OK – yes, we fully admit to being behind in our blogging.  I think Joel mentioned to me that we were 3 weeks behind.  So, that said, the series of picture below were taken before their big birthday weekend. 

For the past two years now, Joel and I have printed off a cute pre-birthday picture of the boys and given them out at birthday gatherings.  This year, we were totally running behind in everything.  We scoured our pictures.  Alas, we did not have any recent photos of brotherly togetherness in the pile and thus needed to stage a photo.  The weather was nice, the boys hadn’t food encrusted their clothes yet, so we took them outside to see if we could get a spontaneous – everyone smiling – photo.  What we got instead, was amazing.

Let me set the stage.  I had the GREAT idea (ha ha ha) of sitting the boys on top of the picnic table.  (I think you can see where this is headed.)  They cooperated but we could not entice them both to smile at the same time.  Then Dexter started to admire his feet or the ground – I’m not sure what exactly peaked his interest.  Joel was behind the camera lens and thus his parenting sense was not tingling with upcoming danger like mine was. 

Too sunny out – no one wanted to look up.

Then it starts.  Mommy sense tingling, Dexter started to look over the edge.  “Hmmm – what’s down there?  Maybe I should take a closer look”, Dexter thinks.

“Oh look – is that an ant?”

And with a gentle rock foward, Dexter starts to leave the table.  About this time, I deploy my volleyball dive forward.

Right after the click of the camera and before Dexter hit the ground, I scooped him up.  That was the end of that round of picture taking.  Joel was amazed that 1) I figured Dexter was going to jump for it and 2) I caught him in time.  That kid is kind of transparent – you know when he’s going to do something stupid.  This time I was ready for it and my reflexes kicked in just when I needed them.  See Joel, I need to keep playing volleyball so that I can catch the boys when they jump from places I put them.