New York City

   As a small town girl it was definitely exciting to go to the big city of New York for the first time. Since Luke and I had to work in New Jersey we decided to take a few days off and hit the city. We rode a train up from New Jersey, rode a taxi from the train station to the apartment we were staying (which was about 100 feet away from Times Square). We walked about 100 miles in those few days and I had comfortable shoes on but me and my silly flat feet still walked around in a lot of pain.
   We didn't do a lot of the touristy things but we had a great time. Here are a few pics...

Jersey Shore

Today Luke and I headed up north to New Jersey for work. We dropped Myles off with grandma Roland last night and so far he's having a blast and getting spoiled. Grandma went to have his foot fitted for shoes. The brand new 2 year old is size 8 & 1/2 wide,haha. We flew into the Newark airport and saw the foggy/tiny appearing Statue of Liberty holding her place in the water. We found our way to the south part of New Jersey and just 1 mile from our hotel our hungry tummies spotted a Bobby's Burger Palace...Bobby Flay that is. We stopped in and I was more than satisfied with the clean modern unique looking restaurant. Pictures to come soon...

My "new-to-you" Wagon!

In our little neighborhood of townhomes there are several families. One family in particular have been very nice and gracious to us. They have a little girl named Aly that's in elementary school. Yesterday they brought us her old 'Little Tikes' wagon. She's outgrown it and they were going to give it to Goodwill but decided to ask us if we wanted it first. I hesitated at first because Myles has SO many toys and things to ride on, but this wagon was great! We went for a long walk and he didn't move or make a peep once. In this picture of him in the wagon you can see all the sidewalk chalk on the driveway.

A few days ago Myles wanted to color with the chalk and 2 or 3 of the neighborhood kids came over to color too. Nithika (the quiet Indian girl) and Aly (the very outgoing blonde). Then a shy little girl (I'm forgetting her name) came over with her dad.

Myles also likes to pet Libba, the fat pug that's very friendly.

water!

Myles loves to play in water so this past Saturday we let him play outside in some buckets of water. The past 2 houses we have lived in already had a water hose, but this one does not. It's still not technically 'summer' yet so we haven't bought one. Anyway, Myles still had a BLAST slinging the water everywhere.

Myles is 2!

It's crazy to think that our baby boy is 2 years old. The big day has come and gone, but we had a lot of fun over the past week or so! On Myles's big day we got up and blew up some balloons and went in to his room to wake him up by singing happy birthday and throwing balloons in his bed. He was so excited and loved it! In the balloon picture he was holding up the #2 to show how old he is now!

We had a party this past Saturday for Myles...it was an orange and blue party, everyone wore those colors and we had a lot of fun watching Myles and his cousin David play and do funny things.

grandmomma and grandaddy sink

This past weekend My dad and step-mom came to visit on their way out of town...well...to Israel (I guess that's far enough out of town) haha. They brought Myles some Birthday presents since they won't be around this Saturday for his party. The presents were wrapped in paper with sports balls on them so Myles wanted to open them the very second he saw them. He was a little apprehensive to be around his grandparents, so he acted funny for a while, but we're hoping he can see them more often in the future. It took him a while to get used to his toys but he loves them all, especially his Rody http://www.all-pop.com/kids_pages/KD0009_rody.htm - this link shows a picture of it. Remember those bouncy ball things kids used to sit on and hold the handles...well this is the 'new age' bouncy thing. you sit on Rody and hold the ears and jump until you're too tired to jump anymore...or if you're Myles you jump until you want to pretend to fall off and squeal laughing.

hair cut!

Saturday I took Myles to a specialty children's haircut place to get his hair cut. He was VERY upset at first. They had a tv, animal crackers, toys and lolly pops at every hair cutting station...but none of those made Myles happy at first, he screamed like someone was hurting him, haha. Then someone got out the bubbles. He played and tried to pop them and forgot someone was cutting his hair. On Sunday Myles got an Elmo stuffed animal from a lady at church and he loves Elmo and hugged him.

dada gone again

March has been a crazy with Luke traveling a lot. He got home last Saturday and it was a busy week of work this week. Then on Thursday he had to leave again. This time he didn't have to go so far, just to Asheville, but we still miss him.

