I'm trading it all in for PINK!

Nope nope, we're not having a girl (or any baby for that matter...)

I've been on a little blog hiatus, and for good reason. We've been with family.

A little over a month ago Adam's mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and we've been pulling together as a family to support one another and do what needs to be done. Some of it's been easy - lounging on the beach in Florida - And some not so easy - sitting in the waiting room during surgery - but we hope in our small way, it's all been glorifying to God. And I think it has.

She's just begun down a road to recovery, but as I've said a couple of times. I'm proud to call her "mom" and even more proud to say she's a survivor.

So we're trading it in for pink around here. And she's the reason I'm kicking myself in the gym three days a week training for 5ks again. Motivation and inspiration, that's what I was lacking.

I've got a lot of photos and stories to tell. But those will have to come some time soon.

The life of a raspberry....

is not very long around here. We were given a bucket of raspberries (thanks Jim and Sondra!) this morning and Max immediately dug in and then asked for more this afternoon for snack. I did get to sneak some in the freezer before he attacked them.






Tonight we went to Morton's Pumpkin Festival. Yumm yumm. Pumpkin Chili Pork Chop Sandwich and a Pumpkin Sundae in a waffle bowl with caramel and pecans topped with sips of Adam's pumpkin milkshake. The food (and company) couldn't have been any better.


the Budweiser Clydesdales


Max loves Mr. Ron


Carnival Rides


Posing for the camera

Our New Favorite

We are quite busy around here this week. Ha! I feel like I say that all the time. But I guess when it's true, it's true. We're having some visitors this weekend before we follow them back to Ohio and then will be back and forth for a while as we hope to help Adam's mom recover from surgery. Nothing better for recovery than the sight of grandchildren right?

We've been watching a new tv show around here. It's a new Nick, Jr. show call Fresh Beat Band.

It has teenagers that dance and sing through their days. And gosh those songs are catchy. I like that they are original "pop" songs instead of the usual nursery rhymes. Since we love music so much in our house it's the perfect show. Check out some videos for it here.

We're already home

We made it in time for the USC v OSU game, much to Adam's delight.

It was rainy today at Indian Rocks when we left. It makes it not quite so hard to come home. Especially since there was a little stop by The Flying Needles on the way to airport only to find that many yarns were on sale. Stuffing beachy colored organic cottons into our checked bag made me much happier.

Our little Max is quite a great wonderful superb traveler. But really he's a great kid in general. He was complimented by staff and fellow passengers alike on how happy and friendly he was.

We had half empty flights so we kept his car seat with us and he had his own seat on each flight. Really nice that one of us didn't have to try and contain him on our laps the whole way. He really doesn't mind his car seat at all.

But most of all he loved the beach and the pool. He loved the birds on the beach and the sand and gifting us shells and learning how to "jump" into the pool. He had so. much. fun. He also slept really well and went right down tonight when we got home.

He was so excited when we got home, he ran around the whole house and started pulling out all of his toys. It looked like he was making sure they were all still there.

Here's some more pics from the past few days.


Fun in the ocean


Chasing the birds


Mama and her babe


Sharing with Grammy


Sharing with Mama


Chasing the gecko (trying to get a good deal on our auto insurance)


Grammy, Max, and Papa


Waving to Mama on the boogie board (this was his favorite thing)


Happy family at the beach


Grammy taking goofy pictures

The Beach

We've taken a little trip to the beach to fill in the rest of our summer. Here's today.

Here's the same beach last November

Creature of Habit

I always use the same treadmill at the gym. It's the first one on the left side (so don't steal it ok?) and it over looks the loft opening to the foyer of Five Points and has a nice view out a window. I stare at the same tree when I'm trying to finish those last 10 seconds of running that are so killer to me. I'm not a runner yet, but I have been working on this system: Couch to 5 k running plan to get myself jump started. If I don't have a plan I cheat. I'm a cheater.

Today that treadmill looked odd. It looked like it was stuck with the incline all the way up. It was hard to even step up to. Instead of trying foolishly to fix it I hopped two treadmills down. This one happens to be right in front of a tv. Luckily it was on CNN. But the closed caption is on some unidentifiable language and I have to listen to music so all I caught were the headlines and captions that scroll across the bottom.

So here's what's going on in the world according to CNN captions:
-Starlings are responsible for deadly airplane flights
-Lots of people showed up for the "Tea Party" in the nation's capital today
-People were killed somewhere in Afghanastan

In the end I was really annoyed to not be able to see my tree.

Milestones...

Max
I'm not gonna lie, when we were last at the doctor I questioned Max's development. I know he was an early walker. I know his gross motor skills and communication skills are fine, advanced even. But I was concerned about his fine motor skills. He doesn't care to color, to use a spoon, or to stack blocks. Knocking down a tower of blocks is a different story all together. Having an education background and having worked around pre school aged kids, I know where stages are. But when it's your own kid, sometimes you don't have as clear a perspective.

The doctor reassured me that sometimes a kid will jump ahead in some areas (speech nad gross motor in Max's case) and be behind in others for a while (fine motor skills). I've been trying to be patient and encouraging those skills the past couple of weeks. And I've determined, that Max isn't "behind" at all. He just has a problem sitting still. This week I've seen him stack blocks, put wooden puzzle pieces in the right spot, color, draw many times on the magna doodle (left handed every time by the way), and use his spoon. You see it's just much more convenient for him to shovel his food in with his ham hands instead. So once again, he's proving he's much smarter than I give him credit for. He's just a boy with too many things to do. He doesn't have the time to sit and stack all those blocks, he'd rather play Godzilla and knock them all down when we stack them.




