Forts and Pigs

One of my favorite memories as a child was building forts with the couch cushions, Alex has also found this equally as fun.

My friend Angela and I took Alex and Thomas to their first ride on the Pink Pig. This is a train that is set up at christmas time at a local mall. We went the first week it was set up and had the train to ourselves and got to ride 4x for the price of 2. They boys enjoyed their ride and then we hit the mall for some shopping and lunch.

Philly

Back in October, Grandma, Alex and I headed up to Philly for Aunt Deb's baby shower.

Alex was super excited about his plane trip and had a great time playing with Aunt Deb, Uncle Rick and all the other friends and family in town for the shower. It is a great thing that there is a park in back of their house, Alex took them all outside to try it out before Mark's arrival to make sure that everything was going to be fun for him to play with when he gets bigger.

We are very excited that Mark has now arrived and can't wait to get back to Philly to meet him.

Alive

Yes, yes we are alive.
I have not been that great at updating recently, so I will try to sum up in 1 post and catch back up. Pictures to come later.
Alex had an amazing 2nd birthday party. Uncle Michael and Aunt Christal came in town along with Nono. Alex and all his friends had a blast on the bounce house and slide. We were lucky and had a great weather day for it, not too unbearably hot for the middle of June. Alex received tons of wonderful presents that he still enjoys today, including a front end loader, bucket wheel, a dump truck he can ride in, tonka garage, t-ball, soccer, and a sand and water box with a very large green excavator attachment!
He is completely obsessed with any kind of loud vehicle, excavator is his most favorite, followed closely by garbage man. I am sure our garbage men love the weekly audience he gives them every Friday morning, screaming HI BIG GARBAGE MAN at the top of his lungs! and yes, he did so loudly the other day from his room, the men looked up and waved, oh and yes the windows were closed!
Aunt Katie came in for a visit and we were able to go to the aquarium again to see the BIG fishes.
I had the realization the other day that I did not have a cell phone until I graduated from college, yet my 2 year old knows how to video conference his Nono and will request to "call Nono on puter" quite often.
It has been very busy with various birthday parties, wedding showers and weddings. Congrats to Johanna and Kacey and Melissa and William.
On my front, I left AutoTrader.com in June and took about a month off before starting my part time job with The Simpson Organization in July. I am working 3 days a week now and really enjoying getting to spend the extra time with Alex.
We have found many new parks and enjoyed numerous play dates with friends.
We took Alex to the Zoo for the first time last weekend. He yelled at the Rhino for sleeping, enjoyed the very tall Giraffes, loved petting the sheep, goats and pigs, was overjoyed with riding the choo choo... but I think his most favorite part was HAIRY DOG! Yes, out of sheer coincidence we happened to go on UGA Alumni day. We were walking along and Alex screamed Mommy Daddy HAIRY DOG, we did not even see him, but Alex has a very keen eye. He gave him a big hug and high 5!
Alex vocabulary is taking off and along with that comes some very funny things, like last week when he attempted to send Daddy to time out during dinner for not giving him mustard in a timely enough manner!
He is a very good eater, not too many things that he does not like.
This is a big few weeks for Alex, he will go meet his preschool teacher tomorrow and then start school next Tuesday. We hope it goes better this year. We have been putting him in the nursery at church and so far so good, many tears but he has not gotten sick on them. In addition, Nono is coming back for 2 weeks to hang out with Alex and give grandma a break.
More to come now that I am getting caught back up.

PDK Good Neighbor Day

A few weekends ago, Carl and I took Alex to the PDK Good Neighbor Day.

PDK is a small airport near where Hilary and I used to live. They do a full air show and have jumpys and the DeKalb Fire and Police and Military all come and let the kids climb in and on the equipment. Alex was in heaven!

He got to climb all over fire trucks, police motorcycles, military helicopters and watch the bomb robots... a little boy's heaven.

He even enjoyed the airshow, we watched from inside a hanger to keep cool and every time the airplanes would go in and out of view, he would shout "There they go!"

