Not a baby anymore

Well we did it, we took the railing off of Noah's bed. It was a big step for me. I was really sad when we were actually doing it. About half way through I want to just stop and put the railing back up. I know it was much harder for me than Noah because we have had no problems (now you know b/c I wrote that the problems will start tonight). It has been somewhat humorous watching him. About 12:30 on the first night Brian and I were watching Noah in the monitor. Noah was hanging half on and half off the bed while sleeping. It was so funny watching him kind of swing until he finally got his whole body back on the bed. He never cried about it or even looked like he woke up. We tried to get a picture but we were too late. Last night about 4:00 a.m. he cried out and when I went in he had fallen off the bed. I picked him up and hugged him and then he pushed me away and climbed back in bed. Another funny thing he does is during the day he will go and get in bed so he can have his passy (we only let him have it in bed). Also, at night if his passy falls out of bed he won't get down and get it. He just calls for us to come and get it for him. I think the picutres show how excited he is to be a big boy.

Summer Vacation

Let me first start by saying in my family growing up we rarely went on vacation. I remember going a few different places and most of the time we drove a little car, so no more than 5 people were ever on our trips. They consisted of my mom, sister, grandmother, myself, and one other person we would invite. Since it was always an all girl trip we stayed in hotels, not anything fancy, but still hotels. Then I grew up and married a Read. I have since been introduced to a whole new world of vacationing. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love going on vacation with the Read's, but I remember once as a teenager watching "The Griswall's" (I think I spelled that right). I thought the movie was the stupidest thing I had ever seen b/c I just new that stuff never happened. Well, it may not be to the extreme of the Griswalls, but I am certain if you filmed our vacation it would be just as funny. So, let me tell you about this years vacation. We went to the same beach as last year. It is really a great place and it has an RV park attached. THANKFULLY the parents upgraded to a much larger SUV. Which was for sure needed since the number of people and animals changed from last year. Let me paint a picture for you, b/c taking any pictures at this point was not even a thought in my head. On the way down to the beach we had David and Charleen, Brian, Noah, and myself, David and Ashley, Chris, and his dog Smokey. Yes, that is a lot of people. Each person had a seat and Smokey had the very very back. Which he stayed there pretty well until Chris decided he wanted to drive and Smokey did not want to be that far from him. Let's just say Noah's car seat is the only thing that saved me from having a dog,who weighs as much as I do, in my lap. Oh, and my brother-in-law David who ended up with the dog in his lap.

Okay now picture time:

Here is the SUV and RV. Yes, we all stayed in the RV including the dog.

Here is our beach set up, and Noah getting a little sleepy.

Noah swimming with his uncle David.

Here we are taking family pictures on the beach. I don't know how well you can see it but please take a moment to click on the picture. The interaction between Ashely and Smokey is classic.

(Another cool scrapblog creation, but I think the picture w/ Ashely and David is blurry. I think that is my fault not scrapblogs. These work like a regular picture just click to make it bigger.)

(I made this using a cool new tool Ashley showed me. It is called scrapblog.)

This is the video of Noah going down the "slide." He absolutely loved it, but it scared me just a little.

We always have so much fun on our beach vacations and are so grateful that Brian's parents let us tag along each year.

Happy Dada Day

We had a great day celebrating what a wonderful father Brian is for us.

This is actually my first "real" Father's Day. Let me explain that comment a litttle. My dad wasn't around much so I really can't remember a Father's Day with him, Father's Day right after Ethan died wasn't the best of all days, and last year was good with Noah but he is was still so young.

So today I went all out except I have no pictures(guess I can't be perfect all the time =)). I woke up, I would say early but I didn't I thought about it but did not do that, and made heart shaped pancakes. I think Kristen did that for v-day which I thought was cool so I did it for today. I decieded that I would have Noah give Brian a gift every few hours. I would hand Noah the gift and tell him to say Hppy Father's Day, but he can't say father so we went with his vocab. He got pretty good by the end of the day. He was even saying "presents". One time he got confused and said "Happy birfday", didn't realize he knew what that was =}

We made the day what ever Brian wanted, we went swimming, the boys slept for 3 hours, we ate at Red Lobster, and watch the ultimate dad movie 'Finding Nemo'. Which I did not know was such a dad movie until we watched it tonight (well we actually watched it throughout the day). It was a whole lot of fun.



