Hard. At. Play.

Before. . .


During. . .


And, after. . .



Joshua.

He plays hard.

Wow. I keep catching glimpses of him around the house and for a second, just a quick little second, I see him as a teenager one day. It is the strangest thing. He went into Kindergarten a little boy and came out a little man. Yikes!

Joshua wakes up biting at the bit to get outside. And, his new thing is wanting to "play football." He asked me to take these posed pictures of him. . .


In this one. . .he has just finished begging his little brother (the one pictured) to play football with him. But, Brett Favre didn't even respond to his request. He opted to continue hanging upside down on the swing. . .

No worries, Joshua had an alternate plan. . .

He just went on down the line. . . And, this little man would do just about anything big brother Joshua asked him to do. . .

Joshua has a bit of an unfair advantage playing with Elijah, but Elijah is just happy to be included in the game!

I like to call these next two pictures. . .

The agony. . .


of defeat. . .

Mommy beat him again. Erik told me not to let him win, so I don't. One of his favorite things to do is race around the track he created in our front yard. One of his least favorite things to do is lose. I keep telling him that one of these days he is going to beat the socks off of me, and I will be so happy when he does! I may just bake him cupcakes on that gloriously victorious day. I told him he was very close to beating me, and that by this time next year he would most likely have beaten me. But, that didn't help. I might as well have told him that it would be sometime in the next century!

I'm not sure what got into me, maybe I was feeling a little overly confident, but yesterday evening after church we were all taking turns racing Joshua around his track, and I challenged Erik to a race.

Yeah.

He beat me.

Still not sure what I was thinking.

But, boy, oh, boy, was it fun!