Christmas came early

Christmas came early this year for Colin as my uncle brought down this kitchen set and cash register and also all the toys in the shelves that you see. The kitchen set used to be my little sister's. Colin loves it all and has had so much fun playing all morning. His favorite thing is to run the cash register - beep-beep-beep-beep is all I hear. He also likes to make coffee and put water in the coffee maker and then drinking it. Last night when we got home he was enjoying playing with it when I told him "Colin its time for bed. Lets clean up your toys." He said "Oh... wait" and runs into the kitchen, points at the clock and says "time for play" Sorry kid - if only the clocks worked that way.

the magic word

I have been trying to teach Colin to say please and thank you and sometimes you're welcome but that ones a little hard for him right now. But he asked for something and I instinctively said "whats the magic word?" He thought for a moment, and in those few seconds I realized it was the first time I had asked him that question and was actually curious to see what he would say. So after I could see the wheels turning in his head he proudly said "GOD!"

About a month ago - or maybe even less, my grandpa was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer. Surprisingly the neighbor across the street has this same type. But he went into the hospital last weekend when he got so weak he couldn't walk. So Colin and I came to help my grandma this week and be her personal drivers as she can't drive since her stroke. He was in icu for a few days and then was moved to his own room. And after they gave him his first dose of chemo he was feeling so much better and can now walk around and looks much better. He will be coming home tomorrow - and he is so ready to be home. We can't wait for him to come home either. What we understand from the doctor is that this cancer has a great response rate with the chemo and from what I saw yesterday they were right. Which is very encouraging to us all.
Colin and I were glad to come help and Colin has LOVED being here. The first thing he went for was the candy dish. Before I could stop him fist fulls of m&m's were being shoved into his mouth. So we put the m&m's up but he still charmed me and with his sweet "peas" (for please) he gets a few every time he walks by. He was very interested in the hospital bed and kept whispering to me "buttons mama, buttons - me push" which we didn't let him but he is really wanting to. He loved the little pond outside the icu wing of the hospital and would pretend his stick was his fishing pole (pole pole is what he calls it) and would fish for hours out there if we let him. Colin also found my uncle's old football helmet and he loves to go outside and play football. My uncle Jeff is coming tonight and bringing Colin a kitchen set and some other toys. It's going to be like Christmas for Colin when he wakes up from his nap. Colin and I will head back to va beach tonight but will be back next Friday if not sooner. Can't stay away from ooo-eee and howard too long!

Catch

Yesterday Colin and I were at the store and I let him walk down the toy isles and play with the toys - trying to get an idea of what he might want for Christmas. Usually if he always goes for one toy time after time it usually means he'll play with it a lot when we bring it home. But he found a kids sized catchers mit and wanted it to play "catch - dada - me" was what he said and he had to call dada on the phone to tell him "catch - home - me" These are the sentences he is saying now. Brent and Colin play baseball ALL the time where Brent will hit the baseball with the bat and Colin (and I) will go running after the ball. Its a great game and Colin laughs and absolutely loves it. So a glove made it all the more exciting. Brent and I have agreed that you can't go wrong with sports toys for him. For one he loves it and it tires him out for great naps and bedtimes but it also is shaping him for his future college scholarship - hopefully. At least its worth a try. He's actually pretty good. He is so proud of his "catch" as he calls it and tonight when Brent comes home we'll have to play again.

Destiny comes to visit

This past weekend my friend Destiny came to visit from West Virginia. The last time I had seen her was in WV when we were moving our stuff out. And I think its been a year since Brent had seen her. We love Destiny and she is so much fun to be around. The weather was beautiful so we went down to the beach - of course. Colin is getting to be such a beach bum and loves to go and play in the sand and the water. We tried to go to Cape Henry Lighthouse but once we passed through the first initial inspection they had to search our car at the second inspection - and apparently our car registration ran out. Who knew Fort Story was so monitored by the military. We haven't made it to the DMV here yet and I think Colin and I will be going Monday. We didn't get a ticket thankfully but we couldn't go see the lighthouse. I was sure we had until March to renew but I guess I was wrong. We had a lot of fun anyways. Brent and I watched TWO movies with Destiny this weekend. Its been a long time since we were able to watch a movie from start to finish but our little man is sleeping until 8am now and makes staying up much easier. We loved having her here are sad she had to go back to West Virginia. Come back again "nit ney"

