Our Day

The weather down here has been putrid. Today has been the coolest day we have had in a while, and the high was 97 degrees. Its been in the 100's the past few days though.

So, unless we are swimming, Zachariah and I try to stay indoors. You know, so we don't die of heat exhaustion. I don't even walk to the mailbox in fear of drenching my clothes with sweat. *shudder*

Yesterday, in a desperate attempt to not perspire, we went to IS KIDS. WWhich is a children's interactive museum here in town. We stayed there for about an hour and a half... and Zachariah kept me busy! He was everywhere, making sure he played with every single thing they had.

Don't fret. I took some pictures. (The pictures were taken with my phone. Please excuse the bad quality.)


We started out playing with some dinosaurs (and zoo animals. but the Dino's devoured them pretty quickly).
Then we played with some train tracks and random farm animals.

Next came some music. He loved banging the sticks onto the tin trashcans and other containers they had around this area. Gave me a headache though. It was LOUD!

We went grocery shopping... and he LOVED this. He filled up his basket with every single banana they had, then put a bell pepper and carrot in there. LOL

We stopped briefly to smell the flowers. That lasted all of 5 seconds, then it was off to another station.
Onto our favorite part. Zachariah got to be the captain of a ship! He stayed up here for a while. I thought at one point he was turning the wheel so much it was going to fall off. But we were good. No pirate ships were broken during our stay. (And just as a side note... they also have dress up clothes for just about every station... but Z was NOT interested in that. I tried to put a pirate hat on him. He gave me a dirty look.)
Then he almost threw himself overboard while looking at all the "ishes" on the wallpaper.
The pirate ship had a lower deck and Z enjoyed playing peek-a-boo under there. :)

Next we drew on a big magna-doodle,
played with some magnets,

took a few guitar lessons,
hugged a wild Zebra,
chilled with some penguins,
and defeated a deadly snake (good thing too, cause it was after me)!

Whew! Told you he stayed busy. And he even ignored the "reading in the castle" station, and the coloring station. I guess those were too low key for him.

If you live in this area, I do recommend giving IS KIDS a try. Its pretty fun and they have stuff there for ages 1-12. Its a nice air conditioned place to let your kid have some fun. :)

ish

Meet Nemo. He is one of our many Pixar stuffed animals. We have one toy for each Pixar movie that has ever been released (mostly plush, but Mr. Incredible is more of an action figure).

Except I just lied. We DID have one toy for every Pixar movie... until Ratatouille came out. Then we fell behind. But we will rectify that situation sometime in the near future. Diapers are a little higher on the priority list these days.

Anyway. The Pixar toys are displayed on the book shelf in Zachariah's room. He has had this fascination with Nemo for a while now, and its just plain adorable. He has been on an underwater kick here recently, and so he loves all things "ish" (fish) and "tuh-tuh" (turtles). This phase may pass soon, but in the meantime I enjoy watching him give hugs and kisses to Nemo. :)




Stop the cuteness! It's just too much to handle!

Okay fine. I will show you one more. But then I have to stop. Because you will seriously go into a state of shock from all the cuteness you have seen on just this one blog post.


Happy Tuesday everyone. :)

A Little Late

Pardon my tardiness on this Father's Day post, but we were SUPER busy this weekend. We had lots of fun visiting with both sides of our families, but come Sunday evening, we were worn out! Zachariah even skipped his nap due to all the fun he was having at Mimi and Poppie's house! (see above picture)


Just for fun, here are some comparison pictures of my hubby/best daddy ever. :)
Last year on Father's Day...
And this year!
Take note of Daniel's tie. Z made it for him for Fathers Day and Daniel wore it to church that morning. How cute is that? :)

Happy Belated Father's Day to all you daddy's out there!
Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Oh boy...

I have a problem. I don't delete pictures. Ever. The type of pictures that are under exposed or too blurry to even tell what is in the image? Yeah, I keep those. I don't know why. But I have a problem with deleting. Its just SO permanent.

