Not So Merry Merry-go-round

I LOVE CAROUSELS! Durham is lucky enough to have GREAT one at Northgate.

We tried Grant on it at Christmastime to get the "christmascard shot" but he wasn't a fan. This week we tried again and he still wasn't so sure about it. Instead of a figure we opted to sit on the sleigh bench, its stationary and doesn't go up and down along with the round and round. Even though its not technically a great picture, I love that it lets you see his "grown up" face. I can totally imagine what hes going to look like as a 'tweener, our baby boy has officially grown up!

Art Revised

When Grant decided that the tatse of wax was appealing we had to stop using Crayons for a while... then I discovered Twistables that are crayons inside a plastic tube, you can step on then, sit on them or even chomp on them and they won't break/ won't suddently appear missing the paper wrapper! YAY! Now we can make even more masterpieces for Daddy!

Geoff's Desktop

I just got an email from Geoff saying this was his desktop background picture on his work computer:

Can you imagine what the Army guys are saying about him?!?! I love it!

Our Sick Little Boy

Thanks to Aunt Rory, Grant has come down with a strange case of the "Hershey's Chicken Pox"

And just to prove to Leisa how much he LOVES his Tonka trucks, this was the view when I went to wake him up at 8am because I figured it can't be healthy to sleep more than 13 hours at any given time~

P.S. the flash went off and he didn't even stir, poor little guy is zonked!

1,000 days!

1,000 days, one beautiful boy, a couple added pounds, a few grey hairs and 3 homes later...

I'm still married to my best friend, and am excited for the next 10,000!

How You Know Its Naptime

poor little guy is sick and couldn't even make it through lunch before he needed his nap~

Bathroom Redo

The BEFORE:

and the AFTER:

I'm so excited about it and am happy that my Dad is so handy. The previous lights were the Dressing Room type where the bulbs were exposed and when we took them off to change them learned that there was no electrical box underneath them! They were just bolted into the studs, so he took down the big mirror, cut the drywall, installed electrical boxes and patched it all back up~ lots of work but the bathroom is officially uptodate!

Memory Lane

Today was a bitter sweet day, I got to see some old friends but it was at the expense of an amazing man. For those who don't know, chorus/singing was my life growing up and I LOVED every minute of it. Today I got to reconnect, if only for a moment, with past choreographers, two ladies that were in Violet with me at Playmakers, countless high school friends and 2 very special music teachers/directors. It was weird when Geoff called and I had to explain that the "drummer for Spotlight and Brightleaf" had died because it made Carlton seem so ordinary. I should have said so much more, Dad was his High School principal, he played the drums for nearly every show I was ever in, he was a staple in the Durham arts and he will be forever loved, remembered and missed.

Happy Valentines Day!

Hope you have an extra SWEET day!

CAPTAIN CHILDS

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/02/army_captains_athroughf_021209w/

Geoff made Captain (not that we were worried)
He won't pin on the new rank until later in the spring but it will happen!

CONGRATS Babe!

The Shows

Grant has 2 shows. He has 2 shows because that's all we let him watch. We picked his 2 shows for him. We picked them because I wanted to be able to stand watching them. One is about music, one is about traveling. He LOVES his shows! Geoff and I love his shows too.
Some kids are Disney Channel kids (I know Bailey loves her some Mickey Mouse Playhouse), I know some kids are Nickelodeon kids... Grant is pro-Noggin (we should have been able to guess that with his dramatic entrance to the world) Now for those of you who don't have 20month olds running around I'd like to introduce you to our shows: in the morning it's Jack's Big Music Show. I mean look how excited he gets about the theme song~

Grants second show is Toot&Puddle, 2 pigs that travel the world (off of their settlement from the Big Bad Wolf apparently) Geoff accused me of liking the show more than Grant did until he saw the effect that show had on Grant. he could be mid-fit and you say the words "Toot and Puddle" and he would stop, look up at you and smile, say "okay" and head towards the couch. Seriously 5 o'clock is sacred ground around here. I mean who could resist these 2, especially when they have more stamps in their passports than I do!

