Life Lessons For My Son

Recently I was able to teach Eli a valuable lesson about what it means to be a man. A man does not pay $50 for a Christmas tree from the hardware store a mile from our house, because that would be easy. A man forces his family to drive to a Christmas tree farm an hour away from home where he can pay $50 for the privilege of picking amongst the few sad looking trees left so that he can cut it down himself and drive home with it on the roof of his car. Why does a man do this? I'm not really sure actually. I'm kind of learning as I go along here.



Here we are picking amongst the extensive collection of sad trees.



Here Eli is telling me how to cut down a tree.



Success! I killed a tree and tied it to the roof of my car!

Meet Harry

Harry is the pumpkin we carved. Eli was pretty excited to pick out the pumpkin & get out the tools but not so excited about the actual carving. Mom and Dad ended up doing most of the work.

Happy 3rd Birthday

Gramma Michelle & Grampa Chris made the trip to help us celebrate Eli's birthday. Per Eli's request, the party was Super Hero themed with masks and capes for everyone. The menu consisted of a Batman themed ice cream cake from the Donut Room (aka Dunkin Donuts) and Jonathan's amazing pulled pork sandwiches.

Eli's actual birthday consisted of homemade cake and a shirtless Eli opening presents. The cake was a disaster due to a forgetful baker (me) who left out the sugar. The presents were a big success especially the Bat Cave.

End of Summer Recap

Here's a quick recap of the end of the summer...we went to the zoo a lot, I won a rocking horse & Eli continued to grow and become even more fun.

We also bought a new computer which has for some reason caused us to stop updating the blog - sorry we'll try and be better about this.

Eli at the Ballpark

South Haven 2010

Lots of new pictures from vacation in South Haven this year have been posted to the flickr page.

Long Weekend

Block Party!

We live on a street that takes its block party very seriously. This year was no exception - the ponies & the DJ were both back along with a visit from the fire department including a fire safety demonstration and the kids getting sprayed with the hose.

Eli decided that he was a big kid and that I needed to stand back. He rode the pony seven times all by himself.Here's Eli making sure that the fireman's mask is working properly - he then promptly shut the intake valve.He also got to sit up in the firetruck

and play in the hose.

The Haircut

I've been trimming Eli's hair whenever it gets in his eyes but he's never had a real haircut. A few weeks ago we made the trip to Bubbles where Eli and Daddy both got new haircuts. Eli was nervous at first and held on to Jonathan for dear life. Everything changed when Dawn, the hairdresser, offered Eli a lollipop. Contently eating a lollipop, Eli put on the cape and the haircut began.Here's an after shot of Eli with his new big kid haircut. Don't worry about the frown, sometimes he's just too serious to be bothered with having his picture taken.

DIY

I've been experimenting with making clothes for Eli and myself since I received a sewing machine for Christmas. It's actually really hard to find cool patterns for boys clothes but I've managed to find at least one inspirational blog. Here's my first attempt that came up a little short (notice the exposed belly).Daddy says my next attempt makes Eli look like a mime but I like it. Of course, white cuffs and little boys don't really go very well together.My most recent attempt turned out the best but has only been worn three times since it's now a million degrees here everyday. This one I made myself with no blog assistance.These were all made out of old t-shirts that we were going to donate to Goodwill. Yes, the last won is from one of the best (if not the best) concerts that we've ever attended.

Recent Visits

In the last few months we've had two very important visitors...Gramma 'Shel and Grampa Reed.As you can see, Eli really enjoys being read to. Gramma also took the opportunity to visit all of Eli's friends at day care where she was a big hit. Eli and Grampa spent a very long time playing in the cave Eli created by sitting under a quilt - Grampa is much more patient in the cave then Mommy and Daddy. Eli also got to learn about Grampa's ouchy when he accidentally hit Grampa in the chest with a dinosaur. "Wow" was Eli's response to seeing Grampa's double bypass surgery scar, "that's a big ouchy, can I touch it?"

School Pictures

I'm sure this will come as no surprise to anyone but Eli has recently taken the cutest school pictures ever. A photographer comes to daycare twice a year to take photos of the kids. Up until this point Eli has always been too afraid of the photographer/lights/camera to take a picture. Don't worry -- pictures will go out in the mail this weekend.