Daniel has been asking (aka: nagging) me to go through my pictures and delete the crap ones to free up some space. I have thousands of pictures on here of Zachariah alone. They are all organized. Every picture I took within his first year I organized in separate folders by the week. Once he turned a year old I started doing it by the month. So there are a TON of folders and a TON of pictures on this computer. I can probably delete hundreds upon hundreds that are either just horrible pictures or copies of pictures.

All that to say, I sat down to do that a little bit ago. Instead of deleting, I found myself gazing at Zachariah's baby pictures. I started going through, week by week. Just staring. Letting the memories take over.

I started remembering when my baby was one day old. Only a freaking day old! He was so tiny!
Then came the three week old pictures. Oh how I loved this picture!

Four months old...Six months old...
Seven months... GAH! He is so cute!!!!

And then all of a sudden, THIS happened:
Seriously. When did he leave the newborn stage and become a full fledged toddler? This is all a bit overwhelming.

*sigh*

I think I want another one.

Keep in mind that in about ten min. my son will wake up from his nap and shake this feeling right out of me. But for now, during the silence of nap time... I want another one.

Swimming Lessons

Last week I took Zachariah to swimming lessons. I know you all may have some questions, so I am going to try my best and answer them. One at a time now. Don't get too hasty.

Okay, here I go...

Who taught swim lessons? My oh-so-patient-friend Emily. I would not have trusted anyone else to teach Z at this age. She has four daughters, and she has taught all of them how to swim by the age of 2. (the fourth is still learning… but I think she will have it down by her 2nd bday.) Pretty impressive if you ask me.

Did Zachariah cry? Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. But its not like he hates the water. He actually LOVES playing in a pool. I cant think of anything else he enjoys more in the summer time. Besides ice cream. He may enjoy that a bit more. But besides ice cream, he enjoys nothing more than splashing in a pool.

How did you feel about him crying? I am not going to lie, it did find it a bit annoying. There were absolutely NO tears. He was just being a butt so I just sat there and did one of two things. 1) reassured him that I was staying in the pool and not going to leave him, or 2) laugh. Sometimes you just gotta laugh at how ridiculous your child is acting.

Will you tell me a quick story? It would be my pleasure!

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who would be scream his head off during swimming lessons. His teacher, Emily, would count to three and put his head underwater. He would miraculously stop screaming (in order to hold his breath) RIGHT before he went under. Not a second sooner. He would come up, be okay with it all, then realize I wasn’t holding him. Then more screaming ensued. It cracked me up. The end.

Can he swim like a little fishy? Not yet. But we are getting closer! He gets better every time we go swimming.

What all did he learn? I did not expect Zachariah to be jumping off the diving board by the end of the week. He is just too young to understand/learn some of the concepts of swimming. He has learned the most basic and important things… how to kick and hold his breath. He still needs to work on doing those at the same time though. When he holds his breath to go under, he crosses his ankles. I have no idea why, but he does, and it makes me laugh. I have such a coordinated child. Needless to say, we will be working on that this summer. :)

Do you have pictures to document this occasion? Of course! I have been told by a certain swim teacher that she should not appear on the Internet in her swimsuit. So I have appropriately cropped her out. :)


The first day wore. him. out! As soon as we got home he plopped on the couch and vegged out with Elmo for a while. Cute little booger.

Here he is... crying and kicking his flippered feet. Despite his tears, he usually did what Emily told him to do.


Okay, here is what I was talking about. Here she was counting to three. He is still doing his screaming/crying thing. And right when you think he is going to get a mouthful of water....


Bam! He closes his mouth.


Note the crossed ankles as his head is going under...


Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming
What do we do we swim, swim, swim
OH HO HO How I love to swim
When you WAAAAAANNTTT to swim you want to swim

Sorry. I got a little distracted. Darn you Dori.


And finished. Whew! That was exhausting.


I am so glad we ended up doing this. Because of the swimming lessons, Zachariah no longer has fear of water in his face, and he is on his way to becoming a cute little swimmer! And Emily, thank you for being so patient with my dramatic little man! You are fabulous. :)

A Messy Playroom is a Happy Playroom

I am a horrible housewife. (That statement is causing my mother to hang her head in dismay as she reads this) I am just not a tidy person. I am okay with living in a little bit of clutter. And I just do not have a bookoodle amount of time to clean my house.

