Bryce and Jilly

Everytime I see a picture of Bryce and Jilly, I just want to cry!!!! I am always struck with how OLD they are, when I see them in a photograph together! The Shockey's were heading down to visit their family, so they stopped here for a little while and had dinner with us. Our big Kindergarten kiddos have loose teeth (Jilly has already lost one!!! And Bryce has his first loose one!) And they are just so stinkin' BIG. And OLD. And I hate it. (But I love it too.) I just love that these two love each other so much. Friends for their whole lives, these two. And I hope somehow they always are!!!
Excuse me while I go CRY now.
;)

Luminaria night

While Eric was serving at Trinity UMC, we were introduced to such a fun tradition that I wasn't even aware of, here in Jacksonville. In the area of town where Trinity was located, they light the streets with luminaries, and everyone decorates their houses. Churches host cookie and cocoa socials, and concerts, and people ride bikes, walk, or drive through, looking at the lights and having a festive fun time. Even though we missed having cookies and cocoa at Trinity, we got in our pj's, made cocoa and cookies ourselves, and drove across town at bedtime to see the lights. I was determined to get a picture of the boys in their cute jammies and hats - which was not an easy task. But here's the best of the best!!

Superhero Bryce, to the rescue!

I am SO thankful for my friend Charity, who took all these pictures at Bryce's party. Taking pictures was more than I could handle, while trying to help the kids make their superhero masks, capes, and armbands, plus taking care of all the other party business!

This was Bryce's SUPERHERO PARTY. . ..the pictures are not particularly in order, but you'll get the point!!!! The kids decorated their gear, and then had a few superhero challenges. They had to make their way through an obstacle course (despite the crazy wind, and cold weather.) Then they had to wrap up the bad guys - (the dads) because surely every good superhero has to be able to tie up the villians!!! But in this case, they wrapped them up with toilet paper. . . funny and difficult, and the dads were total troopers!!!

For dinner, Eric cooked burgers on the grill, and dessert was a SuperB cake. . .and Bryce didn't know, until we cut it opened, that it was a yellow, red, and blue cake. (Thanks to large amounts of food coloring!)

Our sweet playground families were here for the shindig, and it was fun to have all the kids together. Now that most of them are in school, our get-togethers are not very frequent. But its always fun to have everyone together!!!! (Us mamas still get together a lot, thank goodness! Much more often than the kids do!)

pictures with santa!

When we were in Orlando, for Bryce's birthday trip, we saw Santa at Downtown Disney. Here are our pictures!!!! It's so nice they give you the option of purchasing the photos for DOWNLOAD now, rather than just prints, so we can do what we want with them! I love technology!!!! (And I love Santa too!) I have lots of pictures and fun to catch you all up on, so I am going to schedule some posts ahead, so check back throughout the week, and believe it or not. . .the blog WILL be updated!!!! (In fact, the next post will be up later today! I have too much to cram into the end of the year!) XOXO






You'll notice there is no photo of Tanner alone with Santa. (And I'm sure this doesn't surprise you!) There was one photo of him. . . .unpleasantly sliding down Santa's lap. Not exactly purchase-worthy! I'm pretty sure Santa will find it in his heart to leave presents for Tanner anyway though. ;)

seaworld!!!

Year number three of the annual SeaWorld trip for Bryce's birthday. . . and this year we took along my parents! We all had such a good time! Much better than last year when it rained allllll day long!!! :)


the first night we were in orlando, we had dinner at downtown disney (at the T-Rex restaurant we went to last year) and walked around the Lego Store! here are poppy and bryce with woody, from Toy Story. we also walked around looking for a pair of shoes for tanner, because his intelligent mommy forgot to pack his shoes. :)
visiting with bryce's "dolphin friends" at the underwater viewing area. this is one of our favorite spots!!!! (and always makes for cool looking photo ops!)

bryce was SUPER brave, and was willing to go on lots of the kids rides this visit! he and eric and poppy rode on bunches of rides, some more that once! bryce had a BLAST!
meeting a polar bear. . . .
both boys PASSED OUT. bryce fell asleep in my lap (which NEVER happens) right before the evening shamu show started! he slept through the whole thing. OUT. LIKE. A. LIGHT. (i think it was my favorite part of the whole day!!!! he NEVER falls asleep like that!!!)

It was a terrific trip!!! The decorations and weather were awesome, and the boys had a blast! (So did us grownups!) There was a lot of hot chocolate consumed, and lots of fishy friends were made!!!!

