Thanksgiving '09

I thought I better get my Thanksgiving Blog done before Christmas gets here...

Evan and I flew in to Chicago the week before Thanksgiving so that we could meet my new nephew, Nolan. We spent the weekend at my brother's house. Evan and Cameron had a blast together and I got to snuggle with the new baby:)


Mom, Jodi, and Pax drove up on Sunday to spend the day and then Evan and I rode back down to mom and dad's house with them. The minute mom walked in the door ALL the grandsons were on her lap...

I was only in central IL for 3 days. My parents are used to having Evan and I for at least a couple weeks when we're in town! But I guess a little time with them is better than no time at all:) While we were at Mom and Dad's house, Grandma & Grandpa Bridgwater came to visit us.

They brought Evan a firetruck which Paxson enjoyed too....


And Grandpa brought a little wood dancing man which entertained Evan for awhile....


I was able to spend an ENTIRE day with my sister! When was the last time that happened? Jodi and Evan started to make pancakes until we realized we didn't have any eggs....oops.

Paxson is hilarious. I love how anytime he sees the camera he automatically offers up his best "cheese"....




We took Pax and Evan to the library where they were both on their best behavior as the lady sang about turkeys and pumpkin pie. We checked out some books and then just ran through the aisles of books for awhile....best part about being at the library, right?

Mom came to Jodi's for the afternoon to watch the boys so we could go see New Moon. I gave Jodi an assigment about a month ago: Read Twilight, Watch Twilight, Read New Moon. She did great...I think she was in the last chapter of New Moon when I arrived! We LOVED the movie and I'm actually going to see it again on Thursday:)

Being in Illinois for only a short time makes it completely impossible to see everyone that I would like to see but I always try to make at least one visit to see my Grandma Edi...


3 Days in Southern, IL....

Amazingly, I have NO pictures of the actual Thanksgiving day. Evan and hitched a ride with Joel's cousin, Jason, and his wife, Andrea, from Champaign down to Tamaroa. Evan did great on the 3 hour car ride except for when I told him Jason might put him in time-out if he kept kicking the back of his seat. After a few seconds of only his lip puckering and tears forming in his eyes....he let out a full-forced cry. It took me awhile to convince him that Jason was really a nice guy. Jason dropped us off at the Searby Cabin where Linda was waiting for all of us to arrive. John, Jessi, Jack, and Josie pulled in only a few minutes behind us and then Joel and Mark arrived from Birmingham about a 1/2 hour later. We had a traditional Thanksgiving Supper "homemade by Publix and Walmart."

On Friday morning we had "Thanksmas" with Joel's parents and brother. Sometimes its just easier to Christmas with one of our families a little bit early rather than trying to cram everything in at Christmas time. Evan and Jack ripped into their packages and Josie worked hard on hers. I think we were all thankful for the gifts that we received and for the time spent with family.





On Saturday, the entire extended Searby family met at the Friendship Church of Christ in Tamaroa to celebrate Granny and Grandpa's 65th wedding anniversary. Someone even brought a recliner to the church for Grandpa to sit in....


Since the whole family was going to be together we went ahead and did the BIG Searby Thanksmas too. Evan and Jack had fun opening their gifts:



Joel, Evan, and I drove home on Sunday...the worst possible travel day of the year. But after 15 hours we were happy to be back in our own home in Gainesville!

Camping

Kelly did such an awesome job blogging our camping trip that I'm not even gonna attempt to top it. Go to her blog by clicking here and then you can enjoy the couple extra pictures I posted below:

In addition to tie-dying to get ready for our trip, we also baked cupcakes and decorated some for Halloween and some for UF....


Superman and Supergirl...


Kelly forgot to tell about the animal invasion we experienced on Saturday night. Its quite normal to see deer running around the campgrounds during the day but you gotta watch out for the armadillos at night!!! They were not scared of us and would come right up to our camp looking for food. This one thought the remaining steak juices were appealing and decided to help himself. I know, gross huh? We were sure to burn off all the armadillo germs in the fire before we made our toast in the morning!

Pumpkin Patch

When we turned into the lane at the church Evan said, "The sign says pumpkin patch!" I guess on the 3rd trip there he even had the sign memorized. He wasn't too excited about posing for a picture...

Evan Jacob Searby
2 years, 2 months

Of course he smiled when his buddy, Asher, sat next to him...

Pulling each other in the wagon is always a highlight at the patch. Megan wasn't looking where she was going and ended up sitting on a pumpkin...


As if the bounce house and pumpkins weren't enough, there was a tractor to sit on too! Evan probably would have sat on that thing for an hour!


Our good friends Ben & Kyra took Evan to "Trunk o Treat" at the Pumpkin Patch last week. If you're on facebook you can see her pictures of Superman (Evan) having lots of fun!

The Last Two Weeks

We've been busy the last two weeks !

Believe it or not, we were in the pool just over 2 weeks ago! Evan loves the pool and is getting braver and braver with his water wings...

The rain cooled things off a little...

"Wear my rain coat"

"Daddy doing?"

Evan decided it looked like fun after a few minutes of hesitation...


Joel and I attended our neighbor's wedding in St. Augustine. Thank you to Lou and Kelly for tag-teaming the babysitting duty! We didn't know anyone (except the bride and groom) at the wedding so we really just spent time together and enjoyed our private cocktail table...

Austin & Melissa, Just Married!

Playing outside is one of Evan's favorite things to do. We borrowed a big firetruck from one of our friends so that has given him something new to do this past week.

"I spray you!"

"Gotta put out the fire!"

The fire-fisherman?

Jesus Loves Me

Evan picked up my Bible last week and started singing...

