One of my FAVORITE weekends of the year (part 1)

Let me tell you that since having Garrett, besides Christmas this is my favorite week/weekend of the year!  This is such a busy, but FUN weekend.  It all starts with Spirit week at Garrett's school.
Monday = Hat Day
Tuesday = Pajama Day
Wednesday = Tacky Day (love this one)
Thursday = Sports Team Day
Friday = Orange and Black Day

Here are some pictures from his first Spirit Week at school:

As someone told me yesterday, he was the plumpest skeleton they had ever seen!  HA!!!!  He was so chunky, but I loved it.  His tacky day outfit reminded me of Miami Vice.  What fun times!!!!

This year I just picked out three tops and three bottoms and said pick what you want to wear for tacky day.  It seemed to work!

On Friday they have a Fall Festival at the school and it is always so much fun.  They have horses to ride, hay rides, cake walks, jumpy castles, a fire truck, face painting and many other fun things.  Garrett LOVES it and we have so much fun.  This year it was COLD!  Burrr.  We just had a cold front come through and we froze, but had a blast!  Here are some pictures from the fun.

 They were playing beer pong (without beer)

 Cake Walk

 His "scary teeth"

 The Firetruck...could have stayed here ALL NIGHT

 Riding Pepper :-)

On the way home.  He had his face painted like batman!  Love it!!

I'm going to end this post now, and continue with the rest of the weekend in a part two...later tonight if I'm not too exhausted!

Fun Times

This past weekend my mom and I went to Charlotte to go to my cousins wedding.  I haven't seen my cousin in a few years, so it was awesome getting to see her and her family!  We went on Saturday and had breakfast at Terrace Cafe in Charlotte.  Here is the link:  http://terracecafecharlotte.com/index2.cfm?chooseLocation=southpark .  It is so good we ate there Sunday morning too!  Yummm!!!  We went shopping after breakfast and surprise bought one thing for my mom and too much for Garrett!  Baby Gap was having a HUGE sale.  All of the sale merchandise was an additional 40% off.  We got some great stuff for the fall!
Saturday night after the wedding we went to the Epicenter and walked around, had dinner, a drink and came back to the hotel and watched The Help.  It was such a great day.  I love spending time with family.  We came home on Sunday and it was so great to be home and see Garrett and Josh :-)

Tonight we went costume shopping.  Someone had given us a batman costume, but it was way too small.  We went and he was all pumped up to try on costumes!  He told us he wanted to be a bat, not batman...hummm not sure I've seen one of those.  SO we went to the Halloween store and tried on 3 costumes:  Batman, Buzz Lightyear and Police Man.  Let me tell you how EXCITED I was to have this "moment".  Let me tell you how unexcited (if that's a word) Garrett was.  He is a toddler, so I should have expected it.  Last year he refused to wear his costume.  I think this year he will wear it if we promise chocolate :-)  He decided (after me asking for a decision and him screaming telling me he was DONE) on Buzz Lightyear.  Hopefully he will wear it!  Bless

I started getting sick yesterday. I went to bed around 8pm last night.  I am losing my voice tonight.  Hopefully I will start feeling better tomorrow.  The weekend is right here and it is going to be a beautiful one!!!

Pitt County Fair

We headed to the Pitt County Fair a few weekends ago and had a BLAST!!!  I honestly didn't think we would have as much fun as we did.  Doing things with your child and seeing the enjoyment in their eyes is just amazing!  He had so much fun.  He rode his first ride, had his first funnel cake, and ate a hot dog like a big boy.  May sound like little things, but seeing him do all this was awesome.  Here are some pictures from the fair.

Garrett is checking out to see if he can ride all the rides :-)  He asks me every morning if he is "big enough" yet to ride by himself!  ha.



Handing his tickets to the man in charge




First ride!



Grandmommy and Pops watching Garrett ride

This ride scared me to death!  I had no idea it went so high!  Garrett LOVED it!

