4am. . . Black Friday

Tim says never again will he venture out at 4am on the day after Thanksgiving. We only wanted one thing and wanted to save as much money getting that one thing. But not at the risk of his life or sanity. Ah well... Merry Christmas to us.

Happy Thanksgiving

We are blessed in many ways. We have 2 beautiful and intelligent children. We are all healthy. We have a warm house to rest our heads. We are both employed. We have family and friends that love us. And we have each other.

It's official !

I'm Jaxson's first word. :) ( jumping for joy and giggling)

He started it 2 days ago but we weren't sure, but now he will crawl after me or call me from his crib.

"Mum Mum. Mum Mum"

I'm so excited. Hayden's first word was Da-Da like every other child in the world. Okay not every child but darn close. I just wanted this one thing :) Yippee! Plus that just adds one more thing to this little goober's list of accomplishments this month. Where is my baby going?

So Happy...

As you can see we figured out how to make wonderful changes to the blog. And since we now know how to changes things look for seasonal changes or with my mood. Which ever :)

Hope you all like it :)

5th member of this family

The boys playing

The other night while I was making dinner The boys were playing under the table together... Tim snapped this picture.

An old friend returns

This was one of Hayden's most loved toys that we saved for the "what if we have another kid."
We pulled it out of the shed, bleached it up and replaced the batteries (don't know why) and set it up for Jax.
As you can see it was an immediate hit!
What is the coolest part of this toy is that we bought it for $6 + S&H from Target back in 2002. Regularly priced at $40 something. It was a HUGE steal at the time... and I think most of the Moms from the board I was on bought one :) I see much use coming out of this toy again.Here's an old picture of Hayden when he loved this toy :)

Since we're on a roll

I thought I would continue our karate theme and let everyone know that Hayden earned his double brown belt. He received credit for his two events from the tournament and was able to test 2 classes early. He was thrilled!!

Now he only has 16 classes standing between him and his BLACK belt! WooHoo! He should reach that sometime in the middle of January.

Blast from the past...

This was video of Hayden's very first championship. He placed first and shocked us all.
Thought it would be nice to revisit.

Championship - Fall 2008

Hayden did great today! He did all his moves and yelled really loud like they told him to. He placed as a finalist in both Sparring and Self-Defense. He's also only 3 classes away from his double-brown belt. :) Black belt is only 16 classes away. He's come so far in 2 years. After black belt we need to decide how far he wants to go because it starts to become a real commitment after that.

9 1/2 months

I have to post now or I will forget all the new things this child has learned in the last 2 weeks.
* He now has 2 teeth, as of this morning
* He started crawling
* He can hold his own bottle, when he feels like it :)
* He can clap his hands
* He can pull himself up on the couch/chair/toy
* He is feeding himself
* He can sit up from lying on the floor to sitting
* He's learned how to turn on his crib music (which that's fun to hear at 3am :)
See? There is just so much I'd forget about all of it come the end of the month .
Where is my baby going? He was so nice and cuddly and small and babyish for 9 months then WHAM! He's turning into a toddler. :(

Brothers

It's nice to see that they can play together even with the age difference.

End of the season

Hayden's soccer team had a pizza/trophy party this past weekend. He really had a lot of fun and wants to play again next year. Nice thing about that is Tim is coaching and they will be the same team in the Spring. Same uniforms and everything.
So look for indoor soccer to start end of January sometime and Spring season to start in April.

Happy Halloween.

If you can't tell what they are; Hayden is Captain Rex from the Clone Troopers and Jax is a plump spider :-)
(better late than never)

Pumpkins and Pumpkins

I took the boys to the pumpkin farm one day after school. I feel bad that Tim missed out but with vacation and everything happening we just had to fit it in, we needed our Halloween pumpkins.Jaxson just loved sitting in all the pumpkins. He didn't get what they were but he liked them anyway.
Tim and Hayden were in charge of cleaning out the 'heads' and Hayden even tried to carve some this year.Jax and his little pumpkin. He kept trying to eat it :-)Hayden and his masterpieces.

Hayden's Birthday(s)

Yes our kid's birthday lasts for weeks. First the kids party, then the family party, then the spending of gift cards for a week after that. Arg! and Christmas is only around the corner.

Hayden's kids party went over very well. All seemed to have a good time and some were even still talking about it at school the next day. The kids were able to learn a few moves and then play dodge ball and do obstacle course and play the dice game and at the end each child, if they wanted, were able to break a board.
Here's master Hayden practicing breaking his board. It was really cool because the kids got to take their board home to show their parents.


