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.

In Sickness and In Health...PS this means kids too

Well to say it's been a week would be an understatement. Last week on Thursday we got the dreaded call from day care that Garrett had a temperature and we needed to pick him up. Apparently croup and strep where going around daycare...GREAT! SO I jumped in my car and headed to go and get him. Bless his heart he was pitiful! I think his temp was 101 and he was SO HOT. He also had a cough, but that was it. We decided not to take him to the doctor because we knew that there was nothing that they would do for him and it would take a long time to be seen that late in the afternoon. I took him to go and get Yogurt from one of our yogurt shops in Greenville thinking that would be such a fun moment for us. Ha, what was I thinking? We got there and he was already crying because it was like 200 degrees outside. Ugh. We got inside and he told me he wanted black ice cream. Ha!!!! So we went and got the chocolate and peanut butter swirl. He didn't want any sprinkles etc (said with a long "nooooooooooooo" that was whiny too, but he is sick). So we go to check out and I'm holding him because he doesn't want to walk and I've got my debit card and keys and two containers of yogurt in my hand and drop the one Garrett fixed. DRAMA!!!!!! I felt sorry for the other people in the store. I felt really sorry for Garrett though, bless his heart. So after tons of tears the owner came out and gave him another cup to make a new one, but at that point he was D O N E! I quickly went and got him another cup and we sat down to continue our sweet moment (wink wink). He took 2 bites and that was it. So we went home.
Friday Josh stayed home with him. They had a pretty good day together, we just couldn't get his fever to break. Still had a cough, but no other symptoms. I got a text about 8:35 am from Josh that Garrett was doing an art project and continued it off of the paper. Apparently they were playing with stamps and he stamped his face like 8 times with a red stamp! HILARIOUS! He said he turned his head for 10 seconds and when he turned back around he had done it. OMG Garrett was SO HAPPY! I love it!

Here is the picture! It still makes me smile. He didn't want Josh to wash it off. He did though!

We also started letting Garrett wear big boy underwear on Saturday. He was supposed to start wearing it at school the next week so we thought we would go ahead and work with him on it. I guess this is another example of first time parenting bad decision making. Why would we do this while he is sick? Oh well. He actually did really well with it and we were so proud!!!
On Sunday we could tell that he would not be ready to head back to school on Monday. He still had a fever and was just super whiny. So I went into work to try and wrap up some stuff and took off with him Monday. We decided to suck it up and go to the doctor even though we wouldn't get any medicine. Well turns out he had a BAD ear infection in his left ear. I felt horrible that we hadn't thought of that. He didn't complain though. So we went and visited with my dad while we waited for prescriptions to be filled. Luckily he was able to go to school Tuesday.
On Thursday he came home with small looking whelps on his arm, behind his ear and a few on his leg. He has had 2 previous reactions to antibiotics before. Let me tell you, you never want your child to have hives. THEY ARE HORRIBLE!!!! So we took him to the after hours clinic and got him checked out. Turns out that they were bug bites. SHEW!
Garrett has never slept in. He has never slept past 8:15 and his "normal" wake up time is 6:15 to 6:30 (if we are lucky). Since he has been sick he has been waking up around 4:45 to 5:15 and waking up through out the nights. I don't work well without sleep, so I was a zombie this past week going to bed around 8:30. Ha!

I think before you leave the hospital you should have to say the same vows you said as husband and wife to your child...In sickness and in health, good times and bad, etc. I knew being a parent would be tough and rewarding, but didn't quite realize how tough it could be until Garrett arrived! He is also SO REWARDING. He melts my heart and I could just squeeze him.

Good to report that he is feeling MUCH BETTER! We are very lucky that he has never had "serious" health issues and is a healthy boy. Will do more posts about our weekend later.

Not my smartest move

I've been trying to work on my running lately. I really want to run a 1/2 marathon soon (within a year). I need to take baby steps though. I want to run a 10 mile race next. I would like to do this by the end of the year. I am working on getting my endurance up. I am up to 6 miles. Only 4 more to go! Let me tell you, those four miles seem like they will take forever. Hopefully not.
Anyway, I ran Friday and took Saturday off. I decided to go run today. My gym closes at 5 or 6 on Sunday and I really didn't want to drive there. I wanted to be close to home, so I decided to run around my neighborhood. It had stopped raining hard, so I thought i would be alright.
I was about 20 minutes in when I saw lightening in the distance. I thought it was going away, not coming towards me, so I kept running. Not smart! I was about 7-10 minutes from my house when the storm started kicking up pretty good. I turned around fast and booked it. I've never run so fast in a short amount of time (even when that dog was chasing me). I have never been so scared in my life. I was so petrified that I was going to get struck.
To make sure that I wouldn't choke if I was struck, I spit my gum out. I don't know if that makes a difference, but I was thinking ahead. Ha! Luckily I saw Josh driving trying to find me. I was out of breath and nervous as I could be. Thank goodness I was safe. I then had to take a shower while a crazy storm was going on. Shew, what a day!
I did get 30 minutes in :-)
I will now check the weather BEFORE heading out!!!

