Zach Attack!

It's been awhile since I last had videos of my kiddos. Lucy found some of her baby videos while we were browsing YouTube and it was SO fun looking back at how little she (and Zach) once were, and how they talked, etc. It made me resolve to be better at getting them on tape!

We have tried and tried and tried to get Zachary to learn his colors. He can name shapes and animals and even count to 10, but colors just don't make sense to him...until we started naming them according to Thomas the Train's colors. So, for your information, James is a red engine, Thomas is blue, Toby is yellow, Percy is green, and he calls pink "Pinkalicious" (like the book). We've just learned to accept that if he sees grass and calls it Percy, or he calls a banana Toby, so be it. He's actually complicating it and making it harder, so he's even smarter. Enjoy!

Here he is- "Zachawee Cawdon."

He's also become a budding artist-- he LOVES to color and draw. He mostly draws choo-choo tracks, which are parallel lines all over the paper. But one day in the car he drew a self-portrait of himself, which I thought was quite good considering he's only 2.

This is "Daddy." He also likes to draw spiders and "letters" like Lucy.

Oh yes. This is for Jon's parents who are flying in this weekend to babysit for a week while Jon and I go on a Caribbean cruise (woohoo!)-- this is Daddy's way of keeping Zach out of mommy's hair while she's cooking. He LOVES to "help," his favorite is to dump random ingredients in my pots and pans or mixer, stir stuff wildly, and turn the mixer on while my back is turned. Never a dull moment with this guy!

And now for Lucy. She loves to talk, and talk, and talk at the dinner table, so we just wanted to get some on tape so when she's a sullen teenager we can fondly reminisce.:)

They are SOOOOOO excited for Grandma and Grandpa to come babysit, and ask every day multiple times when mommy and daddy are leaving so they can come babysit! They have a very long list of activities, so stay posted because we are Bahama-bound this Saturday!

The Great Outdoors!

This weekend Jonathan was supposed to go on a camp out with his Varsity Scouts, but unsurprisingly they all bailed at the last second. Being the amazing wife that I am :), I suggested, "Why don't you just camp in the backyard with the kids?" So he did.

The kids were THRILLED. Jon got home from work, built a fire, and set up his sad and neglected tent. The next door neighbors were having a party and kept peeking out their back window at us. I think they thought we were crAzy!

First we roasted weenies over an open fire. But you know how that goes-- the outside it all black and crispy and the inside is raw, so when that wasn't working we simply threw 'em on the barby. Camping at home certainly has its perks!

Then came the S'mores. Now, you may be remembering last time we let this little lady overindulge in S'mores...BARF-CITY. Well, happy to report there was no barfing this time around!

And then came bedtime. I'm not really sure how I got out of sleeping out in the tent... maybe it was my lucky day, but for whatever reason Mountain Man Jon was on his own because I was not invited to the camping slumber party, which was perfectly fine with me. I got the whole bed to myself. Aaaaaaaah. Life was good. At least until Jon brought Lucy in at 5 a.m. because she was cold. Zach on the other hand actually slept past 6 .m. which was a miracle, people!

Then we decided to do something we rarely do, and went to Saturday morning breakfast at Cracker Barrel. I'm not a big breakfast eater, but every now and then it is kind of fun to indulge in a big hearty breakfast, especially since we hit the gym before hand.

Mmmmmm! Both my kiddos LOVE pancakes, and these were delish! I tried the sweet potato hotcakes with brown sugar cinnamon butter and man oh man, my mouth is watering right now thinking about them!

It was a delicious Southern breakfast on a lazy Saturday morning...

The rest of the day was spent de-cluttering and organizing the upstairs playroom. I mean, seriously?!? I thought this upstairs oasis would serve as this wonderful environment for my kids to play and do great imaginary things, but pretty much they trash it on a daily basis. Jon's parents are coming to visit for the first time in 2 weeks so we're trying to get things ready!

We then moved the cleaning outside to the garage and my car (which is also always trashed), and while Jon and I were cleaning, Zachary apparently found last night's campfire ashes and either a) fell in them, or b) dumped them over and rolled around in them because he was COVERED. IN. ASH. Man, I love this kid!

January Jots

Where to start, where to start? I can't honestly say that the month of January has flown by so I really have no excuses as to why this is only the 2nd post for the month. In fact I was looking back and noticed that in 2008 when I first started blogging I had over 100 posts that year. In 2009 I had like 87, in 2010 there were 89, and last year I only made 58. Looks like I'm not off to such a good start this year...

But in any case, here we are, at the end of a very long, kind of uneventful month. After the hub-bub of the holidays doesn't January just seem to last and last?? Earlier this month we visited Aberdeen lake which has a nice walking trail and cool bridge that crosses the lake. Even though it was FREEZING it was nice to get some fresh air!

For MLK we took a hike out near where they filmed the new movie "Hunger Games." Supposedly they've filmed all of the scenes of the arena in a state park outside of Charlotte just like this. Pretty cool!

Luckily this back carrier still fits the Zach-O-Man. He loves riding around on his daddy's back!

This little girl however, does NOT fit in the back pack although she'd really like to. She recently had her 5 year old check-up and according to the doctor was "the picture of health." During her eye exam the nurse had her cover one eye with her right hand, and then instead of telling her to switch, she simply said, "Now cover your other eye." So Lucy did. She covered her left eye AND her right eye. It was pretty hilarious. She was pretty confused because she said "I couldn't see anything that way!"

Zachary does enjoy a nice dig in the dirt every now and then. One thing we do love about NC is the easy access to the great outdoors!

We had a little picnic lunch and then on our way home stopped at Panda Express.:) We don't have one in Pinehurst and it's Jon and Lucy's favorite!

They just opened a brand new Rita's in Aberdeen (about 15 min. away from Pinehurst) so we were excited to check our old favorite out! It didn't disappoint!

I tried to make a funny face since this was cause for celebration-- first water ice in about 2 years after all. I always get mango but this time I opted for Swedish Fish flavored ice. Interesting. I taught my first BodyPump class EVER all by myself that night and I could feel the sugar high.:) I'd still pick U-Swirl over Rita's though.

No complaints from her!

Zachary got the cutest super hero cape from Grandma Joanie for Christmas and he LOVES wearing it! He's become obsessed with super heroes lately-- Spider Man being his favorite. He also did call Jesus a super hero-- I think because he had a red robe on?

This kid constantly cracks me up. The other day he saw a black person and asked, "He eat chocolate?" I don't know if we've read "Pinkalicious" too many times (the little girl eats too many pink cupcakes and turns pink), but he was pretty curious.

Jon's "group" has been up for deployment the last couple of months, and so far so good. He did get issued combat gear though, but it's still pretty unlikely he'd be shipped off since there are only 2 dentists at the base (knock on wood).

Just like those army guys on Toy Story!

Hopefully this is as much daylight as his equipment ever sees! Happy January everybody!

My Little Bundles of Joy!

This past summer when I was visiting home in Boise I was lucky enough to have my cousin Missy take some pictures of the kiddos. My cousin is multi-talented; she's an amazing amateur photographer and also the co-creator of www.HowDoesShe.com, a really cool website for women. Her computer crashed right after we took them, so I had no idea when they'd get edited and sent back, but lo and behold a few weeks before Christmas I got these. And I love them! As usual, she did a FANTASTIC job.

((Too bad the ONE picture I'm in, they both look like they're being tortured!!))