First funnel cake...LOVED IT

Weekend Review

Well another 2 weeks have passed.  Working hard on keeping up with the blog, but I find myself so exhausted by the time I get home, that I don't even feel like blogging.  Hopefully I will be able to do at least a once a week blog, but my goal is twice a week :-)
This weekend was a very busy weekend.  This was a GREAT weekend.  Garrett was not on his best behavior, but overall it was wonderful.
Saturday morning I met my mom for breakfast and a pedicure!  It was her birthday weekend.  It was so much fun to spend time with my mom.  We don't get as much time these days to have one on one time together.  After we got our pedicures I headed to CVS and Walgreens to get some deals.  I want to work on stocking up on my stock pile of shampoo's, conditioners, and body wash.  I found a great deal on razor refill cartridges:  Regular price was 12.99, on sale for 8.99 and I had a 4.00 off coupon.  On top of that I got back a 5.00 register reward towards a future purchase!  Awesome!!!!
Saturday afternoon Josh, Garrett and I hung out together before Josh left to go to the ECU/UNC-CH game.  Garrett and I had a date night Saturday.  We went to Chick-Fil-A for dinner.  While waiting in line we had a funny happen.  I was standing there with Garrett and all of a sudden Garrett said "Mommy someone pooted".  I said "What did you say?"  He said "Mommy someone pooted, was it you?"  YIKES!  No it was not me and I don't know what he was smelling.  It made me laugh.  At dinner I asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween.  We have a dinosaur costume on order.  He told me a snowman.  Yes a snowman!  Never seen a snowman costume.  Luckily this morning he was back to wanting to be a dinosaur.
After dinner we went and had yogurt together.  It was VERY yummy and he did such a good job.  He loved it.  After yogurt we went to Barnes & Noble and played train and got a Halloween book.  All in all a fun night.  He went to bed easy and I had the night to myself!  I watched a movie, read a book in bed and relaxed!  SO AWESOME!
Sunday Garrett and I went to church while Josh got some R & R from staying up so late the night before.  After church we came home and I was lucky enough to go to a bridal show for my future sister-in-law!  My mom, and her mom and sister to get some wedding ideas!  It was so much fun and a great walk down memory lane.  I decided I would be the profesional cake tester...it was AWESOME.  Come to find out, they have someone for the cake, but man those samples were delicious!  Yumm.  I think I will start going to wedding shows just for the free cake! 
After the wedding show I came home and did finger/hand painting with Garrett for my mom's birthday.  It was a lot of fun and Garrett did a great messy job!  We had the BEST meal for dinner.  Dad did steaks on the grill, Preston and Nicole did the potatoes and I did the salad!  The best part was the chocolate cake!  Yummy!!!!!
It was a great weekend!  I'm exhausted and headed to bed :-)

Weekend Review

This weekend was filled with ups and downs.  Saturday was what my definition is of the "perfect" lazy Saturday!  Garrett slept in (aka slept until 6:30).  We all got up and had breakfast.  We found Beauty and the Beast on TV and sat down for a snuggle session.  It is so much fun to watch Garrett see something for the first time.  He is so smart and can tell us all sorts of emotions the different characters are feeling and if they are big or small etc.  I love it! 
After watching Beauty and the Beast we painted.  We did a little finger painting and then regular painting.  We stayed in our pajama's all morning long!  I wish we could have pajama days more often!  We had lunch and then we shipped Garrett over to Susan's for a date night for us. 
I love date nights.  Luckily we have a lot of family in town and can go on them when needed.  Boy was it needed!  We did a little Halloween shopping when we dropped G off.  I picked up a few inexpensive things from Target.  After that we went and got yogurt and then came home and were lazy for a few hours.  We sat in silence.  We love G to pieces, but he talks non stop ALL DAY LONG.  It is nice when he's gone to just have some quiet time...
Josh and I love Moe's and went there for dinner.  That's right, we didn't go to a nice sit down restaurant, we went to Moe's!  Ha!  After dinner we headed to Harris Teeter for triple coupons.  We shopped for 2 hours.  It was great not having a little one with you.
We came home and went to church on Sunday.  Susan called us before we left and told us that Garrett woke up at 3am and never went back to sleep.  He was complaining that he didn't feel well and he was pulling on his ear.  We went and picked him up after church and he was Mr. Grumpy pants.  I guess he used up all his sweetness on Saturday.  We came home and I prayed that he would take a nap.  He doesn't usually do naps with us anymore, so it is a flip of the coin if he will actually take a nap.  Praise the Lord he fell asleep watching TV on the living room floor.  I took that opportunity and took a nap myself and so did Sandy!  She ended up waking me up while she was having a dream.  She was yelping (I think she was chasing a cat or something) and woke me up. 
We went and visited my parents after that and had a nice time visiting them. 

Overall it was a wonderful weekend and I hated to see Monday roll around.  Halfway there until this weekend!  Yay!!!

This and That

Busy.  Shew we have been busy.  Life is great!  A lot has been going on and I've been such a slacker lately with the blog.  I would like to update once a week.  Hopefully I can start keeping up soon!

Garrett just started his big boy class at daycare.  I can't even till you how much I love our new teachers.  They are just wonderful.  It was a big transition for him.  He went from 8-10 kids, to around 18 kids.  Shew.  It is so loud in there every time I go, but they seem to have great control over the kids.  Garrett has started singing songs all the time now, he can count to 20 (although the middle numbers get skipped most of the time, ha) and says his ABC's.  He also has a great vocabulary and his speech is really taking off.  They have show and share Friday's where the kids get to bring in a toy or whatever they want to bring in and show it to their other friends/class.  So cute!

BIGGER NEWS:  We are about potty trained!  WAHOO!  I didn't think this would EVER happen.  It always feels like that when you are going through a "stage" with your kids.  I remember teething, breaking the paci, and "crying it out" felt like we were never going to get through it.  We did and made it through this.  He still uses a pull up at night time, but we will hopefully be getting rid of that soon.