Here is a shot that shows how close we were to the planes as they taxied down the runway

Alex driving and climbing the fire trucks

Watching the robots

On the motorcycle

In the helicopter

Update

Well a lot has been going on with us recently... though based on my lack of updates you may not have thought so...
Carl has a new job with The Erosion Company. He is doing well and liking it very much.
I resigned my position at AutoTrader.com and this is my last week.
I am going to take some time to be home with Alex for now and see what develops from there. I am very excited about having more time with him as he is really at a great age and learning so much each day. So for my SAHM friends, please remember to include me and Alex in play groups now :)
I have also agreed to be the co-coordinator for my MOPS group for next year, which I am sure will keep me very busy.

Easter Weekend

We had a great Easter weekend.

On Saturday we went to Turner's 2nd birthday party and egg hunt.

Afterwards, we met up with Aunt Hilary for a late lunch and then saw Uncle Glenn a little later on. Sunday the Easter Bunny came to visit and left crayons, bubbles and eggs. We went to church and then had family lunch at my parents house.

The kids had a great afternoon of hunting eggs and playing catch and hide and seek in the backyard.

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After all the fun, we were all exhausted and relaxed the remainder of the day and watched the Masters on TV.

April

Our household has been fighting colds and allergies on and off for about a month now, I think we are all coming out of it finally.

The end of March and first week of April, we were excited to have Nonno come and visit. Alex had a blast with him for the entire week. It rained a good bit so there was not too much outside time, but they still had fun.
We took Alex to the GA Aquarium for the first time and he really enjoyed it.
Here are some photo's of Alex and Nonno and Alex with Deepo that day.



Late in the week, Carl's grandparents came into down so we had Gigi and Pop here too.
We enjoyed some good food and great time visiting with everyone. Here is a photo of the boys... Alex, Carl, Nonno and Pop.




Alex has discovered shovels or "shovee" as he calls them, and has been having fun digging holes in the yard, I am trying to keep him out of the grass, we don't need to look like we have gophers or something...



Hope everyone is doing well and had a wonderful Easter.

Reunion

Our house is still recovering from the various croup, cold, allergies we have been fighting, but we are slowly healing each day.
This weekend, we had a really great treat. A friend from high school who now lives in Wisconsin came into town and a group of us all got together for dinner Saturday night.
Here are 2 pictures from the event. The first is of the kids playing together - Hannah, Turner, Alex and Cate. The second is all the North Springs people with the kids. We had a great time visiting and watching the kids play together.


After that, Alex went to grandma and grandpa's house for a sleepover and Carl and I headed down to Front Page News for a suprise party for one of our neighbors, we had a blast.

SNOW!

Yes, it is March in Atlanta, you would expect the beginnings of tulips coming up and early signs of spring... which we had until Sunday and then the SNOW hit! Yes I said SNOW. We got a few inches which actually stuck. Alex had a blast playing in it and mostly eating it. Here are some pictures of our snow day, and yes he did eat the carrots off the snowman... poor snowman.

What a week!

OK, so we had a great weekend last weekend... Friday we had dinner with our friends Melissa and William. Then on Saturday we headed up to Cumming for Cate's 1st birthday party. After the party we headed to the flower show for Daddy's work and had a relaxing evening at home. On Sunday morning, Daddy went golfing with the guys in the neighborhood and Alex and Mommy had a brunch play date with the remaining moms and kids. Then we went to a Super Bowl party at our neighbors house. Alex had a blast playing with the boys all day.
Monday started out good, but about 6pm, Alex started to get sick, after getting sick 9X in less than 3 hours, we ended up at Children's Healthcare to get some medicine to help him stop being sick... unfortunately it looks like he inherited the inability to stop without medicine from Mommy :(
I stayed home with him on Tuesday as the Rotovirus ran its course. Apparently it has run through the entire neighborhood!
He is all better now and so on Friday I took the day off and we headed to Chelsea's house for a Valentines play date. We made place mats and decorated cupcakes and played with trucks and had a great time. We met Daddy for lunch and came home and played at the house outside since it was such a great day out.
Saturday, Daddy worked in the yard in the morning and I met my friends Wendy and Michele and her son Max for lunch and we took the boys to the park for a while [pictures to come].
Sunday we took it easy, slept in, went to Church, played outside, and we went to visit our friends Joe and Christine in their new home - it is looking great!
This weekend we are looking forward to a visit by Aunt Hilary and Uncle Glenn and going to Cousin Sarah's 3rd birthday party at a jumpy place!
Here is hoping to a happy, healthy week for everyone!

