Time Flies When You Are Having Fun

Time flies. I can't believe it is almost Thanksgiving and next up is Christmas. Usually by this time I have at least gotten a few presents purchased, but this year - NOTHING! I realize that was definitely a privilage when I worked at Byrnes Associates. I had all kinds of stores right near me and could go to them on my lunch breaks every day if I wanted too. I miss that. So, after Thanksgiving Chris and I really have to buckle down and get to shopping.

This year for Thanksgiving we are doing the same thing we do every year. We start off going to lunch at someones home for Chris' mother's side of the family. Then we do an evening dinner with my immediate family. Then early Friday morning we drive to Virginia to see Chris's dad, Claudia, and other family members. Saturday morning we will head to the Christmas Tree Farm and cut a tree down and bring it back with us that day. That is probably the most exciting part of our Thanksgiving holiday (besides all the yummy eating). This will be our third year of picking out our tree at a farm in Virginia.

Dylan is playing flag football now. He has had one game, which he caught 3 passes and even ran one back for a touchdown! He definitely loves football. He has been begging to play for so long. Gavin has decided to play no sports at this time. He says he just wants to wait and play spring soccer and t-ball. This is so nice for us since it gives us a break from having to run two kids somewhere to practice or play in something. I consider this our downtime!

We recently had parent-teacher conferences with they boys' teachers and they both received great reports. We have been blessed with smart and well behaved kids. Their behavior is definitely different at home, but I'm grateful that they are well behaved in school.

Grace is getting big and saying a lot more words. She says thank you and please all the time now, sometimes without even being prompted. She is very curious and always points at stuff and asks "what's that." She still is all about the boy's toys and could care less about girly stuff. I'm determined to try again this Christmas though. Maybe a new babydoll will catch her interest. We'll see.


My friend Jennifer came over this past weekend and took some pictures. If was freezing outside and Grace wasn't very cooperative, but we managed to get a few good ones. Here's a peek!

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween night. We went trick-or-treating in a neighborhood that my friend Lisa used to live in. This was our 3rd year going to that neighborhood. We like this neighborhood because it always has houses completely decorated, they give out good candy and it's half-way between our house and Scott and Jessica's house.

This year Dylan was The Joker, Gavin was a fireman, and Grace was Dora the Explorer. When I went to get Grace's costume they had slim pickings. But she still looked super cute in the Dora outfit. Plus half the people thought she was a princess anyway.

Kaleb was Bob the Builder. Ethan was the bloody Scream guy. And for the first time, my wonderful neice Savanna broke our yearly tradition and went to a friends house instead of with us. :( But, what can we expect? She is getting older and at the age where family just isn't as fun as being with friends! We truly missed her.

Have I mentioned.....

how much I LOVE my husband. He is a great man! I know I talk only about our children on here, so I wanted to take a second and post about Chris.

I love him because:
he is patient
he is kind
he is funny
he has a big heart
he is not a worrier
he focuses on the positive
he is a great dad
he is a hands-on father
he loves me even with my faults
he makes up off the wall stories
he loves God
he loves his mother
he loves his father
he loves his brother
he is a great cook (thank goodness!)
he loves Panther football
he loves Virginia Cavaliers
he keeps our yard nice
he is a hard-worker
he is dedicated

There are so many more things I can list about Chris. We all have our faults (or what the partner views as a fault)but I choose to over look his becuase all the positive outweighs the negative. As long as I have him and God, my rocks, I know that we can handle anything that comes our way.

Arrggghhh

Has it really been that long since I have had a chance to post? Wow, time flies.

We have been quite busy the past 3 weeks with soccer. We have a soccer game or soccer practice every day except Wednesday and Sunday. The boys are really enjoying it. Dylan's games are pretty exciting to watch because they are older and actually have rules and it is more competitive. Gavin's are fun too! This year he seems to really thrive at being a goalie. For some reason he is not as aggressive as he was last year. But when he's in that goalie box, he does a great job!

Yesterday was Dylan's birthday. He said it was a good day! Last night we had the opportunity to go the South Point High School soccer game and Dylan's soccer team were the ball runners. So every time the ball went out of bounds they would run and get it and throw it back to the players. Dylan got a lot of action on his side and he really enjoyed it. During half time he was even allowed to go on the field and play with a bunch of older high school kids, kicking the ball around and stuff. I'm really kicking myself right now because I FORGOT the camera! My mom is going to yell at me. :)

What else is going on......oh, Gavin informed me this morning that daddy is smarter than me! It went a little something like this:

Me: "See Dylan, aren't you glad I told you to wear long pants and a jacket since it's so cold out?"

Dylan: "Yes"

Me: "When are you going to learn that mom is so smart?"

Gavin: "Nuh, huh, daddy is way smarter than you!"

Me: "Really?"

Gavin: "Yes, he put a little water in the soap bottle in the bathroom to make it last longer! He is very smart!"

Me: "Yes you are right, he is very smart!"

HaHaHaHa! Who do you think Chris learned that trick from? I'll just continue to let Gavin think Chris is that much smarter than me since he is a daddy's boy.

My family really keeps me laughing.

Grace is doing well, too. She is trying to talk a lot more. Don't know what she's saying, but she tries.

I only have one picture to post right now. It's from Kinsley's birthday party. Grace was not very excited at first, and Lisa managed to catch this expression. She's such a little stinker!

