Gonna Take a Walk Outside Today.....

..... gonna see what we can find today......

It was a BEAUTIFUL day outside today, so we decided to take advantage of it and do some exploring in the hills/mountains behind our home. 

Coloring Fun

(By Jen)

 

Last week, while coloring on some of his jet coloring sheets, Noah excitedly called me over.....

"Look, Mommy!!!!  I drew you - two times!"

 

 

I had to ask Greg.... "do I REALLY look like that?"  ;)  

 

 

On a different note.... I don't always come up with the best and most creative ideas, but when I came up with this one, I totally had to toot my own horn.  =)  I printed up some "Jake" coloring sheets off the DisneyJunior website.... and LAMINATED them!!!!  Now he can color his favorite characters, over and over with dry erase markers, and I'm not constantly printing off coloring sheets!!!  He LOVED the idea and thought it was big fun to color and erase, color and erase, color and erase.....  =)

 

 

 

 

We love, LOVE!

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

We had such a fun day today celebrating love!  =)

 

 

Easel Fun

Noah got a new easel for Christmas.  Total fun.  He absolutely LOVES it. 

It has a dry erase board on one side (that also is magnetic for his letters and numbers!), a chalkboard on the other side (that has a clip at the top so you can add paper and color with crayons/markers!) and four nifty little holders for chalk, erasers, markers, crayons and magnets.

Jen and Noah work on lots of things throughout the day, but on this particular morning, they practiced him writing his name.  After many tries, he got it!!!  Yay!!!  (please excuse the jammies, the sun streaming through the window and the poor quality of the picture)  ;)

 

 

A day or so before that, Jen was upstairs putting laundry away and heard: "MOM!!!!!!!!  MOMMY!!!!!!!!!!!  MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"  Thinking his arm had been cut off or his hair was on fire, she raced downstairs in a frenzy..... "WHAT?!?!"  "Look, Mommy!  I made a happy face all by myself!!"  Hmmmm..... not heart-attack worthy, but definitely picture worthy.....  ;)

 

 

Completely non-related to the easel...... last week while we were out shopping, Greg decided "Noah needed" his first set of Legos.  (Ahem, WHO "needs" them?)   It's almost a nightly tradition now and they have SO much fun.  =)  (again, please excuse the poor picture quality)

Big Boy Room!

This past weekend, we worked feverishly to transform Noah's little boy room into a big boy room!  It was both sad and exciting - such mixed emotions as we took out the old and brought in the new. 

After it was all said and done, we stood in his doorway in silence and were saddened at how it no longer looked anything like a little boy's room..... it's almost like we have a 13 y/o living in the house.  =(  But thanks to a combination of Pottery Barn Kids and Pinterest, the room looks absolutely amazing, and we couldn't have been happier with how it turned out!  Neither could Noah.  =)  We videoed him walking in his new room to see it for the first time, and the combinations of both awed silence and little gasps of "I love it!!" "I love my room!!" were more than worth it to us.

Here is a sneek peek of his room.  If you want to see the whole thing, just ask Noah.  He's proud as heck and will excitedly take you on a "tour."  =)

Noah's Birthday P'arrrrrrr'ty

We threw Noah a party, fit for a pirate, this weekend at our YMCA up here in Monument.  What a BLAST!  We both agreed that this was our favorite (and most fun) party of his so far!  =)

It was, of course, a Jake and the Never Land Pirates theme.  We decked the place out with all the Jake birthday stuff that Party City, Walmart and Target had to offer and also threw in a few other cute pirate decorations we randomly found as well.  The snacks even had adorable names too - complete with sword toothpicks!!! (Noah couldn't help but giggle when we told him what everything was.)  One of our favorite parts about the food was the cupcakes.  Jen had found Jake themed cupcake decor on Etsy and just HAD to order it for the party.  Noah was beyond thrilled when he saw them!  =)

After the all the festiveness of having food/cupcakes/opening presents, the second half of the party included swimming!  Noah had such a good time with his friends, he didn't want it to end! 

He's such a precious boy and it's always a pleasure (and SO much fun!) to do fun things like this for him.  =)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the party with his friends, we came back home and had another "party" with just the family.  Noah had fun eating dinner with everyone, being the center of attention and getting spoiled with lots of presents and love.  WE had fun too. What a great day!

 

 

 

 

OH!!  Almost forgot!!  The night of his actual birthday, we went out and celebrated with dessert.  A ginormous dessert.  It was hard to get him to calm down for bed that night.  ;)

 

 

Three Years Old!

The light of our life.... the source of some of our most incredible joy.... the biggest blessing we've ever experienced.... our baby boy.  He turned three today.  THREE!  What a fast 3 years this has been for us.  We can't say we weren't warned that this would happen - we just didn't believe it could possibly be true.

A whole flood of emotions and memories run through our minds as we recall exactly where we were 3 years ago today.  What we were thinking.  What we were experiencing.  What we were doing.  We were gifted with the most gorgeous bundle on the face of this earth and our lives haven't been the same (for the good) ever since. 

Three. It hardly seems possible.  Please, life, slow down.....

Happy Birthday, Noah!  Mommy and Daddy love you more than life itself and are so honored to be your parents.  To know you is to love you, sweet boy.