waiting

uncle time, aunt andrea, cousin mason and cousin olivia are coming over to our house today.  someone was VERY excited this morning and wanted to sit and wait for them to get here.  hmmmm, it's going to be a little bit buddy.  luckily we have liam's birthday party to go to before the gang gets here!

boys will be boys

well, no showing today of the one place we really want to look at...so we headed over to the clay's house so the boys could get together and play.  it was like they had never been apart for a year!  back at their old shenanigans!  not being around kids for awhile, i think graham was loving the interaction!

we took them outside for a bit too seeing as the weather was nice!

the murrays

there really is no way to sum up how much we are going to miss the murrays.  i'm tearing up now just typing this post!!  :(

they truly are our best friends.

we have so many memories that we will hold dearly and look back on often.  

thank you for all you have done for us over the past 8 years.  well and actually i should amend the 'best friend' statement.  we really see you as part of our family.  it will be strange not being able to call you on a weekend to see what you're doing and cook out, but this isn't goodbye...it's a see you soon!

miss isa

ralf and isa head down to florida for their cruise soon, so before we both leave town we decided to grab some lunch together.  when we got home the boys went to get some computer stuff and isa and i stayed with the kids.  ralf and isa brought graham some pretty cool polizei (police in german) playmobile sets, and isa was brave enough to open the one and put it together for graham.  he LOVES it!  and he loves miss isa too!!!

miss jen

today, little miss hannah made it into the hinge office.  she was passed around probably to no less than 8 people and she slept the entire time!  i was glad everyone was able to meet her before we head off to texas.  miss jen stopped by after work for some special one-on-one time with miss hannah.

i'm definitely going to miss this lady!  i was the first AAD at hinge, and jen was the second.  we instantly clicked during her interview and have been great friends since.  we joke that we are long lost sisters since we're so alike.  it's going to stink not being able to walk over to her desk and have our little chats.  guess that's what google chat is for, right!

last of the bad boys of paddington station

time is winding down, so we got the boys together for some final playtime.  

michael and adam are going to have to hold things down on paddington station from here on out!

even mojo got some playtime in with the boys.

luckily the horans already have a trip to texas scheduled for the summer, so we'll be seeing them soon enough!

cascades park crew

the germans are in town, so we had to get the cascades park crew back together.  it was so good to see everyone, enjoy some food...and some homemade caramel schnapps brought all the way from germany!  ;)

chase

operation wear the kids AND the dog out!

this went on for a good 5 more minutes.

a little sprinkle!

all i can say is WOW!  so much love and pampering for this little miss!

thank you SO MUCH to colleen for hosting a very special sprinkle for hannah.  it was perfect and i loved everything about it.  so creative too!  scrapbooking pages made by guests so all i have to do is print out photos!  and cookie favors which were delicious!  i LOVED it all!

and OMG, this girl is going to be a fashionista for sure. so many cute things, i'm so excited for her to get here so i can dress her up in everything!  and some awesome mom helping accessories that i've been dying to try out since they came out after graham was born.  

thank you to everyone!  we love you!

happy birthday michael

for michael's 4th birthday, we all headed out to chuck-e-cheeses.

always fun to be had!

daddy won a lot of tickets for us and we were able to buy some cotton candy.  to our surprise though...the dude didn't like it?!  well, looks like more for daddy, hannah and i!

buddies back together

the clays were back in town for the holidays, and we were able to get the boys back together!

graham was very excited to see liam!!  we went to the park to burn a little energy....

...and then we met up at a friends house for some post-christmas fun!

snow day!

it worked!!!!!

we have snow!!!!

graham and mojo decided to snuggle on the couch and stay warm for a bit.

then we headed outside for a little fun in the snow.  it was the perfect amount for little boys!

playoffs

no, not NFL...flag football!  :)

croistoir's team, the chargers, started their playoffs this morning at 10am.  the weather was beautiful, so we headed down to algonkian park to cheer him on.  we were a couple minutes late, but even when we got there, the chargers were up!  and it wasn't long that we were there when who receives the ball and runs right by us for a touchdown....criostoir!!!  chargers win the game and go to game two.

