Papa and his boy

Mostly just for me :)

Posting this video today mostly so that I can look back at it and remember a day spent with my little boys. This video was taken two days after Christmas, which also happened to be our 7th wedding anniversary. But, as in almost all the past years since we moved out of Florida, Josh had to be back at work and I stayed in Fl. At least I know we'll both be in Florida for our next anniversary thanks to Neil and Ansev's New Year's Eve wedding this year :)

Brad's Baptism

When Luke was born, he had him baptized at my parent's church when he was 2 months old. We had Brad baptized at Josh's parents church (and the church Josh grew up attending) when he was 2 months old too. Brad was baptized the day after Christmas and our immediate families were there to celebrate with us. We did miss Jayce though! She had to work Christmas night at the hospital and go back to work again that evening.





Brad wore the same baptismal outfit as Luke. He also had a new sweater. This sweater was made by my Mummu (my mom's mom) and my aunt Susan. My aunt Susan found the body of the sweater started at Mummu's house after Mummu passed away and then she finished up the arms and sent it to Brad. It was very special to have him wear it.



Neil, Ansev, Brad, and Luke later that day. Josh had to return to Atlanta for work after the baptism. Luke, Brad, and I stayed at my parent's house until New Year's.

Christmas afternoon

After Christmas morning with my side of our family, we packed up and headed to St. Pete to have Christmas afternoon with Josh's side of the family. We took lots more video than pictures there and since I am having such a problem loading videos lately, I'll just try to post one. In this video Luke opens a Mater alarm clock. Josh and I got this for him so that we could try to get him to stay in bed until at least 7 am. I am very sorry to say it hasn't worked at all, but then again we haven't really tried the alarm part...it may just take some more reinforcement. Luke wakes up so early these days. For example, this morning I got up to feed Brad at 5:20 am and Luke's light was already on. Usually he is up around 6 I think. He's pretty good about staying in his room for a little while reading books.



Sweet baby



Pete the cat book, he loves it!



Another present we gave Luke, or maybe it was more of a present to ourselves...headphones for the DVD player!

Christmas morning with a 3 year old is the best!

Christmas morning with a three year old who really gets that he is getting stuff was so much fun. There were presents galore and he was ready to go!



Let's open stockings first. This was strange, we never do this in our family, we usually forget about the stockings and then remember them later. I think it must have been Josh's suggestion since he grew up opening his stocking first :)



Luke: "Dad, stop taking my picture. I have presents to open!"



Luke opened every gift with a "Wow" or "Ooh" he was super excited about everything! A tractor!







Video "Get a tissue daddy"... we have heard this phrase pretty much repeatedly for 4 months now. Yes we are working on getting him to wipe his own nose, currently occurring about 30% of the time.



This next video is too funny...scratch that, was too funny. I can't get it to load so I'll just have to describe what you would have seen.
Luke opened a shirt and he chucked it at me. Up until then he had been so happy with all the stuff he'd been opening and then we got on a small clothes run, so I guess with this last shirt he'd seen enough clothes and threw this one at me. We all died laughing! The rest of the video was just him opening more things, he did open a Gator shirt and wanted to put it on right away, he stripped off his pajama shirt, nearly falling over in the process, to put on his new Gator gear. Yes, we have taught him early and taught him right!

Christmas with small children really is more fun!

Brad, how was your first Christmas?
Thumbs up!

Christmas Eve

Ok, this is getting sad, it is April 4th and I'm just now posting about Christmas Eve. Maybe I'll get caught up to my usual two months behind pace sometime soon. (Let's all say a little prayer that Brad will start to sleep more at night and then mommy may have more energy during the day!...On that note, I am super pleased to say that he did sleep from 8pm to 4:40 am last night!!)

Back to Christmas Eve, we got all dressed up for church and tried to take a family picture. Luke wasn't having it, this is the best we could get.



Then we tried with just us and Brad :)



When we got home from church, we let Luke open one gift.
They turned out to be shoes, but he still loved them.











"Put them on right now!"



Happy with his new kicks! (which, by the way, are already worn out 3 months later, that kid plays hard!)

Pre-Christmas Christmas

Yep, I'm returning to the regularly scheduled catch-up. And we left off at the Thursday before Christmas. We packed up the kids and headed to Lakeland so that I could visit my long-time hair stylist Candi and we had an early Christmas with my aunt and uncle and cousins planned for that evening. I had a nice relaxing couple of hours to myself and got a manicure and pedicure followed by a cut and highlighting of my hair. It was heaven! Since I only ever get my hair done when I'm in Lakeland, it had been a whole year since the last cut/highlighting and it was looking sad. I may have to bite the bullet and find a salon here to go to :(

Anyway, here are some pictures from the evening!
Aunt Kathy holding Brad



Luke and his buddy (my cousin) Grant



me (with my new haircut) and Kathy and Brad



Neil and Ansev :)



Luke ready to open presents!



Uncle Jack opening his gifts (Josh was his secret Santa)



Luke and Grant playing with new toys





New legos!



A Luke smile!



Kathy still holding that baby



Grant gets a turn to hold Brad



Holly holding Brad



And Noah, in his favorite spot during the Holidays!