XXOXO

Christmas wishes. . .

I updated the Christmas Wishes page, with some ideas and suggestions if you want them!! Link is in the sidebar, or RIGHT HERE! I'll let you know if I update it anymore!!!

XOXO

Six on the sixth!

Happy birthday to our Mr. B!!!!!! He had a GREAT day filled with treats and fun! (Wait a minute, its been a few DAYS of celebrating with treats and fun, and a few more to come too!) He started out the day with presents, and then Eric, Tanner and I went to school and had lunch with Bryce in the cafeteria (McDonald's Happy Meal, with chicken nuggets and chocolate milk was his request.) And then I went back for snack time later in the afternoon, with treats for the kids (Rice Krispie Treats, made with Fruity Pebbles, and juice) The kids sang Happy Birthday to him, and he wore his Yoda "Birthday Jedi Knight" ribbon that he picked out at the store this weekend. He opened some more presents at dinner time, and we had steak, mac n cheese, and carrots (his choice!) and banana bread for dessert. We're going to celebrate with Eric's family on Saturday, and then with his playgroup friends on Sunday afternoon, for his Superhero party!!!!

Seaworld pictures are coming. . ..I'm working on them now!

Happy Birthday Poppy!!!!

happy birthday to poppy!!!!!!
bryce had THE best time riding around the block in poppy's cool car
(which i have affectionately dubbed The Batmobile)
bryce has THE best time doing pretty much anything with poppy (washing the car, traipsing through the woods, playing in the creek, making rock gardens, reading books, drawing pictures, and playing with Legos)
and poppy will do pretty much anything, if bryce asks him to!
(which is why I often affectionately dub him, The Sucker!)
we love you poppy!
happy happy birthday!
see you next week!
XOXO

portrait sneak peeks!

Good grief. This month has been NONstop, but especially this weekend. . .we've been going, going, GONE. Here, there, and everywhere. One of the weekend's events were family pictures - which ended up being a 3 hour ordeal, thanks to overbooking, and half of jacksonville getting pictures taken yesterday. If you are reading this blog, you will probably be receiving the pictures from our never-ending day, so i can't show you all of them yet, but here are a few pics we didn't order. (Although we loved them!) Thankfully, we were able to get a CD with ALLLL of the pictures on it. After Christmas I will post all the good ones, and if there are any prints you want (that you didn't receive) you can order additional ones from Portrait Innovations :)

These aren't cropped or edited at all, but those boys are cute as can be!!! How funny is that picture of Tanner?! We could NOT get him to sit still in that chair!!!!


Other than family pictures, we've also been to school for a Thanksgiving party in Bryce's classroom on Friday afternoon, and then celebrated Eric's belated birthday, with his family. We've been to St. Augustine for the annual tradition of Night of Lights (super fun and beautiful as always!) And in a few minutes we are heading out to a birthday party for one of Bryce's friends at Little Gym, and then Eric has to head to church for a meeting. Busy. Busy. Busy. And tomorrow we are having Thanksgiving lunch at school with Bryce!

Shhhh. . .

(don't tell tanner, that all i did was add his name into last year's thanksgiving blog banner, okay?) I promise next year I'll do a new one!

And there are pictures coming. . . one of these days.

We are HOPPING around here from one thing to another around here. Birthday parties, Thanksgiving parties at school, family pictures, etc etc etc! But we had a GREAT time in Fort Myers this past weekend, and I will try to share pictures soon!!

XOXO

happy birthday to dadddddy!

Eric is:

-the BEST at being tackled, smothered, jumped on, and rolled over
-running FIVE miles now, and has lost TWENTY pounds!
-the best teacher of all things football, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones (things that mommy knows NOTHING about. . .well, I know some things NOW, but I'm still clueless!)

-the best hamburger maker, and grill master
-excellent at killing bugs and removing all yicky things that get into the house
-snuggly, warm, and gives great hugs
-puts up with crafty messes and card-making, which occasionally takes over the whole bedroom
-thoughtful and clever and goofy and always makes me laugh, and. . .. .
-the BIRTHDAY BOY OF THE DAY!!!!

we love you Daddy!!!!
happy birthday!!!

the halloween faves. . .

