Weekend with Dad

So sorry to have been absent for a while. I was out of town last weekend and the week leading up to my trip was nuts. Maren was sick and then there was Will's stiches, my tire blow out and dead car battery (in the same day)! ANYWAY, I had a great trip and Michael had a great time with the kiddos. I intentionally left the camera home with him so he could take pics of the kids, but no such luck. Here are a few pics I stole from Mel's blog. They took the kids to DAC Kids where William had his birthday party. Michael needed to get out of the house for a bit and with the extra help from the Defuscos it was perfect. (These are Mel's captions from her blog)

Emily loves watching and following William. Thankfully, William does not mind....yet. He is actually very sweet with her. He takes her by the hand and leads her around, helping her when she needs it.

It was funny to watch the two of them together. William was leading Emily around by the hand and stopping to play with things along the way. As soon as Emily would try and play with whatever it was, he would take her by the hand and say "we have to go." AND she would just follow him and keep holding his hand! I need to get some pointers from him!

I had to post this one. Check out Emily's face. She has already perfected the look that every woman reserves for men. You know the one where you are secretly thinking "what were you thinking/doing?"

I brought Maren over to the toddler jumper, but she wasn't so sure about it. She had just woken up and was not so sure about me yet much less this strange place where I put her!

*So I get to this last picture and I study Maren's outfit and look at Michael and say, "You took her out in her PJ's?" He looks at me and says, "I didn't know that were pajamas. It was a shirt and shorts and besides, I thought she was cute as hell." Well, OK I guess I can't argue with that. I didn't think about laying clothes out for her. I forget that her outfits are a bit more complicated than Will's.

Thanks Mrs. Heidi!

The Johnson's brought over a sweet treat to help William's boo-boo get better. Can you tell that he enjoyed it! What would be do without our wonderful friends?!

Golfing with the Guys

Michael took William with him to play golf today. I will admit I was a bit skepitcal about how he would do all day. Will did great and they all had a good time. He ended up wanting to ride in Mr. Ron & Mr. Brian's cart. That's not such a bad thing if he wants to pick up some good golf pointers. Besides having a great time I thought they looked quite cute too!

First Emergency Room Visit

Michael and I were having dinner with friends last night when our wonderful babysitter called to say that William did a tumble set off the sofa and as she tried to catch him he hit his forehead on the end of the coffee table. Luckily, he was in great hands until we could get home. We decided it would be best if he went to the emergency room. So he and Michael headed out a little before 10pm. Around 1am they returned and William had received 2 stiches. Michael said he was an absolute trooper!

Here are the pics Michael snapped at the hospital.

Luckily the cut is just below his hairline so they could get right in and stich it up.
Will was very excited about his hospital bracelet and did not want to cut it. Michael said he wouldn't let him sit or lay on the bed with him in the hospital. He had to sit in the chair. He slept until 10am this morning--kiddo was wiped out!

Happy Birthday Pa-Paw!

Friday was my Dad's Birthday! While he was here over the 4th of July weekend we celebrated with him. Here are some pics of William and his Pa-Paw. We hope you have a great weekend, Dad! Love you!

Can you tell who put the icing ont he cupcake?

Uncle Mike

One of the hardest parts of living away from family is missing birthdays and family gatherings. My brother had a crawfish boil for his 28th bday. This is an annual event for he and Christy and they do it in June for Michael's bday. I thought I'd share this pic of my parents, step sister Dawn, brother Michael and his girlfriend Christy-- she might as well be family too. Michael and his friends decided to let their facial hair grow as a joke. Michael shaved and left this cheesy mustache for his party. The bottom pic is William making fun of his uncle's pitiful stache!

