Two Two!

Last Saturday (the 17th) was Will’s 2nd birthday! For various reasons, we decided to celebrate on Friday. Kevin and I both took the day off from work and started out with a trip to the zoo! It was such a fun time for the 3 of us. Will loved it! He’s at such a fun age where you can take him to the zoo and he gets very excited to see the animals. We also rode the monorail (which looked like a train to him) and he was a happy boy! This makes me laugh – monkey see, monkey do? Will and the monkey are doing similar things. Ha!

Can’t believe I got this picture! He is so hard to photograph and I rarely get a smile photographed (even though he’s a vey happy boy!)! I was thrilled to get this one!

This cougar came right up to him and he totally missed it. It was cool! He tried to skip his nap on Friday – not cool. He’s never skipped one before! We had to take drastic measures (daddy napping with him) in order to get him to nap. After he napped, we unveiled his birthday present! We borrowed this train table from Dylan and we bought him the train set! He loves it! Worth every single penny and then some! Here is he with awesome nap hair checking it out. I think he’s in shock! What'? This is for me? He’s so obsessed with trains right now. It was the perfect gift! Then it was party time! All Aboard the choo choo train! Here’s the train cake – super cute! (notice the “2” clouds) Sweet Miles came dressed for the party!

It is birthdays where you stop and reflect on how many people really love your sweet boy. Thanks to everyone that came to celebrate with us!

While this is not a good pic, it is about the best I have. I wanted one of his shirt and somehow (when I was running around wildly setting up for the party) I forgot to take a good pic of him before things got started. So, a few things didn’t go exactly as planned for Will’s 2nd birthday. The first one was that it rained. But hey – we’ve been in a drought, no one was complaining. Bring on the rain! But that meant we couldn’t do the piñata outside. Luckily Betty was quick thinking and suggested the garage. It worked just fine (though it is not a pretty picture! Garages just aren’t cute!). The rain was the least of our worries! The craziest thing happened. So we’re running a little late and decide to do cake before presents. I get Will up there and we start singing Happy Birthday. He’s sitting there like a big boy and then… the lights go out. (See the before above and the during below). It was odd. I was actually a little annoyed. I was thinking – who in the world turned off ALL the lights?? There was just a small glow from the one candle (and the occasional flash of the camera). But we continue singing and Will even blows out the candle by himself! (we had practiced – I was so proud!). Then I am pretty sure I and everyone else says – turn on the lights. Then someone makes the realization that – the power is out! What?!? Oh yes. The whole neighborhood was dark. This lasted for at least an hour. Maybe more. Wow. Wasn’t planning for that little turn of events! So one thing we learned was that we’re not really prepared for a power outage. We didn’t have a single usable flashlight. Ha. We found every candle we could (it was very fragrant!) and the neighbors went and grabbed some flashlights. We had cake in the dark and we opened presents…in the dark! Will was a champ. He handled it all very well. He enjoyed opening presents and he would thank whoever gave it to him. He was a very sweet two year old. And – look below. He had food on his face, but it was dark! We didn’t know! :) I like this one – Kevin shining a light on the present! Everyone was extremely generous and Will got so many new fun things. Our sweet boy had a blast! Thank you Will for coming into our lives and making everything just that much sweeter! We love you to pieces! You are so funny, so sweet, so smart, so loving, and just the best little boy anyone could ever imagine! You challenge us and make us better people and we are thankful for that. We only hope to be the best parents we can be. We have had a blast with you these last 2 years and can only imagine how much fun is ahead of us! Please know mommy and daddy love you more than we can possibly express.

Happy Birthday Beautiful Wife!

I realize that I’m a good two weeks late in getting a blog posted about my wife’s birthday, but better late than never, right? Plus, I haven’t actually posted a blog since Will was born nearly two years ago, so it has taken me a little time to figure out what I’m doing.

With that said, HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRANDI!! Brandi and I celebrated her birthday this year (which is August 29th for those who may not know) on the Saturday before by going out just the two of us to dinner and a movie. On her actual birthday, Brandi’s family came over to celebrate with us in a small get-together.

Here’s a cute picture of Brandi and two of the three boys (Miles is not quite old enough to help open presents yet).

Will and Dylan wasted no time in getting Brandi’s presents opened.

It ended up being good practice for Will, as his second birthday is right around the corner. Here is Brandi with her new Texas Tech cup, which Will and I got her to coincide with the arrival of fall and a new football season!!

Will was clearly not as thrilled about the first season of the original 90210, as his Mommy was. That’s my boy!!

Instead of getting a cake for her birthday, I stopped by Sprinkles on my way home from work and picked up a dozen gourmet cupcakes, which ended up being a big hit with everyone. Clearly Will was pleased with my choice of birthday desserts. Brandi, you are such an amazing wife, mother, sister, daughter and friend, and we are all so fortunate to have you in our lives. Will and I are very thankful that you take such good care of us. We love you so much and celebrate the special event that was your birth!

Happy Birthday from your two boys!!

