Nathan @ 2 Years

 I figured since Joseph's birthday is about a week away, I should get busy with my 2 year post on Nathan. I tried posting several pictures that I took one day right after he turned 2, but for some annoying reason, they will.NOT. rotate for me. Of course, all the pictures that I posted of him not being cooperative and demonstrating his 2 year old behavior all posted just fine. Go figure!!!

 

 

Nathan has transitioned into a sweet little guy. It's amazing what unconditional love and prayer for patience can do for a child. He's never been a terror, but has been known (and may still be known) as a screamer and a weeeee bit DRAMATIC, but he is learning to chill and not get so upset over the little things.

 

Nathan at 2 years you:

 

-Wear size 2t pants and shirts.

-Wear size 7 shoes.

-Wear size 5 diapers.

-LOVE trains!!!

-You and Christian have started to bond a little more since Joseph has been in school. You are beginning to tolerate Christian more now too.

-You love jumping on the trampoline.

-You love your grandparents so much!! So much in fact, when you are sick or being disciplined you will ask for them!

-You love playing with your cars and LOVE lining them up...just like your brother Joseph did!

-You love babies, which is wonderful since we will be having one around here soon.



-You still love your milk and you recently discovered chocolate milk, which you love even more.
-You love gum and will chew it for the longest time. When we first gave it to you, you would always spit it out when you were done, but recently you started swallowing your gum, so you don't get as much.
-You have started becoming interested in movies.
-You love anything with pasta in it.
-You love cucumbers, carrots, and peppers.
-You love grapes, apples, pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, but no longer love bananas.
-You love riding in Dada's truck.

 

-Your vocabulary has exploded these past two months and I can't even count how many words you can say! You started putting together sentences right before your second birthday. Some of my favorite words and phrases you say are: Awesome, Nice (when the boys do something that you think is cool), Coocoo (cookie), I sorry, and Jesus loves me (Chi-us luv mia).
-You can name a power ranger: Mia
-You love sword fighting with your brothers!

Your 2 year old Stats:

Weight: 28.2 (53%)
Height: 33.5 (26%)

 

This is the smile you get when you pick the coldest day in Houston to go take pictures. It was absolutely freezing this day!!!! 

 

 

Nathan, you are such a joy and we are so thankful and blessed to have you a part of our lives!

 

 

 

Halloween and Nathan's Birthday

  Since Thanksgiving is approaching, I thought I should sit down and post about our Halloween. It was a low key evening since 4/5 members of our household were just overcoming or in the midst of a virus. I didn't get a lot of exciting pictures from the fun evening, but honestly, they just wanted to get on with trick or treating  and so did I.

This year, Joseph was the Bumblebee Transformer, Christian was to be a football player, but as we were getting him dressed, he decided he wanted to wear his cape. So he became a SUPER football player, and Nathan was Superman.

 This display was much cuter before the pumpkins were all decorated.

Two days after Halloween, is Nathan's birthday. We went with a Cookie Monster theme since he loves to watch YouTube videos of the furry monster. Below are the party favors that we gave out. This was a revised idea from Pintrest.

 Nathan eyeballing his middle brother. It's a look like, "IF you dare touch that cupcake....."

 It's so nice to have older siblings enjoy your big moment.

 I know what you are probably thinking, but no, he's not upset that his cupcake is all gone. He is wanting his Mimi....his BFF.

This is such a fun and busy time of year for our family! Birthday's and holiday's plague our schedule from October through February! Hope you all had a safe and fun Halloween!

  One of my favorite things to do every Fall is to go to the pumpkin patch, pick pumpkins and take pictures. I honestly don't know why I enjoy it so much. Maybe it's a tradition that I want to have with the boys, maybe it's the fact that I love to go out and buy "Fallish" clothes and dress the boys up and try to get some good pictures, or it could be that going to the pumpkin patch makes it 'feel' like Fall around here. You see, we live in the Houston area and as of today (October 23) my AC is running and the boys are in shorts. We don't ever seem to get a break from the heat! So maybe it's getting the boys in fall colors and going to the pumpkin patch that makes me forget about the heat for a while and enjoy the Fall season, even when we don't have cooler temps to go with it.

 

   But, as you know, I have 3 boys and this year, I came to realization that this may be our last year to get the boys in something nice and try to get a good shot of all three at the pumpkin patch. Now, I am not saying we won't ever go back. The boys love pulling the wagons, picking up the biggest pumpkins they can find and climbing the hay bales, it's just the getting in something else besides your underwear and superhero tshirt and having to pose for pictures that drives them crazy.