Moments with William

1. Will has quite a sweet tooth and part of it is our fault and the other part is his DNA. He had no shot given his Maw-Maw & I's knack for sweets. Not to mention I'm pretty sure his Nana found a way to put ice cream in his bottle. Tonight he decided he was done with dinner. I reminded him that once he got up we were done and no more snacks or desserts. We try to limit the number of nights he has a dessert after dinner. About 20 minutes later he realized that he was still hungry and begins to have a meltdown because I told him that it was too late. He continues to cry and carry on. I threaten to send him to bed and he sits sobbing on the bottom stair. At this point I've had enough and I'm about to send him upstairs when he completely stops and says, "Mommy, I'm done having this attitude."
Follow-up: I had saved his dinner and he decided he wanted to finish it. I warmed it up, he ate most of it and then asked for dessert. I put down a Kashi Oatmeal Dark Chocolate cookie and he took 2 bites and announced,"I'm all done. I'll leave this here for someone else." He made that statement because recently we fussed that he threw away 3 quarters of a banana. Michael eats bananas every morning so he told William, "Don't throw it away. Someone else may want to eat it." Not that we really wanted the mushy banana Will had manhandled, but it was a parenting moment! We gotta take 'em when we get 'em.

2. We have recently discoved a show called How It's Made on the Discovery channel. William sits and watches the whole thing with us. We have learned how they make bread, roof tiles, escalator hand rails, leather, boomerangs, etc. Tonight we had a bad storm and the satelitte went out so we put on one of our How It's Made that we have Tivo'd. We have 3 saved so we gave Will a choice by calling out what each show included. There was 3D Puzzles, CD's, Hearing Aids, Florescent Tubes and Toilets just to name a few. Care to guess what Will was most interested in seeing? Toilets, of course! I can't wait!

More Visit

William's favorite breakfast is pancakes. Whenever grandparents are here he takes advantage and has pancakes every morning! Here are some shots of our day.

We were getting ready to go to the pool today and Maren climbed right in her floatie.

My bathing beauty!
We all got in and had a great time!

Dad brought fireworks for William. He loves fireworks! We got home too late on the 4th so tonight they had a blast!

Mason's 1st Birthday

We spent our 4th of July celebrating Mason's 1st birthday. I can still remember last year when he was born like it was yesterday. Mostly because I was huge and pregnant and waiting to have Maren. Brian and Catrina were wonderful hosts and had a backyard full of fun for all the kiddos. There were 10 children ranging in age from 5 months to 12 years old! Almost all of us are from New Orleans and in typical Louisiana fashion despite the inviation time of 3pm-6pm we left at about 10pm. We ended the night with a game of Catch Phrase in the backyard, in the dark barely able to see the clues, but laughing to the very end!

Meme & Maren

William & Gracie

Can you tell Hannah has 2 older brothers?

Mae wanted to grab the balloons so bad!

It took 3 shots to get the entire backyard in pictures. Quite the layout! Thank goodness for good weather so we could enjoy the day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MASON!

Despite not feeling 100% the birthday boy had a great time digging into his cake!

After a post cake bath Mason was ready for bed. Look at this adorable family!

Gracie, Alex & Baby Jack

Hannah, William & Gracie

Maren enjoyed some time in the jumpy while the big kids were eating cake. She had a blast!

Our 2 sweet babies, Mae & Jack were perfect all day!

Thanks everyone for a great day!

Happy 4th of July!

We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend together!

Stone Mountain

My Dad & StepMom are in town for the 4th of July weekend. We have stayed very busy and had a great time! On Thursday we headed to Stone Mountain. We all had a great time exploring their new Sky Hike. It is a really cool Ropes Course structure. There is a kid sized one and an adult sized one. William was so brave! He loved the kids course. He even did the zip line at the end. Meme, Pa-Paw and Michael enjoyed it too!

Maren enjoyed cheering on her brother!

Everyone got in on the action!

Go Meme!

(This was before she bit the dust on the zip line! She's lucky we didn't get it on film!)

William getting ready for the zip line. I didn't get a picture because Maren's stroller was about to roll away-- with her in it.

Michael and I did the bigger course. I did a Ropes course in college with a leadership group and loved it. I have been so excited to try this one with Michael. We thought we would just skip the long lines on the lower course and go right up to the 3rd level (36 feet up). After a knee shaking walk on the first leg of the 3rd level we decided to try level 2 first. You are completely locked in and it is impossible to fall but it didn't stop the nerves! For those of you who don't know, Michael is afraid of heights. He did so good and was so brave to do this with me. He always amazes with how far he pushes himself. He's such a trooper!

The blind leading the blind.

William was intrigued by these 2 guys singing. He kept asking, "why do they talk so funny?"