Father's Day weekend...

We went to spend last weekend with my family in Lexington for Father's Day, and we had a cookout Saturday evening with my mom & dad, my brother and his family and my grandparents.  It's always a good time when we can all get together and we usually do some pretty good eatin'.  :)

 

Even though it was Father's Day weekend, we didn't give my Daddy the day off (that was for the next day, Sunday ;).  He grilled the most awesome ribs for us -- a 3-2-1 deal.  So those ribs cooked for a total of SIX hours on his Traeger grill.  So worth the wait!

 

And we had other yummy stuff to eat with them...

 

 

Of course we brought Jeff's new ice cream maker with us to make our first batch of homemade (vanilla) ice cream for an after dinner treat.  It was soooo good!  It was pretty sweet (but isn't ice cream supposed to be??) but it was the perfect consistency and so creamy!

 

 

We celebrated the dads in our lives with some gifts:

 

 

My Buppa got a bag of books and crossword puzzles -- his favorite!

My Daddy got a basket full of all his favorite snacks + a gift card to Olive Garden.

Jeff and my brother each got a "redneck wine glass" from my parents --
ha, good stuff!

And then I had one more gift for Jeff from us -- a hand painted ice cream bowl!

 

A guy's gotta have a good bowl to eat that yummy homemade ice cream out of, right??

 

I think we made the day pretty special for the dads -- I hope they felt loved and appreciated!  I am so very proud of my Daddy and the example he's been, and still is, in my life.  I've always felt like he was on my side, supportive in whatever my current thing is.  Love you, Daddy!

And of course, I'm proud of the Daddy that Jeff is to Deacon, so proud of both my boys!  They are my heart.  :)

 

we {heart} daddy!

For Father's Day this year, we gave Jeff an ice cream maker!

 

Now let me just say that I didn't come up with this on my own (I wish).  We were shopping in Sam's one day and we saw them.  Jeff took a closer look at one of them and then as we were stepping away, he said, "I want that for Father's Day!"

 

:: cue the file upload into my "gifts for Jeff" folder in my brain ::

 

He is kinda hard to buy for unless you have gobs of money or you're a computer geek. 

 

Or a woodworker.

 

So anytime I hear him say "I want that" and it's reasonably priced, he's pretty much getting "that" at the next occasion to celebrate him (birthday, Christmas, etc.).

 

Hence, the ice cream maker purchase made just a few days before Father's Day.

 

So I wasn't even gonna try to wrap that big 'ole box and keep it somewhere secret.  Instead I decided to hide (read: camouflage) it in this junky closet we have.  It wasn't hard to cover it up after I found a large enough space for it.

 

And then we had a scavenger hunt to find it!

 

We gave him his card which had the first clue inside.  Then he was off!

Since we gave it to him, we've made 4 batches of ice cream!  We're getting our money's worth out of that "reasonably priced" gift.  :)

But no matter what the price, no matter what the gift, Jeff is totally worth every penny!  He is such a good daddy to our boy.  Deacon and I both love him to pieces!  Happy Father's Day, Daddy!

Mother's Day weekend...

I had such a good weekend with my boy last weekend for Mother's Day.  On Saturday, Jeff went golfing with some of his friends so Deacon and I went to play in the park up the road...

 

[it startled me how big/grown he looks in this one...]

 

And then we went up to a new strawberry farm (close to home!) to pick strawberries!

Deacon did really good finding strawberries to pick.  He liked carrying the bucket and he lasted for probably a good 20 min or so.  Everyone at the farm thought he was adorable and kept giving him these ginormous, outrageously shaped berries to eat.  He was loving that!

 

[instagram photo -- so in love with that app!]

 

When all was said and done, we picked almost 4 lbs of beautiful, yummy strawberries!

Saturday evening, my boys took me out to eat for dinner, my choice.  I chose Blue Water for the outside dining and yummy menu.  We don't eat there often because it's all the way down at Wrightsville Beach, but it was so pretty out, I thought it would be a nice night for it.  And it was.  :)

Deacon enjoyed seeing all the big boats on the water, listening to the seagulls, etc.  And he charmed anyone who would look at him, of course.  He's a show-stealer, that one. :: wink ::

 

[another instagram photo -- it's how I capture my life in real time]

On Sunday, we went to church, of course, and then went home for naps.  Around 4:30 or so, we decided to head to the beach -- our first official trip (with bathing suits and everything!) of the season.  It was absolutely perfect out there.  The water was a little chilly but the air temperature with the sunshine was so nice.  Even the wind was minimal which kept us comfortable.
 

 

[instagram again :)]

 

[here's another one that makes him look so grown... :: sniff ::]

I love being this precious boy's mama.

rockstar.

You didn't know we had a rock-stah in the fam, did you??

 

 

A couple of weeks ago, Deacon's babysitter had to do some kind of funky something with her boys' hair since it was crazy hair night at AWANAs at church, so she texted me and asked me if it would be okay to do something to Deacon's hair.

