YAY!

What an exciting day I had today (minus the part where I cleaned this morning)! I got an email from the editor of Kodak's photo of the day and she told me that TWO of my photos are going to be potd's next month!!!! September 1 and September 18! AND one of those photos is going to actually be featured for the entire month on their website on the "printers" page! How cool is that? I was so very excited! Anyways...here's what she sent me that will be showing on their website. What a cutie little Kate is, huh???

Altogether Now!!!!

It's officially over....."Date Day", that is. Every once in a while I take my oldest son out so we can go on a date. It's HIS time. Time for me to focus only on him with no distractions...like a younger brother!!! I feel like so many times when you have an older child (in his case, 8 years older) that they don't get as much attention as a.)they would like and b.) you would like to give them. Even though Judah is absolutely the best big brother EVER and understands his role as big brother, I think it's important to make him feel like he's the "only one", if even for a day. So, we established "Date Day".

Today I took him ice skating. He LOVES it. Let me tell ya, it's kind of funny to see a kid all dressed up in long pants, a sweatshirt and a sock hat in the dead of summer! It's also so fulfilling to watch him skate his little heart out on the rink.

We also played some games in the arcade and won a lot of tickets. Kids were standing around us jealous of the tickets we had!!! We were soooo excited too, that is until we went to redeem them and saw the prizes you wouldn't even be able to purchase at the dollar store they were so cheap! Oh well, can't win them all!

Then he went rock climbing. He's really great at this....it's amazing. BUT I swear, it's every kid's goal to try and make it to the top as QUICKLY AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!!!! Well, he DOES sort of remind me of Spiderman when he's climbing, so how human is THAT?!?!?! ;-)

As we were driving off, I said to him, "Well, our date is officially over...". He then replied with, "Why do you always call it a date, Mom?". And I said, "Well, it's OUR time....together.....ALONE. He had no more questions after that and completely understood the day was all about him. We then went on to joke about our special day afterwards by combining the words "Alone" and "Together".........."Altogether" now!!! And we laughed together....it was good!

And NO he didn't spend the entire time wiping out! He is actually a really great ice skater.....these are just the pics I liked the best artistically.



Here he is almost to the top!



Aaaaahhhh.....success! On his way back down after reaching his goal!