Book-mobile

There aren't too many times when Durham feels like a quaint little town but the first and third Thursdays of the month are these few times! Our neighborhood park gets a visit from the Durham Public Library's Bookmobile, a fun old bus that has been made into a portable library. Grant had a blast on his first visit and kept trying to say "book book book" as he pointed at all of the spines.

Southpoint Treasure

I've stayed away from Southpoint Mall for a while because I was getting frustrated that it had all of the same ole stores with the same ole stuff that you could find at any ole mall and I would just rather spend my time looking around one of a kind boutiques to find one of a kind things... so imagine my surprise when I was walking through a little store at Southpoint and found this gem:

Its a marble tile with a picture of the Alamance Building (i.e. the symbol of Elon University) on it! Turns out that this woman in Raleigh does these tiles with all sorts of old timey images on them through her website: http://www.lithicdesigns.com/ I had been looking at these kits from Tilano for a while now that shows you how to transfer some of your own pictures onto these same tiles to get the old timey effect (http://tinyurl.com/b9b858) and now that I have the Alamance Building, I just might be adding a few others of Geoff and I around campus to our new collection!

Sneak Peak

I just can't help myelf! I was trying to wait until Valentine's Day for the big reveal of Grant's latest pictures but I just can't stand it any longer so here's a sneak peak:

I mean seriously, how could I NOT share that with you!

You'll get the whole effect on lovey-dovey day but yea, now you know what you have to look forward to!

P.S. have I told you all how much I LOVE the Picture People?!? About every 2 weeks you get a coupon for a free 8x10 or 10x13 with no additional purchase required... FREE PICTURES! so it makes for nice presents to send to Daddy when we just need a random "thinking of you" gift and they don't give you the whole "come on, you would be dishonoring your child if you didn't spend $250 for this whole package, how could you do that to them" speech either. love love love them!

Starting Clean

if I have to start clean with taking pictures and videos of Grant why not start with him getting clean right?!? Grant has started drinking out of a cup but he gets a little confused when he gets in the bath and gets a cup there too, instead of just pouring water on himself, hes started to try and drink that water too... YUCK. so its this little game now when he pretends like hes going to drink the water and mommy freaks out. notice at the end that he even starts saying "no no no" to himself~

Paradise Pictures and then No Pictures

Of course it would happen... it was doomed to happen eventually... and with everything else that's going on of course it would happen today... My camera card got erased! We were at the park so for the sake of all of the wee ones around I couldn't yell the four letter words that I was thinking but yea, it pretty much stinks. Luckily I had uploaded R&R pictures so while I'm not quite in the mood to be witty or have funny commentary, I can at least share some of the pictures from the rest of Geoff's time here.

After our trip south we headed even further south and sent the night with Geoff's Aunt and Uncle's "farm" outside of Gainsville. It was so nice to hang out and get to see what they've been working on down there, we had an awesome dinner, enjoyed catching up and took advantage of their guest suite for a pit stop on the way to Jacksonville. The cruise was great, mostly because we were getting sunburned in the Bahamas while our families got snow! Freeport was kind of a bust but we'd been warned that much. Paradise Island outside of Nassau was beautiful and we enjoyed our day at the Atlantis playing like kids in all of their water park rides. The coolest thing that I couldn't get a picture of was a water slide ride that shoots you through the shark tank of their aquarium. I mean seriously, you've just gotten up the never to fling yourself down a huge drop and if you have the guts to open your eyes you see sharks swimming 5 feet from you, separated only by the plastic tube of the water slide! CRAZINESS. there is also a slower ride that does the same thing when you're on a tube and I stole the picture from their website so you can get an idea.

http://picasaweb.google.com/laurabchilds/RRcruise#

Then we had a fabulous week spent in Atlanta and Durham. We got to go to a Georgia Tech game that actually got interesting in the second half, enjoyed our obligatory Melting Pot dinner, and some quality time doing "nothing" but hanging out... then in Durham tried our not-so-talented hand at bowling and as the pictures in the album show enjoyed playing with Daddy's toys as he packed back up.

http://picasaweb.google.com/laurabchilds/RRpart2#