1.  Rory has the entire Brown Bear Brown Bear book memorized, and with a lot of patience she can nearly read the whole thing front to back.  The other night, she was reading it to me, and when she got to the teacher page, she said, "T-shirt t-shirt what do you see?"  I almost died.

2.  We were sitting at a red light, and when she looked over she saw a little Ford Ranger pickup next to us.  She said, "Look mom!  A baby pickup!"

3.  Rory has a rosary that she got for her baptism hanging her room.  I was doing something in my room, and she came running in exclaiming that she has a Jesus necklace!

4.  She just loves to play pretend with her dolls, and Abby is by far her favorite.  Apparently, Abby is growing up, and Rory is becoming quite the little mommy.  Abby drinks her medicine from the little measuring cup now instead of using the syringe; she doesn't like bottles anymore, she needs to be spoon fed with a baby spoon and bowl from the kitchen; Rory has to use a washcloth from the bathroom to wash her face, and Abby has even been spending some time in time out.  There have been several occasions where I've heard Rory sternly telling Abby, "Stop crying you can come out.  Say sorry!"  I wonder where she learned her discipline techniques?

 5.  When she starts to giggle, she'll sometimes snort, and if you laugh at her for it, she will keep doing it over and over again, just because you think it's funny.  It's pretty ridiculous.

Even with all the attitude problems we've been dealing with lately, Rory still continues to crack us up and make us smile more times than I can count.  I love that girl!

Well, I guess I'm a day late, but yesterday I had a senior session with Jennifer, and it also happened to be her 18th birthday!  With the fact that she's a beautiful girl and being able to take advantage of all the awesome fall colors, I loved almost every shot I took of her.  Here are just a few that I've been able to get to today.

Another favorite for me. 

Thanks for the great session, Jennifer!

The last few nights, Rory has been giving me fits with going to bed.  It is really unusual for her because she usually will simply lie down in her crib, and even if she doesn't fall asleep right away, we barely hear a peep out of her.  But not last night.  I was so desperate for her to just lay down and go to sleep that I told her that we were going to be going to the Pumpkin Patch tomorrow (today).  Well, that changed her mind, and she decided she'd better go to sleep so that she could go.  Then, as soon as I walked in her door this morning, she reminded me about the Pumpkin Patch, and threw another fit when I told her that no, we weren't going first thing this morning.  Wow, I'm starting to see what they mean by the terrible two's.  About 98% of the time she is great, but in these last couple of weeks she has been testing my patience.

Anyway, we actually did get to go to the Pumpkin Patch this afternoon, and we met up with our friends Kayla, Aubrey, and Karli.  We played, took some pictures (of course), rode on a train, climbed on some straw bales, and then went back to our house for some pizza afterward.  I'm so tired tonight that I can hardly see straight anymore, so these are the only photos that I've edited so far.

I didn't get many photos of Rory.  Big surprise, she didn't want to look at me.  This one had a yucky color cast, and I was about to throw it out when I decided to try it in black and white.  I kind of like it now.

Aubrey was such a good subject, though.  She has been practicing for our future photo shoots!

And Karli is so cute, I doubt she can take a bad picture!  She sure hammed it up for us at supper, too!

Thanks for the fun night girls!

Here's the big brother of yesterday's cutie.  This kid cracked me up.  He kept running away from me saying, "How about here?" as he hunted for spots to take photos and thought of poses.  At one point he told me, "okay, now you stand here, and I'll take a picture of you…okay?" and he fully expected me to hand over my camera.  LOL!  Good try buddy!  He was also the best helper when it came time to get some shots of baby Cole.  He did such a good job at getting his attention, and I can tell that he is already looked up to by his little brother!

One of his poses.  I'm not sure which was funnier, this one or the one where he picked up a stick and swung it over his shoulder like he was up for bat!  He is going to be an athlete, this one!

Could he BE any cuter?  Seriously.  Not only is he the littlest baby I've been able to photograph so far (well, besides my own, but I didn't know much about photography back then), he is the newest addition to a family near and dear to my heart.  His mommy and I have known each other probably since before we were even in kindergarten, we ended up being suite mates our first year of college, spent a summer together in Medora, and the next summer after that lived together even after I had gone away to a different school.  It was after that summer she moved away to follow the man of her dreams ) and we were both the maid of honor in one another's' weddings.  Since then, we have both started a family and gone our separate ways, but we'll always be friends.  I drove away from our session last weekend, thinking about all the stuff we have done together in our lives, and I even have some pretty funny and embarrassing stories I could share, but instead I think it would be better to just share a couple photos of her babe.

