Love what I find on my camera when I download the pictures. The picture of Tal is just cute, even though he needs a haircut :).

Camden got into some donuts...messy!

And this is pretty common--a picture of a shoe while he was playing with my camera in Target. At least he was entertaining himself, right?

So White Bear is a fixture in our house--he is Reagan's favorite. Reagan suddenly renamed him L.G. for reasons we cannot determine. Perhaps because the white is becoming negligible. Anyway, L.G. comes with us everywhere (he is often in the frog backpack), and we spend many evenings searching for him at bedtime. His nose has been glued over and over. He is too delicate to go in the washer, so we gently surface wash him.

And he enjoys 3D movies.

Love the kids reading the paper! I had forgotten that I even took this picture, so it was a great surprise when I found it. One of my favorite ways to end the day is to have the Rs fall asleep on the couch with us. We went so many years with our little couch, and this giant six-seater is perfect for us. I am a sucker for this--I think I take a picture every time they conk out with us.

While our former neighbors were visiting, we had some new fun times (and of course wondered why we didn't do it more when we had the chance). It was great to see the fun, easy friendships that the kids have slide right back into place. I am especially sentimental about these first childhood friendships that were so innocent and special for us.

Tal and Riley went to tennis camp with our good friends who were visiting, just like old times. They got burned to a crisp, outside in the sun all day, swam like fish, went to a horse camp, and general just loved every moment.

Nothing like these guys to make a bad day feel okay again. They are the best.

If you know me, you know about my aversion to tooth issues of any sort. Since Tal had the missing tooth at ten months, then swallowed his first real tooth at six, I've been a total head case about it. Travis even does the kids' dental visits for me.

So Riley loses the tooth and tells me it must be in the trash. I spend two hours picking through trash. No tooth. He must have swallowed it. Why does this happen to me??? So Riley loves to communicate with cartoons, so he drew the Tooth Fairy a little picture of what happened (I scanned it in before he put it under his pillow), and we were confident she'd take it. She did. Phew.

Definitely just too hot to go outside much, so we were nerds and had July 4th inside. Well, we spent the morning at the zoo and we were shot out.

So the zoo is hot. So hot. And quite smelly. We finally figured out that the way to really enjoy it is to choose one attraction to visit (today was monkeys, or PRIMATES, to be correct) and wear swimsuits and hit the water sprites when we get too heated up. It was awesome.

I have 42 pictures of us arriving at the zoo. Not sure why.

I am compelled to tell the story now of Tal's first arrival at the zoo. Mom & I brought him at age 2 or so. He had thrown a pair of toy binoculars into the bag, and when we got inside the gate, he was sitting in the stroller, had the map in one hand, whipped the binoculars out with the other, and started looking around like he was on safari. We about DIED laughing.

Now he reads every word on the placards by the animals. And explains it all to us.