Happy Thanksgiving!

I must admit that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. A holiday centered around a food is ok by me!! I start looking forward to Thanksgiving as soon as Halloween is over. One of the reasons I love it so much is because of our family tradition of going down to Destin to be with my Grandparents. Thanksgiving at the beach=heaven! I wasn't so willing to give up this favorite tradition when Jon and I got married, so the past 3 years, his parents have accompanied us down to the beach house to enjoy the holiday with the crazy Jones clan.

So our week of thankful celebration started last Sunday as the first crew drove down. My sister's family and the Rusch's joined us Tuesday night. We spent our days enjoying the 70 degree weather and watching my child swim in the not so warm ocean. But how could I restrain him?? I resisted him the first day and just about went into labor carrying a tantrum throwing toddler the mile trek back to the house. The next day, with back-up, I was more lenient and he and his cousins LOVED splashing around in the water, and shivered victoriously the whole way home.

Thanksgiving day arrived, and we were up early and at Papa's by 9:30 to watch the parade and prepare our delicious feast! And a feast it was!!! Jon had a gluten free selection of just about everything, other than the Golden Corral rolls. I ate myself sick, looked at the Black Friday adds, napped, and ate some more. It was a good day.

Black Friday was a success!!! Despite being out in the crowds by 7 AM, I didn't get my $3 toaster from Target, but I conquered several other sales which shall not be named.

Friday night we went up to Baytowne Wharf to see Santa and the fireworks. Jack LOVED the fireworks and just about had a cow when he saw Santa. We weren't ambitious enough to stand in the 45 minute line, but we stood at the fence and waved.

Jack and Hailey were breaking it down to some live country Christmas music.

I definitely slacked in the picture taking department, but my sister however took some 2 year old portraits of my little beast, so those will be coming soon.

I'm 36 weeks, and definitely feeling it. I was up a good portion of the night thinking of what all I need to pack in my hospital bag. I'm getting VERY anxious to get everything done and ready for baby. I have a list a mile long for this week. Good thing I like lists!

Hot Dog! Jack Turns Two!!!

Can you believe my little boy is two?! We celebrated with some of his favorite people, including his two grammies, Grandpa and Pops, and Uncle Daniel. He's such a lucky kid to be surrounded by grandparents and family that love him.

Our original plan for Jack's birthday was to be in Disney World, celebrating with Mickey Mouse. That fell through at the last minute however, so I tried to throw together a semi-festive party for my little man, which was most appropriately Mickey Mouse themed!

So I've been watching entirely too much Cake Boss lately, and got very ambitious at my plans to make a gluten free Mickey Mouse cake. I printed out the face I wanted to do, figured out the clever wording, and got to work. The cake itself turned out quite tasty and you couldn't even tell it was GF. I made the butter cream frosting from scratch, because really, it's just sooooo much better. I trimmed the layers to make them perfectly flat, and stacked them up. Up until this point, I thought I was so awesome and started daydreaming of charging big bucks for making wedding cakes. But the Lord, as always, saw that I needed some humbling. Problem number one: my icing that was supposed to be RED turned out a lovely shade of hot pink. I'd used just about all of my food coloring and didn't notice how pink it was until the cake was frosted. Problem 2: my plans for making Mickey black with oreo cookie crumbs were crushed because I realized it was pointless to contaminate a gluten free cake with dang wheat filled cookie crumbs!! Problem 3: I didn't have the tools I wanted to do all the ambitious things I'd planed. Problem 4: For a most tragic ending to my drama my cake broke apart!!!! It split not just once, but twice!!!! I guess GF doesn't hold together like normal flour cake. Either that or I just completely stink at baking. AAAAAAAanyway, it tasted dang delicious, even if it didn't look like I'd hoped. Not even CLOSE to what I'd hoped. Oh well. Jack could tell it was Mickey Mouse and screamed with delight as soon as he saw it.

He got lots of great presents and my house has been so pleasant the last few days with him playing with all of his new toys. His favorite things were of coarse, his new stuffed Mickey who goes with us EVERYWHERE and even gets tucked in at night next to Jack, and his new, pocket size version of Thomas the Train. His other most favorite thing was the card from his Grandma that sings. He opens it and delightedly dances around. Too cute!

