Don't Be Fooled...

Okay, so these pictures are really old, but I was just looking through pictures from this summer and I got a real kick out of these, so I thought that I'd share them. Yes, they are from the 4th of July which was in fact two months ago. Got it.

Look at that cute little angel face (Andrew, in case you're confused). He's such a sweet boy and loves everybody, but there's one way to get on his bad side...Notice Joe casually holding the food out of his reach. Okay, no big deal, there are ways around that. He just waits until Daddy puts him down to go and get something and then...
he moves in for the kill. This boy loves watermelon. Oh wait, this boy loves ALL food! So there he is peacefully enjoying his plunder when someone notices the watermelon juice dripping down the front of his new white T-shirt and then...
...WATCH OUT!! You want to unleash the wrath of Andrew, just take away his food!
Here's another example: Grandma is feeding him some yummy homemade ice cream and apparently he doesn't trust me, even though I'm behind the camera, because he won't take his eyes off me!And here's what happens when the bowl is empty. Talk about true injustice!
Well, now you know the truth...so you've all been warned!

It's Official!

I hope that I don't jinx myself by writing this down, but I feel pretty confident in saying that Sam is officially potty-trained! Hurray! That was a LONG time in coming...! Hmmm, we first started last October, that's right, 10+ months of the "the worst part about being a parent" (as my mom to delicately put it). In all fairness, we did take a break from November to March, but anyway, the point is, he's finally got it. I keep reassuring myself by saying that every child won't be this difficult...we'll hope it's true. But for now I'm just celebrating!

Here's a few of my favorite potty pictures...

Happy Birthday to Andrew!!

We celebrated Andrew's 1st birthday on Friday. I can't believe that my baby boy is a year old! We had a family birthday party during the day. We had lunch and then cake and ice cream, really basic, nothing fancy, but it was very fun. Andrew seemed to know that it was his special day and he enjoyed every minute of it.

Here's the cake that I made (it's a train, in case you can't tell). I was feeling ambitious and I thought it turned out pretty cute. The blue tower in the front is what we gave to Andrew to demolish and he did a great job! Joe couldn't believe that I wanted to give him that whole piece, but you only have a first birthday once!

Miri and Andrew waiting anxiously for the cake.The cake...just out of his reach......and here he goes!"Really, I'm allowed to do this?""Mmmmm, that's good!""Wow, this is great!""Really, this is okay?"Now it's getting serious... "Now that's what I call fun!"

After we got him cleaned up, then it was time to open presents. He got lots of fun toys and books (which Sam has been loving) Thanks everybody! Joe ended up doing most of the unwrapping since Andrew didn't quite understand the concept.

Andrew and Leila The crew (minus a few): Andrew, Leila, Sam and Dylan (L&D are my cousin's kids) Uncle's Danny and Jon living it up at this exciting party!

It was a fun and crazy little party, thanks to everyone for coming to celebrate with us. To make the day even more fun, we had some of our new friends from church over that night for a BBQ. Another fun event (no pictures taken at that party) and a great way to finish off the day.

A First for This Little Family

Round 1:
We got this great idea that we wanted to take the boys camping. We hadn't gone since the summer we got married and thought that it would be tons of fun to do with our little boys. So, since we are kind of wimps and didn't know exactly what we were getting ourselves into, we decided to try a campout in our backyard first. Baby steps... It turned out to be a lot of fun!

We borrowed my parents fire pit, set up our tent, ate dinner outside (although I cooked it in the kitchen, I'm not that crazy!) and spent the evening playing in the backyard together.

The boys loved the tent and Joe loved the fire, we even got to make s'mores! (Although Sam would only eat the graham crackers and chocolate.)

The next morning...

We decided to have Andrew sleep inside in his crib, so of course I had to sleep in my own bed so he wouldn't be alone inside...oh darn! Joe and Sam slept the whole night out in the tent. I snuck out there and took pictures of them sleeping when I got up to go running the next morning.

Round 2: The Real Deal

So with the trial run being such a hit and success, we decided that the next weekend we'd try the real thing. We enlisted my parents to go with us and set out. We went to my favorite spot from my childhood, Honeysuckle campground. It's way up in the mountains and it was beautiful, just like I remembered it. Talk about a walk down memory lane! The boys are natural outdoorsmen, they were just thrilled by all the sticks and rocks and dirt.

This is Joe and Sam going exploring, isn't is gorgeous?!

This is when we were gathered around the campfire that evening, probably right before Andrew went to bed. Putting Andrew to bed was the part that I was most worried about, but he didn't even make a sound. We set up the port-a-crib in the tent, laid him down with his favorit blankie, and that was it! Way too easy...meanwhile the rest of us enjoyed s'mores. This time, Sam actually tried the marshmallows.