I have been dying to get this hat on a baby, and I was giddy when I showed up and he was wearing the perfect little onesie to accompany it.

Tomorrow I'll share some photos of this guy's big brother.  He's such a helper, and we had a lot of fun!  Thanks, Angie for the fun time with your boys.  It was so great to see you all, and we have to make sure it isn't as long until the next time!

That's what we are.  As I mentioned in my last post, Rory and I planned to head to Montana this weekend.  Well, Friday morning, Rory woke up having a hard time breathing again.  We just went through this whole thing a couple of weeks ago.  She told me, "mommy, I can't breathe," and "I sick.  Go doctor.  Feel better."  Yeah, when your two year old tells you she wants to go to the doctor again so she'll feel better, you know it's not good.  So, I got her in first thing to see the doc.  Two colds in less than a month, both resulting in her not being able to breathe; this leads the doctor to think that Rory has asthma.  Josey and I were not totally surprised to hear this, since he has pretty much the same problem, but it is still scary to think that anything can be wrong with your baby.  And after seeing our nephew go through some rough episodes with his asthma, and having a coworker whose niece died of an asthma attack at age 13, I'm worried.  We plan to get her in to see Josey's allergy and asthma specialist as soon as possible, and I guess I'm just thankful that if she does have it that we'll know what's wrong next time and we'll know what to do.

Cold and breathing problems aside, we still went to Montana, and it didn't keep Rory from having a ton of fun.  And today when we got home, I could tell that all the fun had gotten the best of her.  She is tired.  After lots of whining and crying for mommy, she went to bed early, and I hope that she's off to a better start in the morning.

I have thousands (yes, thousands) of photos to sort through, and not much time to do it in the next week, but here are just a couple of Rory having a little fun on the playground.  Have I ever mentioned how much she loves slides?  The girl could have spent then entire day going up and down this thing.

I have no idea what she is doing here, but it makes for a cute photo.  I love her little belly button.  You can't tell here, but when she was a baby, she had an umbilical hernia that caused her to now have an outie belly button.

Tomorrow, I'm going out of town for a night for work, but when I get back I'll have some photos to share from a fun session I did when I was home.  I didn't even open those tonight because I knew if I saw them I'd be up all night playing!

Rory and I are headed back to Montana this weekend!  We'll get to see all of my family, and one of my good friends is going to be back.  We haven't seen each other for…almost two years, and since then she has added a new little one to her family so I will be coming back with a camera full of cute photos of her boys!

I will answer emails when I get back.  And to leave you with a photo…when I first shot Kayla's senior photos, we had so much fun at our other locations we weren't able to get everything we wanted at her home, so I went back the other night and snapped a few more for her.  I hope everyone has a great weekend!

I'm only posting these two, and then I'm done because I don't want to give it all away before you see them in print!  But I did get through them all, and found the ones I want to edit and I had such a hard time deciding.

If you only knew what her daddy was doing to get her to give me this smile!  It even had me cracking up.

And I really wanted to post a baby Jett smile, but I just loved this one too much not to share it!

To all those I owe emails, I'm not ignoring you.  I have hardly been home the last four days, and have not had a chance to catch up yet!

Remember this sweet dress?  Well, Jenn has done it again, this time for Sweet Birdie's new sister company, Plainly Janes!  As I stated before, I just adore this apple fabric, and I knew I wanted it incorporated into this dress.  With Jenn's help, I was able to pick each one of the fabrics that made up this dress, and I don't think it could have turned out any cuter!  If you are looking for beautiful, hand-made clothing for you little one this fall, you must check out what they have at Sweet Birdie and Plainly Janes!

I finally got my camera in front of these two little ones.  I love the two of them and their parents more than they know.  I drop my own daughter off at their house four days a week, and drive away perfectly content knowing that they love her and treat her like one of their own.  Our friendship with their family is truly invaluable, and we were lucky enough to meet them just a little over a year ago.  Thank you so much, Carole and Tim for all that you do for us and for Rory, and thank you for letting me photograph your sweet babies!  I can't get enough of them!

Joycee…she is Rory's best friend and best enemy, all at the same time!

And Baby Jett…Rory just loves to help take care of this little guy.  When I got home and showed her the photos, she was kissing and hugging my camera when she saw his little face on the screen.

There is no doubt that these two are siblings; huh?  And since I know Grandma Carolyn is reading this, Rory says hi! )