Summer to Fall

 Sweetest chocolate milk mustache ever.

 His hair is long enough for a mohawk! I love it.

 Fun little fishing trip / picnic with some nursery friends from our ward

 Mikey fished for about two minutes and then played in the mud for two hours.

 We roasted hot dogs for dinner and had a grand ol' time!

 Mikey fishing with Brother Cleaver, one of his nursery leaders

These next pictures are all from a photo shoot I attempted one morning in our backyard. I found out a company I like was doing 75% off photo canvases and I wanted a current picture of my kids for the canvas print. So... I got them dressed, spiked Mikey's hair a little bit, and I ended up using the very first picture I took (below). It's brighter than I meant it to be, because the flash came on, but I edited it a little and was very happy with the finished product. It is now a 16x20" canvas hanging in my entry way. It only cost $35 total, after shipping! The photo shoot just went downhill from here.

I was doing all sorts of things to get the kids to both smile at the same time, making funny faces, doing strange noises to get Ginny to look at me, etc. I even bribed Mikey to hold Ginny and smile. Nothing worked very well, except I did get a few silly shots of Mikey. 

Shortly after I started trying to get pictures of the two of them, a stray kitten wandered into the yard. Ginny is deathly afraid of small animals, even kittens. So of course, I'd hold her and comfort her to get her to stop crying, then just when I was about to get the PERFECT shot, the kitten would run by and Ginny would look like this....

Here's Mikey playing with the kitten. He actually befriended it and played outside with it for an hour or more. I think the kitten didn't like being picked up like a sack of flour around its stomach, so it didn't come back to our house anymore.

After the close encounters with the kitten, and multiple crying episodes, Ginny just wouldn't smile for anything, but she's still dang cute, if you ask me.

 

This was another ALMOST perfect picture that was ruined by the cat:

Duncan, Liz, and Mya came to Colorado to visit us in September. We had a blast with them, and the cousins got to spend some quality time together. Mikey and Mya were good little hikers.

 So was Ginny, although this expression would not lead you to believe she was having fun.

 We spent two days and a night up on the Mesa. The aspens were BEAUTIFUL. We hit them at the perfect time to see the height of the colors changing for Fall. (Pics of that later).

 This was the second day when we went for a little walk around Powderhorn, the ski resort on the Mesa. We threw a frisbee around in the parking lot and just enjoyed the nice weather.

 Kevin found a tiny snake.

 Me and Ginny in the condo.

 My camera didn't capture the beauty of the Fall colors, since it was pretty hazy from the top of the Mesa.

 Everywhere we went, these two were just little explorer buddies. They were so CUTE!

 Ginny is sporting her first-ever pony tail.

 Once again, the first picture I took was the only one where both kids were looking at the camera. Why is it so hard to get them to smile and look at the same time?

 Some pictures out our window on the drive

 The last stop was a short hike to another reservoir where the kids could throw rocks in the water. They loved it! We all made bets who would fall in the water first. Everyone bet on Mya...

We all bet right.