSchoolers, and I am serving as the coordinator of our local group this year. While it is lots of fun, and I am enjoying it, all the work to get the year off and running has lead to more meetings and time spent on organizing things like kickoff BBQs! So that is what I have been up to!

Shane continues to work on walking and talking. He walks about as much or as little as he chooses. He can definitely do it, but at times prefers to crawl as he is so quick at crawling! And I think his vocabulary grows by the day. He keeps us on our toes as he is into literally everything! If we can't find something, all we have to do is look in the trash and we find that Shane has thrown it in there! He also has become quite the little dancer, which is very fun to watch. And he has his favorite songs!

Here's the little guy acting like a little character!

As I mentioned being busy with MOPS, one of the very fun things I was able to do for MOPS was travel to Nashville for the annual MOPS convention. About 4000 MOPS moms were renewed and refreshed at the convention. I attended with two of my good friends. It was great fun! And my mom was there as well as she is a mentor mom in the MOPS group at her church!

My friends Julie and Melissa and I at dinner in Nashville

While in Nashville, I was able to meet up with some of my roommates from college! We had not seen each other in over 4 years!! It was so wonderful to spend time with them and catch up with them!!!

Faith continues to love preschool and swimming lessons. We continue to be amazed at the transformation that her swim teacher has done! Faith now retrieves rings from the bottom of the pool, jumps off the edge, and attempts to actually swim! We are so grateful she is doing so well and enjoying it so much.

Those are the things she dives down for!

Here she is floating on her back with the help of her teacher

walking and talking

Many milestones are being reached by our little Shane man! Last weekend he began standing on his own, and then he took two steps. Of course, as soon as we took out the video camera, all he wanted to do was crawl! Today he took five steps to me, so he is making progress. What is really cute is that he is just so proud of himself. After he stands on his own for a bit, he sits down and claps and squeals for himself!

While Shane has been saying a few words for a while now (the standard mama, dada, bye-bye, etc.) Faith has taken it upon herself to really work on talking! She is constantly working with him on saying all the important things in life, such as Buck (as in Buck Owens), trash truck, and Target. It's cute to see her go up to him as she did this afternoon before we headed out to do some shopping at Target and say, "Shane, can you say Target?" Then when he attempts it, she laughs and tells me, "Mommy, Shane said Target!" She takes such joy in teaching him. And she is his official interpreter in case he says something that I'm not quite sure of. What a great big sister.

The pictures below are from this past weekend. My parents and sister were in town for Labor Day weekend. We had a great time with them!

Faith enjoyed a smoothie and PB&J by the pool

We couldn't let a football Saturday go by without watching our favorite team!

First Day of School

This past Thursday was Faith's first day of school! She will be going to school two days a week this year - Tuesdays and Thursdays. She was so excited to go, we had to count down the days before Thursday arrived. And then on the school day morning, she was anxiously waiting at the door for about 30 minutes saying, "We're ready to go!"

I finally gave her a book to read to try and entertain her for a while as Shane and I finished getting ready! She had a great first day; she already really likes her teachers and her new friends! It's going to be a great year!!