My oh my, Halloween. . . .what a DAY! We started out at church, for the Fall Festival, and Trunk or Treat. We had all our decorations ready to decorate our car, and in the past there had been quite a few cars for the event. So we planned to just go there, and that was going to be the trick or treating for the year. BUT. . ..there were THREE whole cars there and decorated. Yes, including ours. What a bust! There were tons of people there for Fall Festival, but no one decorated their cars this year! So that was a bummer, but our car still looked great, and we gave out big handfuls of candy to the kiddos who came around. And Bryce had a great time playing the games, and jumping in the bounce houses.
Tanner went into the toddler sized bounce house, and had a great time, until it became overrun with big kids! Here are B and T in there together.

And here is Mr. B (before he put his costume on) in our groovy under-the-sea car. There were tons of streamers hanging down, but most of them are blowing in the wind in this pic!
Tanner, the train engineer, had lots of fun blowing bubbles (well, POPPING bubbles) and wandering around in the parking lot (it was all blocked off for the trunk or treaters. . .don't worry, i don't normally let him wander around in parking lots!)

Spider Man under the sea!

Tanner feeling quite impressed with his walking and trunk-or-treating skills.

So after Fall Festival was over, we went over to Eric's parents' neighborhood, and took Bryce trick or treating after all, since the Trunk or Treat was such a bust!! We had a great time. There were a TON of kids out, and Bryce had fun. (And he got a lot of loot too!)

Poor Tanner, who had NO afternoon nap, hung in there like a champ!

Tanner? Where are you?

Happy Halloween! Now we move onward to Eric's birthday, and lots more fall fun!!
XOXOX

Fall fun!

I have a couple of fall events to catch you up on! First. . .last weekend we went to Spooktacular at the Jacksonville Zoo. So fun - we do it every year, and this year Gigi and Doobie came with us, which was tons of fun! (And super cool of them, since they were leaving the next day to go out of the country for three weeks!)
So here we are, before we went in. I never take many pictures when we are actually there, because it's crowded, and gets dark, and they just never turn out. Tanner of course was there too. . .. he was just chilling in his stroller during the photo op. Oops!
This weekend, we started out the Halloween partying at Bryce's school. I helped out with their little fall shindig, and I still need to upload those photos!!!! I'll do that this week when I upload the ACTUAL Halloween shots!
So after the school party, (and after mommy came home and took a quick NAP!) we went to The Little Gym, for their fall festival. Bryce had a blast in the bounce house, and Tanner loved playing with the balls. (We think the object was to throw the balls into the tires, but we aren't quite sure!) And both boys had fun playing in the gym, and doing some games. (And Bryce won lots of CHOCOLATE!!!! Yum!)

Here's Mr. B coming off the slide, that was attached to the bounce house.Tanner didn't wear a costume, but since we are recycling one of Bryce's costumes for Halloween night, I decided I could spring for this cutie patootie striped shirt, which was a whopping $3 at WalMart! :) And it matches his orange Crocs perfectly!

"I got the ball! I got the ball!!" (Which sounds a lot like "DAH!")

Tonight, for the actual Halloween, we are going to church for another fall festival! They are also having Trunk-or-Treat where people decorate their cars, and the kids go trick or treating from car to car. People usually do all sorts of crazy themes for their cars (We are decorating our car as an Under the Sea theme. . .because we have everything we need, and it's easy!) So Bryce is going to gear up for more bounce houses, more candy, and MORE SPIDERMAN! Tanner is going to be a train engineer. . .assuming though, that the striped overalls, that Bryce wore when he was two, do indeed FIT Tanner. Probably should have done a dress rehearsal. . . .so hope for the best! Otherwise, he will just have to wear his cute orange striped shirt again!

XOXOX

birthday feet!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIMI!!!!!!
Mimi and Tanner went for a walk, a few weeks ago when my parents were here. I couldn't help get some pictures of Tanner's cute little thighs, and his cute little Crocs. And my mom, of course - with no shoes on.
Because she NEVER wears shoes. :)
Have a WONDERFUL birthday Mimi!!!
We love you!
(I'll be back tomorrow with tons of Halloween photos!)
XOXOX

Now that I am 14 months old. . . .

Now that I am 14 months old:

-When I see an elephant, I wave my arm around like a big elephant's trunk.

-Mommy and Daddy say that all I say is DAH, but I say way more than that. You silly people just don't understand me. I say D-Ah, DAH, daH, and dAh. Totally different words. One of them means DOG. Daddy. Cup. Bird. Can I have that? I want that. Give me that. Get me out of here. Help. Mommy. Milk. Diaper. I'm tired. What? You're Funny. Bryce. Truck. Car. Cat. Dog. Dog. Dog.