Max's doctor was amazed that he knew animal sounds already. But Max loves animals so much we talk constantly about animals while working on puzzles, we sing Old McDonald a million times a day, and we love love love these flash cards.

They go through the alphabet- have a letter on one side and an animal that starts with each letter one the other. While his favorites are still an elephant, monkey, duck, and dog (actually a xolo in this set) he's recently learned "sssssss" for snake and today was very interested in the hippo. I unfortunately don't know what sound a hippo makes. Max can also "roar" for a lion, "nay, nay" for the zebra or horse, "doo doo" for rooster (cockadoodledoo) and we've been working on "chomp chomp" for alligator. All other birds besides the rooster are "quack quack"s.




Crafts
Thursday, Friday and Saturday involved a lot of football watching. So some projects were finished and some started. I started and finished a new shawl for Adam's mom. The yarn reminded me of the ocean and so that's where it will go on Thursday. To the ocean with us for a quick trip to visit Grammy at the beach. Uh, so that yarn was a breach of my yarn buying ban, but I feel a little less guilty since I worked up the whole project in a day. I also finished the other shawl I'd been working on.


Started the little girls hat for Rylee in a lovely raspberry color, but don't even have enough done to make it worth a picture. And also worked a bit on the twin blankies which now that I have the color changes and pattern down will hopefully go much quicker, or there may just be one blankie by March. :)

I'm starting to feel in the Christmas spirit, and so I've been doing a little searching for Christmas projects to make for the majority of our Christmas list.

Go Bucks!

ESPN Game Day is on the tele, we've had pancakes for breakfast (made by Adam, I don't make pancakes), and we're all wearing scarlet and gray. It must be a Saturday in the fall. :)



My only goal for the day is to teach Max "O-H" and "I-O"
.... and maybe some crochet during game time.....

I've declared it in my head to be Autumn. I don't know when autumn became my favorite time of the year, but it definitely is. I love the harvest and the smell in the air and wearing an extra layer of clothes. The weather has helped out with that last one, it's been almost chilly around here. This morning when I was up at 6 am (those of you who know me, know that's a feat) it was below 50 here. Our thermometer read 48.5. Brrrrr. This morning we had a breakfast out and also a coffee at our house. The coffee was to kick off the beginning of our ladies' Tuesday Bible study. I've missed those gals all summer! Another sign of Autumn. This afternoon the sun streamed in the windows and the lighting was just so that it reminded me of autumn too. And who could argue with these colors?








I don't know why I like these pictures so much. Maybe it's because the subjects make me so happy. Freshly washed coffee cups of my "graduation" china from Mom, a Pottery Barn table runner I got for a steal a few years ago, and lastly my absolute favorite (I love love love all the colors) an assortment of Stash Tea still hanging around from wonderful Darby who supplies me with my stash of Stash.

I spent some precious time in the craft room with my sewing machine this past weekend while Adam entertained Max. It was a delight. I love just starting out with a piece or two of fabric and coming down the stairs with something finished in hand. In this case I started with three pieced of fabric and came down with two finished things. A plastic bag holder (just a tube with elastic on either end and a loop to hang it with) so that all the loose bags from grocery shopping have a place to go (at least until I can finally crochet myself up some reusable ones). And a skirt that I am awfully proud of even though it's not that great. First of all I did not use a pattern (which I don't think I ever have for a skirt anyway) but this is made out of a linen crinkly fabric. But here's the amazing part, I actually lined it. It was going to be totally see through without the lining so I got the advice of the girl working at Joann's and went with a thin cotton to line it with. It's all black. I haven't even taken a picture of it because it's just a black skirt, but I made it. I miss making things.

The other night, just as I was falling asleep I got an idea for a quilt. I never know if these are original ideas or things I've seen on blogs and they just pop out when I'm almost asleep. But having never quilted I didn't know how logistically it would work for me to make the entire thing. I know I could probably piece the top especially since the whole thing was kinda free formed anyway. And I know that then you have the batting and the backing, then you quilt it and finally you do the binding. I understand the concepts but not the procedures. So I asked a friend (an older friend) today who quilts about actually quilting the thing. She gave me some good options and offered the use of her machine as well (because I don't believe I have a walking foot for my machine). It's just a baby quilt, so we'll see how or even if it comes into existence.

Max has been very interested in my knitting and crocheting lately. In fact he's been stealing my knitting needles and one has been completely hidden somewhere. And I need it to make a hat. I've been looking for it for over a week now, I guess I'll just have to buy new ones. Here he is "helping" me knit on the blanket for the Strong Babies (I keep meaning to ask Kara and Nick what they are calling them...)




Loving that pattern and how I added a color change, except for the fact that with knitting you always leave the colors attached and so I'm working off three balls of yarn all connected to the piece. That and I've never changed colors in knitting, so it's, uh, definitely looking homemade at the moment. It might require a trip to the yarn shop to have one of the professionals help me make it look a little neater.

Lastly, this is at Aunt Laura and Cousin Ella's request. I can't remember the last time I posted video of Max.... it was before our old Canon camera died, that's for sure. Our new Canon doesn't have video on it, so I've been intentionally having another camera out that does to try and capture some video of Max. We've got some dancing, some singing, lots of goofing off and me trying to get him to talk which he does a lot of until I would press the record button of course.