Thursday, February 28, 2013

Valentine's Day 2013

I am way late on this one too, but I wanted to document Nicholas' 1st Valentine's Day of giving valentine's to his friends and making a box!  I had all of these awesome ideas for making a Valentine box, but when it came down to it, I couldn't get it to work and who has the time, so Daddy saved the day and made an awesome box!
Nicholas LOVED his card monster and held it all the way to school and couldn't wait to show everyone at school!  He was so proud of it!  He wore his Most Eligible Bachelor shirt that day and gave away Cars valentines that he picked out himself from Hobby Lobby a few weeks before.
I couldn't believe how much he had grown from year to year...
His 1st Valentine's Day (this picture is a favorite of mine)
Last year (notice he is playing pirates even then!)
and this year

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Our Big Boy and His Big Accomplishments!

It isn't a big secret or anything that Nicholas LOVES his paci.  We had been trying to figure out a good way to get rid of it and it seemed every time we got ahead with it, something happened and he just couldn't get rid of it.  Also, we had been struggling with getting him to want to go potty at home.  He would just rather keep using pull-ups until he is in college, I guess.

Within the past two weeks Nicholas has made HUGE progress into becoming a big boy!  He has a new assistant teacher at school and she has helped us a lot to make some progress in the paci department.  On Monday, February 11, he gave his teacher his paci after naptime and she "threw it away" because he was so big and didn't need it anymore. :-)  (I actually still have that particular paci in my purse)  Luckily for us, he had a pretty easy transition away from the paci and we told him if he could go without it from Monday evening to Friday night, he could go to the toy store on Saturday and get any Jake and The Neverland Pirates toy he wanted.  Well, he did great!  He only cried for about 3 minutes on Monday night and never looked back!  He had a little issue wanting it when riding in the car, but after about 2 days that was over too!

That Saturday we went to Toys R Us and he picked out whatever he wanted.  I had fully expected him to get the Adventure Island set, but nope, my child picked out Skull Island!  Haha!  I have a sneaky suspicion it was because Peter Pan is included in that set and that is the only way to get him.

Just in case no one believes what a pirate freak our little guy is, here he is with all of his Jake toys in his playroom when we got home!  Haha!  He is obsessed with his skull island and LOVES playing with it, as creepy as it may be! 
Fast forward a week and this past Monday we had a parent teacher conference with Nicholas' teacher at school.  She said he is doing great and ahead in several areas.  He is working on much harder puzzles than he should for his age and his vocabulary has gotten much better since the paci disappeared.  The only thing she really wanted him to work on was sharing (which she said he doesn't do badly at, but could do better) and potty training.  Monday night he went potty and last night he went TWICE!  This morning as soon as he woke up he told me he had to "pee pee in the potty!" and not only did he go, he had a dry diaper!!!!  I am one proud Mommy!

This afternoon our Melissa and Doug responsibility chart arrived that I ordered from Zulily about 3 weeks ago.  Nicholas loves doing small chores around the house to "earn" money for his Disney savings jar and this seemed like a good way to measure what he is doing.  He is already enjoying earning magnets to get some "honey" (aka money) on Friday!
I am so, so proud of our little man and all of his accomplishments lately!  As happy as I am that he is doing so well and being such a big boy, I am a little sad that he has grown up so much lately and isn't a baby at all anymore.  He is begging for some "pirate undies" so this weekend I am thinking we may give them a try, I am more than ready to say goodbye to pull-ups!  He not only looks old now, he is acting older.  :-)

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Surprise! Pawpaw's 60th Birthday Party

I have mentioned (I think) that I was working on a fun party, but didn't give anymore details. Well, the secret is out and I can give the details now! :-) My dad turned 60 on February 10 and my mom and I decided since his master's degree, 50th birthday, and retirement went without any kind of party, maybe we should do something special this time.  We decided since his entire life and first love was football, to have a vintage football theme. We sent out the cutest invitations, but for some reason I couldn't get it to load.  :-(

