kids say the darndest things...

"The sun crashed our snowman. That NOT NICE!"

On the way to school one day after telling Mercer that Daddy was at work... "Mommy, you not work. You stay home. You stay home and clean my stuff."

And the final one which is a "doozie" - as he was looking through an advertisement in the Sunday paper, he came to an ad with women in bikinis. He said "they need to put clothes on" and he covered them up with something. Then he took the covering off and pointed at the bikini top of one of the women "boobies."

Todd and I about lost it at the breakfast table! We tried not to laugh, but it was hard!!

Tonight, we were playing with Play-Doh as a family. As we were opening the package & unwrapping all of the car / truck / airplane / helicopter / dune buggy parts that stick into the squishy dough... he kept saying "wow" "wow" "woooowwww"

After squishing around and making some jumbled-up creations, he would make airplane noises and car noises. "Nrrrrrrrrooooolllllllll.........Brrrrrrmmmmmmm....."

He would also grab whatever Todd or I had in our hands and say "here, I need to do something" or "I need to show you something." Then you could see the wheels turning inside of his head as he was trying to think of what to show us or what to do once he held the dough & pieces in his hands.

This doesn't flow with the story - but it should be on the record that Todd was holding back some anxiety at the colors being mixed & smooshed together. I think they look kinda cool & swirly.... until at some point we end up with this homogeneous grey color... but kinda fun right now!

We have been holding our annual soup night event. Tomorrow night is the 4th in the series -- the last soup night for the year. So far, the first three events have been smaller than usual, but it's been nice to catch up with some people that we haven't talked to in awhile and really wanted to catch up with - so that's been great - getting to spend some one-on-one time with folks. This is why we hold the event.

Mercer thinks it's pretty great to have a party at our house every Saturday night. He's enjoying the event.

We're still continuing his swimming class (because of our concern with life safety/ the pond in our back yard). We'll keep that one up. He's doing well and can float on his own for a little bit... and is able to pretty much climb out of the pool now.

We also enrolled him in a parent-tot tumbling class for this winter quarter. Don't know how long we'll do this one, but right now it's great because he's getting to blow off some energy on Saturday mornings and is learning to do flips, walk on a balance beam, even do a backwards flip on the uneven bars with the teacher's help & my "spotting" him. He's enjoying it for the most part, but is having a hard time waiting his turn to do the activity / standing in line. Hopefully the class will work on his patience a little bit??

That's about all that's going on. Have a great week.

'Til next time...

(This is Mercer trying out his first chocolate-covered strawberry... and another pic of Todd & Mercer watching football together. The J-E-T-S gave it a good run this season~ maybe next year Todd will go to the superbowl to support his team??)

It's a new year~

Just before the new year, we got to visit with some of our friends from the west coast - Bob, Jen and their baby girl Zoe (who is almost 1 1/2 years old and we were just meeting for the first time). We were ALL shameless & kept prodding Mercer and Zoe to hug. She seemed to be more interested in his "big kid" toys, though. Oh well. Hopefully it won't be another 1 1/2 years 'til they see each other again!

Mercer almost made it to midnight on new year's eve... he & his friends were up 'til after 11... we finally heard the last peep come out of their room around 11:45. The following morning, he hit a milestone: he gave up his pacifier. (we prodded him on this too... "throw away your pacifier and you get this big new toy." he really had no choice~) Here he is enjoying his criss-cross matchbox car set & he's been enjoying it ever since. I don't think he regrets his decision. The first few nights, he asked for the pacifier, but we reminded him that HE threw it away in exchange for the car set. He seemed ok with that. So - we're closing in on 2 weeks without it. Woo hoo! Now... to work again on the potty training...

The big news around here -- SNOW -- and lots of it for Atlanta & the metropolitan area. 5" + ice on top. (This picture is taken from a weird angle - the snow is not all the way up to the stop sign!) The snow has pretty much shut down the whole area for quite some time... and 4 days later... there's still most of it around. The city is not equipped to handle it. We went sledding the first day. All was good for awhile 'til he started to bawl "I want to go home I want to go home." Once home - we discovered that his little gloves were not keeping his hands warm & they were bright red and freezing cold to the touch. Poor guy!

