November 2012

Here are all of our random November memories! 

A new toy store opened so we went and Elmo was there!

James had his first experience voting. Thankfully the people passed out candy to keep everyone happy.
 The line was extremely long and after we got to our spot the first thing he did was press the
vote button before I had a chance to choose my person! 

After voting we had a fun time at the park and eating pizza afterwards 

After getting the mail I turned around and saw this: someone is
getting excited about Christmas! 

Story time! I have some interesting hair going on...

"Push me REAL high"

Fun time at church 

Helping Mama bake 

Chilling in Daddy's car.  

Dinner time with just the boys 

"My Daddy no work" and "No help sick people" - that is what I hear each morning when Ryan leaves

A Fun Weekend with Sara

I had a hard time coming up with a title for this post because my sweet friend Sara has come 5 times to visit me since we moved!!! She is actually the one who helped me start my blog when we had just lived here for a couple of months. I'm out of catchy blog posts titles for her visits but I am SO thankful that she continues to come and see us (and we already have some more visits planned for the future!).

We started off our visit by deciding to try a new place for lunch. Unfortunately after we drove there it was closed for renovation!  Since we were near Julie Anne's we ate there instead. I was a little disappointed because what we got was just adequate, but at least we got some yummy dessert to bring home.  

Whoops- cut James out of this shot

 Then we went home for James to take his nap...which he ended up never doing. Needless to say he was somewhat of a beast for most of the rest of the day.  Sara worked on getting some photos for our Christmas card and bless her heart, she had her work cut out.  Dealing with a two-year-old that had not taken a nap plus I was not feeling well, and Ryan ended up working late so we didn't get to have any family pictures! Oh well. I was amazed at the photos she was able to take under the circumstances. 

The next day we headed to church and then went to Marilyn's for brunch. I had never been there before, but I had heard it was good and Sara needed to try some beignets.  Can you believe my child who loves sweets would not eat his beignet?  So strange...he doesn't know what he is missing. I even told him it was a donut to try to trick him into taking a bite but no luck. 

Sara's first beignet- a Louisiana staple 

The rest of the day we spent hanging out and having lots of good conversation. I was especially thankful to have some company since Ryan was working for the weekend.  

Snuggle time 

 When Ryan got off he was sweet to offer to take James to dinner so that Sara and I could have some girl time. I had a great idea to go do a little shopping and then go eat at a nice Italian place. Well, I forgot that it was Sunday so the shop and the restaurant were closed! Plan B: Fajitas, chips and salsa at Tacomania! :)

Before bed we had to take a few pictures as a group.  We took so many that the next morning James kept pretending to set up the camera, he would count to 10, and then say "cheese". 

So thankful for her sweet friendship 

Sara has been extremely kind to take pictures of James since he has been born, and I will forever be grateful for the memories that she has captured.  She talked with me some this weekend about her passion for lifestyle photography and for her desire to capture those simple, every-day moments that we will one day forget.  Sure it's nice to have a good posed picture of your family but in reality my life isn't so picture perfect.   One day I"m going to look back and miss these precious moments and memories, things that I think I will never forget but in reality I may. I love how each photo triggers a memory of our time as a family at that exact stage of life.  Moments I want to remember such as: 

Those tiny hands that still like to hold mine 

That cute little nose 

Those chubby cheeks 

5 little piggies on each foot that love to be tickled

That head full of hair that we can't keep tamed 

That precious smile

A little boy who still likes to cuddle with his Mama on the couch 

The sound of laughter and silliness in our house  

The season in life when play time revolved around trains

These are the moments I don't want to forget 

One of my favorite quotes about motherhood that I try to remind myself is that "the days are long but the years are short".  Yes, sometimes the day-to day-activities as a parent with a young child seem so mundane and the responsibilities are never ending and not very exciting.  I can sometimes feel like we will never get through a stage whether it's the middle of the night wake-ups (still waiting for that one to end), tantrums in the middle of the store, or reading the same book 5 times a day. But then I blink and the next thing you know your little baby is walking, then talking, running, and it's time to start thinking about preschool.  Thank you so much Sara for allowing us to one day, when the years have flown by, to look at these pictures and remember these precious memories. We love you and can't wait to see you again soon! 

October Misc

Well, November is half way over and I'm finally caught up with my October blogging! Here is my monthly post of random things that didn't get their own post.

I just love this sweet face 

We get excited around here when a box comes 

For Ryan's birthday this year we celebrated over the whole week.  It was a busy week of work, etc. so there really wasn't just one day that we could do it all. It was fun to spread it out.

Happy Birthday Ryan! 

I let James pick out a card for Ryan. Not too surprised that this is what he chose!

Of course we added some decoration 

Ryan requested a chocolate chess pie. James insisted that daddy wanted a purple cake.
So.... we made both! Can't have too much cake. 

Final celebration at Sushi Gen 

Every year that I taught I always bought these little pumpkins for my students. I wanted to make sure they each got to have their own pumpkin and they LOVED getting to paint them. So I decided I would let James try it. He enjoyed it, but we definitely haven't mastered the concept of not mixing all the colors so the pumpkin ended up a nice shade of brown. But hey- it kept him happy for at least ten minutes!

Picture from Mother's Day Out 

I also had to include this on the blog so it would be in my blog book for the future.  Several (prob around 6 years ago) my parents hosted two kids for the Samaritans Purse Childrens' Heart Project.  The kids were around two and had life-saving heart surgery and stayed with my parents for around 2 months. Needless to say we fell in love with the two little girls.  Recently my mom received this email from the office in Honduras with sweet Darling's picture attached.  I wish a had a picture on my computer from when we knew her, and it's crazy to me that James is the same age that she was. I can't believe how grown up and healthy she now is!  Such a neat ministry and a wonderful experience for our whole family. 

Happy Halloween! 2012

This Halloween was so much fun because James was super excited about it. He couldn't wait to trick or treat and wear his doctor clothes. We decided for him to be a doctor since he loves to dress up in Ryan's scrubs and truthfully so much of our lives revolve around doctors, hospitals, daddy being gone, etc. There is a lot of medical lingo in our household! Of course I always joke that I hope he doesn't follow in his daddy's footsteps in terms of career so maybe this wasn't the best choice...oh well. I found his costume on Zulilly, and Ryan brought him home a scrub hat from the O.R. 

Dress rehearsal 

Using his doctor bag 

He went wild when I put his outfit on. I made the mistake of confusing him and
he thought we were going trick or treating right then when in reality it was still a day away. Whoops!

This year we were fortunate to be invited to go trick or treating with some friends.  It was fun to go in a group and see all the kiddos in their cute costumes.  

Ryan had to work but at the last minute he showed up! And his pager didn't go off
the whole night. :) 

We had dinner before and James tried to get his hands on some early candy. 

Pretty tough to get a picture of all the kiddos.

Buddies 

So sweet

Sweet Emmy 

Adorable!

The very first house we went to James dug both hands in and tried to scoop out all the candy.
Can we say little pig???

James found Taylor's Nerds- needless to say she was not sharing! Haha!