finish out papa's trip

I have finally begun to play with the manual settings on my fancy nancy camera. Obviously I want to use it to the fullest of it's and my potential. I thought I'd display some of my work. Mostly my goal was to play with natural lighting and blurring the background. I heart a fuzzy background. So I used my lovely rose bushes to practice.

This was such a pretty cluster of multi-colored roses. Pink, orange, yellow....

I feel pretty encouraged by my results. It's nice to play with settings and get results you enjoy.

Levi just couldn't stay out of the camer's view for long

anyhoo...onto my human inspirations. Gracie Bella is growing growing growing. Right at about 5 and a half months she was able to sit up without support. Then she just took off. Quickly she was able to go from lying down to sitting up without any help.

These pictures are of her playing with toys and getting them out of her little toy box herself. I remember when Levi started doing this and I was so impressed. It's just such a big switch from slug baby! She just wants to play play play now.

She's just so cute....ridiculously so.

This picture is for Aunt MiMi. She got Gracie this little toy while we were in St. Joseph. She plays with it now!Sitting like a pasty little muppet.

So, we're all missing Nathan quite a bit. I decided to print out a big picture of his movie star hot face. Levi wanted it to talk to him. And Gracie was just oogling all over it with batting eye lashes. So, I had the mostly great and only slightly weird idea of taping his face to a broncos player punching bag.

Levi talks about missing him every single day. The older he gets the more aware he is of just how long Nathan stays gone. We're gonna need so many distractions and visitors and prayers to get through the big deployment next year.

He ate dinner with us

And now for some super hero pictures. Per usual, Spiderman with his sidekick....the yellow beast.

panting break

This is how their playtime looks in real time. It's pure insanity and I'm glad to have captured it's true essence on film.

Gracie girl needs to get involved in this whole super hero gig as well. She just loves watching Levi and Charlie play so much. Honostly, Levi doesn't have to be doing anything. All she needs is to catch a glimpse of his thick yellow hair as he runs by and she's all a flutter with giggles.

This girl is on the move. I took these pictures when she hit seven months last week and already she has progressed so much. This is her favorite means to mobility; the downward dog. She gets her little tush in the air and pushes along on her head. She is making progress towards a real crawl however. she gets one foot planted and is on her knee with the other legs. Then she scooches. She's a funny tiny girl moving across the room. She's also getting up on her knees now and grabbing onto the table or whatever else is around her. She's only pulling up a tiny bit. She'll have to strengthen her arms for a while with practice, but she's going so fast with all of this. I had about a two week window of time when I was able to put her down on the ground sitting in the middle of a few toys and she would stay in that spot while I did other things. I put her down now and about half a second later she's across the room with the remote control in her mouth. It's on now.

Can't believe she's already seven months.

I love this picture. Just a straight on shot of her adorable little face. Her great red hair and big eyes with mysterious color as of yet. Gotta love the cutie pie tongue. It's always out right now. I think she just wants to crawl so she can keep up with Levi. I'm telling him to get ready cause soon she's gonna be all up in his business.

And it ends with this picture. Every little sis needs a gun right? Nathan will be home in one week and we can't wait. We'll just spend every second together and ignore the fact that he has to leave again many more times.