Easter Eggs!

Dyed by Eli with very limited assistance.

Happy Easter!

We had a busy Easter weekend full of visits from Gramma Kathy & Great Gramma Ruff, egg dyeing, trips to the park, and an Easter Egg Hunt.

Funny Eli story: On Sunday morning while Eli was eating his breakfast I began to explain Easter and what people celebrate on this day. Here's the abbreviated version...
Mommy: "...and then Jesus..."
Eli: "And then Jesus was a Din-OH-saur an he roared! RRRRRRR!!!"
Mommy: hysterical laughter

If you couldn't guess, Eli's really in to dinosaurs and things that roar right now. Sorry Dad, we'll start going to church soon.

The Shore

So the weekend before last was beautiful weather; seventy degrees and sunny. I didn't get to enjoy much of it though because I was at work all weekend because of this thing. You may have heard of it. It was a big F@#*%ing deal. This upcoming weekend - once again we're looking at some perfect weather here in our nation's capital. This past weekend? Eh, not so much. That didn't stop us from taking our first ever trip to the shore. We rented an awesome house and enjoyed cold walks on the boardwalk in the wind without appropriate clothing, hiding tiny seashells all over the house, and practicing for a career in the UFC. It was actually kind of perfect.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We've finally dug ourselves out of the snow! Things are slowly returning back to normal. Our street was plowed early this morning and trash pick up is supposed to resume on Tuesday - yeah!

Today is also my Gramma's birthday - Happy Birthday Gramma! If you'd like to see Eli sing happy birthday to her click here. You'll notice that he's not wearing a shirt in protest of the snow.

We're Getting Sick of This

Yes it's snowing again. No, I wouldn't expect any cute pictures of us sledding or throwing giant snowballs or other fun wintertime activities. The novelty of being essentially stuck in our house has worn off now that we're moving in on the sixth straight day and there is now three feet of snow and ice piled up outside. There's only so many times you can watch Madagascar 2 and youtube videos and make animals out of Play Doh before you start to lose it and its safe to say all three of us hit that point sometime in the last day or two.

Family Sledding Adventure

Jamie and Helena brought over inflatable tubes to use for sledding at the local park. At first Eli was only up for some team sledding action.



Eventually we were able to convince him to try out some solo sledding with an inflatable duck pool toy. Eli actually enjoyed this way more than you would guess based on the look on his face. He threw a bit of a fit when it was time to go.



When the ladies and small children went home to warm up, Jamie and I checked out the scene at our other local sledding hill.

The snow has finally stopped falling, and we've thankfully managed to avoid any power failures or other negative aspects of Snowmagedden, aka Snowpocolypse II, aka SnOMG. A thirty foot tree a couple of doors down did fall down into the street and onto a parked car, but luckily no one was hurt. We're all looking forward to another day of winter fun tomorrow.

Snowmagedden

Friday afternoon.

Saturday at dawn.

Saturday afternoon.

Snowmergency

As we prepare for this weekend's Snowmergency, I thought I would share a picture from last weekend's snow.
I promise to post photos of Eli romping in mountains of snow - as soon as we actually have some snow. Like true Washingtonians we headed off to the store to buy groceries in preparation. Not surprisingly, there were exactly 5 loaves of bread left at the Target in Alexandria at 9:30am. They did however have a ton of playdough which was our main reason for going to Target. If we're going to be stuck in the house all weekend, I thought we needed some new entertainment and playdough is perfect.

Silly Mommy, I Eli

We've started playing a game where I ask Eli if he's my little sugar booger or my little sweet potato pie or my little apple dumpling or my little...you get the picture. After a while of this Eli will finally say "Mommy you silly, I Eli (which sounds like E I)" and then he laughs and laughs. Eli's not a big fan of letting me video him right now so you'll just have to take my word for it.

The Zoo!!

The unusually cold DC winter finally took a brief hiatus long enough for us to visit Eli's favorite spot...THE ZOO! We spent most of our time saying hello to our friend Tulip the Cow.
We discovered a few new things this trip - the dinosaur head and an unexplainable fear of the Gorilla House. Normally the gorillas are more popular than Tulip but this time he started to cry as we approached. I have no idea why and he wasn't able to tell me so I guess we'll just wait and see what happens on our next trip.