What a whirlwind weekend!

We had a weekend filled with family, friends, food, and fun!  Unfortunately, I didn't get too many pictures of our events.  :(  Gammi, Aunt Karen, and Uncle Adam all came into town for a visit this weekend, and I think Grayson had the most fun of anyone!  He LOVED all of the attention! 

Don't they look JUST ALIKE?!?!?!

On Friday, we headed to the BBQ Fest, and it was FREEZING.  Congratulations to our friends, The Smokemasters, though!  They got 12th Place for ribs!  WOOHOO!  We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out at home and enjoying spending time together.  It was so much fun!

Once everyone left on Sunday afternoon and Grayson was down for his nap, David and I got busy finishing up getting the house ready for selling.  We needed to do some landscaping and maintenance outside, including planting flowers and cleaning up the flowerbeds.  Because we have done so many projects together in the last year, David and I have learned to work really well together--we were done with everything in less than an hour!  We were more than pleased with the outcome:

Speaking of our house, we hired a lady to come clean it this week.  We are having an Open House on Sunday, and we thought it would be extremely helpful for someone to come and do everything that needs to be done to make it ready to show.  I used to make fun of people that felt like they had to clean their house before the cleaning lady came, but, not anymore!  Every time I look around our house, I see a new sport that I feel lke I need to clean so that she doesn't have to!  I feel bad having someone else having to clean up our dirt!  HA!  I have to remind myself more often than not that we are paying her to clean our dirt, so it's okay!  :)

And, yesterday, things became official:

We couldn't be more pleased with how our house turned out.  It feels completely empty to me (it doesn't have all our stuff sitting around like I'm used to!), but I think it looks perfect for a home that is for sale.  What do you think?  (These are just a few of the pictures...)

I cannot believe that we are actually selling our house!  David and I have had this goal since before we got married, and we have finally reached it!  We are so ready to move on to the next step in our lives: moving into our dream home!!! 

As always, thanks for checking in on us!  We love you all!

Blogger is so frustrating!!!

I was totally bummed on Friday when I found out the Blogger had been down. All the posts from Thursday had been deleted, including the 9 month posts!
:( Unfortunately, only one of my posts has been restored...so, I will have to retype Grayson's 9 month post and put it back up here. Bummer!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

9 months!

I absolutely cannot believe that I am about to type the fact that our little boy is 9 months old!! Where in the world has the time gone?????!!!!???!!!

Grayson,

The past 9 months have been amazing, and we would not trade them for the world. We have made it through sleepless nights, feeling icky, throwing up, learning to crawl, bumps and bruises, eating solids, and so much more! You are definitely not a baby anymore, and are growing up into the sweetest little boy. Your daddy and I love you so much!



At 9 months:

You wear size 4 diapers, and anywhere from 9-18 month clothes.  You have a big head, just like your daddy.  So......sometimes getting dressed and undressed is kind of hard:

You LOVE to eat! You take anywhere from 4-5 bottles and eat 2-3 servings of baby food and oatmeal each day. You also love to eat off of Mommy and Daddy's plate. Your favorites are french fries, cheerios, chicken, mac and cheese, rolls/breadsticks, noodles, mashed potatoes, and ice cream. You also really like your teething cookies, NumNums, yogurt, fruit, and any orange vegetables. Face it...you love to eat like your MaMa! :)

You feed yourself you own bottle, but you also love to drink from a cup. You don't love sippy cups; you prefer drinking from a big boy cup or a straw. You mostly drink water, but you also really like orange gatorade.

You are ON THE GO! You don't like to sit still at all. You love to crawl all around the house, and pull yourself up on everything! You just love to explore....EVERYWHERE!  You wait until Mommy and Daddy move the gate blocking you from the kitchen, and then you speed over to the dog food to bang on the container and eat the food.  It's like you sit and watch until the gate is moved so you can get in there!  Sometimes, you even try to move the gate.  You are such a little stinker!  :)

You have learned to scoot along furniture, and can stand up on your own for about 2 seconds. :) The other night, Daddy snapped this picture of you waiting on Mommy to get home:

 

The dogs are your new best friends.  You love to play with them, climb on top of them, and laugh at them.  Cordi isn't so sure of your intentions, but Bailey loves playing with you!