The next day, we went out & put 2 sets of gloves on his hands... and this seemed to do the trick. He was out for a couple of hours building a snowman with Todd and helping him to shovel the driveway.

Inside, he got to play with more white stuff... icing! It was the perfect time to make cupcakes and practice icing them. This was his first time practicing this new skill - dipping the knife into the tub & slathering it onto the cupcake. I only had to smooth it out for him - he really did pretty well - until we caught him licking his finger and made him wash his hands.

We saw snow while driving at Christmas, but didn't get to stop & play in it. I'm glad he got to experience snow this season. Now... we are all ready for the next thing!

Home Sweet Home

our travels looked something like this: GA --> NC --> DC --> NJ --> VA --> GA

(all in about a week)

We had a great time at each of our destinations, but packing & unpacking, sleeping in different beds, and riding in the car for 1800 miles is hard on all of us... especially when mother nature throws us a curve ball such as a major snow storm!!

Our trip started in North Carolina - visiting my mother's family. Literally, as soon as we go out of the car & inside, Mercer spotted a "low-rider" car that played music and immediately went into dance. We haven't posted a video in quite awhile - but enjoy this one & notice Mercer's signature moves: a cartwheel... him going into a wind-up with his arm... and a kick over the car! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N4KayeiTo0

Mercer "got it" this year and enjoyed opening presents more than playing with the bows and boxes. We didn't take any group photos at this family gathering. Uncle Eddie's son, Michael, posed for the only picture while others who I won't mention (Uncle Mel) hid behind stuff to avoid the camera. Shout-out to Michael !!

We also got to see my dad's mother, Edith, while in town. Mercer is always a star at her nursing home as the residents and workers there enjoy watching him. He brings energy there and makes lots of people smile. Notice grandma is smiling at Mercer as he is "digging for gold." Ha! Near grandma's nursing home is an interesting development called Fearrington Village. Mercer & I paid a visit there last year and he ran around these sculptures in the field. This year, he was a little more interactive with the sculptures that were decked out for the holidays.

We continued our journey up the road - stopping in D.C. to visit Todd's brother and family. While there, Mercer's cousin, Marley, doted on him and played with him 'til it was time for him to go to sleep. She even read him his bedtime stories! Check out their awesome hats!!

The following morning, we continued our journey up the highway to New Jersey. At one point, we got off of the highway to avoid some holiday traffic. We ended up driving through the town and campus of Princeton - which is really beautiful. This was a nice diversion for us while Mercer was in the back seat napping. The following day, Todd's sister and Mercer's cousins arrived. More arrived on Christmas day & the house was full (9 adults + 9 kids under one roof). Mercer had an absolute blast playing with his cousins. At some point, a full-blown game of Nerf gun war was "on" and everyone was running around the house shooting nerf pellets at one another. Mercer hung right in there with them!!

We got a little bit of a later start on journey southward after Christmas. Overnight, New Jersey was to have gotten hit by snow - so we waited 'til daylight to see what the conditions were. Things were fine & we made it out. Later that day, however, NJ and many other states got buried by the white stuff. We drove through some beautiful postcard-like farms with a dusting of snow covering the rolling hills. Some farms had silos attached to stone farm buildings. Some farms had dilapidated wood structures that added a lot of character to the drive. If not in a hurry, it would've been great to stop and shoot some pictures. (Maybe we can explore that part of the country at some point in the future??)

We had to stop in Virginia to stay the night because as the sun set, the roads were getting slick. We were only a couple of hours from my mom's house in North Carolina, but we called it a night, then drove to her place in the morning - encountering some rough roads. Unfortunately, we lost about 1/2 a day, so we couldn't stay for a visit with my mom. We headed back to our house & when we made it home. When my head finally hit my own pillow that night... it was pure bliss!