Last Friday I kept the kids up past naptime until Andrew could make it home a bit early so we could drive to Manhattan and stroll through Purple Power Play, stay the night with my parents, and then head to the Bill on Saturday morning for the annual family reunion...with 50,000 of our kin.  Ha.

But seriously, we look forward to football season so much every year, and try to include our kids whenever we can.  Or feel up to it.  Or Andrew agrees to it.  Sometimes it's the first scenario, many times it's the second or third.  Because having a baby strapped to you with your four-year-old lying on you while the middle naps away on your husband under the blazing hot late summer sun is exactly how football was meant to be watched!  Go Cats!   

So maybe June won't make it to another game this year.  

But we can say we took all three to at least one this season and lived to tell the tale.

June did her best to spend the least amount of time with us as possible as she thought everyone else's tailgates looked better than ours.  Rude.  Nelle tried her hardest to keep baby sis in line, but soon got distracted by wide-stance leg dancing with a bit of parking lot twirling, except for when she and Henry tried to play catch with a mini football and caught it approximately two times between the two of them out of 100 throws.

I just cannot for the life of me figure out why I was utterly exhausted at halftime.

I love that this crew is growing up with these traditions and it just makes me so happy when they see the stadium and their eyes light up.
Worth it, worth it.  Exhausting, but worth it.

Looking forward to another season, more tailgates, and time with this crew of Wildcats.

ps, for fun - 2015 season opener (OMGeeeee! Teeny tiny newborn June!), 2014 season opener (baaaby Nelle and chubby toddler Ham, 2013 season here and here (preggo with Nelle) , 2012 season (Ham's first game!)

On Tuesday Andrew and I celebrated our eighth anniversary!  And celebrated is used loosely here because I'm not sure how else to write about it.  We actually went out on Friday night last week to officially celebrate it, so on Tuesday we acknowledged it??  

Andrew worked, and we made dinner at home like most/all Tuesdays, but then after we all went for a little drive so I could location scout for a couple of upcoming shoots.  

June's teething in a major way right now (that happens when you only have two teeth through the first 13 months of your life...eventually they do all have to come in, and the time is nowwww), so she and Andrew ended up staying in the car, and the bigs and I high-stepped it through some pretty tall grass into a field of wild sunflowers.  

We stayed for maybe only 10 minutes after getting in some test shots, while Henry and Nelle twirled, picked flowers, and flew like airplanes through the open field.

I love this time of year because the sunflowers always remind me of the time of our wedding.  The wild ones pop up a week or two before and linger for about the same amount of time after, just like they did the year we were married.

We let the bigs stay up past bedtime to have s'mores with us in the backyard by the fire pit, listened to Pat Green, and it wasn't lost on me that this typical, normal Tuesday night in September although ordinary was also extraordinary in many ways too.

Life could not be more different for us compared to when a 22 and 23-year-old got married and decided to make a life together.  And I love that we choose to show up every day to keep making it better and better.  We do the day-to-day, the routines, the mundane, and then somewhere along the way, we realize the every day is the good stuff.  I mean, I love a good date night, but give me Tuesday night over and over again.  Hand-holding in the car, country music around a fire, tucking babies into beds, talking about our days, and falling asleep by the one I said I do to eight years ago.

Because if this is what eight years in looks like, I can't wait to see what's yet to be.

The best is yet to be.

We spent Labor Day weekend doing a mix of things around the house, working a bit, and trying to check a few things off our to-do list
that always seems to be growing instead of shrinking.  

Things like replacing the toilet paper holder in our master bath that Henry somehow lost literally probably two years ago. #1) I just still don't understand how he lost it, and #2) I doubly don't understand why we haven't replaced it yet.  Oh yesssssss, #kids #life.  Hashtag who has time?!?

I'm now living the life of luxury
with an official place to put my toilet paper in my own bathroom.  

Be jealous, people.

I also finally asked enough times for Andrew to build the kids a little DIY dress-up clothes rack that he gave in and did it.  Hooray, nagging for the win!

We told the bigs we needed to go to the hardware store to pick up supplies, and while we were there I got a few other things to tackle some other projects that have been in the back of my head for a while.  The kids were pumped because they think any outting is an adventure, but they especially love going to the hardware store because usually Andrew will take them individually for a little one-on-one time.  And I personally love when this happens because hello conquer and divide, plus they think we're calling in the hard-work store instead of the hard-ware store.  I die.

And in case there was any doubt, this is how Nelle feels about the hard work that comes from gathering supplies at the hard-work store.

Helping quickly turned into a pretend gondola ride in the box that held the wooden dowels, and the funniest thing...Andrew was pretty much done immediately after that.  Ha.

I put the rack downstairs while Henry was at school yesterday morning and Nelle helped me hang up some of their dress-up stuff...astronaut costumes, and fireman suit, and superhero capes.  Funny how you just move something to a new spot, and they act like it's brand new.  We've been playing superheros a lot since, and after June went to bed yesterday evening, the bigs practiced their cape flying skills on the swings.

Sometimes (read - a LOT of times) I get bogged down in the sludge of parenting/working, and struggle to let myself just be and appreciate this stage we're in, but lately, noticing their littleness, and creativeness, and imagination, and the way say hard-work store instead of hardware store has been easy.

And when it's easy, you better believe I'm soaking it in.