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Today I am thankful for the FIRST TIME EVER, Annie slept through the night without me having to go in one single time. She went to bed at 7 pm, I heard her make a few quiet noises at midnight (but no crying), and did not hear another peep out of her until 8 am. She still takes a bottle in the middle of the night every night. She has made it through the night a few times without eating, but I have always had to go in there at least once at some point because she was crying. She almost always wakes up around 11 pm and has to be comforted back to sleep. I was so proud of her!

We had a huge thunderstorm come through just before 6 am this morning. It cooled things off and we ended up having a beautiful day that stayed in the 80s. Nana and Grandy, we got some good swingset time in today. I was even wearing jeans and was not hot. Love it. I really can't wait for fall weather. It will be so nice to cool off a little.

I wanted to write down something cute that Lucy told us the other day. We were all in the car and Lucy was playing with this little plastic toy. All of the sudden she announces, "I am going to look for birds with my noculars." She was holding the toy up to her eyes like binoculars. It is statements like this when you stop and think, there is really nothing she can't talk about now. She knows words that I don't remember talking about with her. She is officially big. *sigh. really, really big sigh*

I had a lot of comments and questions on yesterday's pictures. First, we do have beautiful light in our kitchen, which is where most of our indoor pictures come from. There is also great light by the french doors that go out to our yard, which is the other place indoors that I take natural light photos. 2 days ago I took bathtub pictures using my SB600 Speedlite, which is an external flash on my camera. I really don't know how to properly use this flash, so I left it on my camera to practice using it. So yesterday's pictures were using the flash. The awesome thing about these flashes is that you can rotate the head so that the flash bounces off of a surface instead of your subject. I usually bounce off of the ceiling, but for yesterday's images the flash was pointed behind me at the cabinets. By bouncing the flash, you don't get any of that ugly harsh flash look to your pictures. They look like natural light. There is my photography tip of the week! Hope it is a tad helpful. But just so you know with 99% of my pictures, there is no flash used. I had to look for the flash for Lucy's birthday and before then, it had been months since I had used it. I really like the results when it is properly used, so I might start practicing with it more.

The picture above of Lucy is a true glimpse into our lives. Every night when I sing songs to her at bed, she lays like this with her hands under her cheek and smiles at me while I sing. Every night I think to myself how I wish I had a picture of her because she is so precious. She was in a such a sweet mood at bedtime tonight that I asked her if I could get my camera and take her picture and she happily agreed because it prolonged going to bed. She stayed right in her position and let me snap away. This is something that really only me, Justin, Nana, or Lee Lee would have ever seen because we are the only people who have ever put her to bed. Now you can all see how lucky we are to get to put this pumpkin to bed every night.

How hysterical are the roller skates. She got those from her friend Molly for her birthday and she has really been kind of scared of them. However tonight she brought all of the gear in my room and wanted to skate. She thought she was hilarious when she would fall down. It really was funny. She cried when it was time to take them off for bed. We had to tell the princess skates good night and tell them we would see them first thing in the morning.









I LOVE this picture. Annie was so happy that Lucy was pushing her in the swing. I love it when they can be sweet to one another for a while.