Tuesday, May 27, 2008

10 Months old today!

How could I forget to post about my little man Skylar. Today he is 10 months old. I can't believe it. It seems just like yesterday, I was miserable, was fat, uncomfortable, was fat again (you should have seen me), had carpal tunnel, was eating entirely too much and I had lower back aches....oh and I was huge! :) It was all worth it though when Skylar made his way into this world. We love how he's changed our life for the better, no doubt!

Fun Facts about Skylar
  1. He's talking all the time
  2. He crawls anywhere and everywhere he can
  3. He's climbing (stairs, furniture, you name it)
  4. He does NOT like shoes
  5. He hates oatmeal or cereal now, ugh!
  6. He loves loves loves Puffs and Wagon Wheels
  7. He squints his eyes when you pick up the camera about to take a pic, I guess he knows the flash will go off, ahah
  8. He has another tooth coming in at the bottom, so this will make 9 teeth (4 on top and 5 on bottom)
  9. He clucks his tongue when we do it first
  10. He shakes his head back in forth when I say no, aha! How can you get mad at that?



LOVES Spaghetti!

Hey Mom, does this shirt make me look fat?

My Dad is so much fun to ride with!

Please mom, no more picture taking with the flash!

It's Garden Time!

As you could tell, the weather this Memorial Day weekend was just perfect. Perfect for what you say? Perfect for gardening! On Saturday, we finally tilled up the garden, (Well Terry did), we pulled the weeds and raked it all out. We decided to buy a few seeds and then get the beginner plants from the Farmer's market. We are only going to try and grow the things we eat on a normal basis. (squash, zuchini, lettuce, hot peppers, sweet peppers, green bell peppers and tomatoes) I didn't want to go overboard and then everything die on us later, which by the way, can still happen. Terry and I don't really have what you say, a green thumb, but we're still going to try! Please pray for us that we can do this. :) Here are a few pics of the progress. We planted more on Sunday, but this is what we got done on Saturday.




This garden was already there in our backyard, but as you can see, it's a little overgrown.




Some progress





Looking better



While Terry was tilling the garden area, my project was to dig a hole (we have HARD SOIL too) and plant my Japanese Maple tree that was a gift from Grandma Jewell and Grandpa Olen for mother's day. (I got this on Mother's day too, so I was a little behind in planting it.)


So, we didn't have a babysitter, so we found some shade in the yard and put Skylar in his play yard and let him enjoy some outside time with mommy and daddy. He was actually ok with this.

______________________________________________________________


After the fun of gardening, we went to my nephews 7th birthday party in King. I remember when he was just born and it's crazy to think that he is now 7 years old. That makes me feel awfully old too! :( He had a great birthday party. He got money, giftcards and lots of fun little toys. He had all his little friends there and when the party ended for the grownups, the young ones were going to have a camp out in the backyard. There were several tents and a little fire pit that was ready to be lit as well as having all the snacks and goodies to last them through out the night. I'm sure there were some fun ghost stories told that night. It's so nice to be young again like that. Here are a few pics from his party.


Daddy and Skylar




Rex and his friends having cake




Nana, Skylar and Mom
Yasmine's all grown up too!

Little Zeb is such a big boy now, he's turning 2 soon.


Tuckered out from partying so much.




___________________________________________________________________________________

Also, for some more updates on the house, on Friday I finished the trim for the 1/2 bathroom. Terry already painted it last weekend and I had to do the trim part. That takes forever too. So, we are now 2 rooms down, several more to go, yikes!


Before Picture


I love the color red for a 1/2 bathroom! Sorry that this is only after pic to show, but it's hard to show you good detailed pics of a small room, so I showed you the wall with the decorations.


Other than those events and projects, we did relax a bit. It was a nice weekend and Holiday for us. I just want to remind you what Memorial Day is all about. We have our military men and women oversees and all over the world really, fighting and doing good for our Country. They are keeping us safe from harm and preserving our freedom. We lost a lot of good men and women in past and present times. Please remember that when you are spending time with your loved ones, whether it's family or friends, to think about those who can't. I was very fortunate to have my husband Terry come back to me very much alive and healthy from his 3 deployments (Iraq twice and Afghanistan once). It was a very scary time for us and now we are all back together and loving life as a family of 4. We spend all of our time together and doing projects like we did this weekend, we will cherish forever, so next time you see a military person, tell them how much you appreciate what they are doing for our country. They have the hardest jobs in my opinion.

He came back from Iraq for good in this picture from November 2005 for being gone for 1 year.

