Sprinkler Fun on Memorial Day!

Happy Day After Memorial Day!!!!

Ok, so I have about a bajillion things I am supposed to be doing right now, but I wanted to drop in and say a quick hello and show you some cute pictures. :) We had a great Memorial Day weekend complete with spending time with family, friends and sprinklers! I only brought my camera out during the sprinkler portion of our weekend, so that is all you have to look at today. Luckily my kid is cute enough that you don't NEED anything else in the blog post! :)

Ok, I am sorry to interrupt the cuteness, especially since we JUST got started, but does anyone remember the show Freakazoid that played on cartoon network back in the day? (Click the link. It is the intro song to the show.) I KNOW my Dad and my siblings will remember it, but does anyone outside of my crazy-go-nuts-family remember this show? Regardless, the picture above reminds me so much of the crazy looking run that Freakazoid does. And for those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, or just in case you need a refresher, watch this six second video.

Doesn't Zachariah look like he is doing that exact thing??

Oh man. I about died laughing when I looked at these pictures! Even if he was just trying to block the water from hitting his face, my son is doing the Freakazoid run! It serious cracks. me. up.

Ok. I'm over it now. Back to the cuteness.

And seriously. You don't get ANY cuter than this. Gah. He melts me. I just want to go wake him up from his nap and kiss his cute little face right now!

But I treasure my nap times, so I wont go do that.

Daddy played too! :)

Ahhh! There it is again! Bahahaha!

Sorry.

Anyway, I don't think its hard to tell that Zachariah loves playing in the sprinkler. And once it stops raining down here I am sure we will be setting up our little pool for him to play in too!

But for now the sprinkler does just fine for this little Freakazoid. I mean... boy.

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend!! :)

Mothers Day

I am afraid I don't have a super sweet/sentimental belated mothers day post for you to read today. And I don't even have a ton of cute pictures ready to show you of me and Zachariah. But I do have two pictures of us that were taken yesterday... which is actually a pretty big deal when you take in consideration Z's camera phobia. :)

Even though being a mommy is more challenging than I ever could have imagined, it is pretty much the most awesome thing ever. Zachariah has made me one heck of a happy Mom for the past 2.5 years and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

I hope all of you Mom's had a great Mothers Day! :)

Easter Fun

I am trying to get a sneak peek together from a photo shoot I did last week, so while I am getting that ready, I wanted to share with you a few pictures from our Easter weekend. We went to Daniel's parents house for lunch and an egg hunt Sunday afternoon. And let me just say that Zachariah really got into egg hunting this year and he scored some serious loot. The only thing that could have made it better was if Zachariah had actually cooperated with our family picture.

But he did not have time for that. :)

Without further adieu... here are a few pictures from our lovely day.

I hope everyone had a great Easter! :)

Valentines Day Recap

We started a new Valentines Day tradition. Its a yummy one. Its a sinful one. But it is going to be my favorite tradition of all times.



Chocolate covered strawberries. Aka: heaven in your mouth. This is one of my favorite things about Valentines Day.




Well, that and my pretty flowers. :)


Enough about me. Lets move onto the real reason for this post.



Zachariah received two valentine cards in the mail. One from Daniel's grandparents (Opa and Grandma Pat) and one from my grandmother (Grandma Howell). This made Zachariah's day. He was very excited about the fact that he got letters!




My grandmother included a picture in her letter. It was a picture of a salamander that used to be a "pet" at my grandparents mountain property. As random as a picture of a salamander may seem, it was one of the cutest things ever. My grandma (Grandma Sweet Pea is what the great grand kids call her) and Zachariah have an inside joke about salamanders. Its adorable. And so she mailed a picture of one for him. And he carries it around everywhere.




Daniel's grandparents didn't disappoint either. Inside the card was some nice green money! And what did Zachariah do with the cash?



He threw it into the air and repeatedly said, "I got five dollars!". Crazy kid.


So a big thanks goes out to Grandpa Pat (and Opa) and Grandma Sweet Pea! You all made his day very special. :)




And I will allow you to have one more glance at the chocolate covered fruit.

You are welcome.



I hope everyone had a fabulous Valentines Day! And please share your Valentines traditions. I might want to steal them. :)

Christmas Gifts

I know its a month after the fact, but Zachariah was super pumped about his Christmas gifts this year. I am going to highlight his favorites. And then later I am going to highlight my favorites! Because, lets be honest, parents enjoy some of the toys just as much as the kids do.




Here is the toy that he played with for three straight days. He LOVES trains. And he was very excited to get his first train set (thanks to my grandparents). Eventually we hope to move up to a Thomas train set, but this has been a good introductory one. And he loves that he can rearrange the animals, trees and signs whenever he pleases. The long and short of it is this: While this train set wouldn't be good for an older child, it has been perfect for my two year old. :)





Next up, the mega blocks. This is one of the gifts that I tried to hide for a few days after he opened it. I had to wait until I was in the mood for blocks to take over my house. Well, that mood never came, but once the newness of all of his other toys wore off I brought this out. And boy am I glad I did. These blocks keeps Zachariah entertained like nothing else. He LOVES to build. He especially loves to build with Daddy. They make some awesome robots together. These blocks get two thumbs up from everyone in the house. They are great! (Many thanks go out to Mimi and Poppie for the blocks!)