art time

Colin LOVES to paint. He prefers painting people when we paint walls in our house. But he does like to paint on paper. He doesn't really like to color with crayons - paints and watercolors hold his attention better. He was so cute painting with these brushes I got that I had to take some pictures. These brushes are great since its got the paint and the brush all in one. You just have to squeeze the handle and paint goes into the brush. Makes painting SO much easier to clean up now. He brought one of his paintings to my mom this week. One was so good we framed it. He is so proud of his paintings and likes to tell me what each one of them are. For example the other day he painted a rake, horse, and slide. And amid the paint splotches you could really see where he was getting those. Brilliant. What a smart boy!

little cowboy

When were were at the football game, Jeff brought us our cousin's hobby horse. Colin was intrigued and kept wanting us to bring in the horse when we got back to the farm. (He still thinks it should go back to the farm.....appropriate but our farm doesn't have animals) He looks like a natural here. Its hard to get a good pictures because he bounces so fast on it. He did get stuck under the horse as he was trying to make his baby horse come and hug the mommy horse and I think got some hair caught in the springs. "pelp... pelp.. pelp" is what I heard and since then I think he's a little put off by the horse as he doesn't ride it as much. But he's really cute as he likes to come over and talk to the horse. He pets the horse and adjusts her strap. So cute. He might just be the next horse whisperer :) Thank you Jeff and Hannah!

We finally put Brent's firepit together that he got for his birthday. It was so much fun and we stocked up on hotdogs and smores. Colin would do this every night! Especially the chocolate part.

Another HOkie weekend...

Right before the gameRunning with Ba-pa

Colin laughing at something Jeff told him...and given that Jeff taught me the "beans, beans, the musical fruit" song I can only imagine :)

Watching the game. Notice that concentration.

Yes that makes THREE games we've gone to this year. Colin loves them so we are very glad to have had the opportunity to take him to experience hokie football in person. Although the other day I was throwing the football in the back yard to him since Brent was at work and he kept tackling me. Every time. And he hits hard. (Frank Beamer I think we need to talk) He studies the game and when we get home he loves to play football and try to "drop" the rest of us who are playing with him. Colin loved tailgating and loved to have someone throw him the football while he went and caught it. He didnt tackle anyone there though. Just momma at home I guess. He had a great time with Uncle Jeff - who is now deff as colin says. The weather was perfect. Some of the trees were just starting to change. The game got a little boring in the end and Colin did manage to fall asleep during the 4th quarter. But at least we won which is always important. We had a great time and can't think of a better way to spend a weekend in the fall than at a Hokie football game. Thank you grandma and grandpa and uncle jeff for the tickets again. AND thank you mom and dad for taking us :)Here is a short video of him watching the hokies play nebraska a few weeks ago. We put him down for a late nap and then let him stay up to watch the first half. He didnt make it though and went back in his room and told me he wanted to go to sleep (which surprised us) but he cheered for a good quarter.The past few days he wanted Thomas and Percy (his trains from Thomas the train) to go watch the football game and we had to cheer and yell like we did at the game. The trains did. Which is funny to imitate. And then we leave and go back to the farm. If I try to take the trains home he corrects me and says "farm."

our little decorator

The other day I walked into the room and Colin had his tape measure out measuring furniture. I quickly grabbed the camera. He's pretty good at measuring the right parts - now we just have to work on his numbers. Brent just shakes his head when I walk into a room and start measuring. In fact, while Colin was napping today I rearranged the guest bedroom since I thought of a new way to place furniture :)

By the way this couch used to be a light pine color with green cushions. I stained it black and recovered the cushions. Makes a huge difference. Now I just need to find some pillows to go on it.