Four Letter Words

I haven't had a chance to blog in a while, so I thought that I would try to catch everyone up with four letter words. I've thought hard about this, so lets see if I can do it :-)

POOP
This seems to be the biggest thing going on at our house and this is what cour life is centered around...poop, poop, poop. We have been trying to work on potty training for about 6-8 weeks now. He hasn't had too much of and issue with going number 1 in the potty, but the poop has been the kicker! About 4 weeks ago after talking about his BIG GREEN TRUCK (this was covered in a past post) for 2 weeks he FINALLY went poop in the potty. He went twice that day. I cried. I was so HAPPY. Well it was a short lived celebration. He stopped after that day. Well, last Thursday after buying more bribe gifts he finally started back again. He has pooped in the potty since then with just three little accidents. I hope we are onto something. The only thing is that these prizes are wearing me out. We just got a basket and put a bunch of small things in the basket. He wants prizes ALL THE TIME! Even when he doesn't poop and will throw the biggest fits! Ugh. He's getting better though. Fingers crossed he is on the right path. Hopefully next week or soon after that, he will be in his big boy underpants.

BUSY
Good gracious, I feel like I haven't stopped moving. It has just been very busy lately. Josh and I went on a mini vacation with each other a few weeks ago. We decided to go to Charlotte for an extended weekend without Garrett. This was our longest time away from him. It was so hard, but SO fabulous at the same time. We left on Thursday night and drove up 1/2 way. On Friday morning we went to Carowins. It was fun, but we are not as young as we used to be. We loved the water park, the roller coasters, not so much. We both felt so dizzy after getting off each one. It was overcast and actually cold there. It was about 70 degrees and raining. We had no lines. We were freezing cold, but made the best of it. We then went to our hotel and it was AMAZING. It is fairly new and there is so much to do right at our hotel. There was a movie theatre, bowling alley, bars and restaurants. We had a blast. If you are ever in Charlotte, it is called The Aloft Hotel. Here is the website: http://http//www.aloftcharlotteuptown.com/?PS=PS_aa_SelectService_GoogleExact_aloft_charlotte_uptown_at_the_epicentre_112310_NAD_FM
It was a very "young" hotel. Saturday it was still overcast, so we just relaxed. We went to a movie, Horrible Bosses. Awesome movie, a must see. We did some shopping and then went out to a dueling piano bar. Lots of fun. Sunday was the best day by far. We went whitewater rafting! That's right, in Charlotte. They have a man made place there and it was just perfect. There was so much to do. We got there about 2 o'clock and left at 8:30 (kicking and screaming). I didn't want it to end. We went whitewater rafting twice (I fell out of the boat) and did the Mega Zip Line. I opted to do a free fall jump, Josh did not. I would go back again and again. This is the website in case you are interested...
http://http://usnwc.org/
We left Monday and came home to get Garrett!
So since we have gotten back we did swim lessons with Garrett. They were great. He learned a lot and we will do them again next year too.
I have been tyring to get caught back up with work. I swear you have to work SO HARD to go and then work double hard when you get back. So worth it though!

SING
So Garrett has started singing around the house finally. He would never sing before, but is making up for lost time. Ha! His two favorite songs currently are Jesus Loves Me and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Can I tell you how much it warms my heart that Jesus Loves Me is his favorite song? He will randomly look at me and just say "Mommy, Jesus loves me"! I will say, yes Garrett, yes he does! Makes me so proud. Well he sings this song over and over and over again. He usually sings while playing with his cars and toys. He will mix the two songs together too which is fun to hear as well. He also loves: The Wheels on the Bus, Row Row Row Your Boat and Ring Around the Rosy. He loves for me to sing these songs to him too. I love that he loves me to sing (I can't sing...shew, it isn't pretty). So we sing and sing and sing. I hope he always will sing with me.

TALK
Good gracious, this boy still loves to talk! He talks from the time he wakes up until he falls asleep (talking of course). We are trying to teach him to not talk while we are talking. So we tell him "mommy and daddy are talking right now, you can talk when we are finished". He will say "OK" and then we will continue our conversation. We will talk for about 2 seconds and then he will start back in again talking. I know I will miss his talking all the time, so I try not to get too worked up over it and just enjoy the ride :-)

BURN
I've been hitting the gym pretty hard lately. I love it for my physical and mental well being. My "typical week" consists of
Monday: Step Class. It is a 50 minute class and is so intense. They only offer it on Monday's and it is a great way to start off the week. If you know me, you know I have zero coordination! For some reason, I have coordination when in step class. It makes me feel good :-)
Tuesday: Tuesday mornings I do weight training with my trainer Anthony. My coworker/friend Susie trains with me. We train so well together and it is fun having someone to work out with. Anthony is awesome and I look forward to working out with him. He pushes me and it is awesome because I've felt so "weak" in the past and slowly I am proving to myself that I am so strong. LOVE IT. Tuesday nights I come back for Zumba. I don't know what I would do without it. This class is so much fun. My instructor is Elizabeth and she is amazing. I hope to one day dance like her! I've come a long way! Bless my heart.
Wednesday's: Rest...I don't exercise typically on Wednesdays.
Thursdays: Back in the gym for Weight Training with Anthony in the morning. I sometimes try to run 1-3 miles before training if possible.
Friday: I run after work. I try to go at least 4 miles. I hope to run a 10 mile race soon.
Saturday: I do some sort of cardio
Sunday: NOTHING
I love working out. I never thought I would. I hated it growing up. I absolutely love it and it makes me a better person.