1st Haircut

Ok so I finally relented and got Alex a haircut - I was just so afraid that we would lose the curls.

We went to Snip Its. Alex loved it when we walked in, but when it was his turn to sit in the seat, not so much fun. Once they started to sweep around then he was interested in watching them so he calmed down and we got a haircut. We still have curls left. Here are 2 pictures, 1 when he was not so happy and 1 after he calmed down and let her cut his hair.

California

There are so many wonderful pictures of our trip to CA that I just updated the slide show above to show them, please enjoy!
We flew out on the 26th to San Jose and Nana and Uncle David picked us up and we drove to Lake Tahoe. It was my first experience with chains on the tires - not one I would like to have again for sure. We had a blast in Tahoe, Alex loved playing in the snow and Carl had a good time skiing with his sisters and brothers. Nana and I took Alex up the gondola to the top of the mountain, he was a bit tentative going up, but coming back down he was looking out the windows going WHOA!
We headed back to Gilroy CA, where Carl's parents live on Monday and had a wonderful family dinner that night with everyone and more presents to open. Alex can't wait to get his talking Elmo back, as we had to ship it back here. We spent the rest of the week in Gilroy relaxing, taking walks, going to the park, seeing the biggest mistletoe ever, feeding a horse olives, watching wild turkeys, and playing with the neighborhood cat. On Friday we drove down to Monterrey and up the 17 mile drive through Pebble Beach to Carmel. It was a rainy windy day but we still enjoyed getting out and watching the birds and the sea lions in the water. On Saturday we drove up to San Fransisco and went to the market and then to Pier 59 for lunch. Alex had his first ride on a carousel and loved it. He also saw a blimp over the bay and continues say blimp every day.

We really enjoyed our trip and can't wait to go back and see more next time.

Some more Christmas photos

Below are some more photos from the Christmas season.

Mommy and Alex - Alex just being cute! - Alex and Daddy with his ornaments

The family with the tree - Alex and his most favorite charachter right now Elmo!

Thanks Pampers for putting Elmo on every cruiser, makes it much easier to change an 18 month old!

Alex trying to wake up Max to play - Alex and Max playing in the family room - the girls with the boys... Yes there is proof of Aunt Wendy holding 2 children!

Christmas

Alex had a wonderful Christmas. Thanks to all for the wonderful gifts, of course our best gift this year is my dad's continued good news of being cancer FREE!

Christmas eve, Alex and I went and spent a few hours visiting Georgie, Sander and baby Keller, then headed to grandma and granddads house for the first opening of presents. We then went to the children's service at 4 at Dunwoody Baptist, which was wonderful, Alex clapped and danced on my lap, followed by Macaroni Grill for dinner.

Christmas morning, Alex was greeted by all his Santa loot and we opened the second round of presents, followed by a yummy breakfast of eggs, sausage, biskets and gravy [yummy!]. We had Christmas lunch with all the family at my uncle's house, along with the 3rd round of presents, then headed back to our house for Christmas dinner with grandma, grandad, mom, dad, Alex, and Wendy. We then packed and headed out early the next morning for California, much more to follow on our various excursions there.

Here are a few shots of Alex decorating the tree, with a present, the "Santa stack", in his wagon and his favorite item - his bike!