This was such a fun party for so many reasons!  It was fun to see so many people we never get to see and fun to decorate!  Because we invited so many friends from so many different parts of his life, we wanted to include pictures of him at different stages of life. We had some of him and his brothers as kids, high school yearbooks, football pictures, college pictures, coaching and teaching pictures from each place he has taught, hunting pictures, and pictures of him being a dad and grandfather. I decorated this table with a vinyl tablecloth that looked like a football field and decorated with some fun things I found at Hobby Lobby that will now be in Nicholas' football room/Dad's home office at my parent's house.
For the cake I found a picture on Pinterest and I love how my favorite cake lady, Becky replicated it!
I attempted some chocolate covered strawberry footballs, but they didn't do so well! Ha!
Now, for the fun part...the actual party! My dad is incredibly low key and humble. He hates any attention on him and would not have wanted a party had he known, which is why we made it a surprise. We made it 3.5 weeks before someone mentioned it to him, but we ended up telling him the night before so that he would be over the fact he was having a party before the party.  At that point we found out he already knew (which I suspected he did!)  Haha! We did, however make the guest list and RSVPs a surprise until the party was over, so there was still a sense of surprise. He had some wonderful surprises that night. His best friend from college came all the way from Dallas! Several coaching friends he hasn't seen in a long time, and several of my parents couple friends came. One of my favorite surprises is that one of his lineman from this past season came and that he sent a letter to my dad earlier in the week via my email. I can never begin to tell you how much that letter meant to us. As a coach's daughter, it means so much to know that players appreciate their coaches and the time they invest in the team and away from their family.

I was busy and didn't take a lot of pictures, but this is my favorite of Pawpaw and his favorite little man!
The next day was his actual birthday and we met for dinner that night.  Not my best picture, but good of everyone else.

It was such an honor to host a party for my dad and to see so many people come together to celebrate him and their friendship. I am so grateful that I was given such a wonderful dad. We love you so much!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Catch Up Time...Again

Whew! I think I can finally sit down long enough to write an update. It has been a wild couple of weeks around here, so I am significantly behind...AGAIN.  :-(

The day that Nana went home Michael and I took a weekend getaway to Gatlinburg. We got a Groupon for an awesome deal for 2 nights and went as a late anniversary getaway. (I was actually already there when I updated last about Nana) It was so pretty when we got there. We went on a day the entire town was shut down due to an ice storm the night before. The road were ok, but the side streets and sidewalks were icy.

This was the view from our room and balcony.  It was right on a creek and it was so peaceful.

We also had a fireplace in our room that we kept going most of the time we were there.  Michael loved it so much he has declared that we will have a wood burning fireplace in our next house, I'm not so sold on the idea.
The 2nd day Gatlinburg was a normal, crazy busy place. The only downside was that we both woke up that morning sick. Michael had sinus symptoms, but I had a horrible sore throat and cough. We made the best of it and went on with our plans anyway. That night we had a great dinner at The Park Grill. The food is always good there and we made it our main meal of the trip. They sat us by the fireplace and it was so nice and cozy!
We were supposed to take a trolly ride to see the lights, but by the time dinner was over we felt terrible and just went to sleep! Ha! The next day we hurried home and by the time we got home I had a fever and felt terrible. I was so happy to see my baby, but couldn't get too close and it broke my heart.

By Tuesday I was really sick and finally agreed to go to the doctor.  I ended up struggling to breathe and had chest pain by then and was diagnosed with severe bronchitis and early pneumonia. I spent the next several days in bed.   Luckily, Michael got better on his own and miraculously, Nicholas never caught it.   I was given 5 medications, but it took over a week to get back to the land of the living.  This was my evening cocktail the 1st night...
Two weeks ago we went to Canyon's birthday party.  Nicholas had fun playing with the big kids, but really enjoyed playing a game with his Daddy!   I love that Michael enjoys getting in the floor and playing with him.

Two weeks ago I spent all week getting caught up at work from being out and worked at night on a surprise party for my dad that we had last Saturday night. More on that tomorrow and later this week I'll do a post about Valentine's Day and Nicholas' big news (no, he is NOT going to be a big brother, he has some other exciting news involving a paci).