Myles loves helicopters and one night Luke showed him some helicopter videos on youtube.com so now that's all he wants to do...and there are only so many helicopter videos out on youtube world. The other night Myles was just in one of those moods where he wouldn't calm down. I started playing some helicopter videos and he was so happy! He's been a good boy and he's happy as a lark.

dada is home!

today was a pretty good day. I met with a friend from Samaritan's Purse this morning so it was great to hang out with her for a while. Then Myles an I came home for a while, then this afternoon, dada finally came home! We all hung out for a while. In these pics, Myles was sitting in his tunnel watching tv...with the tunnel unopened of course. He looked at me and said 'cheese' for one of them, then continued to watch Elmo.

The background today is an Elephant because I love the impression Myles does of an elephant. He also makes a funny noise for an elephant...you just have to see and hear it!

a good week so far

This past Sunday after church we went to Luke's parents house to hang out. Grandma and Papaw had LOTS of toys for Myles to play with and he LOVED it. It's hard to tell but in the picture here, he's sitting in a little wagon that his blocks came in. A couple more months, and he won't fit in the wagon. On Wednesday, Luke left for New Jersey to do some work. When he landed there it was snowing, and it was 80 degrees here. He got to go to New York for a little while today. Myles has been a good boy since dada left, but as always, can't wait for him to come home. This morning I took this picture of Myles in this cute outfit his Grandma T and Grandaddy got him for Valentines day.Underneath the jacket is an orange shirt with a "b ball" (basketball) on it. Perfect outfit for these spring days (cool mornings, warm afternoons).

some outdoor adventures

Today was such a beautiful day that we just had to be outside some. We drove to Trader Joe's around lunch time today (www.traderjoes.com). We got some meat and other things to cook some hamburgers tonight. Luke recently got a GPS for work and we were testing out the different voices that talk on the GPS. Every time the person talking would say the "turn left in 3.2 miles", Myles would say "myna" which is how he says his name. I guess he was wondering why this lady keeps saying his name, haha.

Later on I got together some toys for us to play with on a blanket outside. I took a whole bag full of toys out and he would play with them one at a time for a total of 5 seconds each. He obviously didn't want to sit still on a blanket while outside. He pushed a car around for a while, then we went on an 'adventure walk' so gather some items. At first I felt silly for being excited about picking up grass a stick and a rock, but Myles finally got into it and was trying to pick up every single thing...including some old gray dog poop...we didn't keep that one though :)

Tonight the burgers on the charcoal grill were awesome! Overall, it was a great day together.

New blog look

I found a way to make different backgrounds etc. on my blog so I'm really excited and you'll probably see a lot of different looks to the blog! These three pictures are of me and Myles this afternoon. When we got home we went for a walk, then we went to this new restaurant close to our house. Myles was such a big boy and sat in a booster seat. Dada has been in Los Angeles since Monday, but he comes home tomorrow!

accidental pee pee in the potty

yeah - it's weird how it happened. Last night Myles kept saying poo poo and then he'd say 'potty' right after that. He's done this before and it even made me try potty training on Saturday a few weeks ago...not a good experience. So anyway, he kept saying it and went and pointed to where he had his potty sitting up high out of his reach. So put the potty down and took his diaper off to find he had already poo pooed. At that point if I didn't sit him on the potty he would have been upset. Luke went to get a new diaper for him and while we were waiting Myles peed in the potty. I got so excited and so did Myles. He immediately pointed to his special potty stickers...somehow remembering that I explained to him a few weeks ago that if he peed in his potty he would get to put a sticker on his Elmo poster. So that was that and he probably won't be truely ready for potty training for a while.

pictures:

Myles loves playing with his blocks. He always builds an airplane and loves to show us his airplane and how it flies

Myles always wants to look at this digital picture frame we have. He was sitting in his tunnel looking at the pictures.

Our little helper is a great cleaner! He loves to use this swiffer...and he even gets under the stove!

pajama morning

Saturdays are always fun....not because we sleep late - we don't know what that is anymore in this house...but they are fun because we get to hang out in our pj's for half of the morning. Mommy usually makes pancakes or something fun and we get to play together all day!

Myles has been talking SO much lately - saying pretty much every single thing we say. He's also very smart and associates certain people with things and knows that big bird says "la la la". he has a boy in his daycare class, Gus and last week he started talking about him more. He also pretends to talk to him on the phone.