Potty Training

For the past 2 and a half weeks we've been working on potty-training Evan. He's really doing awesome...much better than I ever expected him to do. Thank you to everyone that has been encouraging us and giving us advice. We've taken a little bit of everyone's advice and found a way that is working for Evan. We started out with a timer going off every 20 minutes to signal "time to potty." It stretched to 30 minutes after a few days....thank goodness cuz I felt like I was spending half my day in the bathroom. Now he's going without a timer and he's getting better at telling me when he has to go. Evan loves his big-boy underwear and will do just about anything for an M&M or a Pez. I'm pretty sure he's had more sugar in the last 2 weeks than in his first 2 years of life! Its been exhausting but I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Disney

It was kind of a last minute decision but Joel had to go to meetings in Orlando last weekend so Evan and I tagged along. We were exhausted from our Fripp Island Tripp but this was a chance to see our good friends, the Osorios. Friday was actually Tori's birthday so Evan and I were invited to the family birthday party at Ryan's parents house (Joel was working). Evan enjoyed playing with the big kids and got really excited when he saw the cupcakes!

On Saturday Tori, Ryan, Owen, Kaylee (Ryan's little sister), Evan and I went to Disney! We spent all morning and part of the afternoon at Animal Kingdom. The boys loved the Nemo Show as well as seeing all the animals on the Safari. I'm pretty sure my favorite part was riding Mount Everest with Tori & Kaylee. Thanks Ryan for staying behind to feed the boys while we had some big-kid fun!

Ponchos and Puddles. They had a good time...


Looking like we've been through a thunderstorm...


Look at that Tiger...




On the Safari, I was amazed at how close the animals are to the vehicle...


Evan and Owen were in desperate need of a nap, despite their wonderful behavior that morning, so Tori and took them back to the hotel for a good two hour nap. After naptime we met back up with Ryan and Kaylee at Magic Kingdom. It had rained on and off all day but we were happy in our ponchos and the rain actually kept the crowd away. We were able to ride lots of rides and the boys loved almost every minute of it!

The traditional picture with the castle in the background....not a great picture of us but I promise we had lots of fun after this!


"driving" the teacups...


Riding in Pooh's Honeypot...


I really expected taking a two-year-old to Disney to be a not-so-pleasant event....but Evan LOVED it!!! The only hard part was getting him in and out of the stroller all day. I'm looking forward to our next visit and hopefully Joel will get to go go with us!

Fripp Island

We returned yesterday from our vacation to Fripp Island, SC. We met Joel's parents and his brother's family there for a few days. The house we stayed in was only a short golf cart ride to the beach and we had our choice of 3 different pools! Jack and Evan enjoyed playing together and Josie is almost crawling! Thank you Mark and Linda for a fun beach vacation!

Here are a few pictures from our trip..

Birthday Week

Evan officially had an entire birthday week. We saved all the presents and cards that he had gotten in the mail and let him open one per day. His actual birthday was last Monday but unfortunately we didn't get much sleep the night before. He has been working on getting his canine teeth in for about 3 months now. Every once in awhile we have a sleepless night. He wasn't in too bad of a mood on his birthday but if you look closely you can see the snot running down his nose in almost all the pictures below.

"Need bib Mommy. No want grape juice on my jammies"

We try to play outside or go to the pool everyday. He usually likes to ride on his "scooter." For his birthday joy ride, we went to the mailbox where he received a fun package from his friend, Everly. That was the only present he actually opened on his birthday!

On Tuesday Evan opened his Animal Hospital from Grandma & Grandpa Searby. That kept him busy ALL day! He did really well with the color coded keys for each door and loved listening to all the animals' heart-beats and giving them vitamins. We tried to practice for his visit to the doctor the next day.


Wednesday morning was his 2 year check-up with the doctor. Lets just say he was a LOT happier in the waiting room with the toys than in the check-up room!

He tried to escape multiple times...

After a few tears and a lot of coaxing, we BOTH got our stats:
Evan's Height: 34 1/4 inches Jen's Height: 5 feet 5 inches
Evan's Weight: 27 pounds Jen's Weight: a lot more than Evan

Thursday, Evan and I spent the day out at the Birkett's house. Evan loves to play with Megan's kitchen...he just doesn't like when Megan wants to play with it too. They both brought our their 2-year-old attitudes that day. Evan went to time-out 3 times.

Friday and Saturday of birthday week were spent at home (opening more gifts!) and running errands for Evan's little party on Sunday. Evan talked all week about having cake on his birthday and "getting all messy like Paxson." But then would follow it up with "my need a fork!"

We just invited a few close friends, that we consider family, over for Evan's party on Sunday evening. I asked Kelly to make Evan a little basketball cake....it was huge....but it sure was yummy!



After everyone had left, Joel and Evan went outside to play with the new T-Ball set. Evan demanded that Joel have his "own bat." They had fun "hitting it really fast."



Here are some more random things from last week....

Evan likes to pretend that he's a fireman. He usually runs around the house saying things like, "gotta put out that fire," "put the ladder up high," "gotta get my hose." He now has 2 fire hats so of course he likes for me to wear one too. One day he called me "Mr. Fire Mommy."

He not only pretends to be a fire man, but Evan likes to "surf" too. He uses one of my little plastic cutting boards and stands on it while making ocean sounds and then saying: "surf, surf, surf." I told him that we were going to the beach this weekend and that he could watch the surfers. He said, "Got my pretend surfboard. That's a big wave. Gotta jump over it!"

As if being a fire man, and a surfer aren't exhausting enough, he also likes to pretend he is a giant. He loves the story of David and Goliath. He'll come up to me and say, "My the giant, mommy is David. Oh-no! Giant fall down, hurt his head, he ok."

So I guess we have a typical 2-year-old. He's a lot of fun, talks constantly, and is learning new things everyday, but watch out when he doesn't get his way...you'll definitely witness a meltdown!