Happiness is...

The power cord to my laptop was mysteriously broken last weekend (some might say I was careless in leaving it around in places it should not have been...), so I've been without my laptop all week. The new one arrived this afternoon. Hallelujah! I still need to catch up on Thomas' birthday and his party, but not tonight. In the meantime, I thought I'd drop off this cute smile:


Parker loves to swing! He thinks it's hilarious and wonderful. And speaking of wonderful, isn't it great how much your children love you? They look at you like you must have been the one to hang the moon. It's one of my favorite parts of motherhood...how my children look when they smile at me.


More pics to come soon... I promise!

Happy birthday Thomas!

More to come later, but while I have a moment I just wanted to say I cannot believe that Thomas is three years old today!

Hopefully you can click on this and see it bigger, but I thought it was neat to see his progression over the past three years. For the first two years I have a picture for every month (except 19 months...when I was newly pregnant with Parker and apparently forgot), and then I started doing them every other month with the puppy (but forgot at Christmastime). Even so, it's fun.

Much more to come later when I can find more time.

Happy birthday Thomas!

Brothers and smiles

The other day I had the boys out enjoying the beautiful sunshine. Thomas was riding the Jeep around the house and I was hanging out in back with Parker. I stepped about
15 feet away from Parker (he was in his push car) to pull a weed, and when Thomas came back around the house in the Jeep he couldn't see me, just Parker. He went over to Parker and said: "Ooooh buddy. Did Mommy leave you all alone? Don't worry, it's okay. We'll find her." It was the sweetest thing:


And then he saw me:


Lately I tend to post many more pictures of Thomas than Parker, so here's an attempt to make up for that a little bit. I'll let his smiles speak instead of captions....










It's always true that you can spend all the money you want on all the toys and gadgets for children, but many times, all they really want are the things you've had around the house since long before babies were even a thought in your mind. Parker loves laundry baskets.


He's a ham. Always wants to go somewhere, preferably the places he shouldn't be. In fact, at the moment I need to go so I can get him out the kitchen!

Standing up tall

About two weeks ago, Parker started pulling himself up to a standing position in his crib. He is becoming quite a pro at it! We need to lower his crib this weekend to the lowest level before he leaps out. Sometimes he looks like he just might. Let's hope not. But he sure is proud of himself!


Standing tall and proud! (Ignore the missing doorknob on the closet...oops!)


He's such a cutie, isn't he? :) And no, I'm not biased.

Easter Sunday

After church last Sunday, we headed to Columbia for lunch with Trey's side of the family. After our yummy lunch, Thomas set out on an Easter egg hunt (he was a pro after all his practice hunts!).


He found lots of eggs...


Some had money. And he's so smart, he quickly (without instruction) gave it to his Mommy ... :-)


He sometimes needed a little coaching from his cousin, Mary Reames...


He did pretty well!




Then it was time to relax on the swing with Nana and check out those eggs (eat some jelly beans!):


Parker found many laps willing to hold him...


And he was quite intrigued by the metallic eggs since he could see himself in them:


Such a beautiful day!


Not sure why Thomas was riding a broom (he was being a little "witchy"!), but he needed a little instruction on how to do it properly...




Then Thomas played with a cool bubble gun (actually, there were two!). He thought they were quite neat:


His Aunt Mary Sue showed him how to use it just right...






It was a beautiful day and it's always wonderful and perfect to spend days like Easter with family! Easter is a celebration of life, and there certainly was much joy and livelihood to our Easter day! Thanks to all!

Parker the motorboat?

I've been quite a bit under the weather this week, and utterly thankful that my Mom has retired so she was able to take Thomas for a day. It was much easier to suffer through a high fever and misery with only Parker (and poor Trey is on the road and came down with it too). Thank you Mom for rescuing me (again!). And Thomas completely enjoyed his time catching frogs, playing in the dirt and wearing his new earplugs to ride the tractor with Papa (even into a tree).

I have many pictures to post, but am busy preparing for Thomas' upcoming birthday. So I thought I'd share this quick video from Easter that makes me smile (even when I'm really sick!).

Happy Easter!

What's the saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket?


Though maybe it works okay for Thomas. :)

I had grand ideas of a great family picture on Easter. It didn't happen. I couldn't even manage to get a decent picture of the boys. And then, to top it all off, little more than a week before Thomas' third birthday, our camera is having serious problems (it might be dead). So this is this just about sums up my attempt to get a good picture of the boys on Easter morning:

Monkey see, monkey do... Thomas, the pro at not cooperating with pictures, is making his brother do the same. And Mom, this was before we finally convinced him to wear the crab sweater... no pictures in that (he was far too enamored with his new tie: "What is this? It has cars and trucks on it?" He didn't want to cover it up with his sweater vest. Silly boy.).

This is the best of the few attempts. No kidding, I even have a picture of Parker spitting up on Thomas. It was a fun attempt this morning, to say the least.


I have many more pictures to share from our eventful Easter day, but they will have to wait. But we do hope everyone had a joyous Easter!