Tuesday, August 20, 2013

September 2012

Welp, here I am, in the second half of August 2013 and giving my blog the ol' once a year update. So much has happened this last year that I can't just give a summary. The boys have just been too dang cute to not share some pictures! 

We let the boys share a birthday party last year since they were both pirate obsessed. And they have the same friends. And their birthdays are a month apart. It works well!

Graham turned 4 and Jackson turned 2. Our two pirates. It was a great party and all the kids came in their best pirate costumes!



The Pinata was a HUGE hit!


Jackson was very upset that people were beating his pirate friend... 
He's giving him a hug here instead of taking his turn to swing.
(Please notice the piece of cookie cake...
He begged for a piece and refused to put it down or eat it. He's not a sweet eater...
what a funny kid!)


He seemed to get over it pretty quickly once the pirate head could be used as a hat!



Matt's parents moved to north Charleston to pastor a church. We are so sad they're so far away obviously, but we had a wonderful time visiting them and getting to explore their new city and meet their new church family! Our first day there we took a carriage ride tour of historic downtown.
It was so much fun!



Graham LOVED the beach. For all his texture issues, the sand was no big deal... who knew?!


Jackson wasn't as thrilled. He only liked the beach if he was wearing his flip flops.
And he didn't like if the water got above his ankles.


But in the spirit of their pirate love - we found a pirate playground. They had a blast!


Matt and I got to spend a morning exploring the city by ourselves - so refreshing.


And Matt got to surf almost every day. He was in heaven...


We had such a wonderful visit with Nana and Granddaddy! 


The drive there took us 18 hours (we took the long way by accident). 
So on the way home we stopped at a motel for the first time... 
No one got much sleep but this bedtime picture does capture the 
boys' excitement of us all sharing the same room!


And we came home to a loaded fridge thanks to my parents! 
Such a nice treat as we re-entered reality...


Thursday, September 6, 2012

August

So here we are again. Another month has passed. I blogged about J's birthday in a separate post so here is the rest of August. And can I just say that as I was uploading these I realized that they are all phone pictures.  I love my camera dearly but it is just so easy to grab my phone... oops!

 We did some rearranging to give us our room back, give the boys a play room, and get them into bunk beds.
They love their bunk beds.

 G loves his playmobil guys. He especially loves them when they have a party on the ship.

 Wrestling with Grandaddy. Matt's parents recently moved to Charleston and we miss them dearly. 
Can't wait to visit them soon!

 Oh you know... just building trains in the playroom.

 Sometimes G is the sweetest big brother. Much of the time really...
He insisted on pushing J here and he was so careful and kept reminding him to hold on tight.
Melt me.

 How do you think they feel about pirates?

 There was this glorious day when the heat and humidity broke and I had this great idea - go to the zoo and see the new sea lion exhibit! Too bad every single other person here had the same idea...
We didn't get to walk through the new underground tunnel, but the boys were still thrilled. 

 And they were best buddies. And the weather was nice.

 And we got to see the zebras (G's favorite animal these days...)

 It really was an awesome day at the zoo for us!

 Our friends had this super cute lemonade stand as an "end of summer" sort of party.
I can't believe I didn't get a picture because it was so adorable!
Everyone was super cute and G for real fell in love with the whole lemonade stand thing.

 J fell deeply deeply in love with ring pops.

 We spent the morning with some friends at a park and these two had so much fun!
They were running races in their own "olympics." And climbing trees, so cute. 

 Just more dress up. This is pretty much all day every day...

 After going to a lemonade stand, G would not stop talking about having one at our house. Every time we went to the store he would beg for some pink lemonade for a stand. Matt was working with the neighbors in the front of the house and so I let G take lemonade out. He was so stinking cute with it! He offered it to everyone within ear shot at least 5 times. More than anything, he loved seeing people ask for a drink. Oh, and he had like 5 cups...

 J's daily outfit. He wears all three hats because the black pirate one is a little big and falls off. So the others help keep it on.

 We need to get this little G-ism documented. He is really funny about his hands and toys. We've always known he had some tactile issues but nothing that makes living every day life difficult. 

So he is quite the little hoarder with his special toys. And I noticed that he really only holds his toys with his right hand. He never eats or does anything that would get his right hand dirty or sticky either. In fact he'll ask for a wipe or go wash his hands if his right one is even clammy. He calls it his "toy hand" because it's bigger and better at holding more toys. He doesn't like his special toys to be on the carpet or on his bed or even the couch because they get lint on them. WHAAAHHH? Yes, we know it's absurd. Yes, we know it's super type-A of him. 