On a side note: we got a new keyboard b/c our other one broke. I thought I was doing good b/c it only cost $12.00. I feel like Kate from 'Jon and Kate plus Eight' b/c, all I ever do now is say "I hate this keyboard". I guess you get what you pay for.

21 things about Noah

Noah just turned 21 months on March 29th and I have been wanting to post 21 things that tell more about who he is. This is the whole reason I wanted to do this blog so I can look back and remind myself, since I seem to be forgetting a lot of things lately.

1. Noah loves to watch American Idol while drinking his milk before bedtime.
2. He also loves to watch Winnie the pooh with the figurines close by.
3. Every time we get in or near the car he asks to "dive" which means drive the car. He gets pretty upset when we don't let him.
4. He is really into trains. Someone gave us about 20 magnetic Thomas trains which he spent all night connecting everyone of them in a row.
5. He is also really into cars, which he has been for a while, it was pretty much his first word.
6. He can wink.
7. Any time he hears music he begins to dance.
8. He has very blonde and long hair.
9. He loves the Wednesday play time at church.
10. So now when we pass church he cries that we are not going there to play.
11. Every time he hears an airplane he looks up and tries to find it.
12. Noah loves to mow the lawn walking behind Daddy when he mows the lawn.
13. When you say show me your muscles he flexes his arms.
14. He does the whole "pee" in the potty routine except for the actual peeing part.
15. When you say touchdown he does the hand motions for touchdown.
16. He loves to do the "help rocket take off" part of Little Einsteins.
17. He likes to have his back scratched with a car. This is part of our bedtime routine and if we forget for some reason he begs for it.
18. He has beautiful blue eyes.
19. Whenever the phone rings he automatically says "Dada"
20. He loves to do the hand motions for "This little light of Mine" and "The Wheels On the Bus". When ever we see a school bus he starts the hand motions.
21. If he doesn't want you to touch him and then you do he says "owwww". It is real funny to keep touching him and every time he will say "owwww".

I can't believe Noah is now 21 months it has gone by so very fast and I have loved every minute of it (except for the non sleeping part but that is over now).

November 2007

Well, I have a little catching up to do. I truly do want to keep this as a record of the things going on in our lives but I have not been very good at that. So the next few posts will be my attempt to catch up from November 2007 to Feburary 2008.

November was a good month for us. I can't not remember the little details, which is the whole reason I started this blog, so I will mostly talk about Thanksgiving.

I enjoy Thanksgiving so much because God has blessed Brian and I by having families that get along. Every year for the last 5 or 6 years we have had Thanksgiving at our house. My mom and sis come and Brian's mom, dad, brother and sister and now her husband come. It is great!!! I get up early and cook all day long, which is something I love to do. It is a very normal day even with all family members present. This year was just as wonderful even though we missed Chris, he was with his fiance for her birthday. There was not much out of the ordinary this year except a little snow. Our Thanksgivings are usually not very ordinary they have included my mom's coworkers from Germany, another included her friends from Africa, and one year we had a reenactment of the first Thanksgiving. Half of our family are true Native Americans and they wore homemade headdresses thankfully no pilgrim apperal was worn. (I tried to find the picture but that was before our digital camera but if you come over the picture is still on the fridge.) But this year Thanksgiving was quite subdued. Noah enjoyed all the fixings but was not crazy about the snow.
(I apparently do not have any of the photos of us in the snow so if my mother-in-law or sis-in-law read this send them to me so I can add them to this post.) I will include some of the photos from the Friday after Thanksgiving (if I can get it to work). Noah, Brian, and his family went to the Gaylord Texan. I did not I was rocking out at the Kelly Clarkson concert with my sister.