Birthday's Coming Up

We are getting ready for birthday's around here. It starts with mine, September 11, then it moves into a crazy month in Ocotber. Dylan's on Ocotber 1, Savanna's on Ocotber 4, and Gavin's on October 8. Lots of birthday parties to plan and attend. Luckily for everyone, Dylan and Gavin are still young enough that they are okay with having their birthday parties at the same time without feeling like the other one is "stealing their thunder" so to speak. I know this will change in a few years but for now it's great. Although it does make for a CRAZY, large birthday party, it is still nice to knock them out with one shot. They are both asking for new bikes this year. They both need to move to the next size up. Hopefully Chris and I can go look at some soon. Dylan is really into more of the electronic stuff now. He is asking for a new Pokemon game for his Nintendo DS, a new game for the Playstation 2, a MP3 player, and some other small things. Gavin is asking for a new "swweeeet truck, swweeet car, swwweeet motorcycle, swwweeet 4-wheeler, and a swwweeet monster truck." That's what he said. They all have to be "swweeet." He cracks me up sometimes.

I don't think Chris and I will do much for my birthday. We will probably try to grab some dinner tonight since my mom will have the kids at church. I'm turning 29.....just one year away from 30. Maybe next year we will throw a bash!

I think I mentioned a few blogs ago that our friends Tony, Amanda, and Abbygale came over for dinner. Amanda gave me a CD full of pictures from that night and the camping trip. These are some of my favorites from the dinner night. All the kids climbing in our tree out back and a cute one of my pretty princess!

School, our weekend and more....

School started last week. The hustle and bustle with Dylan to do homework is back in swing. AND we get to add Gavin to the mix. Gavin started Kindergarten! He seems to like it, I guess. I say I guess, because it is like pulling teeth to get him to tell me about his day. Dylan is the same way. This is a typical conversation:

Me - "How was your day?"

Dylan or Gavin - "Fine"

Me - "So, what did you do today at school?"

Dylan or Gavin - "Nothing"

Me - "Really, so why do I even send you to school?"

Dylan - "Because it's the law."

I do know that Gavin's best buddy Benjamin is in his class and sits at his table. I know Gavin is very happy about that! I'm interested to see how this week goes. Maybe I will be able to get more out of them or at least one of them, as time goes on. I also know that Dylan has reservations about his teacher. When asked if he likes his teacher, he said to me, "She's okay, but she has issues." After prying and pleading to understand what he means when he says "issues" he tells me that she is not very patient with a kid (Dylan's friend) in his class because he talks a lot. I'm okay with that, if that is what he means by issues.

Soccer has also started back up. Chris and I are super busy, that's all I have to say. I'm not sure what we will do when Grace gets older and is ready to start participating in activities. We'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Our weekend.....

Saturday Chris went to Trent and Ragan's for the fantasy football draft that he plays in every year. After the draft was over I took the kids there. We had a great time hanging out with everyone. They filled up the baby pool with water and the kids played around in that for the longest time. Grace enjoyed swinging in Tatum's swing.

Sunday we had Tony, Amanda, and Abbygale over for dinner. We had lots of fun with them and I think she took a few pictures so maybe she will send those to me shortly.

Monday Chris stayed at home with Grace while they boys went off with their friend Andrew and I took advantage of shopping alone at the new Marshall's. They have a lot of nice shoes! Then I came home and cleaned! I know this made Chris very happy. I even mopped, which I am embarrassed to say it has not been done for a couple of months. I seriously HATE mopping. I think it is the worst chore and I would rather clean 50 bathrooms than mop my entire house.

Beach Trip Drama

Our beach trip.....where do I begin. It was truly great....until Saturday night. Dylan was laying on the floor sort of gently wrestling around with his little cousin, Kaleb. Gavin then decided to join them, by jumping down on Dylan's neck! Dylan immediately jumped up screaming and crying in pain and holding his neck. He screamed and cried hysterically (calming down off and on only for a few seconds at a time) for almost 25 -30 minutes. I tried ice and gave him Tylenol. He kept saying that he was having shooting pains going down his neck and one time he even said it was tingling. So, I started to panic and we made the choice to call 911. We laid him on the floor and did not let him move his head. Side note: this whole time he could move his fingers and toes and he never loss consciousness. So first a cop pulls up and comes in. Dylan calmed down once he was there. Then an ambulance comes up about 3 minutes later. And then about 5 minutes after that ANOTHER ambulance pulls up. It was kind of like a scene in a movie. Anyway, they check him out, ask us what we want to do, and we said take him to the hospital just to be safe.

So here he is with the EMT before they toted him out to the ambulance. We couldn't help but laugh because he was just so little and cute and all bundled up. Plus the EMT started laughing so it kind of broke the ice and made Dylan smile
So anyway, Dylan had a CT scan and a neck XRay. Everything ended up fine and it was just a neck contusion. So an expensive lesson learned......Dylan is a dramatic child and we could have probably done without the hospital trip. But, on the other hand, a neck injury is a serious thing and you can never be too careful.

Now on to the fun part of the trip. We had beautiful weather the whole time. Our only complaint was the wind was crazy! It was so strong, which made the waves very rough and sand would blow by us and it would sting when it hit you. The boys had a blast running around and playing in the water. Gavin did great this year and was not scared at all. Grace did not enjoy it too much the first two days. She would sit on your lap and touch the sand. She eventually got up and walked around and played. But on the last day, she had a blast. She wanted to be in the water playing. This was brought on by Grace seeing Kaleb in the water and laughing and having fun. Once she saw that, she was ready to play. I have a few pictures from my camera. My mom has much better ones that I hope to get next week. But for now here are some.

My studs, Dylan & Gavin
Pretty girl, Grace
And this is a picture of my weirdo husband and weirdo son! They decided they would sculpt me in the sand. So apparently this is what I look like. :)