Snuggling

Jaydon loves his Scout and Teddy. He takes them places around the house, wants them to watch him do things and tries to have them eat or play or watch a show or snuggle. or even in Teddy's case play tackle football. It is pretty cute to watch him and so we took a couple pics of him with his friends one morning.

Happy kiddo!

Playground with Grandma

I had a basketball workshop to attend and Jeremy was just getting back from AK so we headed to g-ma's house for the weekend. It worked out really well because we got to visit friends and Jeremy got some schoolwork done while Grandma took Jaydon adventuring. Jeremy and G-ma took Jaydon to the fun park at the local YMCA where they had a great time.

It is a pretty big space and Jaydo loves getting up on stuff and exploring.

"Hello, Hello" He enjoys these sound carrier thingys.

Climbing!

Sliding with Grandma!

Visit to Auntie's House

After spending a great day with Asia and Sophie Jenny invited us over for dinner. It was quite good but Jaydon particularly loved trying to snuggle Joanie (Jen's cat).

Joanie was trying to take some refuge on the bed but Jaydon was really all about being around her. We found that if she was covered with part of the blanket she didn't really mind Jaydon all that much so he got a few good snuggles, which is more than we can say he really gets with Lily.

He does love animals! I guess he comes by it naturally.

Playdate at Sophie's

We had a great visit with Asia and Sophie, made even better because the weather was beautiful for late Sept and Sophie has a bouncy house! We all had a great time and of course at some great food!

Not only does the bouncer have the open space to jump, it has a rock wall and a slide! Perfection!

Can you tell Jaydon enjoyed himself?

Sophie and Asia having some fun.

Sophie off and running.

Small Group Reunion

We had a great time getting together with members from our old small group. I am so thankful that we are able to make a point to try and set aside a day or two a year when we can hang out.

The four families

The four dads

The six kids (we of course waited until the very last minute to throw them all on the couch for a picture, you can tell they are a bit tired and less than thrilled).

He is my son!

We were all playing after dinner one night and Jaydon stopped what he was doing, looked into the kitchen and then ran over to his high chair. I was trying to figure out what he was doing and then low and behold he started cleaning up his tray.

Running to see what needs to be cleaned up.
Putting the dirty dishes into the sink.

Cleaning up with the rag!

While there is a part of me that is a little nervous I may create a neurotic cleaner I like I am, there is another part of me that was totally thrilled Jaydon would notice and go clean up himself. He is a big helper around the house and I love it!

First Art Project!

Art projects are not my strong suit as a mother. We have done some coloring and Jaydon finger painted with auntie but in general he does not get sucked into art projects very well and he certainly doesn't want to have to sit (or even stand) in one place for longer than a minute. I realize it is pretty important and so I will continue to work on it but in the meantime this was one of those little awwww moments. Jaydon was in the childcare toddler room at church and when the parents came back to pick them up they had made some sheep! Jaydon was so excited to show his sheep to his daddy (who hadn't made it to church due to too much school work)!

I heard someone, somewhere mention that taking pictures is a lot easier way of keeping the memories of all your kids art projects through the years then trying to keep everything. So while Jaydon's sheep will live on the fridge for probably months to come I have another avenue for remembering it in the future!

Mowing with Daddy

I am sure by now I have managed to mention a time or two how much Jaydon likes mowing! He gets so excited when it is mowing day and he now is in full participation mode. He takes his job seriously and gets his little lawn mower out there pushing it around right with daddy, or nana or Bud - whoever happens to be mowing in the neighborhood.

Doing the backyard.

Working hard on the side yard.

Ending with the front.

Cats and Birds

It has been awhile since the cats got their own blog post so I figured it was about time.

We bought a new computer, still waiting to hook it up, but it is here and we look forward to being able to do things at a faster rate then our poor old laptop. Lily enjoyed the box!

Higgins got hot! We had a mini heat wave (and it shouldn't have seemed that hot) but since we had such a cold summer we weren't used to it and we were sweltering!

One of our neighbors always lets their birds sit outside during nice days. This has been happening for the entire summer and even before that and while our cats don't get to go outside all that often they do on occasion and had yet to even seem to notice the birds. Until today! Higgins found them first, was lured away by Nana with some tuna and then headed right back. Lily caught on after Higgins kept going over there and there we have it.

