Knitted Goodness

Y'all, my super talented friend Shannon is doing a giveaway on her blog.  Go look at it here.

She knitted several hats and some booties for Milo and also that SUPER CUTE pumpkin outfit he wore at Halloween.  Here.  Let me refresh your memory:

Oh my word.  He was so tiny.  And isn't that pumpkin just the most precious thing you've ever seen?  If he was still that tiny I'd totally get him one of her sock monkey hat/diaper cover sets.  Maybe I'll get one for my sister's little munchkin when she has him/her (probably a her).  :) 

Anyway, check out Shannon's giveaway, and check out her Etsy shop.  There's a link on the side of her blog.  She has awesome stuff (including knit Chuck Taylor type shoes!).  

Thankful Thursday

After a two week hiatus because I was packing for, and then actually being on, vacation, I'm back for Thankful Thursday!

So many times last week I stopped in the middle of an activity and though about how thankful I was for some little thing.  Here are a few pics of those things:

A gorgeous sunset over the ocean:

Silly faces at the dinner table (when he should have been eating):

Evening walks barefoot on the beach with the little man:

Early morning coffee on the porch of our cabin (and seeing a deer walk past while we sat in the quiet!):

Sand between my toes, and sandy baby toes (and once I was even thankful for sand in my bed because it meant I was still on vacation!!!)

A whole 9 days to spend with my sweet husband and our little guy (who LOVES his Daddy):

Date night with my husband (and sweet friends who watched Milo so that we could have date night!):

A morning run on the beach, in the rain, and seeing a beautiful rainbow:

Did I mention walking on the beach?  Seriously, our kid LOVES the beach.  He loved the water, he loved the waves, he loved the sand.  If we were out there, he was a happy little camper. I had SO MUCH FUN watching his sweet face as he watched the waves and walked in the sand.

And I don't have a pic of them but I was also thankful for our friends who we vacationed with.  We had SUCH a great time, and it doesn't appear than any of us got tired of any of the others (even after 40 hours in a mini-van and sharing a cabin with one bathroom for five days). We had a wonderful time with them and are so thankful for their friendship!

A vacation post will follow sometime later (who knows, maybe in three months when I have time off from work because let's be honest, I'm not the most punctual when it comes to posting).  And I still owe a birthday party post but I'm waiting for some pictures from someone (whose name I will not mention but it rhymes with Audrey). For now, these will have to hold you.  Have a great weekend! 

Happy Birthday Milo!

Our little man turned one today! Actually, if you want to be technical, his birthday isn't until 10:42 (if I remember correctly) tonight. But today is the day. We got up this morning and had our usual photo shoot. Those have gotten more difficult as he has gotten more mobile. Today was nearly impossible between the wiggles and him not feeling good because he's got several teeth coming in. We did manage to get some cute ones though:

This evening we decided to try round two with cupcakes. At his birthday party he just smashed it to bits and threw it all overboard into the floor for Kona. Tonight was not much different. You'll see in the series of photos below that he does have some icing on his face - Nathan got him to try a bite of it but he seemed less than impressed with the whole thing. 

We had a fun, low-key day with our little monkey today - it was so nice to go to church as a family, have lunch with some friends, and then come home for naps and some family time. It's hard to believe it's been a year. I was snuggling with him this evening and with his head laying up near my shoulder, his feet were at my knees! When he was born he fit up on my chest with his feet just at my waist...  He's quite a "waver" these days too.  He waves at everyone, smiles at them, etc. The other day as we were going into Target there was a woman coming out and he waved and smiled and she stopped and told me that he made her day which I thought was so sweet. He's pulling up and cruising the furniture and will occasionally act interested in walking on his own, but we're not in a hurry! (We're not pushing him over either but we're not rushing the walking - he's plenty fast when he crawls!)  He's eating a few more table foods but still acts uninterested in lots of things, so we just keep offering and assume that, like with the introduction of cereal/baby food, he'll eat when he's ready.  In the meantime he is certainly not starving.

I'm realizing I haven't done a great job of documenting his first year. I can't remember a lot of his "firsts"...we didn't even get a family picture on his birthday. BUT, we do have a lot of other pictures, and lots of fun memories of our first year with our firstborn! He's such a sweet, happy baby and we are definitely blessed beyond measure!

Thankful Thursday

Late again, I know.  But don't even act surprised.  Everyone knows that's how I roll these days. 

On to business.  Things I have been thankful for this week:

• A fun birthday party for Milo
• A husband who is creative and loves to go all out for birthdays (and any other celebration)
• Looking forward to a vacation
• A much needed mani/pedi all by myself on Thursday (my first one since before Milo was born - YIKES!)
• A happy, healthy almost one year old who is learning new things every day!

The big party was last weekend, it'll get it's own post later.  For now, here's a sneak peek at the preparation - and seriously, if the look on Milo's face in that last one isn't pure joy, I don't know what is.  He is just the smiliest baby!

Family Day Friday!

Today the Daddy had the day off and we went to the zoo!  Grammi and Papa got us a zoo pass and today was our first time to get to use it.  We will definitely be using it often!  Because we have a pass, I didn't feel like after we'd been there only an hour or so we had to stay to "get our money's worth" even though it was super hot because hey, we can come back for an hour every day next week if we want to!  

The new elephant habitat is amazing! And we got to see the baby elephant which was still fairly small, as far as elephants go.  

Milo getting ready for the zoo - as you'll see he spend most of the visit chewing on this strap.  Teething might just be the death of us around here...

Mama and baby elephant. Mama's name is Asha and baby's name is Malee, the third elephant in the pic is Asha's sister, Chandra. (Daddy's name is Sneezy and he lives in Tulsa.) They were spraying themselves and the baby with mud here:

Mama and Auntie never let the baby far from them - most of the time they were on either side of her:

Milo thinks the elephants are pretty cool:

See?  She's still little for an elephant...although when she was born she weighed 304 lbs.  YIKES!

Here the baby was trying to climb over this log but got high centered for a few minutes.  She finally got one of her back knees up a little bit and then Mama or Auntie came over and gave her a little trunk to rear support and helped her on over...only for her to turn around and go back over it the other way:

The baby was so cute playing in the water.  She just rolled around and splashed and looked like she was having a big old time:

Milo still thinks the elephants are cool and is still unwilling to give up the strap:

Milo and Mama with a gorilla:

I believe this was a black bear.  We saw the grizzlies too but they were pretty far away and lying in the shade (for which I cannot blame them as they are wearing heavy winter coats and it was HOT out there):

We stopped through the children's zoo for just a few minutes to let Milo cool his toes in the little stream:

In spite of the warm day, we had a fabulous time.  We loved spending time as a family and can't wait to go back to see more animals!