A girly girl.

When we were blessed with a daughter, we weren't going to push gender roles on her. (We said the same thing with Henry and look how that turned out.) We mostly said that because we only knew boys and girly things like dolls, dances, and Princesses are beyond our knowledge (no offense, Cowen girls). One thing that particularly frightened mama were tights. How frivolous, how ridiculous.

That is, until it got cooler and some of June's summer things were too cute to be put away. And then we became a tights family. Seriously, have you ever seen anything so cute?

And look at that bottom. Too much. Does anyone have any advice on tights that attract so much lint?

Now that June is crawling, we are quite enamored with her sweet little bottom. When she's not stuffed in tights, she's got her fat little legs squeezed into leggings. We thought this was especially cute with a little extra butt cheek hanging out, until papa went to adjust her diaper and got an extra surprise.

Henry's antics

We wanted to devote an entire post to Henry, because he's just been really fun lately (that is, when he's not pushing mama's buttons). He's started pretending and is good at repeating a lot of the phrases that we tend to overuse. Some of our favorites:
1. "You guys"
2. On the phone with papa: "So how's your work?"
3. "Mama's gonna rock you, babycakes." (Quoting Grandma Seibert's promise to June that mama would rock her to sleep from now on- fat chance.)

He also has new names for us- "Pop-popske" and "Momke."

Here's Henry in his favorite playroom of the house- our 4'X8' kitchen floor- we all really like each other here, and since mama spends most of her time in the kitchen, we all spend a lot of time in the kitchen. If you can't catch all that he's saying, Thomas (the train) is going to the grocery store to buy milk and pizza. Mac (the red semi) and Tanker (the black semi) are going to the marshmallow store for marshmallows (what else?), but the first marshmallow store is out of marshmallows, so they have to go to another store (based on actual events of Papa and Mister Paul). Meanwhile, Mac and Tanker have left their respective trailer and tanker back at the campsite with Lightning McQueen. Really, who needs dolls?

When not in search of marshmallows, Mac often goes out to buy lunch to take to Papa's work- usually milk and cheeseburgers.

You'll note that all of our favorite toys are trucks with trailers. They are the best.

After the kids ripped the room apart (we like to think it's not always this messy), Henry tried to do a puzzle, but his baby sister is really getting good at crawling. So Henry had to take matters into his own hands.

This is our favorite way that he tries to get rid of her.

We have pumpkins in our front yard. Today papa commented that they were beautiful. Henry replied "They're not beautiful, they have grass on them." Apparently, he does not approve of the lawn care.

Papa had his computer out and Henry was playing with it. Papa asked if Henry wanted to type some letters with him. Henry answered "Papa, you can type ABCs when I'm done doing my work."

And our favorite: We were reading a new book, "How Do Dinosaurs go to School?" which asks the age old question whether dinosaurs behave in class or act up. When a T-Rex was misbehaving in his class, mama asked Henry why the teacher looked so upset. Henry's response: "Because that dinosaur is going to eat him!"

More West Virginia pictures- Juner.

Mama forgot that she took both cameras on vacation and just found these pictures today.

PawPaw had to hold Henry to get him still for a picture.

X-treme BASE jumping stirs up an Xtreme appetite in Papa. Which can only be satiated by giant turkey legs.

My extreme appetite led me to eating dirt and glass.

Uncle Adam rocked it sling style. Those flowers look good on you.

The Turner family. You'll notcie that Henry is wearing two different colors of neon. That is totally on purpose in a crowd of 80,000.

Here's the best Cooper family shot. You can always guarantee at least one person is looking in the wrong direction.

Henry insisted on zipping up his vest on his own.

But PawPaw convinced him that he could help.