PUMPKIN CARVING!!

First let me apologize for the order of my pictures. I'm having a problem with blogger in that it reverses the order of my pictures after I upload them. (I'll work on figuring out how to correct the problem!)

Last Saturday we carved our pumpkin and had fun for the most part! Brady certainly didn't seem to mind taking the "guts" out or anything, but we couldn't find a comfortable place for him to stand to be able to reach inside....I guess we'll work on that for next year!

the finished pumpkin on the front porch!

standing on the table so he could reach inside to get the guts

studying the guts

standing on a step stool wasn't quite high enough

the process begins!

TAGGED!!

For those of you that don't know, "tagged" is something that happens in the blogging world. It means that someone from another blog, in this case it was Shana from The Giroux 5, "tagged" me to reveal 7 weird/interesting facts about myself and then I am to tag 7 others to do the same on their blog. So, here goes:


1. When I make chili, I prefer to eat it over elbow macaroni. Yes, it has to be elbow macaroni, not just any type of noodles. (weirder still, this is how Alan prefers his chili too...it was one of those weird things we found out about each other while we were dating)

2. Another thing that Alan and I realized we had in common while dating was that we both love the chocolate cake donuts that have glaze all over them from Dunkin Donuts. Aside from those neither of us is a big donut eater.

3. I don't like cake. I haven't liked it since I was a kid. It's the one dessert that I will pass up every time. At my birthday parties growing up I always had a Carvel Ice Cream Cake!

4. I've always loved to travel and did some growing up with my family, but since meeting Alan my travel opportunities have been amazing. I've been to Denmark, Brazil, Italy, Switzerland, Canada and I've gotten to go on cruises free (or at "vendor" rates, which is like $400 for 7 days) so I've been to lots of countries in the Carribbean. I recently figured out that I've been to at least 75 cities in 17 countries! (I think there's more, but I haven't gone digging through old itineraries yet!)

5. For our honeymoon we went on a cruise to Alaska! I only mention this as "weird/interesting" because of the curious remarks I get when I tell people that's where we went. I guess most people associate honeymoons with a warm place, but I really wanted to go someplace Alan had never been and that didn't leave many options and I had never been on a cruise before then so it sounded like a good idea! For the record, we loved it and I would go back in a heartbeat!

6. As I said above, I had never been on a cruise prior to 2000, but since then I have been on at least 10!! That's what I come up with off the top of my head, so I might be missing one or two. Again, this is thanks in big part to Alan's job!!

7. My high school retired my soccer jersey the year after I graduated and I was also inducted into the school's Hall of Fame in 2006 for my achievements during my 4 years on the team. I scored 106 goals in 4 years, which at the time was a school record and a county record. The previous school record was 79 (I think) and the previous county record was 88. My record has since been broken by a fellow teammate. I also have to add that I only scored more than 3 goals in one game on 2 occasions because the coach we had for my first 3 years had a rule that once you scored 3 goals you were either moved to defense or taken out of the game. (those 2 occasions...once she forgot how many I had scored and the other time was my senior year with a new coach who did not have that rule).



Okay, so per the rules of "Tagging" I am to tag 7 people so they are:



Katherine
Karin
Rob (who I doubt will participate, but you never know!)
Stefanie
Joyce
Angela
Michelle

BASKET(S) FULL OF FUN!

These are some pictures from a few weeks ago and I just think they're funny.

Brady checking out his books. I'm not sure what the facial expression is all about, I've noticed he's starting to make this face more often though....maybe it's a toddler thing!?

I guess Brady thought that since I put his books in a bigger basket he could sit in it and read.

Okay, so I'm not really sure what he was thinking by getting into the toy basket!! Oh, and I'm pretty sure I had to help him out of this one!!

GO RAYS!!!

Grandma and Grandpa (or Baa as Brady calls them..yes, he calls them both the same thing!) sent Brady this Evan Longoria t-shirt so he'd have it in time for the World Series! Sometime last week I taught Brady how say "GO RAYS" while holding his arms up in the air..it's pretty cute and he thinks it's funny so he's always laughing when he does it. Let's hope the Rays can pull out a win tonight so we can tie up the series.

wheeeeeee!!

HELLO!!!

Here he is doing his "GO RAYS". (on a side note, I just realized that when I look at this picture he looks like our friend Jim Terry!!...hmmm, funny).

MEET BROBEE!!

Brady loves the show YO GABBA GABBA. It's a weird show to say the least, but Brady is mesmerized by it. There's this guy dressed in an orange jumpsuit with an orange wig who has a silver case of "monsters" that come to life. They sing and dance and always have a good message. There are also segments that have kids dancing and/or singing and doing "cool tricks". I believe there are five "monsters", I don't know all of their names, but there is a red guy, a blue girl, a pink girl, a yellow robot type and there's also Brobee, the green striped guy. I was in Target(in Miami) over the weekend and lo and behold, who did see?? BROBEE and a few of the other characters so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get one for Brady!! Brady likes this show so much that I can actually cook dinner without having him under my feet, which is nice!! It comes on twice a day so I record one episode for emergencies and I let him watch the other episode. I guess this show is starting to become popular because I just read or saw that a DVD has come out, so I'll have to get that for sure!! After thinking about it, I've decided that it reminds me of a show my brother and I used to watch called "The Electric Company" that was on in the early 70's. Anyway, without further ado:

HERE'S BROBEE!!!
Brady's checking him out

Brady, Brobee and half of Chelsea!

Oh, I forgot to mention that this Brobee talks and sings!! Brady is pushing his hand to get him to talk.

TIME OUT!