-When I want my cup, I can sign "cup" (and say DAH of course!)

-When I see a bird, or hear a bird, I shake my head back and forth. (not exactly sure how that started, but he does it every time!)

-If Mommy or Daddy asks me to bring them something, I'll do it, if I feel like it, and depending on what it is they want. If it's Daddy's phone, or keys, or something yummy, I might not. But if Daddy wants the half eaten pea from my mouth, I'll give him that.

-I love to throw and kick a ball, and I love to give my baby doll kisses and hugs.

-I have four teeth.

-I like to lay on the floor and wiggle, squiggle and shake around. Mommy, Daddy and Bryce say, "Wigggggle wormmmm!" and I do it more. They really think I am hilarious

-Some of my favorite foods: peas, blueberries, pumpkin bread, pasta, rice, grapes, hard boiled egg whites. Oh, and sugar cookies from Publix. :)

-I LOVE dogs. I love to go for rides in my stroller because we see dogs out for their walks, and I scream "Dogggg!" (also known as DAH.) I love LOTS of animals. I am quite fond of elephants, dogs, cats, and birds especially. I love going to the zoo too.

-I also LOVE my big brother. I don't really understand why he thinks I am his football tackling dummy, and why he likes to pull me down and push me down all the time, but I love him anyway. And sometimes I think it's funny. But sometimes I don't. And one of these days I am really going to teach him a lesson.

-I get SUPER excited when we go Bryce's school. When we pick him up from school, I call his name. (Also known as DAHHH!) And when we drop him off, I wave my hand as we drive away.

-Sleeping is still sort of a silly thing to do. Mommy says I'm getting better though. Sometimes I sleep from 7pm until 4am. And then I want milk. And then, if she's lucky, I sleep another hour and a half. And sometimes I like to wake up at 3am, and scream for a while, just to keep everyone on their toes.

So that's what I'm up to. I am a pretty cool baby, if I do say so myself! Happy 14 month birthday to me!

I owe you this. . .

Total cuteness. . .and messiness. This is what the kitchen normally looks like now. Canned goods, toys, and magnets scattered about. . .I don't think you see it in this picture, but the garbage can currently resides on the little half-wall, because SOMEONE knows how to lift the lid. And the bench goes sideways just perfectly to block the front door and stairs.

It's pumpkin patch time again!

We have been going to the same pumpkin patch ever since Bryce's first Halloween. . .you probably know this already, because I remind you every year. I'll spare you from looking at the past five years of pumpkin patch photos (you can go back in the October archives if you'd really like!)

Yesterday was deemed Pumpkin Patch Day, and I was a little irrational, fighting with Bryce about which shoes he was going to wear, and how his black sandals were going to ruin my photos. (I talked him out of them though, so all ended well, in my book! The irony - I'm not sure his feet are in ANY of the photos I took!) The light wasn't great when we were there, but I got a couple of good ones - enough that I feel like my pumpkin patch photos were a reasonable success.

Tanner was pretty funny toddling around, tripping over roots, and not wanting to touch the dirt and grass. He just kept plopping down everywhere. But he loved exploring and looking at all of the pumpkins. And he tried to pick up one or two that were bigger than he was. (He was less than successful!)


I'm especially pleased with this photo of the two boys. . . .I won't tell you how many shots it took to get them BOTH LOOKING AT THE CAMERA.
Tanner and Bryce each picked out their own baby pumpkin. At the present time, Bryce's pumpkin is wrapped up in his blankey, and sitting on the couch. I'm serious, I think he slept with it last night. And this morning he asked if he could give it a bath in the sink. (And he did.) He does this every year - becomes OBSESSED with pumpkins. And it usually ends in tears when they become too disgusting, and have to be thrown out.

We did get one "big" pumpkin for the front door - and apparently I did not take a photograph of it!!!! I will, once we decorate him up. We are going to attach a felt face, instead of carving it this year, so it will last longer.

table time

These pictures are from a few weeks ago, I think it was a Sunday afternoon, and we were waiting for the Jaguars game to start (note Tanner in his cutie patootie Jags jersey!) Tanner was doing one of his favorite things - eating (It's avacado, one of his favorite foods! He even likes it in guacamole!) Bryce was doing one of HIS favorite things. . .playing with Legos of course!