Cheesy

Phone cameras will never be as good as actual cameras at taking pictures.  That's just a fact.  But, as they get better at the job, I've found myself taking more and more pictures with my phone because I happen to have it on me most of the time.  Besides the lessened quality of pictures, the other major downside is that the shots I take don't automatically get integrated into our family's collection like things I take on the DSLR or my point and shoot.

So tonight, after much supplication from my sweet husband (because pretty much any task from me for anyone needs repeated requesting--I'm kind of at a point in my life where at any given moment I've got several balls in the air that I'm trying to juggle so I get distracted pretty easily, heck even at this moment I'm rocking a baby with my foot while I type) I finally made the past 9 months worth of photos available to him to get into our collection.  It turned out to be hundreds of pictures.

However, even with hundreds of pictures, we noticed that we have a LOT of shots of Bridget that are pretty similar...

This baby girl has one CHEESY grin!  And man, does it light up all of our lives!  Bridget arrived in the world just a darling little thing and these pictures really let that shine through.  She has also turned out to be our most expressive child by a wide margin as well.  We are constantly cracking up at the faces she's making at us or others (because while she's delightful towards us, she gives MAJOR shade and stinkface to any stranger who has the audacity to look her in the eye).  And she's also the most verbally advanced of our children--just today when she handed Grant something she wasn't supposed to have and he tossed it aside she exclaimed, "That's not nice!"  It was awesome.

Just AWESOME.

We use that word quite often when talking about any one of our children.  They're really such fantastic little people whom we happen to have the privilege of raising and calling our own.

Going to the Zoo

My parents bought us a wonderful and thoughtful Christmas present this year: a membership to the Fort Worth zoo.  We immediately took advantage of these delightful Texas winters to go check it out.

It was just about the perfect zoo: lots of great animals and scenery but not so big that the walk from one place to another makes us want to go home early.  We had several really interesting close encounters.

Tigers

Snakes

Birds (not very visible in the picture but very personal in real life)

There was actually one big eagle that looked like it thought Bridget might make a good treat. And Bridget figured that out pretty fast.  Didn't get a picture, though.  What we did get a picture of was the sea creature petting area

Probably the most significant, though, was the up close encounter with the train

In fact, the train was so exciting, poor Paxton thought it was serious child abuse to force him to get off at the end of the ride.  Kid just wants to ride a train all day and can't see why anyone would want to take that from him.

We spent about 4 delightful hours there, which is a good amount of time when you have kids of this age.  It's really close (and just a few blocks from my work) so we will definitely be going back often.  So exciting!

I didn't get any zoo pictures of Seth, but he's growing very well.  His baby acne is gone and he's lovely, well-behaved, and a reasonable sleeper.  You can't ask much more from a kid that age.

He's even cuter than that now, if you can believe it.

By the way, you know who else is at a super cute age? Bridget

Actually all the kids are at delightful and super cute ages at the moment.  We are really loving this full quiver of children we have.  Raising children is a challenge but it has moments that are more rewarding than others.  It seems like those have been coming in droves lately.