I've been putting Brady in time for a few weeks now when he doesn't behave. I think he gets that he's done something I don't like, but I'm not so sure he knows it's a bad thing to go to time out because when he starts misbehaving and I ask "do you want to go to time out", he responds with, "yeah", with a smile on his face. Of course this usually makes me laugh, so I have to be careful about that. This morning I put him in time out 3 times within the first hour he was up!! The first two times he wasn't listening when I told him "no" and the last time was when he threw one of his blocks at Chelsea (the dog) and hit her square in the face. He definitely knew I was upset with him then. (this throwing incident was after he had dropped his shoe from upstairs and Chelsea was laying on the landing waiting for us so she got hit then too!!) Amazingly he started behaving like a perfect angel after the 3rd time in time out...he even listened when I said "no" to him! This parenting a toddler, or almost toddler is going to be fun stuff, I can tell!!

BLOGETTE MEETING!

We found out that one of the families from my Yahoo group would be in town so we decided to get together for dinner. We went to Macaroni Grill to meet Karin and Ryan (Ryan's dad had to stay home and work) and we had a great time! It was great to finally meet since you start feeling like you know these people that you "talk" to on a regular basis, not to mention that we watch each other's children grow up through our blogs!! Anyway, the boys were cute...I wish they could have interacted a bit more though. Ryan is as cute in person as he is on his blog, but he was a bit more shy than I anticipated he would be. Ryan had just turned 2 last Wednesday and the waiter over heard us talking about that so he brought out a cake and sang for him!! The boys LOVED their cake and ice cream!!

Karin and Ryan getting ready to blow out his candle.

blowing out the candle

Brady after eating his cake and ice cream

Brady and Ryan posing for picture together

COX FARM

On Sunday we went to Cox Farm with Margi, Mark and their two boys, Ty and Blake and Kristi and her two kids, Kyle and Kayla (her husband Ken had drill weekend). We had such a good time and the weather couldn't have been better! There were lots of slides and of course pumpkins! There was a great hay ride too. We could have stayed much longer than we did but since we were having dinner with Karin and Ryan (who we had never met before) we needed to get Brady home for a nap. I'm already looking forward to next year!

The enterance with all of the pumpkins

LOOK, it's farmer Brady!!

Brady is in front of the "how tall are you this year" pumpkin.

Daddy and Brady going down one of the slides

Brady eating his apple, which he LOVED!!

Brady picking out his pumpkin

Ty, Blake, Brady and Mark

Super cute Kayla

A family picture

No smile, but still cute!

ICE CREAM FOR DINNER!!

We went out for ice cream for dinner as our Familiversary celebration and I'm pretty sure Brady was in favor of it!! I decided that since it was a special day that Brady should get something other than the normal chocolate/vanilla swirl in a cup, so I got him some brownie sundae in a waffle cone bowl. When Alan realized what I ordered for him he says (in a snide tone), "oh, he's not going to eat all of that"...well, he ate about 3/4 of it and he probably would have finished it, but we had to get going because I had to go play soccer. (the rest of it it's the freezer for tonight). Then to continue our celebration we went to PF Chang's for dinner last night. We've had a fun few days celebrating our special day!

He can't wait to dig in!

mmmm, this is good!

This is one of my favoite pictures of the two of us....just look at that adorable ice cream face!!

HAPPY FAMILIVERSARY!!!

One year ago today we met Brady for the first time and I can remember walking into the foster mom's house like it was yesterday!! Our lives have changed so much in the last 365 days, but I wouldn't change an ounce of it for anything in the world!! Sure, we can't jet off to who knows where anymore, but you know what? I like it better this way...I feel like I have a purpose in life now. It's nice to know that someone is 100% completely dependant on me and I like it. And besides who can resist Brady's cute as can be smile?? I mean I can be having the worst day or be super tired and as soon as I see him and he smiles at me, I forget about all of that.

Today Brady and I went to Barnes and Noble so he could play with the trains (and I could get a Starbucks!!) and we got 3 new books too! This kid LOVES books so I never say no to them. Then we went to Old Navy to do a bit of shopping and I got Brady 2 of the cutest t-shirts (I'll put a picture of them in the next post) then we met "Aunt Viv" for lunch. We'll go to dinner as a family tomorrow night to celebrate. ( I'm thinking we might have time to go out for ice cream tonight, so maybe we'll do that too!!)

Brady has grown SO much since last October!! He's about 24lbs now is about 32 inches long! He is talking up a storm these days and says so many words, like: bird, dog, apple, up, down, car, more, milk, bear, juice, water, fruit ("toof" as he says), hot, mom, dad, on, off, help, Pooh, and I know there are others that I can't think of at the moment. He's also very into making animal sounds/gestures for the following animals: dog,(woof) cat(meow), bird(tweet), tiger, lion, dinosaur(roars), coyote (he tilts his head back and howls!), alligator (he either does the Florida Gator Chomp or he does a version with just his hand and says "chomp, chomp, chomp"), owl (hoot, hoot), panda (he chews), Koala (he sleeps), gorilla (he pounds his chest), chicken (bawk bawk), duck (his quack sounds like "duuuuuuuuuuck), cow (his moo sounds like "boo"), pig (he does some sort of oink/snort sound) and sheep (baaa). He's so cute when he does these!! I do have it on video but I couldn't get it to upload last night, so I'll have to try again because it's really something to see!! He is becoming very independent and likes to do things himself, which can be good and bad...coming down the stairs adds at least an extra 5-10 minutes and we don't always have that time!!

We couldn't be any happier with our "little pumpkin" as I like to call him, and we can't wait to see what the next year has in store for us!! Here's a look back at some of Brady's first pictures. If you want to read about our trip to get him, check the September and October archives!

His referral picture from April '07.

May update photo which we like to say he was calling us!!

June Update picture with the black lab we sent and in an outfit we sent.

August update with the black lab again.

September update...right before we travelled to meet him!!