Saturday, November 26, 2011

Long overdue update!

I'm not even going to go back and see how long it has been since I last updated this blog. I'm just going to start back on updating it now. I realized this morning I hadn't uploaded pictures to Picasa in a long, long time. It's been my project throughout the day now. And I figured instead of emailing out a million links to the various albums I put online, I'd just do a blog post and add the links here. Pretty genius, huh?

So here are some things that have been going on in our lives the past few months.

In March for Will's spring break, we took a trip with my mom to San Clemente, CA. It's in southern Orange County. We had a great time and we had our first family trip to Disneyland! Unfortunately it was insanely crowded. That just means we'll have to go back when it isn't as bad.

San Clemente March11


In June, Will graduated from Pre-K at Grace Adventures Preschool.

Will's Pre-K Graduation


Also in June, Miles moved out of his crib and into a big boy bed. I hadn't painted any since we moved into our house, so I figured him switching from baby to big kid furniture was as good a time as any. His room at our old house was painted with stripes which was a complete PITA but looked awesome. I somehow convinced myself stripes would be a good idea again. Ugh. It looks fantastic, but I was kicking myself as I was up at midnight one night still taping off the damn stripes. He loves his room, though, and that's all that matters.

Miles' Big Boy Bed


Later in June we headed to California again, this time to San Francisco and Cayucos. John was competing in the Alcatraz Shark Swim, where participants swim from Alcatraz across the San Francisco Bay to the city. He did amazing, I was so proud of him! His brother and our niece and two nephews were there to cheer with us for him at the finish line too! After a few days in San Fran (we cut our stay there short by a day) we headed south to the gorgeous Central Coast town of Cayucos. We'd been there when I was pregnant with Miles and really enjoyed it. This time John's whole family was going to be there with us, too. The boys had a blast with their cousins and grandparents. John and I even got to sneak away to go winetasting in nearby Paso Robles one afternoon! Ah the benefits of vacationing with family! We had a great time and may just make it an annual tradition.

SF and Cayucos


In July my cousin Kim and her husband Chris came to visit with their new baby girl Harper. She was born in May and the first girl baby in our family! Well, first girl since my cousin was born in 1980. ;) Will was pretty upset when Harper was born and he found out he had a girl cousin, but as soon as he met her he was so excited. He loved getting to hold her and got a little upset when anyone else wanted to. She's such a sweet baby--we're all excited for when they're back at Christmas!

Baby Harper comes to visit!


One morning over the summer I arrived home from running with my best friend to be greeted at the front door by Miles, with his face covered in brown. First thing out of my mouth was, "Is that chocolate or poop?!" Not an entirely crazy question because he was naked from the waist down. Thankfully (?) it was chocolate. John was still sleeping, and the boys had decided they were hungry for breakfast. They had come downstairs so Will could make them breakfast. What better thing to have than chocolate milk, right? Later that day, it got a little too quiet upstairs while the boys were up there playing, so we went to investigate...and discovered them playing with my makeup in our bathroom. Never a dull moment at our house, I tell you!

Mischevious Boys


In August, Will started kindergarten. He was pretty apprehensive because we discovered on "meet the teacher" night that his two best friends were in the other kinder class, and the only kids he knew in his class were a girl from his swim lessons over the summer and a girl from Sunday school. He struggled with getting adjusted the first week (it's all day from 9:00 to 4:00...one day he told me, "Mom, I just don't like things that last from 9:00 to 4:00), but now he's doing really well and really loves school.

Will's First Day of Kindergarten


For Labor Day weekend, my mom and I headed to CA again (this was the year of the CA trip) so I could run in the Disneyland Half Marathon with my best friend Jen. John had made plans to go to Dallas for the LSU season opener way before I decided to run this race, so he couldn't be there. Friday morning when we were supposed to be leaving, I woke up with a sore throat. A quick trip to the Walgreens clinic confirmed what I was pretty sure of already--strep throat. We made the trip anyway, with me figuring I would run what I could and walk what I couldn't run for the race. Plus I've had strep throat often enough to know that by Day 3 of the antibiotics I'm usually feeling a lot better. If you want a more detailed rundown of the race, check out my fitness blog post about it. We spent Saturday of the weekend at the beach. Sunday morning was the race, then we had brunch on the Queen Mary (incidentally, that's where John proposed to me) and went to the Long Beach Aquarium. It was a fun weekend and I learned that I love running half marathons. Who'd have ever thought?!

Labor Day California Trip


Halloween was kind of a sad event at our house this year because Will was sick. He had pink eye and a fever--both of which ended up lasting a week! He had to stay home while my mom and I took Miles trick-or-treating. My mom and I got candy for Will, but it wasn't the same.

Halloween 2011


And finally, last weekend we celebrated Miles' third birthday! I can't believe my baby is three already. We had a great weekend, and my brother came down to celebrate with us. Miles was so excited for his birthday this year. His party is going to be next weekend. He has three friends who all have birthdays within two weeks of his, so we moms decided to have one big combined birthday party for the four of them instead of forcing all the same people to attend four different parties.

