"Sunshine, Lollipops...doo doo doo-do-do"

I'm happy. After almost a week of rain, the sun is out, but the weather is still remaining a touch cooler. I've seen leaves falling from trees already, and I haven't had a mosquito bite in over a week. Life is blissful and no time feels better than September. It is fast becoming my favorite month of the year!

Dan and I have been dieting for the past three months and exercising a lot more. Our hard work is starting to pay off and it is just fun to see what we were capable of. Dan's been running about three miles a day and I've been keeping it around two. I'm thinking of running the Huntsville Half Marathon this year...I better get going with that if it's really going to happen!

Logan's been busy with school and cub scouts. His leaders are fantastic and he always does such fun things! Linc is happily working in school. He is so fun because he loves homework. He's perfectly content to come home, pull out his folder and get to work. If he doesn't have homework, he grabs one of the workbooks we bought him and does that. He's already begging to do his homework in cursive (his version of it anyway) and I'm still trying to convince him to wait till third grade for that. The boy always makes me laugh. He is just so Linc!
Owen started his preschool again yesterday. He was up at 6:00 am, fully dressed, pushing me out of bed.  His school has a lot of children this year and he is in heaven! The only bad thing is that Ellie wants to go too and I'm holding her off a year. I'm going to have a very sad three year old for the next nine months!

Owen is a smart, sincere little boy. I was at Publix the other day with him and Ellie, and two sweet older gentlemen came up to me and offered to buy Ellie. (Completely joking of course!)  Owen didn't think it was funny at all and looked them right in the eyes and said, "You can't have her! She is protected by a force-field called family!" (O's a huge Star Wars fan.) The men looked shocked and embarrassed (as was I), but I almost broke out in tears right there in front of the buggies at Publix, because of how sweet his comment was. I'm so happy that my little boy knows he is loved and how important our family is. It is a "force-field" and we will always be there for each other!

Ellie is being her fun, girly self. She is turning three next week and I am having a princess party for her with all her little nursery girls. She is so excited! She's been in the habit lately of saying, "I'm a boy!" (poor kid has all brothers!) and try as I might, I couldn't convince her otherwise until yesterday I told her that if she was a boy, she wouldn't be needing a princess party...she should have a fire truck party. That did the trick...she instantly announced that she was a girl, and hasn't changed her mind since. She really wants that princess party!

I guess that's about it. I took some of my most favorite pics ever of Ellie yesterday that I will probably post on my photo blog too because I just love them; but since her birthday is coming up, I wanted to add them here as well. I am also going to add Owen's "first day of school pics".  Sorry there are so many, but I practice on my kids...I don't know what I'm going to do when they are all in school!

 Have a great weekend everyone!

On the way to school!

One more, right before he went in!

While O was at school, Ellie and I went and read to Linc's class and then headed to the Sharon Johnston Park. I saw this little spot and had to get a few pics of her! I really love how these turned out...who knew that all I needed to get real pics of my daughter was her best friend, Teddy!

My Mom made this hat for her. :)

And then a few pics of Owen for his first day! He humored me. :) These were taken off Jordan Rd. and Mooresmill.

I'll post some with Logan and Linc later!