I have one more thing to write down in the books....Friday February 25, I took the front rail off Myles' crib and I put the "toddler bed" bar on the front. It's just a small thing that goes on half of the front....then we told Myles that he was going to sleep in his big boy bed and we prayed with him and said "ok it's time to go to bed" and he said "night night" and got up in his bed and laid down. I was so nervous but he didn't get out or fall out once...nor has he since then. It's almost as if he's always been sleeping in that toddler bed. I'll hopefully get a picture soon.

jump Myles jump!

Mommy was gone a few days and the day I came home I took a bunch of pictures. It was warm when I came home on Saturday and Myles had some hot sweatpants on so I took them off and was about to put some others on and he put his shoes on...that's the reason for the pictures with the t-shirt, diaper and shoes! Later on that night he started jumping over these blocks and I loved taking pictures of him. Also, his hair is getting long so when I got it wet I spiked it up and it was funny.

is it potty time yet??

this past weekend Myles' grandma and papaw came to visit. They brought some awesome Sesame Street underwear and went went to Super Target where Myles got a cool new frog potty. We aren't starting potty training yet, but we were curious what he'd do when he sat on the frog. He got so excited and when his dada got the camera he just sat there and said "cheese" over and over. He of course never did pee pee, but when we decided to put his diaper back on he then wanted to carry the frog around with him because he liked it so much. We wouldn't let him because then he'd think it was a toy and we definitely don't want to start carrying the potty around when he starts to use it. Sooo, we put it up for now.

static electricity

this past weekend was so beautiful...we explored and found a park near our house on Saturday and we had a blast! they had a field we let myles run around in for a while then we took him to one of the 2 playgrounds and helped him go on the slides, he had a scared look on his face at first but as soon as he went down came the word "adain" aka "again." A little while later we decided to leave and we got to experience Myles' first huge meltdown, at least we were outdoors, but it still wasn't pretty.

Tonight i was folding a blanket and Myles thought it would be fun to run through it. I noticed a great deal of static happening on his hair so i had to get a picture...this just may be one of my favorite pictures ever...every single time I look at it I laugh

Mr. Myles eating lunch

I just had to upload this picture from last monday on Martin Luther King Jr. day - Myles' daycare was closed and we didnt' want to sit at home all day so we went to work and ate lunch with a group of ladies...Mrs. Capin was having her 68th birthday (she's the wife of a man who works there and has been friends with Billy Graham for many many many years). Myles was such a good boy and so cute...i just couldn't get him to smile for this picture though.

chocolate Myles

the picture is a little fuzzy because it's taken from my cell phone, but it's dark chocolate letters spelling out 'Myles'. Not only is it chocolate, it's chocolate from France! At work we have a couple of people that we are partnering with to start an Internet Evangelism website through the BGEA, which is really cool...but I always help them with their schedules etc. while they are in Charlotte, so they bring me chocolate! And...since Myles can't be with me at work during the day, I thought I would bring him to work...by spelling out his name :)

cheese

This picture was taken sometime a couple weeks ago when I was playing with our new camera. For the longest time I've been trying to teach Myles to say 'cheese' for the camera and sometimes I'll take a picture with him and he'll say cheese but then when I look at the photo his face looks like the normal "I'm ready to do something else now" look. But this time he actually did "cheese" for the picture and has the cheese face! The funny thing is, it makes him look different - it looks like a fake smile, haha.

January 2011

I haven't been able to do a blog in a while and honestly I didn't really think anyone was looking at it, but I'm happy to know some people actually miss it.

Luckily we've been able to avoid sickness in our house this winter...until the end of December. Myles got sick right around Christmas, then I got it and was sick during New Years. A week or so later, Myles got really sick with a high fever and was totally not acting himself so we took him to the doctor and got horrible news, "one of his tubes is coming out of his ears and there's an infection behind it." I was devastated because even though Myles' ENT doctor in Boone told us his tubes didn't really do anything I think they did something...they kept us out of the doctors office and his fever gone. So now, who knows what's going to happen, we may start that cycle over again...but I'm choosing to believe that it's not going to happen.

Myles finally got over his cold and after a week of antibiotics he seems to be better....except this evening his nose is running and his temp was 99 degrees and he had some goop in his eye earlier today....and Luke has felt sickish all week.

as i alway say...tis the season