 

   Before we were even out the door, my two oldest were in fits about having to wear the shirts I had picked out. Thinking to myself, "This is NOT going to be fun," I put an entire thing of tic tacs in my pocket and off we went.

 

  As you can see in the picture below, this pretty much summed up all their attitudes about having to sit for pictures.....

 It took a little while to get started because there were a lot of people moms there with their kids trying to get pictures and we just had to time it to where a large semi was unloading a ton of pumpkins, so that was pretty distracting.

 

 Okay, getting a little better....

   Had to pull out the tic tacs to get Nathan to look at me. As you can see, he is wanting one.

   Then they began to go from extremely bored...

   To, faking smiles just so we can be done and get the Sonic drink that I ended up having to bribe them with.....

   To Nathan being so annoyed with this entire day that he was willing to hitch hike his way home.

   But in the end, I was able to get a descent snap shot of each individual boy...

 

   And I was able to capture this during our time at the pumpkin patch. Not too shabby, I guess.

....Until next year's pumpkin patch, oh wait, never mind!

Summer in Review



Since our last trip, I have been wanting to post about our summer. As you can probably guess, I have been spending my free time doing chores or sleeping. This baby is honestly taking every ounce of energy I have left for the day and causing me to be extremely fatigued.

 

So, last week, I started uploading pictures and I was able to finish loading the rest today to give you a glimpse of our summer.

 

We had a wonderful summer break. If you didn't see or hear from us, it was because we were pretty much gone from July 4- August 8.We took a trip to Colorado, which pictures from that trip can be seen here, went to a family reunion in West Texas, had a college friends reunion weekend in College Station and we ended our summer with a trip to Dallas to see Mimi and Papaw! It was such a wonderful summer!!!

 

 



This summer, I learned that my boys eat their watermelons very differently: Nathan, just dives in, Joseph, is very serious and concerned with each bite, and Christian, looks to see where his next bite is going to be.

This summer, I learned that my boys have some mad ninja trampoline skills and that Christian and Joseph may have a future in modeling.

 

This summer, I learned that Nathan looks super cute in this shirt and that my boys LOVE watching the Olympics (swimming and track were their favs)

 

This summer, I learned that Christian either falls ill, sleepy or becomes injured when asked to pick up his toys.

 

This summer, Nathan learned how to raid the pantry and I finally figured out why all our snacks were going so quickly.

 

This was nothing new, but my boys love to play with and in the water!

Joseph and one of his buds at VBS.

This summer, I also learned that Nathan would much rather eat off of the floor rather than eat his snacks from the bowl that I put them in.

 

This summer, Nathan became a student of Joseph's Frogology 101 and learned how to catch and handle frogs.

 Hunting for frogs.

 

This summer it happened, Nathan became a MAJOR Daddy's boy!

 

Check out these cuties!!

 

 And, these cuties at the circus, courtesy of Marnie and Poppy!

One of my highlights from this summer, was meeting with our college friends in College Station for one Saturday. This group is absolutely amazing! Even though we have had these mini reunions a few times since we have graduated, I am still amazed at how we can get together after not having seen each other in months and laugh and practically pick up right where we left off. Love it!

Here, we are staging what it used to look like several nights a week at dinner (minus the kiddos!). Just the five of us laughing so hard that our sides would ache and talking about dreams and hopes for the future. 

 





 

Obviously not the best picture, but me and my college roommate and best friend Kimmi outside our dorm hall! So many memories!

 

I am pretty sure some DIE HARD Ags would poop a communion cracker if they saw our son climbing the Century Tree. Oh well, boys gotta be boys.

 

We took our boys to Daddy Bush's library and Museum. I was very impressed at how well the did.

 

To end our summer, we took a trip to Dallas to see Mimi, Papaw, Aunt Stacey, Uncle Josh, cousin Cooper and my Grandmother. This was such a fun fun fun trip! My dad went out and bought all of Joseph's school supplies and clothes. My Grandma bought him his backpack and lunch box. Mimi took us to this awesome water park, we swam tons, watched the Olympics and ate lot of popcorn. It's our boys home away from home!



 





Oh, the older two got new running shoes, so as soon as we got home, they wanted to go to the track and try them out. Nathan didn't get new kicks, he just does everything his brothers do,