I absolutely adore my two year old and love to watch him all day long. He makes us laugh so hard with all the funny things he has to say. He's started getting a very stern look and pushes his eyebrows together when he means business. He has started to get the hang of "please" and frequently requests "please Nemo" as soon as we get in the car. He is obsessed with Finding Nemo and has probably watched it 50 times in his short life. He can spot a Mickey, Elmo, or Thomas from a mile away. It's seriously quite impressive. When he really wants something, he gets overly excited and studders "wa wa wa wa wa wa want Nemo" for example. He loves candy, applesauce, hot dogs and cheese. He refuses to eat any vegetables and can pick them out of EVERYTHING. I've tried many methods of masking them, and the only successful ones so far are mushing them up in applesauce, and disguising them in zucchini bread.

Jack loves his daddy, and loves to help him with handy work around the house. He folds his arms for prayer and yells "AMEN" when it's over. He does this in church too and people have started asking me if we're raising him southern baptist. Hey, the boy's on fire with the Holy Spirit what can I say?! :)

Happy Birthday my favorite little man!!!

Trick-or-Treating!!!

Little dinasour man. So fearsome!
Jack and his friend Brody. Probably the cutest little monkey I've ever seen!

I just love having a toddler!! He makes everything so fun! This was our first year really trick-or-treating and we...I mean Jack had an absolute blast. We got together with some friends to watch the UGA/FL game (NOT going to talk about that slaughtering) and had delicous soup bread bowls, cookie cake and a whole assortment of my childs trick-or-treating spoils.

Jack loved being in his dinasour costume and especially loved his tail. He finally got the hang of putting the candy in his basket and we made it to like 10 houses! Hooray for a fabulous Halloween!!

The next day we went to my parent house for dinner, and Jack found this "Mick Mouse" hat. He put it one and kept making me sing the "hot dog" song (you know the one..."hot dog hot dog hot diggity dog"?? From Mickey Mouse club house...anyway) he was going nuts and dancing like Lord of the Dance. His little feet were moving so fast. Just the most recent hilarious/adorable thing he's done lately.

Pumpkin Carving

My favorite Halloween tradition, other than eating candy corn, is carving my pumpkin. Well, ok, third favorite. Going to North Georgia to the pumpkin patch and getting fresh apples is my number one favorite. Anyway, so for family night Monday, we carved up our pumpkin. It's been sitting safely on our porch for the past week to avoid being "drop kicked" by an over excited toddler. So he was thrilled to see the pumpkin again and had such a blast helping me carve it. He wasn't so interested in digging out the guts, but loved poking the sides with his marker. And look at how talented he is! Turned out great and veeeery spooky!!!Like his mom, the tongue always goes out if he's concentrating very hard on something.

I'm the one on the left. Completely wretched picture of me, but thought you'd like to see the belly. So there is my 30 week prego self in all my bloated glory.

Pumpkin Picking

It is so funny what Jack is afraid of. Last year, we took him to this very same pumpkin patch to pick a pumpkin, and he wouldn't let us set him down, let alone touch any of the pumpkins. So we'd tried to prepare him for our scary festive venture, and had told him all day that we were going to get a pumpkin. But right on cue, we drive up to the patch and he starts shaking and making the scared face. (Not NEARLY as bad as the scared face when we go through the car wash, but still pretty bad.) He kept saying "bye bye pumpkins" thinking that would make them go away. But we pressed onward, determined to have a festive memory building time!

We walked around and tried catching some of those typical kid with the pumpkin photos. He cooperated a little and at least let me put the pumpkin near him. But despite his dad jumping and whooping behind me trying to get a smile, all we got was the "please rescue me" face. Bless his little heart!!

Jack allowed us to walk him through the patch, as long as he got to hold dad's hand as we searched for the perfect pumpkin.

He eventually noticed the twangy music blaring and spotted a pumpkin just his size!! He sat there being adorable for about a minute and let me capture some pictures, then started doing a little jig with his new found larger than life squash.

Just call me Jack-O-Lantern......

Oh come on! That's clever!

10 weeks to go!!!

What, is that a problem!?



I love this stage of pregnancy. I look very pregnant, and therefore easily make friends with everyone around me. There must be something about a pregnant woman that people feel they can connect too. It's a great conversation starter and I think I know every person at my gym by name and they're entire family history. It's great. But I must be getting large because people think I'm due anytime. REALLY? I've got 2+ months to go people. I'm not to the point yet where people tell me "you look like you're ready to pop" so I guess that's good.

Sorry I don't have any legit belly pictures, we just haven't whipped out the camera in a while! I will soon though promise.

Our hot new ride!!

Ok, so this isn't my ACTUAL car, but I'm way too lazy to go take a picture of it, but this is what it looks like. Cute huh?! Jon and I have been agonizing over a new vehicle for the past few months. It took us FOREVER to decide what we wanted. I wanted an SUV and Jon wanted a truck, so you see what we ended up with. :) It'll be great and economical for our growing family. Hooray!