Oh yes we did!

The tradition continues...

2012

2011

2010

Poor guy is going to be taking a yearly picture til he's 18...or moves out of the house!

The "Real" Birthday

On Friday, we celebrated Eli's "real" birthday. Again, we are in disbelief at how quickly the last year has flown by!

Wasn't this just yesterday?

Mark had to work most of the day but Eli and I did some fun stuff to pass the time until he came home that evening to celebrate.

Eli got to paint some cool pictures with his big-boy paints and paintbrushes.

He also helped me bake his birthday cake and clean-up afterwards. (aka lick the spoons/spatulas)

While he napped, I made the "firetruck" birthday cake that had been requested. This year I decided to branch-out a bit but think the end result was pretty successful.

When his Daddy got home from work, we gave Eli some of his presents from us before his birthday dinner.

He got an Acer, a "camera" complete with an additional Grem and Acer, and a Lightening McQueen. For those of you familiar with Cars 2, the boy is obsessed with the "Lemons" in the movie. We aren't quite sure why he loves the "bad cars" so much, but he was pretty psyched when he opened all of these. The reactions I got on video were priceless!

We had some special surprise guests join us for Eli's birthday dinner that evening; Ms. Ashley and her dog Maddie, who brought an awesome dino birthday balloon attached to her collar. Eli chose a meal of spaghetti with meatballs, salad, and bread.

After dinner, Dada surprised Eli with his final birthday gift from us. He was pretty excited to learn there was one last present to open!

Our last gift was a set of train tracks to use with his trains. The boy had been asking for some tracks for at least a year and was beyond thrilled to see that he would finally have some of his very own to play with. Keeping this present a secret had been killing Mark and me for quite some time!

Then it was time for some cake and ice cream!

Little stinker started eating the gum-drop "lights" before I could even cut the cake!

Eli finished off his birthday playing with his new train tracks and was in absolute heaven.

Happy 3rd Birthday to our Eli! We are so blessed to have been chosen by God to be your parents and are very excited to see what fun year four will bring!

First Day of Pre-School!

Last Tuesday, Eli had his very first day of Pre-School. We had been waiting for this day since I registered him back in January, but it's amazing how the emotions don't really hit until the actual day comes. Due to his birthday falling right after the August 31st cut-off, Eli is the oldest (and biggest) kid in his 2-year-old class but I'm hoping that will be a good thing as he progresses in his "school career." He will attend school on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a few hours and I'm very excited for him to have some time to learn new things, make new friends, and let's be honest, for his mommy to have a bit of time to herself too! It felt very strange to drop him off his 1st day. I've never left him for an extended period of time with anyone but family, friends, the church nursery, or a babysitter. My eyes did well up a bit when I drove out of the church parking lot, realizing that my "little buddy" is growing up into a big boy, but that was it. He seemed to have a great time during his first day (no tears that I know of) and was pretty exhausted when I picked him up but excited to return in a couple days. We're looking forward to a wonderful first year of Pre-School!

Started the day off with a special breakfast of Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Eli was NOT in the mood for a 1st day photo-shoot, obviously.

Mama snuck some pics walking into school with her iPhone

Thanks to my girlfriend, Allison, I did get a cute picture with my Big Boy

And then he walked right into his classroom like it was no big deal!

First Pre-school Craft
(He is in the Duck Class, so I believe this is a hand-print duck that lost his beak somewhere during transport. Still priceless to this Mama!)

Eli gives Pre-School 2-thumbs-up!

Oh, and Eli's awesome Dada did manage to convince him to take a "first-day" picture later that evening. Little turkey!

Early Birthday

Mark's parents (Gram and Grandpa) joined us over the weekend to fit in an early birthday celebration for Eli and his Grandpa, who just so happen to share the same birthday day. He was sufficiently spoiled with attention, gifts, and some yummy cake. Now we are just having to explain to Eli that he still has a few more days to wait for his "real" birthday!

Yummy cake Gram brought for the Birthday Boys

The Birthday Boys!

My silly boys love their cake and Eli eats his just like his mama, icing first!

Labor Day 2012

As summer quickly comes to a close, Eli and I headed out of town to celebrate the Labor Day holiday with my family at LakeNear while Mark unfortunately had to work the long weekend. We didn't do too much more than spend a lot of time playing indoors/outdoors, eating some yummy food, and just plain enjoying the company of my parents, little brother and his wife, and my grandmother. Come to think of it, I think ours was more of an un-labor day weekend! It was glorious! Here are some of the highlights:

Eating a little breakfast on the front porch in our pj's

An early morning game of fetch

Some building-block construction (yes, the boy still is in dire need of a haircut...and a comb!)

Semi-naked water play on the back-porch

And many games of "Sheepie" with Uncle Matt

Olympic Fever

This post is quite a bit delayed but I wanted to record something about the Summer Olympics that took place in London last month. Obviously, this was Eli's first experience with the Olympic Games and he absolutely LOVED it! He watched a good bit of the opening ceremony with us (staying up way too late that night) and spent the next couple weeks watching and cheering for various events in the evening before going to bed. His favorites were swimming, diving, running, gymnastics, and basketball. We would practically have to peel him away from watching when a commercial break would come on right before bedtime, telling him the competitions were over for the night. Yes, we had to lie to our son. When the games finally wrapped-up I think all of us were going through a little Olympic withdrawal. It had become a part of our nighttime routine. Definitely looking forward to the 2016 games in Rio and in denial that our oldest baby will be 7 and our unborn baby boy will be 3 1/2. Craziness!