(even though graham did some cheering for criostoir, the tall grass was just too enticing!)

chargers win game to and head to the finals!!!

we weren't able to get to the final game since graham was wiped from playing at the other two games and taking a nap.  but when we heard from colleen, it was a close game, but unfortunately the chargers lost the final game.  bummer.

but the good news out of all of it....criostoir got MVP for his team for scoring FIVE, yes FIVE touchdowns!!!  pretty proud of him.

this is halloween

a little nightmare before christmas for you!

and then some spooky silly fun!  somebody was beyond THRILLED to be sully for halloween this year!!

the remaining members of the bad boys club ended up going trick-or-treating together.  they had a great time!  graham was a little hesitant at first, but i think when he realized what happened when they knocked on a door....he was VERY into it!  we were also very good about saying thank you to everyone.  the three boys were quite the hit with everyone too.

and yes...even mommy dressed up this year....a baby mummy tummy!

birthday celebration part I

today we celebrated the dude's birthday with the murray's and grammie.  we did things a little differently this year and decided to head out to chuck-e-cheeses for the festivities.  the kids thoroughly enjoyed themselves and graham LOVED having everyone sing to him for his birthday!  

we ate some pizza, played lots of games and ate some cake.  we picked up a whistle, curvy straw and a bracelet using the tickets won from all the games we played.  

good time had by all!

happy (early) birthday dude!

Ryder's first!!!

today we headed to cox's farms for ryder's first birthday party!

of course graham fell asleep on the way to the party, but we got him to wake up a little while after getting there.  luckily!  he had an AMAZING time.  

the dinoslide was the main attraction for him!  daddy stood in line with him and took him down the slide.  he wanted to do it again, but the line was even longer than before.  so we took him around to the rest of the park.  

we saw some cows, walked through the stands in front of the milking stage, played in the hay and played in some kid-sized eggs!

happy birthday ryder!!!  i can't believe it's been a whole year already!

ticonderoga farms

today we headed out to ticonderoga farms for anjali's birthday party.  it was great to see all the kiddos again, and all the adults too.  it had been far too long!

graham LOVED the huge potato sack slide.  we often times found him coming out head first out of the tunnel slide!  if only we had one of these in our backyard, the dude would be worn out all the time. sliding down the slide and then running around and climbing up the huge hill.  i definitely let grady handle that one today!  :)

there were some chickens and ducks to watch.  another super bouncy air pillow.  and hay ride and a COW TRAIN!!!  but this one was unlike one i've ever seen.  the cows went up and down as the ride went along.  too cute to watch.  apparently graham and alex got the one that bucked the most.  they loved it!

oh....and graham used the big boy swing for the first time!  YEAH!!  no more baby swings for us.  now on to teaching him how to swing himself!

north cackalackie

so here it is, the sunday after the fourth of july and i realized i only took about a days worth of pictures while we were visiting nicole and jeremy in north carolina.  i also then realized that i took not a single picture of the the four of us friends.  i blame that to the fact that we were having such a great time that we burned all the images into memory.  

we had such a great time and the days seemed to fly by.  thank you both so much for the wonderful visit and we can't wait to see you both soon!  oh...and mojo already misses clover!!  :)

butterflies, insects and dinos...oh my!

planned for us today was a trip to downtown raleigh to visit the museum of natural sciences.  good choice for being inside too seeing it is hot hot hot!  

first exhibit was the living conservatory where we got to be inside a room with tons of beautiful butterfiles.  we also saw some lizards and happened to be in the exhibit for the turtle feeding.  

next up....insects!!  graham was very interested in the huge cockroaches.  yick!

finally....the dinosaur exhibit!  what can i say, the kid loves his dinosaurs!  even when we went to the discovery room at the very end of our visit he found the box of dinosaurs and proceeded to line them up neatly in a row.  he also put them back very nicely before we left.  if only he would do that at home!

happy 4th!

we woke up early this morning and headed down to raleigh, nc to see our friends nicole and jeremy for the weekend.  mojo was in tow, seeing as they have a pit bull mix as well, clover.  

luckily the dude was feeling better and slept most of the trip down.  it was rather hot outside though, so he was a little cranky when we got there.  

we had a great time though.  nicole had invited some of their neighbors over for a cookout and we were able to hang out and relax.  the dogs wore themselves out playing.  and the boys had fun tasting beers together!  

i realized about halfway through the day that i hadn't really taken many pictures.  d'oh! but at least i had a few before someone got really messy eating watermelon.