If you come over, just ignore the fact that my house is NOT spick and span. And it wont get any better either. The more kids I have, the worse it will be. I can already feel it. Mom, you may just want to steer clear of this place all together in a few years. :)

Oddly enough, the playroom is the one room in the house that I HAVE to keep clean. My sanity depends on it. I don't know why, but if I walk by and see toys laying on the floor, I must pick them up. And if Z is playing, I clean up around him. I just don't like that room being messy.

Leave it to me to clean the one room that people don't even see when they come in our house. I am some kind of crazy.

Anyway. The other morning, as I walked down the hallway, I saw the playroom looking like this...
I about had a heart attack. It took everything that was in me to walk away from the room and go fix my son some breakfast. I would have to tend to that later. Waffles were calling.

After breakfast I immediately went into the playroom and cleaned. And since everything is pretty organized in there, it took all of two minuets to get it looking like this...
Whew. Much better. As you can tell, Zachariah was ALREADY in there starting to play. But I didn't care. I just needed it to be fresh and clean before he started making it more messy.

Is that weird? Am I alone in this act of insanity? Isn't the playroom supposed to stay messy? Shouldn't the four piles of dishes in the kitchen or the thick layer of dust in the living room be higher on my priority list?

Gah. I digress.

Due to errands and swimming lessons, we didn't have much time to make a mess of the room. But after Daddy came home from work, he and Zachariah did some damage.

Lets just say the play room gets cleaned up at least twice a day. Sometimes three. But I stop at three. I do have my limits, you know.

A messy playroom is a happy playroom. So long as the little boy in the playroom is happy, I am good to go. :)

Sick Day

My baby was sick yesterday. He had a temp of 103. Turns out it was no big deal... the fever apparently came from his throat. We got meds to nip it in the bud.

Regardless, he was sick. And if you can believe it, he is even MORE adorable when he is sick. I could just eat him up.

He and daddy ended the "sick day" by chillin out in front of the TV. Zachariah loves watching TV with his daddy. Who am I kidding... he loves doing anything with his daddy. Anyway. I snapped a pic. I thought it was cute.


I have a post about Z's swimming lessons coming in the next couple days. Until then, have a great weekend!

Another video

A friend posted this video on facebook today and I just cant stop watching it. I like it, I love it, I want some more of it. ( There's a little Tim McGraw for ya)

Seriously though. I think this is a fabulous video. It made me smile. And tear up. So I wanted to share it.



And for those who are wondering, I do hope to post something BESIDES a video next time I blog. :)

This Is Not A Joke

I really have no words for this. All I can say is when Daniel and I saw this commercial come on TV last, night our jaws hit the floor. We were speechless. Daniel immediately looked it up and posted a link on his facebook. And now I am sharing it with all of you.




Some of you may be getting this for Christmas. So watch out.

Update and Picture

Update on my brother...

His fever has not gone above 100 for the past couple days. So that is good. They have finally found a medicine that is working for him. BUT in order for him to get rid of the pneumonia completely, he has to stay in the hospital for 14 more days so he can get the meds through an IV. He also has an enlarged spleen. He is VERY bummed. And bored. And really wanting to get well so he can finish boot camp. My parents are going to see him this weekend though. So hopefully that will give him a little boost. Please keep him in your prayers.
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And now for a picture. While Daniel was teaching a Disciple Now for our friend's church, Z and I went over to my parents house to kill some time. The last good picture of my Dad (Pop's) and Zachariah that I have was back at Thanksgiving. So it was time to take another. And I thought it was pretty cute. :)


Hope everyone has a great Monday!

My Brother

This is my brother, Wesley. Even though he is only 16 months younger than me, I have always been his overprotective big sister. When we would go to youth retreats I would make sure I knew where he was at all times. He was shy, so if I saw him without his friends I would go and hang out with him or make him hang out with me and my friends. I am sure he found that really annoying, but there was no point in talking sense into me. I loved feeling like I was "taking care of him" while we were away from our parents.

