HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZACH!

I am not too sure if this year had flown by or if it took forever. It feels like just yesterday that we brought him home but everything else (Baby Blessing, Nana coming, Easter) was soooooooo long ago.

Today is Zach's 1st birthday. He is such a sweetheart and we are all so happy that he is a part of our family. he loves to laugh and thinks that his big brothers are very cool. He follows them everywhere :) and is very sad when they go off to do their own thing. He isn't walking yet but that is not a surprise to us because we are used to the preemie delays. He does pull himself up and walk around things, much sooner than either brother did.

Zachman loves crackers and milk and anything that is edible as long as it isn't cold or green.

Happy Birthday Stink! We love you!!

A Fabulous Vacation!!

It is about time for a new post and I have a great one :) Vacation! We got home on Monday from 4 days at Great Wolf Lodge in North Carolina. It was so wonderful and worth every penny. The kids had a great time, the parents had a great time, and the grandmothers had a great time.

We had the opportunity to take a 4 generation picture and I am glad we did. Michael's mom flew down from New Jersey and we all had so much fun with her! Come back any time Grandma Carol!!! The kids had such a fun time with her and Tanner was so happy that Grandma Carol went down the big slide with him :)

I took lots of pictures of the indoor water park at the hotel. We were fish and spent lots of time in the water. Grandma June even took her wheel chair in the wave pool..lol. Many people approached us and told us how thrilled they were to see her in the water and getting drenched by the 1000 gallon bucket of water that falls every 5 minutes.



Besides the water park, Tanner's favorite place was the arcade. He got over 6000 tickets, thanks to mom and dad..lol, and was able to get a DVD Frogger game, a stuffed wolf, a slinky, a yoyo, and lots of strawberry tootsie rolls. He also enjoyed magiquest and using his magic wand to slay the dragon and free the princess.

We enjoyed ourselves so much, we are going back next month with my mom and cousin Paige. We cannot wait!!

Very Cold Weather, Valentine's & A New Van

I hate to say that I kinda like when life is crazy and busy, but it is the truth. I like feeling needed. We have had quite a few exciting things happen at our house this past week, yes, all this in one week.

1st: We live in South Carolina. We love the warm weather, the beaches, the fact that "cold" is 50 degrees..hehe..but this winter has been especially cold (20's & 30's) and on Saturday morning we felt like we had awakened in Utah:

It was so exciting. Tanner was up and dressed at 8 am ready to experience the cold stuff.

2nd: On Saturday night we celebrated Valentine's Day. I have wonderful memories of Love Day. It was always so exciting to come home from school and see that my mom had decorated the table and left us each a little gift all wrapped up and sitting on our plates. I decided that I want my children to have the same memories and know that their mommy loves them. I was so into Valentine's this year and this is what our table looked like.

I made Chicken Parmesean (red & white), red jello, pink lemonade, and garlic bread. For dessert we had Valentine's donuts. It was very yummy and we had a wonderful evening together as a family. The boys were all very excited to find a balloon with a giant hershey kiss on their plates, and a little personal gift next to their place setting. I thoroughly enjoyed spending the time to show my family how much I love them.

3rd: OK, now on to the good stuff (hehe)! After some crazy experiences during the process of buying a new van, I finally have a beautiful new auto mobile in my driveway.

It is a 2005 Buick Terazza. I am sure that someone out there is thinking, "Buick makes a van?" well, they did from 2005-2007. It is very pretty. It is slate blue with tan leather. It has a DVD player which my children are very excited about. There are fancy little buttons that when pushed are going to make for a fun ride :) Here are all the pictures:

This is a picture of the color, though it does not do it justice.

And Tanner's favorite feature :)

We are very excited to take our new van on a mini vacation this weekend to North Carolina. Great Wolf Lodge has been on our list of vacations for quite a while now. It is a resort with an indoor water park just for the guests. 4 days of 84 degree water fun, a spa, an arcade, story time each night at the clock tower, and a visit with Grandma Carol will be great! Pictures will come next week :)

Our Little King

What is there to say about this picture?? Gavin is such a nut. Imagine, if you will, one of those shape sorters that are red on one side and yellow on the other. Yeah. Gavin's crown is a broken shape sorter. He has been wearing this on his head for at least 6 months. It has changed shape and molded to the little dudes head. You can even see the white stretch marks on the "crown". It will not successfully stay on any other head in our house. He sleeps with it, eats with it, and even bathes with it. Oh, and if I took a close enough picture of him without it, you would be able to see that his hair has the shape sorter shape. It indents in the front where the crown sits.

Well, what do you do when your sweet little man wants to be a king? You let him, because they are only little once and it makes for fantastic photo ops..hehe

"We Hope It Snows Today!"

Tanner had a very cute program at school today where the kids shared with us what they have learned about winter. Tanner's part was, "We wrote sentences about what color we wanted our mittens to be. My mitten is red." He read it while pointing to the letters...so cute.

After their little program, we got to help them make snowmen out of marshmellows, a york peppermint patty, a whopper, a candy orange slice, mini chocolate chips, pretzels, and fruit rollups. Very cute! Tanner told me to hurray and take a picture so that he could eat his snowman.

The reason I titled this post "We Hope It Snows Today" is because at the end of the program that is what they all said, with Tanner pointing to the words :) and those precious kids will not have to hope any longer. We are in the path of a winter storm that is bringing snow and ice this evening. What a perfect day for a Winter program.

The Zach-Man

Our little Zach-man is growing up so fast. I realized that I have not done an update on him in a while. He is now 10 1/2 months old and weighs a whopping 23 lbs.. He is taking after his older brothers and is just now trying to crawl. I have to remind myself that he was a preemie and will be behind in that type of thing. However, he is already pulling himself up to things. If he needs to get to anything he will roll. If he is headed in the wrong direction he will sit up, turn around, and roll to what he needs. It is very cute.

He is a lover of all things food..ok, not all things, he HATES green vegetables. He will dry heave if they even come near him. He takes after his brothers there also. His favorite foods are graham crackers, eggs, mashed potatoes with brown gravy, not chicken gravy..lol..and he loves Ravioli.

He now has 9 teeth and more making their way out. He loves to bite and scratch, and he would bounce in his bouncer all day if we let him :)

He is just a sweetheart and we love him so much!

One Curious Toddler....

Oh I am so boring!! There has been nothing to post about in the last 2 weeks! All I do is clean house and chase after a 2 year old who insists on emptying anything he can get his hands on :)

Yesterday I found him playing with all our toothbrushes (yuck!) and when I took them back to the bathroom (he was playing with them in the living room) I was met by everything from under the bathroom sink, on the floor. After cleaning the bathroom I walked around the corner and he had managed to get my purse off the counter and empty it on the floor. By this time he had heard, "GAVIN WESLEY!!" about 10 times and I thought he might start to understand that mom was not happy...nope. He just laughed and went on to empty the book case in his room, steal Grandma June's hankerchief (which he thought was hysterically funny..she did not) and dump his lunch on the floor. UGH!!!

So after a very stressful day with a very defiant toddler there was nothing else I could do but love him, because with a face like this.........

It is impossible to stay mad for long :)