Lily was definitely trying to figure out how to get those birds and probably would have made some awkward swatting attempts that could have succeeded in knocking over the cage but not actually getting her the birds.

Higgins on the other hand kept playing it cool. Pretending that he really didn't care much or want to do anything but hang out on the rockwall...

Cul-de-sac BBQ

Have we mentioned how awesome our neighbors are!?! We are so blessed to live in the neighborhood we do that even though we are currently running into some size of house challenges we don't really want to think about moving. So when you have such awesome neighbors what better way to celebrate than the have a cul-de-sac BBQ. It was great!

Since I love burgers so much it really wasn't all that strange for us to have three or four different varieites in our house so we just had a little menu where everyone could select what they wanted - it was great!

Just enough space!

Yep, we really just pulled the BBQ out front and most of the neighbors helped by bringing chairs and tables.

mmmmm...food!

People enjoying the party. We are fortunate to live around one other couple that has young children and then a lot of retired folks who are around all day and love having visits from us. Jaydon truly has free roam in our area and goes to neighbors houses on a daily basis to say 'hello'

Jaydon and Emmett and ZZ playing in the side yard!

This was quite the wrap up to an insanely busy holiday weekend but it was a lot of fun and we got to attend three nights of parties and host three parties of our own. Not to mention get our garage cleaned out shelves installed and organized and re put away! Busy, productive and FUN!

Jaydon's last 2nd birthday party!

I had felt guilty because I hadn't arranged a true party for Jaydon's birthday (having a cake at our family reunion and then just signing to him with some strawberry shortcake on his birthday didn't seem quite sufficient). Now that I have seen it truly ended up being like four different parties I probably could have gotten away without putting together the family dinner party, but we had a great time and enjoyed visiting with auntie and uncle and grandma and gram so we are really glad we did it. (Plus they came up at different times and allowed us to go enjoy a lot of Evan and Amy's wedding festivities).

Jaydon loves sports so I could see myself doing round cakes with basketballs or baseballs or some other easy to decorate ball for many years to come!

There is a happy birthday boy!

He really does love opening presents.

Uncle built this cool robot with the new blocks he got from Gram and Grandma.

For the actual lighting and singing we made sure to also write 33 on there because Jenny and Jaydon's birthdays are only two days apart so we can celebrate them both!

"Happy Birthday to you!"

Enjoying the dessert. For one of the first times I can recall my cake would not come out of the pan and split apart and was just a general fiasco. Luckily dark chocolate frosting can hold anything together and it ended up tasting mighty good. Jaydon was pretty funny and stuck with just eating the ice cream!

Evan and Amy get married!

A week before Labor Day Jeremy finally got on facebook chat for the first time in forever. His friend Evan was on and asked where we were living and what we were doing next weekend. So a quick calendar consult later we were on for a fun weekend of wedding festivities for Evan and Amy. Evan and Jeremy went to high school together with quite a few of the other guys who came for the wedding so it was a bit of a fun Kodiak reunion for a lot of them. Three nights of partying and a wonderful wedding!

Jason, Evan, Large, George the groom with three of his four groomsmen the night before the wedding.

Where better to celebrate before your wedding...Boundary Bay.

The ceremony was beautiful. At a local winery and my goodness the flower girl was the cutest thing you have ever seen. She was almost one year old and just couldn't be convinced to stay awake any longer so right as the ceremony was starting she fell asleep. Her parents were both in the wedding party so after they entered the front the dad walked back and got his daughter - she cried initially upon being woken up and then promptly fell right back asleep. He held her like this while she was sleeping and slowly twirled his way up the aisle while tossing out flower petals. She slept in his arms the entire ceremony - so adorable!

Then when you don't think the wedding could get any better out comes Amy in a horse drawn carriage. It was really a wonderful day and beautiful wedding!

Evan and Amy and their dog (who was the ring bearer) after the ceremony going for a carriage ride!

The cake with a cute figurine painted by a relative that exactly matched Evan and Amy and their dog during the event.

The really nice thing about a lot of weddings where people are from Kodiak...fresh seafood! Evan's family still does commercial fishing in Kodiak and they brought down salmon, halibut and crab for us to enjoy - it was awesome!

First Dance.

I had a great time getting to meet so many of Jeremy's friends and I know he had a wonderful time getting to hang out for a few days with some old buddies. Congrats Evan and Amy!