Life with the cutest boy ever

Having James around can be so much fun! He cracks us up all the time, and makes everyday stuff so much better :) The last time Anthony went fishing and came home with fish to clean, James got really upset about it. He kept watching Anthony saw into the fish with his electric knife and crying, "Oh No!!!" over and over and over again in this pitiful voice! He would pick up the fish scales from the ground and bring them to me and say "Oh no!" and look at me, as if I could fix it and make it all better. Anthony just kept telling him that it was okay and that this is what we do with yummy fish :)

The next time we were expecting the same reaction, but he wasn't upset at all! He was actually pretty curious:

 He had to touch it:

 Anthony's dad got James to make "the face" and caught this picture of it. He reminded us that Anthony's nickname as a little boy was "the face" since he was always cheesing for the camera. Isn't amazing how children can be so similar to their parents as children?

Then at cub scouts last week I was able to get these pictures of James. He spent almost the entire hour on that stool, babbling along and teaching a pretend lesson. He must have been imitating me from watching me on Wednesday nights, since he doesn't ever see me teach during primary. It was to die for!!! I love his faces in the different pictures, his expressions totally tell the story :)

 Lately, James has started saying so many words we have lost count, sometimes as much as 6 new ones a day! A few days ago he was in the bath and started saying belly button. The way he says it is so cute!!! We try to get him to say it all day:

Trains and Dogs

Last Saturday we went to a model train show at the fairgrounds. It was so interesting!! I knew that there were people who were into model trains as a hobby, but I didn't realize how hardcore!! They have these layouts and tracks that have such detail put into them. It was amazing!

James was mesmerized:

 After looking at the trains, we walked to the other end of the fairgrounds where they happened to be having a dog show. We totally didn't know about it until we got there, but we ended up spending more time there than with the trains! It was fun to see all the different breeds of dogs and the....enthusiastic dog owners :)

 This is kind of unrelated, but James has been taking really long naps lately (maybe he is going through a growth spurt?) so we took a picture of him one afternoon:

I also wanted to add this picture of us visiting Anthony's parents. All on his own James has started making this adorable funny face! He makes it and comes up to you to show you and then he laughs and laughs! If you ask him to make "the face" he will do it right away. Luckily we got a picture of it!

 We love that goofy kid!

New Year's Day 2013

New Year's day Anthony went off fishing, so James and I had the day to ourselves! It was absolutely gorgeous outside, the kind of day you can't make yourself stay in the house, so I decided to go check out a geocache at another Sugar Mill ruin. The history of the ruins around our town is really interesting to me. The area used to be a big sugar plantation area, but they were all destroyed by Seminole Indians in the 1800's

 Of course, James found a stick that he liked and insisted on dragging it around everywhere. We have had to implement a rule that sticks "belong" in the park and he has to leave them behind before we get into the car. Otherwise we would have stick souvenirs from every trip to the park!

Since that didn't take very long, I didn't want to go home just yet. So I decided to go walking on the beach. I love that we live only 15 minutes away!

We always look for turtles in the dunes and we got lucky. Two of them right next to each other!

 This is the view as we walked out to the waves. Gorgeous!

 James was wearing long pants and I knew that they would get sandy and wet, so I just took them off. He loves the freedom of no pants, that is for sure.

He had so much fun running through the water and saying hi to everyone we walked past. The only thing that I didn't like was that since it is a driving beach and James loves cars I had to really work to keep him away from the driving lane. Other than that, it was a perfect New Year's day at the beach!