You like to go places with Mommy and Daddy, especially when you can people watch. You only like to sit in the cart backwards so you can see where you are going...and you alway hold on for dear life! :)  One of your favorite places to go is the mall because there are just so many people there!  And, there is a super fun helicopter ride:

Your favorite toys are the ones you can bang together: the pot and wooden spoon, your blocks, and your basketballs. You love to bang your piano, and are starting to wheel yourself around on your "Push-N-Go." You also like to play with doors (open, shut, and slam them), and with the door stoppers (you crack up at the sound they make).

You have 4 teeth now, and a 5th is on the way!  You have 3 on the bottom, 1 on the top, and another one is almost broken through on the top.  As a result, you drool like crazy.  You always have to have a bib on...I think you must go through about 10 bibs a day!  And, you think it's really funny to pull off your bib, hold it up in the air, and then drop it.  :)

You are an awesome sleeper.  You go to bed around 8:00pm each night (sometimes earlier), and usually wake up around 6:00am.  When you wake up, you always go to the side of your bed closest to the door, stand up, bang the side of your crib, and scream at the top of your lungs to let us know that your awake. 

You take your baths in the tub like a big boy (no more ducky tub--it's now one of your toys!), and you love water!  We can't wait to take you swimming this summer!  You sit and play with all of your toys, and splash and splash.

You are stubborn, just like your MaMa.  You don't like to get your diaper or you clothes changed, and when you decide to do something, you want to do it, no matter what!  You have learned to throw a fit--and if we don't pay attention to you, you quickly get over it, and move on.  You laugh at us when we tell you "No," and you are very independent.

You still don't watch much TV, but you love to watch movies in the truck.  Your favorite is still Elmo, although Blue's Clues gets your attention sometimes.  You also really like Toy Story.  You don't like riding in Mommy's car very much because there's no movies to watch!  Instead, you like to kick the mirror and try to get out of your carseat....which you have been almost successful at.  You can get your arm out of your restraint!  Houdini!

No matter how big you get, though, you still love to cuddle with Mommy and Daddy.  We cherish those quiet moments when you are perfectly content sitting on our lap.  I especially look forward to each night when we cuddle before you go to bed.  You are just growing too fast!  Please slow down!! :)

We love you so much, Grayson, and are so looking forward to the years to come.  You are such a happy and loving little boy.  Everywhere we go, we notice people turning to look at you, smile at you, and come over and talk to you.  You love the attention so much!  We thank God for blessing us with you every day.

You are the best gift we have ever been given! 

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

9 months, Part 2

This month's pictures were super hard to take!  Grayson just wanted to climb and play instead of sit for a picture!  Here are some outtakes:

Mother's Day weekend

My first Mother's Day has come and gone.  It was a GREAT weekend, and I am so so so so blessed with a wonderful husband and an amazing little boy.

On Saturday, we headed up to Dickson for Old Timer's Day.  David hadn't been in a long time, and we thought it would be a great family weekend.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great, but we still had a wonderful time.  We arrived at Gammi and Nonnie's house around 8:30am, and had a delicious breakfast.  Then we headed to the parade. It was the first time Grayson had even been to a parade!  The noises and sirens didn't seem to bother him a bit.  In fact, he almost fell asleep!  :)

We walked around the festival after the parade was over and stuffed our faces with junk food: corn dogs, kettle corn, and cotton candy!  :)  It started raining on and off, so we decided to head back to Gammi and Nonnie's for a bit.  It was a great time.