Now onto the horses. I'm not gonna lie... I am not a huge fan of these horses. Something about their faces just give me the creeps. But Zachariah loves them. He calls them by name every single time he plays with them. (Left to right: Cocoa, Gandalf, Brownie) Nana and Pops have a couple toy horses at their house and he loved playing with them, so they got him a few of his own! He is forever grateful. Thanks Nana and Pops!





Remember Zachariah's obsession with The Backyardigans? Well, his Aunt Amanda (my sister) got him Pablo (the penguin on the right) for his birthday. Much to his excitement, he was able to add Tyrone and Austin to his his collection last month!


I will be back later this week for another Christmas gift post. I cant wait to show you my favorites! :)

Tip Top

Due to the whole holiday thing, we have been crazy busy around here. But I wanted to stop in and say a quick hello and make sure I didn't lose any of my readers. I mean, I only have a handful of people that read about my exciting life, so losing even one of you would be pretty detrimental.

I didn't lose any of you did I?

*chirp*

*chirp*



Anyway. Later I will explain about our Christmas festivities and all of the loot that Zachariah ended up with, but for now I want to show you my favorite stocking stuffer ever.


Meet Tip Top. Well, that is what the Ty company named him. Zachariah calls him "New Iraffe". Regardless, this adorable little giraffe was in Zachariah's stocking Christmas morning and I love love love him! Right now he lives in the play room and living room, but I am hoping that Zachariah will allow him into his bedroom sometime soon.


I hope everyone had a great Christmas!!

From Our Family To Yours

Merry Christmas everyone!

Traditions

Zachariah is just now at the age where he can "get into" Christmas. He is very excited about Christmas trees, ornaments, decorations, presents, "no-fakes" (snow flakes) and Christmas lights. He is loving this whole Christmas thing so far!

We started a new tradition this year, and I hope that we will keep it around for a while. As Zachariah gets older it will get more fun for him, but I think he had a fair amount of fun this year. Especially considering his lack of nap and uber amount of crankiness. (I will spare you the details)

Wanna know what we did??


We painted Christmas cookies! It was super fun and A LOT easier to clean up than sprinkles.



In case you are interested in the icing/glaze recipe...

Stir together 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon corn syrup, 2 tablespoons water, and a splash {1/2 teaspoon, maybe} of almond extract, or whatever flavoring you desire. Divide the mixture into smaller containers and stir in 2-3 drops of food coloring per container making each a different color.








The best part about painting cookies is being able to eat them!




These are the finished cookies! Only two of Zachariah's cookies actually made it to the "finished plate" alive. The rest were a little decapitated...


Can you tell that he favored the color green? I think this holiday tradition gets two sugary thumbs up from our little toddler. :)


Happy Christmas Eve Eve everyone!

A Few More...

Here are some more train pictures! Click here if you missed the first set of adorable pictures. :)






Do you remember Mr. Giraffe Blanket? Zachariah has actually named him ( story on that coming later), so I guess my name is null and void. Regardless of the blankets name, Zachariah is still as attached to that thing.


That being said, it did not surprise me when Zachariah decided to show off his train set to his giraffe blanket. He did this for at least five minutes and when he was done he just sat the blanket down in front of the train as he went about his business. It was absolutely adorable.




He has also decided to show off his train to his nut cracker.

Yeah. I may have the cutest kid ever.

Choo-Choo!

I am itching to watch some Gilmore Girls Episodes while Zachariah is still napping, so I am going to make this post kind of short. I am sure another train post will appear on my blog in a few days, but for now I wanted to show you some pictures of our most favorite Christmas decoration!


Once you look past the wimpy artificial tree, you will see our awesome train set. Complete with snow and a village! We have some extremely thoughtful friends, and they happened to give us EVERYTHING you see under the tree. We were pretty stoked.




Zachariah's favorite thing to do is press the yellow buttons. Although all of the buttons get a pretty good work out, his two favorites are the whistle and "all aboard".




Seriously. This kid could sit here and watch the train all. day. long. And he practically does. Well, not all DAY, but most of the morning is spent playing with the train. He just loves it!!!








And here is Zachariah's favorite part of the village set. Isn't it adorable?? He sits on the floor and says "tigga tee house?" over and over. Gah! I could just eat that child up.





The older Zachariah gets, the more fun we have at Christmas! I love it!

Our Thanksgiving

Whew! The past four days have been insanely busy. Its been a good busy, but busy nonetheless. Wanna know what we did? Good, cause I have some pictures to go along with my babblings. :)


We started our Thanksgiving morning on the couch watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,


then we went to Mimi and Poppie's for lunch and played all afternoon in the backyard.


Daniel and I got a picture together, which happens about twice a year. So this was an added bonus to our week/weekend!


Then we successfully got a group picture with Daniel's family,


and a couple days later we almost got a successful picture with the my family...


and then, as soon as the picture was taken, my son ran off.


We got to spend time with most of my cousins on my mom's side of the family,


and Zachariah met his adorable second cousin (or something like that).


We got to spend time with my Auntie Jan (who we adore),


and Zachariah took a ride in the golf cart with Pops...

Whew! I told you we were busy. But a good kind of busy. Throw in a couple of photoshoots, me making my first pumpkin pie, deviled eggs, broccoli casserole, swirled cream cheese pumpkin bars and that concludes our weekend! We had so much fun spending time with our family and eating the most delicious food on the face of the planet! Seriously. It was such a great weekend.


What did you and your family do for Thanksgiving?