The next morning...yes I survived the night with no air mattress and both of the boys slept through the night. Not bad, if you ask me! The boys were thrilled to wake up and find out that we were STILL camping and that we hadn't snuck them home to their beds while they were sleeping. Andrew discovered his new favorite place to play, under the picnic table (see below) and Sam showed me how he was as big as the trees (almost...).

Here's Andrew helping Joe roll up the tent...what a happy helper!

The River:

Did I mention that there is a little river/creek/stream (depending on the time of year that you are there) that runs right by the campground. The water was way to cold to get in (it was a pretty cool weekend) so we just made due with playing with the rocks. Joe and Sam built a dam, or tried to at least.

So after a great experience, I've decided that we can be regulars at this camping thing, assuming that we pick up a few essentials that we don't have yet, like an air mattress for me!

My Project

After all of the DIY shows I've watched on HGTV, I decided to take on a project of my own. I got two nightstands on a clearance rack for about $15/each and the dresser is a hand-me-down from my mom. Here are the before pictures:




And the After shots:



Altogether, it cost about $75 and I now have "matching" furniture in my bedroom. Not too bad, next I'm going to design a headboard to match....

Insanity!!!

If anyone ever asks you if you would be willing to fly to the opposite corner of the country with a 1 and 3 year old... STANDBY ... starting with a red eye flight...from Seattle (yes, that's a five-hour drive from us) ...RUN AWAY! Did I mention there were 2 connections each direction? Well, that's what we did over the weekend. Jealous, right? Now here's the whole story: Joe's dad (a man with big ambitions and good intentions) wanted to fly us to North Carolina to surprise his mom at her 50th birthday party. I think that he had the idea kind of late in the planning stages and so by that point the airline tickets would have been outrageous so instead he pulled some strings with a friend who works for American Airlines to have us fly standby. In all fairness, I agreed to the crazy plan (I'd never flown standby before and didn't really know what I was agreeing to). Why he had us leave from Seattle instead of Spokane, I'm still not sure, but that's what we did. So, the trip started when I left the house on Thursday at 3:00 with the boys, picked up Joe on the South Hill and then kept going to Seattle.

These were taken shortly after we left for Seattle at the beginning of the

trip...they had no idea what was in store for them!

The boys in Seattle, watching as the first flight the we were supposed to be on, was leaving...without us!

The flight we were hoping to get on was at 9:45 going to New York (JFK). From there we were supposed to make a connection to North Carolina (RDU). There weren't seats for us on the first flight. Ouch. We ended up taking a flight at 11:30 to Boston. In the morning we got a connection from Boston to JFK at 8:00 EST. In JFK we didn't make the 12:30 connection to RDU (it was full) and it didn't look good for the 5:00 or 9:00 flights either. So, it was starting to look like we were stuck in New York. Joe talked to our airline friend and she suggested some other airports that were within a couple hours from Raleigh. So, we ended up getting on a 2:30 connection to Richmond, VA. That was good. At least we were getting closer to our destination. Keep in mind that my this time we'd been travelling for close to 24 hours straight with no sleep (at least for me, the boys all got at least some sleep on the red-eye from Seattle). We were stuck in the plane, waiting for our turn to take off for an hour at JFK, the whole flight was only supposed to be 55 minutes. We finally got to Richmond just before 5:00 and waited about an hour there for our ride. THEN we had a two-hour drive ahead of us to actually get to Raleigh, plus we were starving and had to stop for dinner, plus our bags were at a different airport than us. They made in on the flight to RDU, even though we didn't. After all was said and done, we got to the hotel at about 11:00 PM, I'd be up for 40 hours and travelling for about 32 hours straight. Miserable doesn't even start to describe how I felt! The worst part was that we would spend Saturday with his family and then have to turn around and do the whole trip again on Sunday! It turns out, though, that it looked better for us to take flights on Monday and the trip coming home was much less traumatic, not what I would call fun, but managable. We flew from Raleigh to New York to San Diego to Seattle and then drove home. No missed flights and no red-eyes. The boys were troopers through the whole thing, I was amazed and how well they did with it all.

The two days that we got to spend with Joe's family were great, except that I felt somewhat like a zombie the whole time because of lack of sleep. Sam and Andrew ate up the attention from Grandma and all the other new "audience members". It made me wish, once again, that there was a way that we could live close to both sets of grandparents, but I don't really see that ever happening! They took us on a tour around their family's old neighborhood and that was fun to hear stories and go see things that were part of Joe's childhood. The birthday party was a success, except for the food, but that's a whole other story that I probably won't get into! Pearl was a little mad that Phillip had put us through the whole standby ordeal and felt horrible for it, even though it was in no way her fault or responsibilty. Overall, there were enough good things to offset the bad and I'd say (now that it's in the past) that any time that boys get to spend with their grandparents is worth some sacrifice. But I'm never doing that again!