LOVE
I just love my guys, family, friends and life. I am truly at a good point in life and am enjoying it. Josh and I have also joined Covenant Church in Greenville. This church has done amazing things for me. It will probably have to be a post in itself. Amazing church!

Well that's enough for right now. I hope to start posting more!

Birthday Weekend

It started with watermelon margaritas...PERFECTION






GiGi reading to Garrett at the end of the night




Me and mom

Mom, Dad and me (missing Preston)

Garrett killing some cupcakes

Playing with stuff in the garage :-) Who needs toys?

I love that I still get birthday napkins. Yummy cupcakes!

Josh and me

These pictures were all taken at my parents house for my birthday celebration. I need to back it up a few days though. I just have trouble loading pictures, so they came first this time :-)

I don't have any pictures, but my celebrations started on Saturday. We started by taking Garrett to see his first movie, Cars 2. He did SO GOOD. He lasted a little over an hour and he was just precious. He enjoyed it, but we left early. We went to Chick-Fil-A and had some lunch and then took him to SuSu's house. SuSu is Josh's mom and Garrett was lucky enough to spend the night with her so that we could have a date night and celebrate my birthday together. SuSu had a big cupcake waiting for us and Garrett sang Happy Birthday to me. So So Sweet. He sang it a lot that weekend. We dropped Garrett off and he had a blast.

Josh and I went to see another movie, The Hangover 2. It was awesome. We laughed and laughed. It was nice to have any concerns and just enjoy ourselves. We needed to do it more often (I'm sure our parents won't mind). We went to CPW's for dinner. The service was terrible! The food was AMAZING! When we were getting to the end of our dinner a couple came in and was put at a table behind ours. The tables were very close though. What I'm trying to get at is that I could hear everything they were talking about! I am a very nosy person (I will be the first to admit it) and love making up stories of what people are doing etc. Well I didn't have to make up a thing. These two were on a first date and they met online! He was a horrible date and I felt sorry for the girl. He talked about his girlfriend and the fact that he sweats a lot within the first five minutes. It was awesome! I wish we could have found out what happened, but we had to go! Thank you SuSu!!!!

Sunday afternoon we went to the pool for the first time this year with Garrett. I will post about that later. He was a little fish and just did so well!!! I was so proud!

Sunday evening we went to my parents house and had dinner. When we drove up there were balloons on the mailbox! Ha! My mom has always celebrates huge! I love it. My grandmother and Uncle were able to come down and celebrate too. So mom and dad made watermelon margaritas and they were SO YUMMY! We also had cupcakes, steak, and rolls! I love food, so I was super excited. We had a grand time.

To say I felt blessed is an understatement! It was just wonderful.

The Big Green Truck

I got a phone call from Daycare on Tuesday of this week. If you have a child in daycare your heart sinks EVERY TIME you see their number pop up. It is usually a phone call about your child being sick. I knew it couldn't be sickness related (I thought anyway), so my next thought was "uh oh what has he done?"

Who knew they were calling with EXCITING NEWS!!! It was his main teacher and she said I just want you to know he pooped in the potty today!! I started crying, not full on tears but just a tear or two. To say I was proud was an understatement! I asked her to put him on the phone and he said "HEY MOMMY" in his sweetest little voice. He melted my heart from the word HEY! I asked him if he pooped in the potty and he said Yes! Then he said "BIG GREEN TRUCK MOMMY, BIG GREEN TRUCK" I said yes buddy we will get your big green truck today!

Last week Garrett and I had a date night and we went to Barnes and Nobles. When walking down to the kids books they have about a million toys for kids his age to see on the way back. Brilliant on their part. Next time we will take the long way to get to the kids books. Garrett spotted a big green truck and fell in LOVE with it! I came up with a plan that we would get this truck IF he pooped in the potty. Well it only took a week, but he pooped in the potty!

He then pooped again that same night! We are on a roll!!!!!!!

BUT...he hasn't pooped since then. So now we have to consider taking it away and it makes me so sad to have to do that. I really hope that he will start pooping again. I will give him a few more days.

We are going to also consider going to the dollar store to get some random goodies for rewards when he will go poop in the potty. Ahhh being a parent sure isn't easy and fun all the time, but so worth it!