Phone Pics

Told you I was way behind – here are way too many phone pics for one post. Oh well. The weather has been so nice lately! Thank you Jesus! We have so enjoyed being able to get outside lately. Today we started out with a walk to Will’s future elementary school for some play time. He is so brave sometimes. This slide is kind of high, but he doesn’t care. He goes down it quick, too! Kevin is holding him in this picture, but at one point he sort of just grabbed onto this bar and swung out a little. I almost had a heart attack. Sometimes, he’s a little too brave. Whew. Here he is just chillin the back yard a few days ago. He likes to sit in his chair when we sit in the big ones. I really think he looks so cute in a hat and wanted to get one of the back of his head. He doesn’t like to go outside without a hat. True boy. Yay for getting to talk walks in the wagon! Oh look – a pic of my crockpot disaster. There’s a new facebook page on crockpoting and I got inspired. This did not go as planned. Plan B. Last weekend at the park! So much fun! Sportin’ daddy’s hat. He knows Florida State. And the Rangers. OH! Cute story. I was taking him to school the other day and we were almost there and he started talking about crackerjacks. I was like what? How do you know about crackerjacks? Then he said – go for it mommy! Ha. He wanted me to sing one of his favorite songs (thanks daddy) – Take me out to the ballgame! So I did. At the end of the song he’ll say Texas Rangers! All boy. Aren’t these flowers beautiful that my husband sent me for my birthday? I loved the yellow – so different – so nice! (And the color coordinated with my Journal of Accountancy sitting on my desk!). Quite awhile back Tricia and I took Will & Dylan to Chuck E Cheese. Will was a mess. He loved the ski ball. Except – he couldn’t roll the ball all the way up there. So he would sling them and they’d come rolling back while he grabbed more. It wore me out! I was catching them and rolling them up there before the went rolling behind us. Funny kid. Sometime (a long time ago) I took him to a gym class. I think i mentioned once how I took him to a music class and that he hated it. Well, he loved the gym class (except when they did group activities – he gets shy). I didn’t catch him at the right time – he loved this thing. He could bounce to the end and jump in to the pile of blocks. Choo choo! Obsessed. Totally obsessed with trains! Here’s a terrible picture – but Will & Dylan were so cute walking together before the circus. :)

School Days

Will started to a new class at school a few weeks ago. He is now in the 2’s class! It is a big deal! They learn so much in his new class. He even wears pull-ups to school and they are working on potty training. Whoo hoo! I had not mentally prepared for that, so I’m not really pushing it, yet. However, we do try to go when I think about it and he does really well! He goes especially well right before his bath at night. We are really excited that he seems pretty interested in it. We do a whole potty dance and everything. My little boy is growing up. Sigh.

I wanted to take a first day of school picture. Annnnnd…this is what I got. Seriously, he is hard headed sometimes. He didn’t want me to take a picture, he wanted to see the pictures on the camera. I tried to explain that I had to take one before he could see one and he wasn’t buying it.

The next day went better! Here are a couple of him before his 2nd day of school! It works, right? He looks so big! He’s seems so tall. We go on the 21st for his well check, looking forward to seeing his stats. He has outgrown a lot of his shirts just recently. These are 2T shirts! Big boy! He’s still rocking the 6-12 month shorts, but well that’s okay buddy. :)

Around the house

Well, I kept waiting for the blog fairy to update my blog – but it never happened. For some reason, I have not made blogging a priority. But it is important to me, because this is how I remember things. I don’t have a baby book (gasp) and I surely am not crafty enough to do scrapbooking. So this is how I remember all our family moments. So – I am catching up! I’ll try to do a couple of posts rather than one mammoth one. So here is Will eating a bowl of cereal with milk. I thought it was cute. He liked drinking the milk at the end! Here’s a pic to help me remember how much he loves his “computer” and watching Curious George. Man he loves him some George! He also likes playing with stickers and coloring! But he goes through the stickers so fast!

Random? Why yes. But there is just something precious about our little sleepy head in the morning. Crazy hair and no pants and everything. Here is what a typical morning looks like while we get ready for work. Cutie pie.

He now likes to go swimming in the bathtub! It is so sweet! He’ll turn around and head the other way. Love, love, love, love this age. He’s insane at times and there may have been a moment just the other day where I had to go sit on the couch and do a little breathing exercise because he was throwing one impressive tantrum, BUT – he is also so stinking cute. He’s learning so much and we’re starting to have conversations. He’s hilarious, too. He loves to hop everywhere these days. And jump. And he’s sweet and now loves giving us kisses (that took a lot of training on my part) and hugs. He loves to read books now, finally. He’s just all around awesome. Except for that tantrum thing. But he’s almost 2, I guess that comes with the territory.

We’ve had the pj’s for awhile – and I still think he’s precious in them Oh that sweet face!

He also without fail with match up the blocks. Kevin will get a good base going and hand blocks for Will to add. He always puts them where there’s a matching color and size. Do we see a cpa in our future??

Will and Dylan had the best time with Uncle J the other day! Uncle J came over and spent a good amount of time just playing with these two knuckleheads. They think Uncle J rocks!