Isaac, Anna & Henry

Here are three kiddos that are important in our lives right now, that I wanted to be sure to fit pictures of them into a post...the first one is Isaac (his mom is a close friend of mine). I did a post from his birthday party a couple of months ago actually. Anyway, he and Noah play so cute together. We had him over to play last week, and here are the three boys enjoying lunch outside!

Isaac & Noah with their "picture smiles" painted on (Allison informed me that really is Isaac's picture smile). Funny boys.

Next is Anna. This petite little gal has been lots of fun to have around. I babysit her 2-3 days a week, and it's been really different having a little girl in the house. Besides the more obvious physical differences, there just really are inherent differences between boys & girls. She is a dainty little 15 month old though (dainty being something I've never dealt with), and other than her little adjustment period that we had at first (where I experienced the difference between a girl-scream and a boy-yell...) she is really mellow (very different than my high-energy boys). Not that there aren't high-energy girls too, but I'm telling you that it's different (I know there's still a lot to the "nurture" side of things, but I am more and more convinced of how strong the "nature" side is as time goes on too).

The boys always look forward to having Anna there, and are really sweet to her...sometimes they are a bit much for her though and I have to enforce giving her a little bit of space, or no more hugs. She's getting more used to their volume level and the way they play though (isn't she cute? I love those curls)...

Something that Anna does share in common with my boys is a love for being outside. Thank goodness for our fenced in yard, right?

Lincoln is usually running around too fast to interact too much with Anna, but Noah loves showing her everything and trying to teach her how to say things. She has had a verbal explosion lately too, and is picking up on things very quickly. So, that's a little bit about Anna - who's a big part of our family these days!

And last, but not least is cousin Henry. Mark's sister has lived (with Ryan & thier son Henry) most recently in Colorado until Ryan finished residency. Then they took off to Italy for a couple of months, and then they were in town here for a week before moving to Oregon (where they have taken jobs). So, it's a novelty for us to get to see the three of them. Henry is such a cute, observant little guy and it was fun to get to spend some time with him - and his parents too of course :) We had a little shin-dig up at Mark's parents house when they first got to Utah (that's where this picture was taken)...

...and then we had a little get together at our place later that week. Here is Mark drawing on the sidewalk in our backyard with the boys.

Henry and Noah playing firemen...Noah is very into assigning roles or characters to younger friends right now, and Henry played along nicely.

Sometimes Noah got a bit bossy though - wanting to do what he wanted, regardless of what his playmate thought...like getting on the back of this bike (I thought it was amusing that Henry kept looking at the camera while pushing back Noah to keep him off the back of the bike). Ha!
We're lucky to have so many wonderful people in our lives...and that includes these 3 kiddos!