Josh, Garrett and I took a trip to Holden Beach a few weeks ago with my dad, aka Pops.  It was awesome!  I will blog about that later this weekend.  We got some awesome pictures.  I love the beach and Garrett is such a beach baby!

ECU had it's first home football game.  Garrett and I were lucky enough to be able to attend.  We tailgated with Josh's mom Susan and her friends.  They were sooo much fun.  I actually got to bake too (which I love).  I was also able to see some friends from college.  It is always good seeing old friends.  I wish we could have hung out longer, but we had to get into the game.  Garrett and I were able to sit on the first row right behind the team.  He had a great time looking at everyone.  Too funny!

I've been slack also on working out.  I've finally gotten back into it.  I truly enjoy working out, but the time to put into it is what discourages me sometimes.  I really struggle with my balance of mom, wife, sister, daughter, working out, work, girl time etc.  As I seem to do really well in one area, the others seem to fall.  I'm working hard to find a balance.  I miss my girlfriends and hope to start catching up soon.
Earlier this month my AC went out in my car.  I drive a 2001 Honda Accord and she has been so good to me.  I'm not ready for a car payment yet.  Luckily the fix was inexpensive, but I think I'm ready to trade my car in.  I will be getting another Honda I think.  So right now I'm also working on cutting down some credit card balances and working on preparing myself for a car payment...yuck!

Josh and I will be joining Covenant Church at the end of this month.  I am over the moon excited about this.  We feel like we have found such an awesome church home and I look forward to this wonderful opportunity.  Next on the list is to get Garrett dedicated to the church.

My brother got engaged a week ago and I couldn't be happier.  I honestly thought I wouldn't ever have a sister and I love Nicole so much.  She is such a beautiful girl inside and out!  I look forward to getting to know her more and can't wait for the wedding!  It will be next November.

Well I think this catches us up for right now. 

A Few of Garrett's Favorite Things...30 months old

I wanted to take some time to blog about some of Garrett's favorite things right now. He is really at such a FUN age right now! He is a hoot!!!! We find ourselves laughing a lot lately at some of the things that come out of his mouth.

He really enjoys reading. He goes through his "favorite" books. For a while it was one of Josh's gold bug books from when he was a child. We call it The Bad Car Book! The only problem with this book is that it is around 60 pages, so we really have to be sneaky and skip pages at night. Otherwise we would be reading forever! His other books that he enjoys are Brown Bear, Brown Bear and a book we have on Dinosaurs. OF course anything with cars, trucks or tractors is a WIN too :-)

He also loves to sing songs. When he is playing by himself he sings the most. He loves "Jesus Loves Me". I think he knows that this melts my heart :-) He will sing it over and over again and then start mixing it with "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". He also loves "Row Row Row Your Boat" and "Ring Around the Rosie"

Every morning Josh goes and gets Garrett out of bed. They then come in and "wake me up". It's a game Garrett loves to play. He yells "BOO" at the top of his lungs followed with a lot of giggles. Then he crawls in bed and yanks the blanket off and says lets go play! My favorite part of every morning.

If I want him to smile and he's being shy I will say "I see that smile"! I look at him and he is trying his hardest not to smile and can't keep it in. SO PRECIOUS

He loves to tickle. EVERYTHING! He will tell me to tickle the TV, tickle Sandy, tickle him, etc. Once I go over to tickle him he will squeal and then yell "Not right now mommy". I will stop and he will ask me to do it again...and we do it over and over

He's starting to make lots of noises with his mouth. He will make motor sounds or car sounds while playing with cars. One day he was trying to get the motor sound going and he couldn't get his lips just right to make the sound. He told me his lips were broken! Ha!

Garrett crosses his legs when sitting about 95% of the time.  He looks like a little grown man! 

I don't wear tank tops very often.  The other day I had one on and he asked me why I had on my bathing suit?  Very random, but got me tickled!

When playing hide-n-seek Garrett usually hides under a blanket on the sofa or on one of the beds.  If we say "Where's Garrett?"  He will tell us exactly where he is.  "I'm on the bed under the blanket, come get me"!  ha!  Bless his heart!!!!

Garrett loves to be NAKED.  When he gets out of the shower or bath, he will yell "Here comes naked boy"!  He had a HUGE smile and so proud of himself.  He will say "I'm naked boy mommy".  Yes you are!

Right now he gets prizes for pooping in the potty.  His favorite prize is a matchbox car.  I swear he will produce one for a car in a flash.  Josh and I have to hide the cars because he will become obsessed with going to the potty.  Well occasionally we will say sit on the floor and close your eyes and let me see if we can find a car.  He will sit, but sometimes we will see him peek.  The other week we didn't have a car available for him and he said "Mommy I will sit on the floor and you find a car, OK?  You find a car mommy?" Ha...he is a smart cookie!


Well this is most of what he is doing right now.  He also started his "big boy" class on Monday.  He moved from a room with around 9-10 kids to around 18 kids!  Big move.  I still wish that there weren't that many children in his class, but we have WONDERFUL teachers!  I am really excited about this year.