Anyways, I am hoping to catch up on December tomorrow.

The First, Not So Good, Expensive Haircut

Before I get started with the haircut blog I need to apologize to my faithful blog readers. I am sorry that I have been HORRIBLE about blogging. I am not sure I really have an excuse as to why I have not blogged. I would like to pretend that I have some awesome story of how crazy things have been and that is why I have not blogged but, the truth of the matter is that I am lazy. Nothing interesting nothing fantastic I just have not made myself sit down and blog. This is also the reason I have only scrapbooked Noah's first month of life and he is soon to be 18 months.

First Haircut
Okay, so way back in November right before Thanksgiving I finally decided it was time to cut Noah's hair. His bangs were in his eyes and I did not want Thanksgiving pictures with his hair like that.

Here is the before picture:

I called Cool Cuts for Kids and made an appointment. I called them one because it is right by Brian's work and two I thought as the name of the store states it would be cool. It was pretty neat. They had lots of toys for kids to play with and the chair they sat Noah in was a taxi cab. He really did not mind the hair cut at all. He was very excited to be in a car but his did not have a steering wheel and the one next to him did. I was very impressed that there was no crying and only a little bit of moving.

Happy in my car =)

Holding real still for the scissors.

Being very still.

So happy especially since it is all over.

Not So Good Haircut

About an hour after we got home Brian said "Noah's hair looks funny". I didn't really pay any attention to that statement. The next day while Noah was playing I said "I think his bangs are uneven". Upon further inspection by the two of us (and why it took us especially me so long to notice I am not sure) his haircut was not so good. I know it must be hard to cut a one year old's hair but I got it cut to look good in pictures and now it was going to be even worse.

Expensive Haircut

WOW!! Never once did I ask what the haircut would cost because never once did I think it would be over $10.00 dollars. First, let me say that all they did was trim his bangs and trim the back of his hair. I do not even consider this a haircut really. It cost us $20.00 dollars. Yes, you read it correctly we paid $20.00 for Noah to get a trim. The cost of the haircut became even more painful once we realized that is was not so good. I did wait a while before telling Brian the cost of the haircut because, I knew he would not be happy and I was right. So, to appease him I said now I know why Amber cuts every one's hair herself. To which Brian replied, "Can she teach you how?"

MUD RUN!!

Mud Run 2007 has come and gone with another great experience. This is my third time running in the annual Marine Mud Run 10k. This is a 6.2mile "boot-camp" style race that involves 15+ obstacles that ALL involve either mud/water or both. This event continues to grow, and this year was over 2,000 runners. The event is to raise money for "Toys For Tots." Our team this year was "2 Fast 2 Furious". Funny, we were neither too fast or too furious, but we had fun. We were a co-ed team of five, 3 guys/2 girls...tuff girls. The picture below is of four of us at my house before the race...nice and clean!

The race began around 9:15 for the co-ed division, and prior to earlier thought, the weather was perfect. No frost bite this year! My plan was simple at the beginning. The "Fox 4" news crew was participating and would be followed by cameras. My school of thought was to take out Steve Eager (nightly news anchor); this would surely land us on the 9:00 news. Well, my teammates found that to be in poor sport. You win this time Eager!

Roughly 3/4 mile into the race, Ashley (my soon to be sister-in-law) developed blisters on both heels. She was a trooper and fought through it. Here she is faking a smile with my brother:

We ventured through tunnels, climbed over nets, bear-crawled in 20yd mud/water pits, etc. We started the race together, and we crossed the finish line together. Chantelle and Noah were cheering us on at the finish line. Noah, even though we were covered in mud, was eager to hand-out kisses to the team.

People ask (including my lovely wife), "And you paid for this?" Yes. We had a blast, and except for Ashley, our one wounded runner, will all return next year. Actually, there is going to be a Spring edition, so I reckon' will run then.

Overall, 2 Fast 2 Furious had a great time! Newcomers: Ashley, Stephanie, and Jared all did great, and I was proud to have them on our team!

Until Mud Run 2008...the end.