Jack 5-25-10

This is a video of Jack that I took this week. I wanted to get him pretending to talk on the phone, because it always cracks me up. On the second half, we are making faces at each other. It's hard to believe this boy is almost 18 months!!

Our Spring

This has been such a wonderful and blessed Spring! I have neglected my blog lately, but I'm making myself sit here and write it all down before I forget all of these memories! We had about 4 or 5 weekends back to back where either Josh or I said, "This is my favorite weekend we've had as a family!" It doesn't always happen this way, but it's just been a particularly sweet time with lots of fun family activities!

I will have to do this in installments:

Family Camp-Out~
The family camp-out we went to was one of them. We packed up all of our outdoor gear (we hardly have any, but we brought everything we had) and headed off on a Friday night to go camping about an hour from town with some wonderful families at our church! We had a ball, letting the kids run around outside and enjoying the great weather with no working cell phones and beautiful scenery to enjoy! We enjoyed a devo by the campfire, roasting marshmallows, we slept fairly well (for camping), had great food, got to explore and see neat things, and enjoyed the company of all of the families that went. One of my favorite parts was watching James have a ball with his friends (of all ages). I feel tremendously blessed to have so many families at our church who know, love, and spend time with our kids. James just eats it up, and I know these relationships he's formed and is continuing to form will bless him throughout his growing up. He was so sad to leave when it was time to go, and he kept running around making sure he'd said good-bye to every person. We had to roll down the window so he could yell good-bye to the junior high girls walking on the path. :)

James' 4th Birthday~
James had a great 4th birthday. On his actual birthday, Josh took the day off, and we went to breakfast and the zoo together. James was a bit of a birthday monster, and every time someone would call to wish him a happy birthday, he'd say (in an Eeore tone) "Thaaank youuuu". Even though he'd talked about it for months and months, it just fell flat for him. :) By that night, though, he was perked up when we went to dinner at Ninfa's with Nana and Deedah. We still really enjoyed the day, just being with our little 4 year old, and celebrating him! The next day was his birthday party day, and he was so cute and excited all day! This was the enthusiasm I'd been looking for in him! It was such a sweet and special day, seeing him get so excited about his party. We went out and bought party favors, and he got really into helping me put them together. He couldn't wait to give them to his friends! His anticipation grew as we ran last minute party errands! We all had a great time at his party! It was at The Jumping Party, which is such a great place to throw a party. We thoroughly enjoyed James run around and play with his friends, singing happy birthday to him, and just celebrating our precious boy! I am so thankful for each person who came to help celebrate James turning four. My family headed back to our house afterwards for coffee and more presents. Below are pictures from his birthday and birthday party!

Birthday




We were so happy to run into James' buddy, Creighton, as we were walking in, and James wanted to be with him the rest of the time there.





Party Day

The Faces of Baseball

I was taking pictures in motion mode of James playing baseball and cracked up at all of the different faces of his I captured! He makes all kinds of crazy faces when the ball's coming at him! He's also making a lot of his silly faces in here. He makes these faces all of the time right now. His most common one is a silly eye roll, usually after trying to fake me out and saying, "jus kidding!" Make sure to turn up your volume!

Enjoy!! ;)~



The pictures of Josh at the end show you where James gets it from!

Buddies

I can't stand to look at that dirty tv picture anymore, so I'm putting up some pictures of my boys this past week. They are just the sweetest little buddies to watch play together. Jack adores his "bu-boo" and James almost always wants his "little buddy" around. They giggle together all throughout the day, play ball together (somewhat), play funny little made-up games together (of course at the attention span level of a 17 month old), and it is such a joy to watch their budding friendship!

I think I need to clean my tv!!

This just made me laugh when I saw this. I was sitting with my new camera in my hands taking a bunch of pictures, while watching the video slideshow my mom had made me for my 30th birthday. I was taking random pictures of some of my favorite pics from the slideshow and took this one.

My camera somehow focused on the fingerprints on my tv! You can't see these fingerprints in real life, even with the tv off, but WOW!! I had no idea how many fingerprints were on my tv!

I took it again, and it focused correctly. (I love this picture taken right after my ring ceremony.)

My beautiful mantle

Does anyone else's mantle ever look like this? My mantle is now the place for holding things that I don't want the kids to touch. It usually starts out pretty clear and looks like this by mid-day.

4th Birthday Party!

I promised my sister-in-law I'd get these pictures up quickly! I'll blog later, but for now, here are birthday pics, along with Easter and a few other things...

Easter/Birthday/Birthday Party

The Big 0-4!

I can't believe I'm saying this, but James is four years old today! What a precious gift he has been to us over the past four years! James fills our life with so much joy, excitement, NOISE, energy, enthusiasm, love, and fun. I can't imagine life without him! Josh and I both noticed that James has matured a lot lately. A couple of months ago, it seemed like he grew up before our very eyes. He has suddenly changed from little boy to almost big boy.

James at 4

~James weighs 39 lbs and is 40 in tall.

~James continues to be a ball of enthusiasm. Anytime we're going to church, school, a friend's house, the park, HEB, Daddy's office, outside, you name it, he give a HUGE reaction! It's easy to make him happy!

~He is particular. A church teacher told me he was the most particular one in the group of 3's,4's, and 5's!! Everything had to be just so! Not surprised here!

~My mom often describes James as a jack rabbit. He hops around, jumps around, and just has so much energy in each step.

~James right now is into: puzzles, being read to or pretending to read, drawing, all sports, race cars, but his favorite thing of all right now is probably building. He'll spend an hour building "statumes", and all sorts of neat buildings, bridges, etc.

