Visit with Great-Grandpa

Stephen’s grandmother passed away near the end of May, and even though we had planned to go to the funeral, Stephen ended up having a VERY late night at work the night before and he didn’t get home until 5 in the morning, and we were needing to leave the house at 8 in order to go to the funeral. So, we made plans to go to visit his grandfather the next week, on Memorial Day.

Stephen’s grandmother, Jerri, had only seen Christopher in person one time, when he was about 6 months old. We didn’t have a lot of time to get away when Stephen worked at Walmart, then I started school full-time last July, then Stephen started school in January and started a new job in February, and time just goes by SO quickly. Unfortunately, we never made the trip back to visit Stephen’s grandparents and it makes me so sad to think that we don’t even have a picture of Christopher with his great-grandmother. I hate it that we just kept putting it off and she ended up passing away just a few weeks before summer break, when we were planning on making a trip to visit. However, I do know that Jerri loved reading my blog and she enjoyed it very much. She checked it daily and left me lots of sweet messages. She loved all of the pictures I posted of Christopher and printed them all off on her home computer and made a huge book of pictures of just Christopher.

Anyway, on Memorial Day, Stephen and his mom and I, plus Christopher, headed to visit with Stephen’s grandfather, Ernie.

We had a really good visit and Christopher loved spending the day with his great-grandfather… and I think the feeling was mutual. ;)

Way to Go Mavs!!!!

The Mavs won the NBA Championship tonight!!!! Stephen and I are Mavs fans (he made me one!) and we even went to a game when we first started dating.

Whoa. Skinny Stephanie.

Christopher Tyler is also a Mavericks fan…

We just got home from Ft Worth this evening, so we were able to pick up some new Mavs clothing while we were there. This is C-Monster showing his support tonight.

Here’s the best part of this post. These pictures crack me up! They were taken during the last few seconds of the game (when there was still action happening, but there was no way that the Heat were coming back to win it) and I said to Stephen, “Let’s take a picture of two happy Mavs fans!”

Picture Number One: Stephen looking at the TV

ME: Stephen! You’re not looking at the camera!
(P.S. Check out my new Mavs shirt! And yes, that shirt that my husband is wearing is the same one he wore at the game we were at THREE years ago!)

Picture Number Two: Stephen STILL watching the game

ME: Stephen! You did it AGAIN!
(Although I must admit, that grin on his face is PRICELESS! He was SO excited!)

Picture Number Three: We were both laughing and my hand was shaking because of it, so when I finally got a picture of Stephen looking at the camera, it turned out super blurry. My eyes are all crinkled up from laughing, too. But it’s a great memory. :)

Dallas Mavericks: 2011 NBA Champions!!!!!

Weekend

Happy Sunday! We have had a busy week/weekend! Believe it or not, this is the first time that I’ve even opened my laptop in probably 3 days, which is CRAZY for me!

We had the Lum & Abner festival in our town this weekend, which is always fun.

Just for fun, this is a picture of me two years ago on the weekend of Lum & Abner. Our friends had their baby girl the Friday of the festival and this is the picture of me and their new baby.

I remember this weekend SO well. After this sweet girl was born, I got really excited about meeting Christopher! I am about 30 weeks pregnant in this picture.

{I should mention here that I have been having some serious baby fever recently  - and this picture isn’t helping!}

Last year at Lum & Abner, Christopher participated in the baby crawling contest and got 2nd place. The next week, his picture was on the front page of the paper!

We had a lot of fun this year, too! The pictures are on Stephen’s work camera so I’ll have to do an update later with this year’s festivities!

Last night, we played Charades with my family. Always fun times… especially when it involves my brother trying to get my dad & Stephen to guess Puss in Boots. Enough said.

Today, Stephen and I were planning on staying at home but we ran an errand this morning and on the way back home we stopped at his mom’s house. She was swimming in her pool so we decided to swim, too! It was our first time to get in her pool this year and we had a lot of fun! She has a leak and has had some problems getting everything balanced and clean this summer, so the water isn’t clear, but we got in anyway. :) Christopher wasn’t too sure about it at first but he ended up loving it!

Isn’t that little floaty cute? My MIL bought it last summer. Christopher loved it! (And I love not constantly having to hold him!)

We ended up having lunch at Nana’s and watching a movie with her while C napped, then we headed home and I worked some more on my landscaping project! It didn’t go as quickly as I had hoped last weekend, and it has been HOT and yucky here this week and we have been busy with other things, so I am still working on it. It looks SO good and hopefully tomorrow I can take some “after” shots and then post them on here.

After I had worked in the yard for a few hours I took Bella and Jasper for a long walk and when I got home, Stephen had chicken, corn, and mashed taters ready for dinner. YUM!

Now we are watching the Mavs play and trying to wind down for bed! I have great plans to start getting up early and running in the mornings, but in order for that to happen I have GOT to stop staying up till midnight then sleeping till 9:30. The weather here has gotten hot in a hurry and it’s usually 80+ by 8 or 9 in the morning and then it only gets worse! We’ve already seen upper 90s this week and I know that it’ll stay that way till September… so if I want to run without having a heat stroke, I need to do it at 6:30 in the morning!

