Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

Xander's hair has been quite long for sometime now, and a haircut has been coming for a while. This morning I decided to give both of the boys haircuts before I got ready for the day (since I always end up so fur covered in the end.) I love Xander's long hair with its curls, but I finally did it. Here's my cute chubby boy before...

(I promise, he's wearing a diaper ;) )

Here comes the clippers... He actually did pretty well for the first time. AND WAY BETTER than his brother does with haircuts. I just wish both of them wouldn't wiggle so much, especially when I'm trying to trim around ears and around the back of the neck.

A little traumatic, but I survived... I mean, Xander survived! :)

Such sad faces... But so darn cute too!

And here's the after-bath-feeling-much-better after pictures. I'm definitely not a professional hairstylist, but it turned out well enough.

I knew he was growing up fast, but now he also looks grown up. Funny how haircuts can do that. I'm still getting used to it.

'Do or Die

So I decided to jump on the short summer hair bandwagon, it was either that or die of heat. With weather in the 90's recently my hair was always in the way or in a ponytail. And Xander liked to use my hair as his tow rope. I was just tired of my hair and needed a change. So here's the change...

Don't really have any good before shots... I'm usually the one taking the pictures. Ben had way too much fun taking mine last night. They're not the greatest pictures, but you get the idea. Thanks Ann for watching the boys, so I could get my haircut!

Birthday Bash and Lightening Crash

Grandpa Barnes turned 80 on the 10th of July, and that following Sunday we had a big Barnes' family dinner and party. We gathered at my in-laws home for the celebration. Here's the birthday man. Lookin' good for 80 years of living!

After dinner and birthday cake, Grandpa had requested family musical performances. So while the different families performed, (and of course I didn't perform... let's be serious here ;) ) the little kids played outside in the backyard. Gavin had a lot of fun playing with kids of Ben's cousins (what does that make them anyway?). Especially his little buddy Aiden. Those two loved playing in Grandma Ann's sandbox. If you look closely, Gavin's blue shirt is gray with dirt. According to Aiden, he was just making Gavin into the Sandman (from Spiderman... Aiden loves those kind of comic book characters.)! It was so funny. His poor mom sure felt bad, but I figure Gavin gets almost as dirty on his own.

The littler toddlers stayed inside and played. I think a couple of them also had fun dumping everyone's cups of water they had sitting next to them on the floor.

Xander decided he was a big boy and needed to drink out of a cup. This kid sure is trying to grow up to fast!

Once all the very musically talented Barnes shared their numbers with us, we headed upstairs for a slide show Ann had put together of memories and pictures that the family had of Grandpa. One memory shared by several family members, including Ben, is Grandpa's story about a bear named Herman. Grandpa graciously got up and gave us the "Reader's Digest" version of the story. It's quite funny because he takes his top teeth out to tell it. I wish I had been around when he would do the full narration, it's such a hoot!

As everyone said they're good byes, we gave Gavin a bath. I didn't really need to take half a sandbox home in our car with us. We put both boys in their jammies and headed home to put them in bed. Because it was so late both boys conked out. But Gavin's seat isn't as comfy as Xander's is for sleeping, so he makes up for it.

How that is anymore comfortable... I don't know? As we drove home we started noticing lightening and enjoyed a good lightening show... especially for here in Idaho. We don't normally get very much lightening. I tried to take some pictures from the car... I didn't really get the lightening, but I ended up with some that captured the other lights on the highway kind of cool. Then once we got home, Ben spent I don't know how long taking picture after picture trying to capture the lightening just right in a picture. Here's what we ended up with. There are a few really neat shots.

Rexburg Excursion

After living here in our home for just over two years, we decided we needed to clean our mostly white carpet. Needless to say, with two little boys it wasn't looking quite so white anymore. While the carpet cleaner was busy, I put Xander in his highchair to play. By the end, he was sound asleep.

While the carpets dried, we headed to the Rexburg for the day. We went to Porter Park with Grandma Ann and Jacob and Sarah, Ben's cousin, and her two kids, Aiden and Laila. Aiden is a couple months older than Gavin and Laila is about 10 days younger than Xander, so it's a perfect match for friends! The park has a free school lunch once a week, so the kids got to eat a school lunch of a hot dog, tater tots, animal crackers, and milk. After lunch, or at least the little I could get Gavin to eat, we headed over to the playground to play. Before Sarah left, we all headed over to the Carousel and went for a ride. I'm not sure if Gavin liked. I had to hold on to him the whole time or else he got worried, but he didn't cry. He didn't really smile either, except when waving at Grandma. I think he had more fun just watching it!

When it was just Grandma, Jacob, and us, we decided it was warm enough to let Gavin play in the spray park. Xander enjoyed the show from the sides in Grandma's arms.

Even though I think he enjoyed the water, Gavin wasn't always quite sure about everything going on.

Jacob took Gavin down the little slide...

Only ONCE. I love this shot you can tell Gavin is stiff and a little afraid, but the water caught in midair is just too cool.

We had a great day in Rexburg. We'll have to go to Porter Park again soon!

Cuckoo For Cocoa

Recently, we bought Cocoa Dyno-Bites, and needless to say, Gavin loves them! He asks for "cocoa, cocoa" all of the time. He has them for breakfast sometimes, but more often he has them for dessert. He'll eat his lunch or his dinner all gone just so he can have a bowl full of cocoa, and then proceed to scarf down the whole thing even though he just ate. You can tell he loves them by the chocolate grin he's wearing!

Photo Shoot

A few days ago I pulled out the camera and decided to try to capture the curls that appear on Xander's head. Some in Ben's have family have curls, but Ben and I have such strait hair that we never expected would end up with a little boy with curls. When Xander's hair gets sweaty or wet, the ends start to curl. It's so cute. I tried to capture a close up picture of his hair, but my subject was quite wiggly. This was the best I could get.

Besides having a wiggly subject, Gavin kept trying to be in the picture. He didn't like I was only focusing on Xander, so we had a little photo shoot of both of the boys. Both of the boys have a fascination with the camera and as you can see the like to get nice and close!

Here are my two handsome boys! They are both getting to be so big. I sure do love these boys!