I just sort of made it my quiet little goal to get his right hand dirty now and then and also to drop his toys on the carpet.  You know... just to keep him from getting TOO controlling about it. Ha!

 Who knew that J liked crafts? Who knew he could manipulate stickers so well?
This bought me like 30 whole minutes of time in the kitchen without him under my feet. Win!

 First day of school! The boys are technically in just a mom's day out (called Peeps) at a church near us. G went there last year and loved it. So this year J joined him. G is in their 3K equivalent and J is just in a 2's room.

I love that they learn bible verses, play outside, do messy crafts, meet friends, hear bible stories, walk in lines, sing songs, and get some time away from me as their only teacher in life. Plus, I get a few hours to grocery shop or window shop at the mall in quiet!

 Graham was so excited as he was telling Jackson all about what Peeps would be like.
He always asks for us to drop J off first so he can walk him to his class. Brother love!

 I found this little magnet toy in the dollar section at Michaels. Man, who knew G would love drawing silly beards on him so much?!

 Someone dressed himself. And I found him standing like this checking out his reflection in the fridge.
He asked me if I thought he looked fierce. True story.

 A little DQ run one evening. Who knew these little treats would make them so happy?!

 Hat hoarder.

 Oh Jackson...

 We seriously went to Target like this. They got so many smiles.

 J eating his lentils. Crazy kid.

 Second day of school. Still liking it!

 G briefly went through several days as a superhero.
Don't worry - he's back to pirates.

 Lovey hat.

Walking into Chick fil A. It was raining so the goggles had to be worn.
You know, to keep the water out of his eyes. He wore them the entire meal and time in the playground.
Matt can't believe I let him do stuff like this sometimes...
(and remember his toy hand? check out which one is in his pocket...)

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Jackson turnes 2!



Look at this sweet little guy. He is truly such a treasure to us and a delight in our life! I am so thankful God has put him in our family - we love watching him grow!

Since I've taken my sweet time getting the blog caught up - he has definitely gotten the short end of the blogging stick. I mean, I've just ignored documenting his little milestones completely. Mom fail. I'm pretty sure he'll forgive me though.

In the spirit of remembering some of the details, here are his 2 yr stats:
Weight: 24 lbs (8th percentile)
Height: 34.5 in (53rd percentile)  We knew we had a string bean on our hands, ha!
Head circumference: 19.02 in (40th percentile)

What he's eating these days... Cereal for breakfast. Yogurt with raw oatmeal in it for lunch along with some goldfish and maybe an apple if I'm lucky. He loves goldfish. He also eats kids cliff bars, apple sauce pouches, almonds, lentil soup, loves green beans, pizza, french fries, lemonade, kefir, chocolate milk, and steamed broccoli.  He is pretty much the most inconsistent eater ever. I mean ever. There are totally days where he eats cereal and goldfish and might drink some milk. But three cheers for the green veggies!

He is a total chatterbox. He went from saying no words at all to basically being G's little parrot. He tells us everything that he wants and is a very successful tattler. We laugh at his voice though, he has this very rough and raspy voice most of the time and his yell/cry has more in common with a foghorn than a human voice. But when he talks to you it is literally the most sweet and angelic thing you've ever heard.  He is way more articulate than G was at this age.

Some of his more unique phrases are :  "no do dat guys", "find wovey bink" (lovey and bink), "watch muppey pi'tes" (muppet pirates),  "holp ee" (help me), "bubba take way" (brother took it away), "watch Hook", and "chocky molk" (chocolate milk).

And since I mention Hook and pirates. To say that my boys love pirates is a huge understatement. They live and breathe pirates. First thing they do in the morning is put on their hats and boots and locate their swords and plastic hook hand cuffs. We're totally having a joint pirate birthday party for them.

 I love my little two year old!

"Cheeeeese!"
Look at these two. Sometimes they don't even look related.


 See, J and my dad share a birthday. I completely forgot to get a picture of them together which is a bummer. But we were able to celebrate together with a little family dinner. My mom made a cobbler for the grownups but these guys loved their pink lemonade cake. I promise Caleb was having fun despite that face.
 He was so proud to be able to blow it out himself. We'd been practicing.

 Don't be fooled. This kid won't touch cake to his mouth. 
I think T or C might have finished his piece off, ha!

And we can't forget Graham! He loved celebrating his little brother and insisted singing to him all day long.
And he loves cake. Well, maybe just the icing...

And happy happy birthday Dad! We very much enjoyed celebrating you and another year of memories, laughter, stories, road trips, AU games, Haiti updates, dog pictures, DDP runs, good conversations, and  tender Papa moments. Love you thiiiiis much daddy!