Before we left to head back home, we noticed that Grayson felt rather warm.  We had to make a stop at my parents' house in Humboldt, and, while we were there, we took his temperature. It was 102!  He slept most of the way home, but didn't sleep well at all on Saturday night.  (He seemed better on Sunday, but then got puny again that afternoon.  We ended up taking him to the doctor on Monday, and he was diagnosed as having a virus--which means there's no medication or anything that can make him feel better...just rest and loving. He's back at school this morning, though, and feeling much better--thank goodness!)

On Sunday morning, I got 3 Mother's Day cards!! :)  They were the sweetest cards, and, again, I cried. I also got the most GORGEOUS ring from Grayson:

We spent the rest of Mother's Day working on the house...and I even got a nap!  :)  Overall, it was another wonderful weekend!

Thanks for checking in on us!  We love you all!

Life as we know it...

It's almost 3:00am, and I can't sleep.  So, I figured there wasn't a better time to update the ol' blog than now! :)  I can't believe it's been a week since my last post!! That just goes to show you, I guess, how insane our life has been lately.

After David found that someone had tried to steal his truck, we immediately called our realtor.  I know those two things seem completely unrelated, but we just had to do something.  We were both so upset about what had happened, and we needed a resolution of some kind, somehow.  Anyway, we met with Robin, and, thankfully, she LOVED our house.  She said it looked like a little dollhouse!  :)  She also really noticed all the work that we have done throughout, including the painting, remodeling, flooring, and other little things.  Needless to say, David and I were just THRILLED after talking with her.  She did tell us, though, that we needed to go ahead and start boxing things up. Basically....our house needs to look like a model home before it goes on the market (on May 15!!).

David and I got started right away:

These boxes are just from our kitchen!!

We spent the majority of 3 days packing, cleaning, painting, and clearing out.  It felt like we must have made about 10 trips to our storage unit and thrown out a ton of stuff.  We painted 2 rooms, rearranged furniture, and organized, organized, organized.  It's starting to feel like a brand-new home! :)  

The house will be painted this week, and we will do the rest of the landscaping next weekend.  We are going to spend Mother's Day finishing organizing and clearing out the last few closets and then just doing some last little hard-core cleaning that needs to be done before the For Sale sign goes in the yard.  We are sooooooooooooooooooo excited for that day! 

We also met with a mortgage lady this week to talk about our options with buying and building.  We ended up getting some pretty great news, and a plan for what we need to be doing while our house is on the marker to best prepare us for getting into the house of our dreams.  It's hard to believe that everything is finally starting to come together, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of getting out of this house!!  :)

In other news:

Grayson is over his ear infections, and is back to his old self.  In fact, he is probably nuttier than ever!  He continues to be into everything...he climbs on the table, onto the fireplace, crawls all over the floor, and just generally likes to cause trouble.  He thinks it's hilarious to flip over and crawl away whenever we are changing his diaper, and he tries to race us into the kitchen when he knows we are about to put the baby gate up.  He laughs ALL THE TIME, and is really starting to do things to get our attention.  And, he has learned a new trick: he can climb out of his Bumbo seat!  I am not sure how he does it with those chubby little legs, but he manages it somehow.  

We are waiting as long as we can until we take him for his first haircut, but he is starting to need one pretty badly.  He came home from school on Thursday with a mohawk:

Have I mentioned how much we love Grayson's school?  :)  His teachers are sooooo wonderful, and I can really tell how much they love him.  They tell us all the time what a "cool kid" he is, how much fun he is, and how much they enjoy having him in their class.  On Friday, Grayson came home with my first Mother's Day card:

(Click on the picture to see what it says....)

I cried.  :)

All in all, it's been a wonderful several days, and we are so pleased with the progress we have made on the house.  Grayson has been happy as he can be, despite a few bumps and bruises from falling down and running into things.  :)  We are looking forward to a wonderful weekend!  I promise to be better about updating--including posting pictures from our family trip to Dickson's Old Timers' Day, and my first Mother's Day.  As always, thanks for checking in with us!  We love you all!

Our silly little boy