dripping with passion

a few things i want to remember about our boys at six months and two and a quarter years old: moses: loves to watch our wedding video (he asks for it every few days by saying "watch mama and daddy in the red car" referring to the very end when we leave our reception in a red car :) ). adores his brother and gives him the biggest, longest hugs while saying "awwwwww." says "one minute" pretty much 100% of the time he is asked to do something ... always looking for one more minute to play!  is obsessed with a story book his grandma gave him for christmas last year, and references the stories in it multiple times a day. loves animals more than anything. his favourite animals are elephants and giraffes and he will often randomly say, "i  love  elephants" or "i  love  giraffes." if he sees a picture of an animal when we are out and about he hollers "annnnnimal!!!" with so much glee. he spends hours every day playing with

one. i feel like i am coming out of a bit of a fog - the past couple of weeks have been kinda crazy. i'm realizing (re-realizing, really) that life is really just a series of peaks and valleys. and when i'm in a dip, even one that feels pretty deep, i can just look forward to going up again (while also remembering that more dips are ahead). things seem to always get better over time ... and if i just anticipate the up and down i can do my best to enjoy the ride no matter how high or low i am.   ^^ just a couple pictures of gabriel being the sweetest baby alive. i'm seriously convinced he is. ^^   ^^ a stop by borough market one day recently revealed that bread ahead is now selling passion fruit  flavor filled donuts. ooooookay. (yes, i ate one, and yes, it was delicious .) also, autumn gourds are always fun. ^^   ^^ look how gorgeous these baskets of mushrooms  are! and i always love seeing displays of colourful produce. ^^   ^^ ian was out of town for work a lo

  on our last morning in portugal, we took an little boat tour through some sea caves and it was crazy cool. we were blown away by unique natural beauty and also truly stunned by our boat going inside some wildly small openings in the cliffs! the colour of the water in the algarve is pretty mind-blowing, and the rock formations are amazing. the boys were great on the thirty-minute ride, and it was the perfect cherry on top of our portugal beach vacation.     ^^ the most famous of the algarve's sea caves, benagil cave. totally incredible. ^^   ^^ we approached this opening in the rock and as we got closer and closer we said to each other, "wait, we're not actually going in there, right???" we had to sink low and hunch over to prevent banging our heads! there were 3-4 times this happened, it was wild! ^^       ^^ i really can't believe the colour of this water is real! ^^     we stopped by the town of albufeira on our way to the airport, and that ma