six months tomorrow

it's true that the more kids i've had, the faster and faster their milestones have seemed to come at me. dallin is six months old and getting ready to crawl, and i'm all, "wait a second, didn't i just have you, like, yesterday?! i mean, i feel like i haven't even worn regular, non-pajama pants since you've been born, and you're already starting to crawl?!"  

#redhairdontcare

soylent green

is people!

grey anatomy

today. two weeks before my thirty-first birthday. 

i found my first grey hair.

life is short

eat dessert first.

raspberry hunt

having quite a bit of jam still leftover from when bryan and matto (aka "sickle" and "hammer") ruthlessly headed up our berry picking last year, and it having been rather hot in the pnw this past saturday, the wheeler clan ended up in the fields for just under an hour and toted home only about five pounds of berries (which i think are, like, already gone) for our 2014 season.

still, it's a family tradition, and summer girl would never let us hear the end of it if we decided not to go.

so here she is picking away, completely oblivious to how embarrassed she should be of her daddy's ginormous hat.

as a bonus, 2014 marked caleb's first time "in" the fields. spoiler alert: he was not a huge help.

and here's afton, resting on her bucket and complaining about being hot and tired not but two minutes into the ordeal (a girl after my own heart). 

you got off easy this time, wheelers, but next year, we'll be out of jam.

rainbow dash

#afton

(birthday dress made by momma)

afton is incredibly imaginative. she spends a good portion of her days in her own little world and loves, loves, loves it there. afton also loves jumping. off of everything. it's like she wakes up in the morning and says to herself, "self: jump off ALL the things!!" so our whole house shakes. a lot.

afton is smart. i mean, like, brilliant. i mean, like, she thinks about things in a very different way than you or i or the rest of the universe thinks about things. she continues to have a mastery of language well beyond her years, but if you ask her a question (especially in a "class" type setting), she'll likely act like she has no idea what you're saying. and who knows, maybe she really doesn't have any idea what you're saying.

and she's funny. really funny. afton is a natural-born entertainer. it comes off as goofy and strange and yeah, a little weird now and again, but just wait, in a few years, this girl's gonna have 'em rolling.

she loves organizing her toys and putting together puzzles and dressing her dolls and coloring pictures and making up stories. she is deathly afraid of dogs. and villains in movies. and loud noises. and bright lights. she eats three bowls of rice krispies every morning for breakfast and would have fettuccine alfredo every other meal if we'd let her.

afton is very polite and sometimes shy and really hates being told what to do, but she is getting better at doing it anyway.

and so goes our afton. our afton noelle. our littlest sunshiny, sunshine girl.

toothy

we interrupt your regularly scheduled birthday programming to bring you the loss of afton's first tooth.

which promptly fell out after breakfast this morning. not a day over five and already falling to pieces:

hi five

happy fifth, afton bay!

the swim revue

summer and afton with their cute friends and swim lesson buddies, maddy and cami.

i was super impressed with how much the girls learned these past weeks in swim lessons. they are comfortable in the water, they hold their breath underwater, they open their eyes underwater, they face float, they back float, they kick, and summer is even adding a basic crawl stroke.

success!

the pursuit of happyness