Hurricanes, sitting up, and new carpet oh my!

Things have been a whirlwind around here! We have found ourselves so busy lately.
2 weeks ago we had some great (and our 1st) house guests come for a visit!

Jamie's MawMaw and PawPaw evacuated Hurricane Gustav and came to stay with us a few days! We had a great time and they were a huge help with a bunch of things around the house. Thankfully they had no damage.



We did get a lot of painting accomplished while they were here in preparation for the new carpet! They were a wonderful help and it was a blessing to have them come. They also got to meet Harris for the first time and got to hang out with the wonderful Maddox. Maddox of course followed pawpaw around like a shadow and was constantly asking him what he was doing. Maddox had a great time with company and so did Harris. I think Harris got a little spoiled by being held all the time ;) He's not used to such luxuries.
Thanks, MawMaw and Pawpaw for a great visit and all the help!

As mentioned earlier we got new carpet! Yay, it was definitely needed and has made a huge improvement to the house. We wanted to paint all the rooms before the carpet and we had to take up some wood flooring. The wood floor was a pain and has gone on our list of things to never do again! It was mismatching parquet wood flooring, for those of you wondering why in the world we would take up wood floors. Plus it was randomly laid in the hallway and only one bedroom. The other bedrooms had nasty stinky carpet. It was a lot of work to get things ready but it definitely paid off.
Here are a few before and afters for you to see.
Our room:
Before


After


Hallway:
Before


After

Please realize that we still have no decorations on the walls yet and there is still painters tape in the hallway.
We'll post more before and afters next time.

The boys have both been sick with colds this last week. Thankfully they both seem to be on the better end of the cold and we should be done with runny noses soon.


Maddox has been thoroughly enjoying the beautiful weather the past few days. He loves to play outside.

He is doing great and has been keeping us on our toes with all of his climbing adventures, exploring, and non stop talking.

Harris turned 5 months on the 11th. He weighs 14lbs. He has been sitting up really well by himself lately. He loves to sit on the floor with Maddox and play with toys. Maddox is learning what little brothers are like and he's not too sure he likes the whole sharing thing.

Harris is in awe of his older brother and loves to laugh and smile at him. Harris also encourages Maddox's not so great behavior by laughing when Maddox hits him, or jumps off of things, or spits his water etc, etc.
Harris is a super sweet little guy and he definitely puts up with a lot from Maddox. One day he will be big enough to get Maddox back.

Here is a picture of our new stroller too! Jamie took it to the mall last week and she loved it! The people who invented it are geniuses! It can be a single or double stroller. It's called a Phil and Teds Sport Buggy.





Thanks to all of you who stick with this blog even though we are sometimes very slow to update! Our house feels like a zoo sometimes but, that's what having kids is all about right!

We know everyone has been waiting.....

So, we are finally sitting down to update this blog.
We have had a lot going on in the last few weeks so we will quickly sum them up and then get on with the pictures.

We got moved into our new house. We like it a lot. We have a lot of work to do on it but it looks 100% better after being cleaned and getting our stuff moved in. We have a lot more space which is SO nice. We also have an amazing backyard that we all love, especially the dogs! We'll post some pictures of it soon. We only have pictures of the inside and that is not pretty so we will wait until we can get a few shots of the outside. We'll save the inside pictures for before and afters. We also really like our neighborhood. It is a quite loop of houses where everyone is outside in the evenings cutting grass, doing yard work, and visiting. It is full of kids and they all play outside afterschool and in the evenings. We have already met a lot of neighbors and they are all so nice.
Maddox really likes that 2 school buses go by our house each day. So we are always on the lookout at 3:30 and at 4:00! He thinks it is the best thing, well, unless a firetruck would go by our house but we don't want that to happen.

We had a great time at the beach!! Maddox loved hanging out with Mimi, Pawpaw, Angie and E. He liked the beach but only sand the ocean was a little much for him. It didn't help that the waves were crazy while we were there. Harris liked his beach trip too. He figured out just what to do on the beach, sit back and relax! We all had a really good time and were sad to leave.




Starting him out early on Guitar Hero!


Maddox is as crazy as always!

He is so full of energy and has quite the sense of humor. He talks in full sentences now only omitting a few connecting words. The other morning while we were all hanging out in bed and Harris was nursing Maddox tells us "I used to eat a boobie now I grow and climb ladders." We thought this was hilarious and so out of the blue! He does love ladders and anything else he can climb too. He keeps Jamie very busy during the day!

Harris is a sweetheart.

He went for his 4 month check up the other day. He weighs 13lbs 12oz and is 24' long. He is doing great. He is always smiling and loves to laugh now too. He is fascinated by Maddox and squeals at Maddox to get his attention. He is a very laid back baby and is content to just sit back and watch things happen unless he is hungry or tired. He is still very blonde and only has a little peach fuzz. He's a cutie pie!

We celebrated our 3 year anniversary last Wednesday! It was a great day! Our gifts to each other were a new weedeater and a double stroller...how romantic! The double stroller is super cool though. We'll dedicate a whole blog post to it when it comes in. It is supposed to be here tomorrow! Brian thinks the weedeater is super cool too! :)

Well that about sums everything up in a condensed form.
We hope everyone is doing well!!