Monday, May 19, 2008

House updates

As I said in our "update" post, we bought a house in Greensboro. We absolutely love it! We're out in the country and our neighbors are so quiet. They're probably thinking when they saw us Young Loud and Wild Folk moving in, "There goes the Neighborhood." :) We actually met our neighbors surrounding us and they all seem so nice. One neighbor brought us a plant and another gave us a Carolina Tarheel floor mat. Terry already likes him big time! They all have lived in this neighborhood for 30 + years. Hopefully, we will keep up the trend and do the same. Ralph loves it too, but we're so missing our fence that we used to have at our old house. We took that for granted, that's for sure. Now we have to walk him, but hey, that's giving us some much needed exercise, right? Actually we just use our extendable leash and just stay in one spot, so...no exercise there. :) Hopefully, we can afford a new fence soon. I'm getting quotes for just the heck of it. I'm sure it's going to be more than 100 dollars, aha! BTW, that seems to be our budget this year, so it looks like maybe next year we will get one. haha

Anyways, after the Zoo on Saturday, we decided to paint the master bathroom. If you know me, you know I hate WHITE walls. I start to go crazy, so I knew what I was getting into, when we bought this house. Only one room in the entire house was painted and that is the dining room. Thankfully for us, it's the color I would have painted it! :) So we bought some paint a couple of weeks back for the master bathroom (start small) and decided to get something done this weekend. Also, we had to buy a shower door. For some reason the people that lived in our house previously didn't have one or they took it with them before the house went on the market. We didn't think anything of it, until we moved in and thought, how in the world did they take a shower? The water would have hit the bench and splashed out and all over the floor when they did. Oh well, so we had to suck it up and buy one. They installed it last week and it looks good. Below are the before and after pictures of our progress. Hopefully we will have more updates like this to post frequently, because that means we're actually doing things. We tend to get very lazy on the weekends!

BEFORE




No shower Door?

AFTER (Paint and Shower Door)



We have a Door, yaaay....now we can shower in our master bathroom! Let me rephrase that, we always showered, haha, just not in our bathroom. We had to share Skylar's bathroom upstairs.

Our Next project is to till up our garden. We have a garden already set out and fenced, but it's not maintained and with the rising prices of produce, I want to try and grow my own vegetables. We're all very excited about this. I will update on that as we grow. :)

Sunday, May 18, 2008

First Trip to the Zoo


Fast Friends already!

We went to the Asheboro Zoo on Saturday! Going to the Zoo was so much fun and it was an exciting time for us all. We met up with our good friends, Emily and Jacob Elrod and their cutie patootie son Crawford. Not only was it Skylar's first time at the zoo, but it was Crawford's as well. The Zoo was so packed, but the weather couldn't have been any more perfect than it already was. We had our sunscreen (spf50) ready and off we went! Speaking of Sunscreen, you will need to check out Emily's blog about that and what happened to her little man Crawford when she applied it. Poor little guy!





Trying to pose with my little man.






Daddy and Skylar hanging with the Buffalo



We saw the buffalos (btw, that's what Terry said buffalo wings come from :-)), elephants, giraffes, gorillas and polar bears... Well, we saw more than that, but those are the ones I really wanted to see. :) Skylar really didn't pay attention too much, other than trying to be the loudest kid around. He was blowing raspberries all day and squealing unto his heart's delight. It really didn't matter though, since most kids around us were doing the same. He was so funny and just happy! He never once seemed scared of the animals. He's only used to seeing Ralphie around the house, so these animals are much larger and different to him, but it never fazed him one bit! I will say that he never took a nap the entire time we were there. I think he felt he might miss something if he did. You never know at a Zoo though. :) Thankfully, no animals were on the loose!







Sweet Buffalo




Beautiful Elephants!


Cute Polar Bears









I tried getting a better pic, haha!



Another fun event of the trip was the Merry Go Round ride. Emily and I thought, why not have our boys ride too and so we brought our baby boys (Crawford is 8 months and Skylar is almost 10 months) up there and rode. Terry and Jacob thought we were crazy, but as you can see, they loved it and didn't cry! That is always a good sign by the way. See..., Mother's intuition wins out in the end. We knew what we were doing, ha!




Getting ready to start....HOLD ON TIGHT!!





Emily and Crawford Enjoying the ride.



My little blue eyed man!





We are all so tuckered out from our fun full day at the zoo. We still tried to smile for the camera, (not Skylar). :) Looks like Crawford was camera shy.


Our Family, minus Ralph


We actually missed the monkeys, our tour guides (Terry and Jacob) somehow had us bypass that whole area, hmph! But as you can see, we had our own little monkey with us the whole time. So, it was a great day afterall. We can't wait to go back!




Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Update







So, the last time this blog has been updated was when Skylar was 3 months. My hubby Terry started it and now I finally have the time to update it. I have been fascinated by reading everyone's baby blogs that I thought, why not us too and do the same. That way you can read about us and see how much Skylar has grown and what he's been up too. Which has been a lot!

So, to start this blog fresh again, Skylar is now 9 1/2 months. He's getting so big! He weighs a little over 20lbs and he's 31" tall, so he's 50% for weight and 97% for height. He has a full head of hair (blonde, no doubt), gorgeous blue eyes, he's crawling and he has 8 teeth. 4 on top and 4 on bottom. He stopped biting, thank goodness!! He's crawling as fast as a Nascar Race Car Driver drives. He started crawling a week shy of his 7 month birthday. I won't be surprised if he runs before he walks though at the rate he's going. He pulls up on everything and loves to squeal and most of the time, he will do that when it's not approprate. (Sorry everyone who sits around us in restaurants. :)) He laughs constantly and hugs and kisses us. He says mama (first word by the way), dada, ball, what (or wha) and bye. He tries to attack Ralph, but Ralph is too fast for him, ha! We enjoy every bit of him and love him so much. I can't believe how lucky we are to have him in ours lives. We truly are so lucky and blessed! I will keep this blog up now, so make sure you come back and check us out.