Never underestimate the power...

of a line leader.

Adie Grace reported for preschool line leader duty on Tuesday morning at 900 hours.  

Line leader duty also means that mommy get to come hang out at preschool all 2 hours. And the privilege of bringing snack. =)

It was so fun to see her at school because she doesn't really tell me much when she comes home.. she always says that she played on the playground and went down the slide.  Every time.  Now I know that they do all kinds of fun things! 

Here she is doing her very best job at leading the class... cousin Brayden is giving the poor girl between himself and his cuz the death look.. just wait.. they are together in every picture!  makes me wonder if they will be this inseparable in elementary school?

And the below picture cracks me up because you all have heard me tell ya about her quirks, right?  She sucks her lower lip and plays with her belly button.  Nonstop.  She is trying to be super secretive and be all mature in her line leading abilities and hide her belly button playing...

She is super predictable too.. she is obsessed with the letter "A" because it is the beginning letter of her name so that's where she plops her bottom...

And how convenient that Brayden's name starts with the letter "B"!  Um, could they sit any closer?

And her favorite color is orange so she's also predictable coloring EVERYTHING orange.

And I'm going to show you a million pictures of her singing and dancing because I'm her mom and I'm allowed because mom's do that.  And the pictures make me giggle.  And proud. 

Check out the belly button that she made an outie.. she's gunna regret that when she wants to wear a 2-piece.  When daddy lets her wear one.  When she's 25.  =)

And this one made me giggle so we'll end with our line leader blog  post with this picture...

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And can't leave the baby out!  Lately she actually sits still while we read books to her. And has a knack of know when mommy is going to take a picture of her.  My little cheeser...

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And we had an AMAZING service at church on Sunday about marriage.  It's not up on our website yet but when it is this is the LINK where it will be. If you are married you need to go listen to it!!!  We ended with our pastor asking all the men to leave a love note for their ladies on our church's windows and someone captured this picture that went out in our pastor's weekly email to the congregation...

I am the luckiest girl in the world. =)  Man, I love that man!

ETA:  (EDITED TO ADD)
Um, that is not my husband!  I just got a call from a-laughing-hysterically-good-friend Melissa.  You know, the one we went on the cruise with. Um, apparently that is ZACH'S silhouette and not my Darin's!  Haha!!  Zach wrote Melissa his love letter right below Darin's love letter to me and the photographer got this angle that looks like Zach should have been Darin!  HOW FUNNY!  So yeah, I don't love Melissa's man but I do love my Darin. HA!

I don't think...

the Barbie bike was intended to be a tandem, but my girls sure think so!

Lately we've been spending a lot of time in the front of the house because Adie is obsessed with riding her Barbie bike and using sidewalk chalk.  Yesterday we hiked out there to wait for daddy to get home from practice and the girls figured out how to do this.... the below picture is in motion...

Here they are driving over their hopscotch game...

Crack me up!!!!

They didn't fight once while they were joya-riding.. I mean joy-riding.  (Love the play on words!!!)  That's our lately problem here at the Holsopple household.. the fighting is endless.  Joya usually instigates it too by just walking up to Adie and smacking in her in the face.. um, seriously? How do you teach a 16 month old that walking up to someone and punching them in the face isn't acceptable?  So sweet looking but SO ornery!

And this picture cracked me up because they have the same exact look on their faces...

Joya also likes to hang out on the rocking chair and wave at the cars driving by...

And then she started cheesing for me so of course I have to show ya!

And my fave. =)

OUR Family Photo Shoot...

I am WAY luckily blessed that one of my besties is an amazing photographer.  Amanda and I concocted an amazing plan to swap family pictures.  We had the hardest time figuring out when to do them because our families are so, so busy and not to mention that weekends work best to do something like this and that's what our clients think too!  This was Amanda's 3rd shoot of the day and my 2nd.. had one on Sunday then too. 

We finally figured out a time and would ya guess it.. it starts POURING rain 10 minutes before we are to start.  So we did dinner first and headed out and it ended up being a great night for a shoot.  =)

You KNOW I'm gunna show you the out-takes because they are just about as valuable as the really good ones. =)  I'm a scrapbooker, that's how I roll. =)  So you will first get my comentary on the funny ones and then will get to see the good ones at the end.  My girls are at SUPER hard ages to shoot so Amanda was a saint for even trying!

Ok, here we go!

Good picture of everyone.. cept for my joker looking Adie...

Yo adie.. is it a bird?  A plane? What is so interesting in the sky?

The below one was Darin trying to be funny.. on the way I was coaching him about the pictures and told him to turn his head ever so slightly my way in our pics because it makes us look like we like each other. And he did this the first 5 pictures and just waited for me to look at the camera to find his sneakiness..

Then we tried the trick of lifting Joya up and Amanda would shoot the picture right after she'd land.. Darin thought lifting Joya up to Michigan was a better option.  And praise Jesus there were no broken arms in the process...

So then we try it with both girls and again.. thankful for no broken bones or dislocated shoulders. =/

These were the last bunch we tried.. can you tell everyone is sick of getting their pictures taken?  Including my hubby?  Joya is SCREAMING!  I'm probably saying "Guys, this is the last one." And any of my clients know that when I say that I mean "I'll proabably shoot 26 more.."

And since the scream didn't work Joya is trying to bust out of here..

Oh, forgot this one by the ivy wall. Guess I've never let my girls play in a rock driveway before??  They had NO interest in looking at Amanda... 

This one cracks me up.. Darin and I playing huggie-bear-kissy-face while our girls are desperately trying to escape to play in the rocks!  This is our life!