dental visit

Last night Colin was drumming on a pan,while standing on his chair and I was cleaning the kitchen and we were singing a song together. The next thing I knew he had fallen and bumped his chin. His tooth went into his lip and he has a deep bruise on his chin. So we put the boo-boo bunny (if you dont have one they are amazing - works every time) on his boo-boo and sat and read some books while Colin calmed down. I didn't look inside his mouth until about 20 minutes later when he pointed and said owww - boo-boo. So sure enough one of his front teeth was crooked and his gum was bleeding. And to make it worse his pacifier (which he calls ba-ba) made it bleed even more. He didn't seem too bothered by it at first so we waited until today before heading over to the pediatric dentist. (this all happened around 7:30 at night) We put him to bed but Colin and I didnt get much sleep last night though as he kept waking up and telling me his tooth hurt. Poor little guy. I was really worried about in the middle of the night after the 4th time of getting up to comfort him. We met Brent at the dentist's office since he was working right near there and our little guy was so good. He let them take x-rays, look in his mouth several times and never once complained. He didnt fracture or rupture anything but we're supposed to keep an eye on it and if it turns colors we need to go back so they can clean out the decay is what they said. His tooth will correct itself they said and slowly go back to normal. He let them poke around with their instruments but notice the death grip he has on the arm rest.Afterwards we went and got yum-yum. What a brave little guy.

pops comes to town

This past weekend Brents dad came for a visit. Pops as Brent and now Colin call him. Colin immediately gave him his blankie to play with - and that is a huge honor. Colin and his Ba-pa play with his blankie all the time and play chase so he wanted to do that with this grandpa. This past weekend was the 50th airshow at oceanna and while we didn't go to the exact air show we went down to the boardwalk for a mini show that they had Saturday night. They had some planes fly over and one let off fireworks which was really cool. Then they had parachuter's jump from the airplanes and land on the beach (right in front of us - we were standing in a really good spot) Colin loved the fact that they GUMPED! (jumped) It was really amazing how they did it. They had a band playing afterwards and Colin danced and then played on the playground that they had on the beach. ON Sunday we went to the beach after church. We've been doing that the past few weekends as the church we've been going to is about 5 minutes away. Its on the Chesapeake bay so the waves are small and easy for Colin to jump. People can also bring their dogs onto this beach which Colin loves. Here he is - our baywatch kid, running in the surf.... and don't worry. He isn't always speedo boy. We put his swim suit on and it was too small so he took it off as soon as we got there. Good thing he was wearing swimmers. He and I went yesterday and bought a new Thomas the train swim suit that he insisted on wearing in the bath last night so I think next Sunday he'll be fully clothed.
And last but not least the Redskins won this weekend! Good game for all. Pops stayed to watch the game and left Monday morning. While Colin didn't watch the whole thing he ran around singing "hail to the redskins" or "nen nens" (redskins)

We also picked up Colin's new bed, dresser, chest, desk and nightstand. Martha was redecorating her son's room and gave us all this great furniture. Pictures of his big boy bed to come!

Colin's first sentence

Colin just said his first clear sentence that even Brent understood word for word.....

"Momma - you're the best!"

I can't think of a better first sentence to say!

but so Brents not left out - Colin and I are reading a story and the story asked "do you have a best friend?" and I asked Colin who his best friend was and he said "dada!"

our little engineer

Colin has been greatly influenced by our trek every Friday across the bridge tunnel to Newport News to see my parents and get my pay check :) (and more supplies for me to work on during the week while little one naps) He has recently been constructing tunnels (or in colin language - nunnels) with his legos. Legos are an amazing thing and he plays with them for hours building towers and tunnels. He makes his tunnels and then places them around his train tracks and makes all his trains go through the nunnel. Sometimes the lego men climb the towers and jump onto the track.... should I be worried about him in the future? He will constantly ask Brent or I to "woo woo" which means go play trains. Its really fun to see his mind work as he builds his nunnels or towers. He has recently been making "ba's" (which is steps for the rest of us) so his lego men can climb the "ba's" or steps to the top of the tower. And yes he is still in his Thomas PJ's. Same PJ's - different day. Although I have hidden them today and he has forgotten about them for the moment so I can wash them. Tomorrow will be a different story :)

so awful its funny

my sister took this picture and its so bad it makes me laugh every time I see it. Colin and I are much more photogenic as you can see in the last few posts :) I hope you get a good laugh and enjoy this picture as much as we do.

Landscape Challenge....