The family party was nice as always... too much food leftover :)
Here's Hayden and his women playing before dinner.

doing the 'booty dance' because he was happy he got Chicago Bears gear
My cousin Greg thinking he gets the first piece of cake...
Hayden and his cake... that I proudly made after a HUGE oops the day before with it. Whew it tasted ok. :)

New Foods

We were given the ok by the doctor to start dairy (except milk) so Jax has had a lot of new foods recently.
Cheese
Yogurt
Cottage Cheese
Pancakes
Puffs
Cheerios
caned pears
caned peaches
pasta
Raw avocado
Raw Mango
Bananas
Ritz crackers

So many more things to try and eat. It's helped with meals. Now we have more choices than between mashed peas or mashed carrots :-) He is also showing us he'll eat anything we put in front of him.

Forward Momentum

I think he's finally got it down... so look out world
here comes Jaxson!

Tigersharks - 4, Hammerheads - 4

Last game of the season, YEAH! It was getting a bit cold out there.

The kids have come a long way. Most of them even know which direction to kick the ball :-)
The game tied 4-4 and we had Hayden to thank for 2 of those goals! WooHoo!
His friend Noah scored one of the other goals.

Now it's decision time, Hayden wants to play baseball AND soccer but next spring he will have to decide on one. We can't do both and karate. Tim and I are only 2 people :)

Vacation Part 1

Okay so most of you know we went to Virginia for Tim's friend, Nate and Tannis's, wedding. It took us 16 hours to drive there with potty/lunch breaks.
We went to the Natural Bridge Zoo the first day we were there just to keep it light. We were still very tired from the drive there.
I guess being from Chicago and having Brookfield Zoo and Lincoln Park Zoo within driving distance we are VERY spoiled. This place was a rednecks dream zoo. No paved paths, no real environments for the animals. Just cages along some gravel paths. Heck a Lama had a baby and the zoo people just left it there in the grass. Anywho the kids seemed to enjoy looking at the animals.
Tim thought this deer needed some food. I think he liked looking at it's "big rack" LOL :-)

We used the rest of our feed on these poor starving goats. They were so hungry they tried to eat Jax. This is the stand-off that ensued.

Goat looking at the baby, "so what YOU got for me, huh?"
"Phhhhhhh!" Jax replied

Hayden feeding his friends, . . . er I mean monkeys.
Then we thought it would be nice to visit some wildflower fields. I was itching to really play with the new camera. But Mr. Navigator took us to the Boxwood Gardens in downtown Lexington instead. Now again, when we Chicago people hear garden we think paved walkways, fountains, manicured lawns. Well in the south east they do things different. :-) This place was a nature preserve with some signs. The kids area was nice. Hayden could of stayed and played in the mud kitchen all day.

Jax took in nature by petting the grass. Good nature...
There was this area called the Construction Zone. Really all it was was logs that had been cut and varnished. But Hayden and Tim enjoyed making towers and such.
Here they are showing off their work.
We walked around the place a bit but couldn't go far with the stroller, hence no paved paths. Plus since we were there on a school day there were some kids there on a nature trip.
The next day we decided to try seeing Natural Bridge and the caverns there. We hit the Toy Museum first. It really looked like a big closet in someones home. Heck our friend Dan has a collection equal to this. The guys were in heaven though in the Star Wars area. Tim was ogling some figure that was rare and worth some $$.
We tried to take the stroller down but it was too steep and too many stairs. Little did we know there was a shuttle to take you to the bottom of the stairs. Doh!Hayden wanted to be sized up to the Black Bear....We had to give Jaxson a chance too. :-)
Here is Tim and Hayden in front of Natural Bridge. This formation was naturally formed (thus the name :-) by a river that runs underneath it. While were were there it was a mere stream. Virginia was in a drought. Thomas Jefferson bought this land for 20 shillings which works out to $2.40. Also in the cliff across the river George Washington carved his initials in the rock while doing a survey there in the 1700's. Okay history lesson over :-)
As you can see it was very pretty. The fall color was just right and it was a nice walk.
Hayden playing around taking pictures. This is one of the keepers. The other 75 pictures of rocks he took were somehow "lost"So after the 45 minute hike we were a little pooped. Hayden was tired and hungry and Tim and I were sore from carrying the wiggling wonder the whole time. We stopped at a great place for dinner called the Pink Cadillac. It was an old time 1950's dinner and yes it really was painted pink and there was a pink Cadillac parked out front. After dinner we took advantage of the great weather and took the kids to a park. Hayden didn't stand still long enough for a picture because he found a group of boys to play with. So Jax was my willing subject. Man he just loved those swings!!
. . . more to come later.