 

My response?

 

"Totally fine with it."

 

The "something" she was going to do to Deacon's hair was just some colored hairspray that washes out but I didn't know she was going to spike into a mohawk.  As soon as I got the photo from her on my phone of my "rockstar", I texted back "I love it!!"

 

 

 

He was rocking that hairstyle, let me tell you.

 

In fact, I looked at the can of hairspray when I went to pick him up, thinking to myself, "Maybe I need to get some of this for myself...just to, you know, switch things up a little bit from time to time."  :)

 

He loved it, telling me "it's red, mommy -- it's red!" when I went to pick him up.  Fun times!

 

 

Easter 2013

Easter Sunday this year dawned...well, not so sunny.  Or warm.  At least not to begin with.  It turned out to be a decent day, though, by the time we left church.  We had a great service, as always, celebrating the resurrection and saving power of our Lord Jesus.  I am so very thankful that I belong to Him, that He has made me free!

 

I tried again to coordinate our "Easter outfits".  It's a little more subtle than last year, but we are both actually coordinated with Deacon's little sweater vest.  Oh, he was SO handsome!  And bonus!  We found our friends, Larry & Kristen, as we were picking Deacon up from the nursery so I was able to have Larry snap some quick photos of us after church.  Larry was our photographer at both of Deacon's birthday parties.

As we did last year, we waited until after church to do Easter baskets.  I'm not even trying to deal with a kid who is either a) strung out on all kinds of candy, or b) pissed because we gave him the basket but told him he couldn't have any of the candy in it.

 

It was fun to watch him discover the basket and then look in it to find all the goodies.  We gave him a few books from the Target dollar section (that place NEVER fails me), some eggs filled with various candy including gummy bears (one of his faves) and peepsters (have you heard of these?  chocolate covered marshmallow, holla!), and a battery-operated Percy train.  He loves the other battery-powered train on his train table, and he loves Percy (Thomas' best friend :) so we figured that would be a hit.

 

 

And oh, boy...he's been introduced to Peeps.  These are Jeff's all-time fave Easter candy (I say yuk.) so I'm actually surprised of course, he shared with Deacon.  Well, what's not to like when you're a kid with a major sweet tooth??

 

Yeah, he's a fan.

 

 

 

I'm just gonna eat ALL of this candy right now, mkay??

Spring Fling 2013

 

Deacon went to his 3rd Spring Fling today.  Our church hosts this event every year and it's always a lot of fun for kids and adults alike.  The event caters to kids, but I think their parents enjoy seeing how happy they get just as much.  I know I do.

 

At this stage, I'm always curious to see how Deacon is going to react to something he's done before -- like going to the beach for the first time since last year, or an annual event like this that he was an entire year younger for last year.

 

Last year, he was in the "up to a year old" egg hunt so he was "big man on campus", you might say.  He was almost a year and a half old last year.  This year, he was in the 2-3 year old egg hunt so Jeff had to coach him a little bit...

 

"Buddy, you're gonna have to step up your game a little bit for this one...a lot of these kids are older/bigger than you so you're gonna have to bring it."

 

It was quite eye-opening for us as parents, too.  Considering the egg "hunt" is just a big open field with hundreds of eggs dumped on it, we had to really rush around to help Deacon get the 7 or 8  eggs he ended up with.  He still gets distracted easily so we had to keep after him to "keep looking for eggs".  But he did great, picking up the eggs he found and putting them in his basket (vs. licking them and putting them back on the ground, or worse, in other kids' baskets, like last year :).  It was a lot of fun to watch him.

 

[um, apparently he gave some kids the stink-eye...]

 

 

We also took a hayride.  Deacon loved this last year, and this year was no different.  We were able to be first in line for the next tractor (they had several running) so we got the benches right at the front of the trailer so Deacon was able to watch the tractor as it pulled us.  That happened last year, too, so I was thankful for that opportunity again.  Deacon really enjoyed it.

 

 

And then we took a pony ride.  I really didn't think this was happening this year because when we saw the horses + pony, I asked Deacon a couple of times, as he watched them, if he wanted to ride and he would always say "no" with his eyes as big as saucers.

 

Well, then we were talking to some friends and they asked him about the pony and he said he DID want to ride.  Right.  I'm thinking we're going to get back over there and he'll change his mind, but nope.  He got on, with Daddy close by and Mommy capturing the moment.  There were no smiles, and he balked a couple of times, but he stuck with it (the ride was only about a min long).  I was proud of him for trying it.

 

 

The weather was definitely not what we would prefer (it's actually kind of funny to look at photos of the first Spring Fling, and the second one, and notice how different our clothes were in each one), but it didn't keep folks away and we had a good time watching Deacon experience his 3rd Spring Fling.

 

Kids are never bothered by cold or hot, rainy or snowy weather anyway.  :)