Miles' 3rd Birthday Weekend


So, there's a brief photo recap of what we've been up to over the last several months. Now if I can just remember to update here more often, it will be a whole lot easier!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Doo's coming!

I was trying to upload this video to Facebook for my brother, but it's not working. so I'm putting it here. My brother is coming to visit tomorrow and the boys are ridiculously excited to see Doo!!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

My elf altercation

When I was looking for the pictures of Sam to post I saw these from our trip to see Santa and had to share my funny elf altercation story.

We had plans the day before my dad died to go see Santa. I was going to pick Will up from school then we'd go to the mall and John was going to meet us there, we'd see Santa, have lunch, yadda yadda. That morning I got a call from my dad's hospice nurse that he'd entered the "death stage" and would probably pass in the next 24 to 48 hours. I called my brother after talking to her to see if he thought I should go see our dad that day. We had just been out to see him on Saturday and this was Tuesday. He basically told me that yes I needed to go out there and man up and do it. God bless little brothers! Anyway, I called John and we changed plans to go to the mall by my mom so the boys could still go see Santa. My mom met us there.

I had, of course, taken my camera with me because every other mall I've ever been to lets you take your own pictures of your kids with Santa. I take my own but generally we buy a package anyway...because I'm a sucker like that. We're in line and I see this sign:



In my defense, somewhere other than this sign it said something along the lines of "Please do not take any pictures while in the Santa's Village area" which I took to mean as long as you're outside the little fence area, you're cool to use your own camera. So did the lady in line behind me.

We formulated our plan. John and my mom would take the kids up to Santa, I'd hang back outside the picket fence and take my own pictures. Will was so excited to see Santa and bounded straight up to him when it was their turn. Miles was a bit more hesitant.





You'll notice the elf in the first picture there. I'm still not certain if it was a guy or a girl Perhaps elves are gender neutral? I don't know. Elf saw me taking pictures and our dialog went something like this:

Elf: Ma'am, you can't take your own pictures.
Me: Don't worry, I'll still buy yours.
Elf: That's not the issue, you're not allowed to take your own pictures.
Me (said with defiance and "don't mess with me" tone): What are you going to do, kick me out of the mall?
[Meanwhile I'm still taking pictures]
Elf: No, but I can call mall security.
Me: Go ahead, knock yourself out.

I continued to take pictures until I realized that Miles was not cooperating at all and was pretty freaked out by Santa. Mall security never showed up, so I'm glad I called Elf's bluff. We did end up buying pictures from them, even though I didn't want to out of spite at that point. Our official 2011 Santa picture looked something like this:



Lesson to Elf: don't mess with a girl whose dad has been given two days to live. She really won't care about your stupid camera policy. ;)

Our newest addition

I can't really say new anymore because it's been almost two months. We had been debating getting another dog for quite awhile now. Will really wanted one, and Miles loves dogs, but we didn't know if we wanted to deal with the work and extra responsibility involved with having one. The funeral home we had to go to after my dad died had a really sweet dog at it. That made us miss having a dog, so the day after my brother went home we headed to the Humane Society to see what they had. I was still pretty skeptical at that point. They didn't have a whole lot to choose from--unless we wanted a pit bull of some sort--but then we saw Sam. Will actually picked him out. We got to play with him for a bit and he was so sweet. He didn't react to Miles poking at him and being rough, he cuddled right up to John. Will asked if we could take him home, so that about did it. We were dog owners once again. He really is one of the sweetest dogs I've ever encountered. He lets the kids climb all over him and be rough which is great. He's pretty quiet and mellow, too, which is a nice change from crazy Cindy Lou. We aren't sure exactly what kind of dog he is...we think part Boxer, part hound dog of some sort (based on how he'd howl when John left when we first had him), and the vet thought maybe some Rhodesian Ridgeback. Regardless, he's a great dog and we're so happy he's part of our family now! Welcome to the family, Sam!

Hanging up the sign to let everyone know Sam was coming home with us!






Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Thanksgiving

Normally we go to San Antonio and spend Thanksgiving with John's family, but this year we offered to have it here. His parents were the only ones to take us up on the offer, but it was nice to get to spend a week with them. John and his dad got to play a lot of golf, John and I had a couple date nights, we took Grandma to Trader Joe's (which they don't have in TX, or at least not in San Antonio), went to Zoo Lights, had an amazing Thanksgiving dinner (if I do say so myself), had a couple fires in our backyard fire pit. It was a really nice visit. My kids were so sad when it was time for Grandma and P-Bill to go home. Honestly I'd love to switch the traidtion to everyone coming here to celebrate Thanksgiving, but we'll see if that happens!

Thanksgiving

Miles' Birthday

I know I have a ton of catching up to do on our blog, but I at least started putting pictures with captions into Picasa albums so I could share the links here. that will have to do for now for a few things, then I'll get more caught up when I can. I don't know where my time is going lately--I feel like I'm constantly running around and getting nothing accomplished.

Miles' Birthday