Yesterday was a day full of working in our yard. We love our yard and have big plans on making it really nice. Its one of the reasons we bought our house. I'll have to let Brent tell you his plans for his garden and patio extension -its a really tiny patio so we'd like to make it bigger. I think we're going to do raised planting beds on the side of the yard for brents garden but we're still working on those plans. And we go back and forth with putting up a fence. But there were some overgrown bushes in the flower beds that just needed to go. So as soon as we woke up Saturday - which with Colin is very early - we all went right to work. We pulled out all the ugly bushes. Colin was so cute and went and got his gloves (an unmatched pair of winter gloves he found) and helped a little bit but he really liked finding the slugs. And yes he is wearing his pj's. He has to wear his Thomas flannel pj's all day every day right now. We bought mulch and have to dig out the stumps and then i'm going to plan tulips and daffodil bulbs in some of the beds. I dont know what else to plan right now so we'll just have to see how these bed progress. We left the yellow/greenish bushes but those low evergreen looking ones are gone! It already makes a huge difference. I dont have after pictures yet so you will just have to check back sometime next week to see the progress we've made this week. we are almost done with our shade garden in the back yard. It was there but was very overgrown so we've cleaned it out and added more plants. Looks great now and will have to post pictures of that soon too.

Before. The first picture is looking at our side corner looking into the back yard. Its the left corner in the second picture if that makes sense. The second picture is half of the back of our house. Note our new air conditioning!

Looking for slugs. The second picture is the aftermath - we filled 13 large bags.

Colin was a huge help but when asked if he had fun that morning he told me "NO!" Oops! Good thing we did most of it while he was napping :)

Lions!!!

Laughing at something "kitty" must have told him

For the past few months Colin has been talking about lions. He will walk into a room and go "uh-oh roar!!!" (as he does the lion roar) and usually I'll have to tell him its ok the lions are sleeping or playing and he says ok (which in his language is AH-HAY)and goes on his way. Sometimes he hides from the lions. I'm not sure why or where he got the idea to hide from lions or that lions were bad. Although I remember my mom talking with my grandma about how they didn't like food lion and colin was sitting there doing his "roar" the whole conversation so I'm not sure if thats where it came from or not. Who Knows....somethings are never understood i guess. Since we moved, Colin has had a hard time going to sleep. He has to go to sleep with the light on and talks about the lions sometimes. Well last night I turned off his lamp since he wanted it off and all of a sudden "lions" were in the room and this time he kept pointing to the ceiling. The shadows of his lamp made it look like big shapes on his ceiling which to him were lions. So I moved his lamp and then we made shadow puppets on the wall and talked about how it wasn't really lions (not sure if he understood that) but just shadows. He had fun making the shadow puppets himself and then went right to sleep! It was amazing. Poor little guy was just afraid the whole time of the shadows.Here is a sweet picture of Colin and my grandma. We spent Friday with my grandparents and Colin cried the whole way home saying he wanted to eat dinner at oooo eeee's (short for Howard and Ethel) I think he knew Brent was cooking fish for dinner and in that case I wanted to eat dinner at oooo eeeee's too! (the fish was good. I'm just not a big fan of fish) Next time Colin... Next time.

Another hokie weekend

As you can see Colin is really getting into football games. Especially hokie games! He had a great time this past weekend. Here are some highlights.

* Going to the farm. We all love the farm - Colin gets really excited when we get there and brings out all the trucks (play trucks) and plays on the tractors. This time he also went right for the candy bowl and had eaten a whole bowl before I saw what he was doing!
* Blacksburg - So beautiful. One day I want to live there again.
* Tailgating - my parents are getting very professional in their tailgating gear.
*Jimmy John's
* The drillfield. Although Sarah and I agreed that the trees have gotten a lot taller since we went there...
*Lane Stadium - need I say more
* Colin learning how to say "lets go hokies" well he doesn't quite say the exact words but the melody is exactly the same with whatever he is saying. He also goes YES! when you say touchdown and pumps his arms up and down.
*The Highty Tighty marching band. Colin couldn't keep his eyes off of them and we had to march with them into the stadium. And our seats were perfect for him to watch them the whole time. He got really excited when they played during the game.
*Sarah jumping up and down to Enter Sandman while holding Colin.... AND FALLING! haha it was so funny and I got it all on video. She and Colin are fine. The girl they landed on might not be :) haha no she's ok but was a little annoyed. Unfortunately for the family the video was taken with sarah's camera so you'll be left with Brent and I telling the story.
*Colin yelling Go GO GOOOO and cheering the whole game. He stayed awake this time and LOVED it all. Sat and marched around for most of the game.
*Colin telling me he was going to go to Virginia Tech when he got older... Well not in so many words but he keeps telling me he wants to go back - and I could not be prouder!