A bunch of pictures

We have been crazy busy lately! We are buying a new house so the last few weeks we have been busy trying to sell our house (done) and get things together for the new house. Not to mention packing too. We close on both houses on Aug. 6th! We are so very excited! Our house now is getting pretty snug. We found a bigger house with an amazing backyard. The house needs some work, especially on the inside, think 80's wallpaper in every room, but we are all set to get started with some renovations!
The boys have been great! Maddox has been enjoying going to Mothers Day Out. His last day is next Thursday, it has been a great time for everyone and we will be sad when it is over!



Maddox is a blast to be around and we are learning 2 is a very challenging but fun age. We have been having a lot of success with potty training! Hopefully we can have that done and over with very soon! He is very active and always want to be on the go and playing outside.



Harris is great! He is such a happy baby all of the time. He'll be 4 months on the 11th of Aug. He has started laughing and rolling over. Maddox is the best at making him laugh, Harris loves his big brother!


We won't be posting a new blog for a while. We are busy packing right now, then we move into the new house and then we are leaving for a beach vacation 3 days after we close on the house. We have a busy few weeks ahead. A week at the beach will be the perfect end to all the house buying stress!


We hope you enjoy all the pictures!

A big fish and a little fish...

We decided to put Maddox in swimming lessons this summer because we thought he would really like it and that he really needed it. Well we are so glad we did. Apparently we are parents to a part human part fish. Maddox is crazy in the pool. He LOVES to swim and is very good at it. His teacher was blown away by what he would do in the water. And, we are very pleased with how well he can hold his breath underwater and come up for air when needed. He can hold it well enough to dive for quarters at the bottom of the pool. He really enjoyed jumping off the diving board and the popsicles he would get after every lesson. We learned a lot of ways to help him with his swimming and his technique. After his swimming lessons we went to Jamie's parents for the weekend and he got to swim around some more and practice his new skills.


Harris go to go swimming for the first time while we were at Jamie's parent's. He seemed to really like it and was very content in the water. So now we have a big fish and a little fish.

He went straight to sleep after swimming!

It seems like we have been so busy this summer. We have Maddox in Mothers Day Out right now and that is a huge help to Jamie. She is now able to get more things done around the house and run errands with just one little one in tow. She hopes to get started on some new sewing projects soon.

Here are some more pictures that we have taken the last few weeks:


Happy 50th Birthday PawPaw!!

Quick Post

This is just a quick post with a few pictures.
We are headed to Houston this weekend for Jamie's Dad's 50th birthday!

This will be the second time this month that Jamie and the boys have traveled to Houston. About two weeks ago Jamie went to say goodbye to a very special person, Liz. Liz was Jamie's long time babysitter and basically a member of the family. She lost a very courageous battle with cancer on Monday June 9th. Thankfully Jamie got to have a very nice visit with her before she passed. The service is tomorrow so we will be attending that while we are there.

The boys are doing great! Maddox is in swimming lessons right now, more on that next post. Harris went for his 2 month check up yesterday. He weighs 10lbs 11oz and is 22 1/4 inches long.

Here are a few pictures to hold you over until the next post

Time for an Update

Summer is definitely here....it is so HOT!! To beat the heat lately we have been playing in the water a lot. And last night we decided we needed a bigger kiddie pool so that we could join Maddox in it! Our backyard now looks like a kids playland or something!


On Memorial day weekend we decided to take the boys on a little hike so we drove over to Driskill Mountian, highest point in Louisiana! They both had a good time, Harris slept and Maddox had fun picking dewberries along the path. We captures a few pictures along the hike.




The boys are doing great! We all finally feel settled in since having Harris and feel like we have a good routine down. Maddox has become accustomed to having Harris around and the days are going a whole lot smoother.



Maddox is getting so big! He is such a little boy now and he sure is ALL boy too! He has such a fun personality and makes us laugh all the time. He is putting lots of sentences together and repeats a lot of what he hears, which can be very funny especially when he uses it in the right context. He heard Jamie say the word weird the other day so now he says when things are weird!

He loves to help "make" in the kitchen. This means he feels the need to help with every meal breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack!
He no longer says his name "Makeek" it has now turned into "Maddock." So everything is now "No, Maddock do it." Everything is always all about them when they are two! Gotta love that egocentricity!
We signed him up for swimming lessons next week. He is such a fish that we decided some formal instruction would be good for all of us. He has no fear of the water which can be a good and bad thing.




Harris is doing great too! He is so cute and such a sweet little guy. He is very content and happy all day long. This is new for us since Maddox was a little( insert sarcasm) high needs.


Last time we went to the doctor (last week) Harris weighed 8lbs 12oz. He is definitely eating well, gaining over a pound a week!
This week he has been going to Vacation Bible School with Jamie and just peacefully hanging out with her, like we said he is a very content baby.
He smiles a lot now and has started cooing at us when we talk to him. Last night he slept for 7 hours!! That was a first and may be a last but we sure did enjoy it!


The blueberry farm is now open so stay tuned for pictures of blueberry picking!