Hello, Summer Break!

I’m SO relieved to say that my two-week mini-semester is OVER! I had hoped that it would be a low-stress class, but we crammed a LOT of information into 30 hours of class. Every evening when I got home, I read two chapters in a textbook and answered 10 essay questions at the end of each chapter and studied those questions and a long list of definitions from each chapter because we had a 20-30 question quiz the next day in class over the reading material and that was pretty much ALL that our grade was based on. The teacher’s grading scale was not normal – instead of the normal 90-100 = A, his scaled was 95-100=A; 85-94=B, etc. Anyway, to say the least, I’m very glad that it’s over and now I have the entire next MONTH off from school and I am SO glad for the break.

Today Stephen and I worked in our yard on a project that we have been wanting to do for quite a while. I took before pictures and when we finish up (hopefully tomorrow!) I’ll take some after pics. I’ve been looking forward to doing some landscaping since the beginning of Spring, but I just haven’t had the time. This entire past week I’ve been so excited about buying some flowers and getting ready for this landscaping project. I went by Walmart on Thursday (and I completely blew off my homework until LATE that night) and couldn’t help but buy these pretties…

Impatiens, begonias, vinca, lilies, & coleus… most of which will be potted and put on my front porch steps! :)

I have so much planned for the next month. We are planning a trip to Ft. Worth to visit Stephen’s family and to go to the Zoo and probably a few other outings. I have a HUGE to-do list for the house and yard, and, of course, I plan on spending a ton of quality time with Christopher. He is growing up SO quick and is SUCH a little boy. I’ve already started planning his birthday party (Sports theme… what else?) and I’m really excited about it. I can’t believe he’s going to be TWO in less than 3 months… where has the time gone?!?

Dinner at Nana’s (yes – Nachos. Don’t judge.)
&
Playing in his sandbox at Nana’s

Local Celebrity

Christopher made the the paper! This is the third time (not including his birth announcement) that he has made it into our local newspaper. Not that we have any connections. Ha. Christopher had to spend a little time with Stephen at his office this week while I was in class. Star is the cat that lives in the office at the paper. Every week, Star writes a little article in the paper telling what all she has been up to. Christopher loves cats and of course he loved getting to meet Star. I’m glad that Star wrote about meeting Christopher!

Someone needs to work with Star regarding the proper usage of commas and other grammar etiquette. Just sayin’.

Easter 2011

Guess what I have! PICTURES! (a LOT of em!)

Of course, it’s been so long since Easter and so much has happened, I’m not sure I can remember everything about it. ;)

The weekend before Easter, we celebrated at my mom’s house. She always has her big Easter celebration the weekend before, so that it doesn’t conflict with our (large) family’s day-before-Easter plans in Texas. (Pretty much all of our relatives live in the Texarkana area.)

It was a long day and Christopher didn’t get his normal nap in before hunting eggs, so by the time it came to do the egg hunt he was exhausted and really had no interest in hunting eggs. My mom and I had been working with him for a week or so and he had been really enjoying it, but he was pretty much done after about two minutes.

First – my mom made this cutie patootie Easter Basket for Christopher. It says “Hoppy Easter” on one side and his name on the other. I love it!

I realize now that I just took pictures of Christopher and not of the whole family. Not cool. Also, looking through the pictures – I’m not happy with the way a lot of them turned out. Not sure what the deal is? Aggravating!

The next weekend, on Easter Sunday, we went to church with my parents. That afternoon, we went to my mother-in-law’s to hunt eggs and have dinner with her.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I waited until the very last minute to do Easter Bunny shopping pick up a few items at the store. While I was there I saw a cute egg dye kit that was sports-themed. Since Christopher’s OBSESSED with balls, I made a last-minute decision to dye and decorate eggs. I always loved the day when we dyed and decorated eggs and I hope it’s a fun tradition for Christopher, too. The only thing was that the little plastic wrappers that going around the eggs – well, they were really cute baseball/soccer ball/football designs, but the eggs I got were too big and they wouldn’t go around the eggs. So, note to self – get SMALL eggs when using them as Easter decorating eggs.

When we got to Nana’s house, we found out that the Easter Bunny had left Christopher a basket full of goodies!

Next, we dyed eggs!

Hunting eggs…

Some of the plastic eggs that were hidden in Nana’s yard had SURPRISES in them!

In this picture, Christopher is asking us to open up a piece of candy for him. It was a little bite-size chocolate wafer type thing and Mama wanted a bite as well. I opened it and let him bite off a piece, then when I went to take a bite, he shook his head NO at me and took the candy back and stuffed the WHOLE THING IN HIS MOUTH. See pictures below.

Too much.

Okay, I feel SO much better now that I’ve written about Easter. You know, from a month ago.  Our desktop wasn’t recognizing that my memory card had pictures on it, so I ended up installing Photoshop on my laptop and transferring all the pictures there. SOOO now, I shouldn’t have any reason not to be a blogging fanatic. Except for the ridiculously time-consuming two-week-long class I’m in right now.  But more about that later. :)