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:
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!
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!
We had one full Christmas holiday! My mom came to visit Friday before Christmas so we were able to get some time visiting with her before the rest of the family arrived Christmas eve and Christmas day. Friday night Anthony and I went out to dinner for our anniversary and it was so strange to go somewhere without James! Dinner was wonderful and it was heaven to be able to eat in a restaurant without worrying about James. He is not a fan of sitting down for meals :)
Christmas Eve Anthony went fishing with his dad and they had a great time! They stayed out all day and caught 5 red fish (but were only allowed to keep 2). Anthony is dying to get back out there soon!
While Anthony was gone, James and I took my mom to check out the dinosaurs at the botanical gardens and find the geocache. The weather was perfect, and I walked right to the geocache! I had researched a little more online and realized that I had been looking in the wrong spot before. Once I got to the right area, it was a cinch!
Here he is, trying to give me a stick he got of the ground so I can put it in the "ash" (trash). He gets very concerned about litter or things he thinks are out of place :)
'
At one point, he decided to just sit down and draw in the dirt with his stick. I don't think I have ever seen him do that before:
When we would get to a dinosaur, James would say "whoa!" or "cool!" and then proceed to find something more entertaining to play with. At the triceratops, he found a palm frond on the ground and pushed it around for the rest of our visit. He loved that thing! He cried when I made him leave it. I just think it is so funny that right in front of this HUGE stone dinosaur he would rather play with a stick:
As we were getting in the car to go home, my mom put James down in the passenger seat for a minute so we could put our other stuff in the backseat. Quick as a flash James crawled over to the driver seat so he could play with the steering wheel. When I pulled him away to put him in his car seat, he clung to the wheel like glue, he did not want to let go!
Christmas Eve my brothers made it from Gainesville and we had a great time visiting and playing board games. I love how much we laugh when we all get together! My older brother had to leave real early the next morning to make it home in time for work, but we are glad he got to stay for the time he did.
Christmas morning, I was up waaaaay before James was. I think I got up around 8:30 and finally I went into James room to wake him up around 9:45. Why can't he sleep in like that on a normal day?
After everyone was up, we went into the front room for presents. James had a hard time getting the hang of his stocking...he would get one thing out and then want to play with it and act annoyed when we would want him to keep looking for more. Eventually he got into it :)
For some reason he ended up with three different play microphones. He loves them though!
Anytime I ask Anthony what books James should have (since I can't resist buying him books!) Anthony always says The Poky Little Puppy, since that was one of his favorites growing up. This year he got it!
Another car:
A large car track/set. It is about 50/50 right now between him being really irritated by this toy and loving playing with it. It might need to disappear and come back in a few months...
The grand finale of the morning was his new jeep! He absolutely loved it!
Here is a video of him driving it around. He now has become a pro at pressing the reverse when he gets stuck somewhere and then backing out. Anthony is trying to think of ways to fix the wheels so that they don't get stuck so often in the grass.
Christmas afternoon Anthony's parents and his sister and her family came over for appetizers and desserts. The food was great and we had a blast visiting and opening presents. James caught on to Anthony's parents' names really quickly and he kept asking for "Mimi" and "Papa" all night:
Of course we couldn't leave the dogs out of the fun. They absolutely hated it:
It was a great Christmas, I hope everyone else's was just as wonderful!
When I was little if you had a power wheels you were the (wo)man!!! Since James is obsessed with all things transportation, I started keeping my eyes out at garage sales for an affordable power wheels. I didn't think I would really get him one, since I didn't want to pay too much. Plus, it still seems like such a HUGE gift like it was when I was little, although it seems like now the prices aren't that bad compared to the costs of other popular gifts. So I wasn't really planning on getting him one, but then I came across a barely used one at a garage sale a few months ago. It was priced at $50, which I knew was reasonable especially considering how new it looked. You could tell it hadn't been ridden much. The owners said they got it for their daughter and she went through a growth spurt and grew out of it almost immediately. I offered them $40, they took it and it was mine!