And those were the out-takes. =)  Now for the keepers!

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We also convinced our boys to do couples pictures.. oh gosh, SO FUN!!!  We decided next photo shoot we're gunna get babysitters, go out to dinner and then end with some just mommy and daddy's pictures. We had a blast..

Man he's hot... hubba hubba!!!

I will leave you with one out-take from our couples shoot.. Me trying a serious look that I'm obviously not very good at and my hubby blatantly looking down my shirt.

Sorry dad, probably didn't want to see your baby girl's hubby sneak a peak but hey, we have two kiddos.  You proably figured it's happened at least twice!

Thanks again for swapping, Amanda!!  Love ya!

ETA: We did our own editing.  We took each other's pictures and then handed each other our memory cards.  =)  I spent no time editing the out-take pictures! 

Yet another thing to worry about...

Welp, the door in Adie's room will be officially closed for the unforeseeable future.

Joya learned how to climb up into Adie's loft.  This little 19lb spitfire LOVES to climb and her sister's loft is added to the "new-things-that-are-fun-to-climb" category.. the loft along with the kitchen table, the computer desk and the kitchen countertops.  She loves to catwalk down the kitchen countertops. 

Yesterday morning I was cleaning up in the kitchen and went to check on her in Adie's room and she was up in the loft. I first sighed because it is yet another challenge to my day and then got over it and grabbed my camera.  As any scrapbook mom would do. =)

She wanted to show you all how she did it...

Wala!  She's at the top!

She is so proud of herself..

Poor Adie.. the loft was always where she went when she wanted to play with her people and dollhouse and get away from her little sister.  Nothing's off limits now. She's a climbing machine!!!

Lip color...

Had a blog reader, Vintage Country Girl, ask me what color I used on my smackers. (BTW.. how fun that you are Jett's teacher! Isn't he a riot? And that HAIR!?)  Anywho..

 Thought I would show ya a picture so you get the right one. It's from Aldi. =) Yep, Aldi has a skincare line. It's the knock off of Arbonne.. um, I'm there! No mineral oils, made with natural stuff, made in Germany, it's just splendid. You guys could have guessed that it's super thrifty, right? HA!

Well, I do use Mary Kay neutral lip liner and then us the Lacura pink container of lip stuff. They have 3 different kinds... all 3 for $1.49. No joke. The first time I selected the lip care stuff I seriously picked it because the container was pink. =) And now I LOVE it! So addicted..

Taking a picture of a lip liner and color is super easy, right?

Not when there is a Joya loose!

I had to grab her, set her down across the room and then run back over to my lip care to take a picture before what is seen in the above picture would happen. Girl loves to be in the action.

So yeah, that's my lip color! I wear it 100% of the time!

Any one else have any questions? I'm kinda in a blogging stump. =/

Oh, and caught my 4 toother on the kitchen table grabbing an apple again today.

She's so proud. =)

And Adie starts up another round of gymnastics classes tonight! She's been in her leo since 2pm...

Yeah, so shoot me a question or give me a topic to blog about. =)

We have a Preschooler on our hands...

Adie got to go to her first day of preschool on Tuesday!  She had a blast. 
I think. 
It's like pulling teeth to get her to talk about what they do at school.  Every day she says they play outside and go down the slide. I'm pretty sure they do more but she has her mother's memory so that's probably all she can remember of the day!  She only does 2 hours on Tuesday's and Thursday's... perfect for her attention span.  This was actually the preschool that Darin attended about 28 years ago! 

And yes, she got to wear the apple jeans. =)  It was definitely cool enough!

Look how tiny she looks under that sign!  We'll take this picture again at the end of school and then next year when she's in the 4/5's class to document her growth.

Ahhh.. only 14 more years of public school, baby girl!  Hope your enthusiasm for school now sticks with you for a long, long time!  And that you learn more than going down a slide...

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Just got my winter hair back!  No more platinum blond. =(  It was super fun so I'll probably do it again next summer when the tan comes back.  Had a couple people on Facebook ask me if I could do a picture of it.. since I haven't seen the hubby since Wednesday night with football and couldn't ask him to take the picture, I decided to try some in my bathroom mirror. It didn't go so well...

And my camera is super hard to focus when you aren't looking thru the view finder...

Here's a picture of our really nicely in focus towel holder if you all were interested in knowing what that looked like...

This one is probably the best we got...

we should have stopped then. =) 

Now you all can see how much I need to clean my mirrors!

This one cracks me up.. not sure what Adie is looking at???

Her smile made me giggle in the next one.. oh, and yeah, growing the bangs out.  Next time I think I want bangs will someone talk me out of them?  Please?  no me gusta the upkeep.

Had to get Joya into some!  And still perfecty unfocused. =)

And there's the closet door that needs painted in the background!  Oh and Joya got her first haircut too!  She was sporting a tiny bit of a baby mullet so we trimmed up the party in the back.  Now it curls even more.

And here's just me... Still not so focused. =)  Look at the hair color, people!

And here is a platinum blond picture from the cruise..

Fun to change it up.  =) 

After our trying to shoot in the mirror-ness I found Joya up on the table helping herself to an apple.

Cuz babies with 4 teeth are really good at biting into an apple, right?  She seems to think so!

And I appologize to all my Purdue alums, my father and myself for having the girls in these blasteded Notre Dame shirts.  It's borderline offending me.  Darin's coming home here soon and will get a kick out of his girls in his teams attire.  We even had an offer to go to the Purdue game today but Darin veto-ed it because he'd rather WATCH the Notre Dame/Michigan game.  Humph.

My girls probably just got written out of their Papa's will by being in these shirts...