It was a great weekend. We had a lot of fun. Thanks mom and dad, jeff, grandma and grandpa for the tickets. You're contributing to another die hard hokie fan in Colin.

yum spoons!

Last week Jamie and Benjamin came over for dinner. Colin woke up from his nap and brought all his baby toys out into the living room for 'the baby' and couldn't wait for Benjamin to come over. So with all those toys - what did Benjamin want the most? A spoon. That tasted the best and of course Colin had to join in. Benjamin is growing so fast and is so close to crawling. We can't wait to hang out with them again.

And on another note - we have air conditioning. Its wonderful. Although Colin wants to sleep in his flannel pj's at night since we're used to just sweating all night. Thank you Rod and Debbie again for your ac unit. I don't think we would've survived without it!

Well we're off to another weekend of hokie football. This time in the wonderful town of Blacksburg. And Colin's beloved highty tighties will be there (no offense James and Angela - he likes the MV's too!) Lets hope we dont get rained on and that the outcome will be much better this time.

weekend fun

This past weekend was a busy but really fun weekend. It started Friday morning when Colin rode his tricycle for TWO whole hours. We were chasing the garbage truck :) fun and very smelly! I was amazed he kept wanting to go. Then we went and fed the ducks and turtles at the lake near our house. And then when Brent got off work we headed to Richmond to pick up Sarah for our weekend fun. (after a brief stop at Bead Retreat in NN for me to turn my stuff in/get new supplies for this week and for Colin to get his chocolate and to see Ma-MA. He likes going to Bead Retreat and gets excited when I tell him were going to see grandma at work) We then picked up Sarah and drove to I think Henderson, NC to spend the night before heading to Charlotte for the first Hokie Football game. We got to the game just in time. Colin at first wasn't too sure about it but once Enter Sandman came on he wanted to jump up and down and LOVED the fact that both teams had brought their bands. We were able to go sit near our friends Jon and Emma which was really fun. The game was hot - very hot. And obviously didn't turn out the way we wanted to. Lets hope for a better game this weekend. But it was still fun to sit and enjoy the game with friends. And Brent loved being at a football game on his birthday! happy birthday Brent! Colin got really tired and hot and eventually fell asleep - like he does every year. Amazing that he can fall asleep during a football game.

We ended up going back to Jon and Emma's house after the game to hang out and spend the night. (it had been 5 years since we had last seen them so it was really good to spend so much time with them) They have two boys - one Colin's age. It was great for Colin to play with someone his age since most of the kids we know are older or younger. Their boys are so cute and were really sweet with Colin. Jon and Emma have a beautiful house. It was great to get ideas for our house- lets hope it turns out as well for us :) Colin keeps talking about Cole and Beckett and in his prayers last night thanked Jesus for Cole and "the baby" So sweet. Although at one point he went to hug Cole and ended up tackling him. I guess its different hugging someone your size than hugging momma or dadda! We left Sunday morning and got home Sunday evening just in time for Brent's friend Mike (aka witty) to get here and for us to go to our neighbors cookout. With all the food and junk food there what did Colin want to eat - only broccoli! He usually eats it cooked but he loved it raw. But it was good to get to know or neighbors better. Oh and Jim's (our neighbor) brother is a center for the seahawks! Brent's in awe :) haha. We all went to the beach Monday morning and then after Colin woke up from his nap we went to the pool for the last time. Colin started playing with some kids at the beach and one girl turned to him and said "your funny" and you should've seen Colin's face. He was so proud and just looked at her in awe. So good for him to get that affirmation from an older kid - especially since most of them didn't really talk to him and he wanted to join in so bad. Colin has been saving the change his finds around the house in a bowl to take to the pool so he can get a snack so he used it yesterday - got two bags of peanut M&M's. (I snuck a bunch for us out when he wasn't looking) Now we'll have to find another treat for him to save his money for. He was so proud of using "his money" Colin woke up this morning asking for Ant Ant (sarah) and witty. lets hope they visit soon. It was a great weekend and tons of fun but I'm looking for a few relaxing days... although tomorrow Brent has to drive to Kitty Hawk, NC for work.... might be nice to go with him :)