~His favorite color is purple!

~He loves his brother, but has taken on the bossy older brother role like a pro.

~James is strong willed, yet compliant. He likes to obey, raises his hand in school, follows rules well at school, and asks permission most of the time. On the other hand, if he doesn't want to do something, like take yucky medicine, you will have to talk him through it for half an hour before he'll do it, with lots of tears in between.

~One of the things that makes me most proud is how he'll say he's sorry. When he does something he knows was wrong, we'll talk about it, and then always a little bit later, he'll give a very sincere apology. A lot of times, I'd forgotten about it, and he'll come up and tell me he's sorry for (xyz).

~It also makes me so proud how he takes care of and is protective of his brother. He gets him things without me asking when Jack's fussing.

~He is grateful. He says sincere thank you's a lot, with no prompting from me. Yesterday morning, when we pulled up to school, we hadn't been talking about our cupcakes at all, and he said, "Thank you for making cupcakes for my friends, Mama."

~He has been really into letter sounds lately. He doesn't do it as much now, but for months, he would tell me all day long what letter different words started with. He knows most of them very well, but gets confused sometimes with the tricky ones. He'll also read a few recognizable words (stop, mom, james, jack, georgia, no) and now likes to sound out words with me.

~James is having a wonderful year in "school" this year. I could not be happier with the wonderful teachers he has, and he is just thriving in there! He has the sweetest group of friends that have been together (most of them) since they were babies. I have been so blessed to get to peek my head through the window throughout the day and see what he's doing in there. I tear up sometimes watching him play so happily with his friends, watching him sit in circle time and do cute motions to cute little songs. His eyes are always glued to his teacher, sitting straight up, and obviously very into everything she does. Every time we pass each other, we hug, blow kisses, or wave. He is always so happy to see me. His friends will excitedly say, "James, there's your mommy!!" They are the cutest little bunch of kids! I just love them and truly can't believe they'll be in preK next year!

~James love to sing and do his crazy/funny dance. He loves to sing "God songs", read "God stories", and talks about God and Jesus a lot.

~James asks us lots of tough questions! "Mom, how are babies borned?" "Where do they come out?" "Did God reach into your mouth when I was borned?" (No, you just came out when God knew you were ready to come out.) "Oh, I came out like THIS (showing me) and breaked your body?"

and questions about adoption, resurrection (on and on and on, on this topic), heaven, where God is, who Deedah's mom is now that Gigi's in heaven, anatomy, etc.

~He's such a fun little person. He's funny, has a funny laugh (a growly "Eh-heh-heh-heh), and is fun to just sit and talk to.

~He's competitive. If I want him to do something, I just have to race him. He loves to wim, but then sometimes will be nice and say, "you won too, buddy" to his brother. :)

~He likes to create games to play and turns lots of things into games.

~He is still my sweet, sensitive, caring, compassionate boy. He just melts my heart in so many ways. When Josh was sick last week with the stomach bug, he immediately took on the role of caretaker. He kept going to him on his own accord, asking him if he wanted sprite, crackers, etc. He prays on his own for people to get better and just is often thinking of others, making sure all is well with everyone.

~He is still so affectionate. I woke up in the middle of the night to James kissing my forehead, he loves to give Jack hugs and kisses (much more than Jack does), and he's a big cuddler. He and Josh cuddle on the couch every morning for as long as they can, and he will bury his head into our necks when we pick him up.

~He's a picky eater. He has a decent reportoire now, but there are a lot of foods he refuses. He likes: chicken nuggets, life or honey nut cheerios, yogurt, peanut butter, pb crackers, buttered toast, beans, taco meat, rice, scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, french toast, broccoli, sometimes mashed potatoes, grilled cheese sandwiches, taco soup, spaghetti with meat balls, apples, sweeties (mini oranges), breakfast bars, pizza, candy, cookies, chocolate, and THAT'S ABOUT IT! I so badly want him to eat other stuff I make, but he won't. I'm hoping that will get better as he gets older!

~He loves to play soccer in the backyard and shoot hoops over and over. He's already surpassed me in skills...I don't know if that says more about him or me! But I'll try to do what he does with the soccer ball and it just turns out wrong. I can't wait to see him play in the Fall!!

~James loves to strike up conversations with random people. A lot of times it's the young college girls, and he'll tell them his life story. He'll tell them anything from how we broke down in Birmingham to the latest neat thing he did.


Well, that's all I can think of for now, but I'll try to add to this as I think of more. I just want to freeze this adorable age! I feel like this is the end of the little-boyness in him, and I just keep looking at him lately and being sentimental about the rate at which he seems to be growing up. I know it just gets faster, too, so I'm just soaking him in right now.

Happy Birthday to my sweet Jamesy! Your daddy and I couldn't love you more!!!

More pics









Date with Nana and Deedah for James' birthday...Fazoli's ("Dazoli's") and Barnes and Noble ("Barnes and Nebble")

Like Brother...

Jack lately will try to do just about anything that James is doing. Sometimes this is a problem, but sometimes I can use it to my advantage! James wanted to eat his cereal on the floor this morning as he worked on his puzzle. Jack immediately fixed his eyes on the bowl and immediately started walking over to it. I knew this wasn't going to go well, because there's no distracting Jack in situations like this, so I got him his own bowl with cheerios. This worked great, and he sat there and ate the cheerios while watching his big brother eat his bowl!

"Mommy"

James drew this picture of me today while I was talking on the phone. I asked him what that was in the middle, and he said, "your tummy!" Hmmm....don't worry, I'm not pregnant, but apparently he sees something there! I still love it, though!