The only problem was that it looked like this (minus the blonde little girl:):
Not that James would care of course, but we just couldn't feel good about ourselves as parents if we let his friends see him loving on a barbie power wheels. The embarrassment! :) So we did some googling to figure out the best way to go about painting it and we finally took an afternoon and got it done. I love how it turned out!
His new manly ride:
We are considering adding a few more details, like some bike reflectors for headlights and brake lights and maybe some decals but we might not. It depends on how stressed I feel as we get closer to Christmas :) We spent almost as much on paint as we did on the car, but I love that my little boy is getting something we really put some effort into. I can't wait for Christmas morning for him to start cruising around!!!
This morning I took James geocaching to a botanical gardens about 20 minutes away. I had heard about this place a few times, but was reminded about it by my friend Leah. It is a really cool place, and it has tons of history! First it was a sugar mill plantation in the 1800's and there are still ruins and equipment preserved on the property.
Then it was converted into a sort-of amusement park in the 1940's called
Bongoland, with huge stone dinosaurs, a caged baboon named Bongo, and a
train that took you around on a tour. It shut down after only a few
years due to lack of interest, I guess those kind of amusement parks
weren't in style back then! Luckily the dinosaurs are still standing.
A giant ground sloth:
Walking on the dino foot prints:
T-rex:
Stegosaurus:
Triceratops:
Now it has been adopted by a local nonprofit group as a botanical garden and it is gorgeous!! There are all these little side gardens, like an Asian garden, an herb garden, a "natural chapel" with walls of bamboo and trees, and even a human sundial. My favorite is this gorgeous tree they call a "confederate tree" because supposedly confederate soldiers camped under it during the civil war:
James and I had so much fun exploring, but we didn't end up finding the geocache. There was a wedding going on (who has a wedding at 10 in the morning on a Tuesday??) and I didn't want to interrupt with my weird looking under and over rocks geocache search :) In a way it is good, because it means we have a reason to go back soon!
Anthony has been a registered nurse for 11 years. He received his Master's Degree in Nursing from the University of South Florida and is currently working as an adult nurse practitioner at a private family practice. He also is a committed saltwater aquarium enthusiast and is a die-hard fisherman:)
I got my bachelor's degree in psychology and my master's degree in rehabilitation counseling from UF. After working a year and a half at USF with Student Affairs, running their academic testing center for students with disabilities, I am currently a stay at home mom and chief family officer.
We have two little boys, James and Everett and we love being parents!!
Anthony and I met in January 2005 when he moved to Gainesville to work at Shands. We were both in the same family home evening group in the singles ward. (Accident? I don't think so!) After we got to know each other, we were pretty much inseparable. We had so much in common and we felt like we had always known each other. Anthony proposed to me in July 2005 by sending me on a scavenger hunt around town to our different dating milestones (our first date, our first kiss, etc..). The scavenger hunt ended with him down on one knee with an engagement ring! We were sealed December 17, 2005 in the Orlando Florida Temple.
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference" -Robert Frost
"Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better." -C.S. Lewis
"Remember, sometimes those that start out the slowest end up going farthest." -Elder Joseph B. Worthlin
"David saw himself as a shepherd, but the Lord saw him as a king of Israel. Joseph of Egypt served as a slave, but the Lord saw him as a seer. Mormon wore the armor of a soldier, but the Lord saw him as a prophet. We are sons and daughters of an immortal, loving, and all-powerful Father in Heaven. We are created as much from the dust of eternity as we are from the dust of the earth. Every one of us has potential we can scarcely imagine."-Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin "In the private sanctuary of one's own conscience lies that spirit, that determination to cast off the old person and to measure up to the stature of true potential." -President Thomas S. Monson
Family Pictures
My brother's graduation
Anthony as a kid. Look at that grin!
Me as a kid. I was going to be a ballerina of course!