About five weeks ago he left for basic training with the Air Force. I had this whole post I was going to write about it, but it made it way to real. And I didn't want to start crying about how much I missed my brother. So I didn't write the post.

Sunday he came down with the flu and pneumonia. The hope was to have him improving by now so he would still have the possibility of graduating with his group in four weeks. But I got a call this morning from my mom telling me that he has been hospitalized. The pneumonia has gotten worse and he has 104 degree fever.

Needless to say, its almost impossible for him to be able to catch up physically with his current platoon (I think that's what it is called). He may have to start over completely once he gets better... which would suck. To be over halfway done with boot camp and to have to start all over again... I cant even imagine the frustration that Wesley would be feeling.

I hate this for him. I feel so helpless. I want to be able to help take care of him. And I am just his overprotective sister. I can't imagine what its doing to my mom. I can tell you though, if things get worse my mom is probably going to be jumping on a plane to go see him.

All that to say, I need you to pray for my brother. Pray that he is healed and will recover quickly. And pray for my parents. As you can imagine, this is REALLY hard on them. Their son is suffering in a hospital somewhere in Texas and they can't be there to comfort and take care of him.


I love my brother to bits, and I just want him to get better.

Need Your Imput

I saw this super cool bath toy at Target today. Its a turtle shower that is designed to help babies/toddlers learn how to shower. By pushing the turtle's tummy, they control the flow of the water that comes out of the turtle's mouth.

Z hates when I dump water over his head to rinse the shampoo out, but he doesn't really give me an option seeing as how he refuses to lean his head back. So part of me thinks that this would be fabulous for him.


But before I try to convince Daniel that Zachariah "needs" this (hee hee), I am wondering if any of you have had any experience with this cute little turtle. Does anyone have any good or bad reviews? If you haven't tried it, do you think it will end up being a waste of ten bucks, or should I go for it?

Morning Walk

Zachariah woke up super early this morning (and by super early I mean he woke up at 7:15 instead of 9:00), so we went on a walk, in our PJ's, to eat up some time. I took some cute pics that I want to share with you, but first I must tell you about our dog.

I received a cute little puppy dog from Daniel on our very first Valentines Day. We had actually only been dating two months, and he went ALL OUT for that Valentines Day. He left stuff for me for three days leading up to Valentines. I got flowers at work, candy on my pillow at home, and a cute stuffed puppy dog in my car when I got out of class. That dog was promptly given the name, Baron Westminster Von Lichtenstein (long story). I have kept it ever since. I love that little puppy.
All that to say, that Zachariah went snooping in my closet and found said puppy dog. He apparently has adopted it as his own and will often carry it around with him EVERYWHERE. I have tried my darnedest to take it and hide it again so he wont ruin my puppy... but he ALWAYS finds it! This kid is good.

As we were heading out to stroll around the neighborhood, he grabbed "The Barron" and settled into the stroller. A little ways into our walk I decided to see if he would show the camera his affection for MY puppy dog.

When I asked him if he loved the puppy, this is what he did. Gave "The Baron" one of his infamous big hugs and grinned from ear to ear. How ADORABLE is that???

Then he promptly gave the puppy a kiss. Which I am a little bitter about. He hogs those kisses and gives them out to his stuffed animals just to taunt me. Seriously. He thinks its hilarious.

You may not be able to see it, but here he is making the dog sound (which is not a mere, "woof woof". It is a freaking realistic dog sound. Very impressive). He is actually making it bark at me. This kid makes me laugh out loud sometimes.


And here he let me know that he was done with the whole picture taking thing.
Stubborn kid.


Then he dropped the dog. And I didn't see. and my left front wheel rolled right over the little pup. Poor thing. It is the first dog I have ever hit, and I stop to take a picture instead of making sure he was okay. I am heartless.

But he is doing good. He cleaned up quite nicely. :)


Something tells me that with all the love Z gives this puppy, I am not getting him back any time soon. And as long as my pup keeps my kid this happy, I am totally fine with that. :)

Just thought you should know...

that my kid is adorable.


End of song. :)