Water, Water, and More Water (7 Quick Takes)

If you don't like a lot of pictures of cute smiles, this blog post is not for you.

--- 1 ---

We found a park a while back that has a little man-made stream running through it and we've gone to play in it several times this summer.  It's just Matthan's size.  He loves to go through the water to the other side, up over the bridge, down and around the path, and then leans around the bush and yells "I see you, Mommy!", and then runs back up the path, back over the bridge and through the water to me.  Repeat 1,457,643 times.

--- 2 ---

I have a hard time sleeping when there is light in my room, but I'm not a huge fan of the face masks I've tried.  I didn't want to cover the lights on our baby monitor completely.  It only took almost two years for my husband to suggest putting a sock over it.  Perfect solution and it kind of looks like Santa Clause.  Maybe?  Kind of?  I think so.

--- 3 ---

In case you missed my post about us taking Matthan to the beach for the first time, click on the picture below to go see more pics.

--- 4 ---

I can't help myself.  Every now and then I get a hankering for the 'ole WaHo.  The Hubs doesn't care for it, but every now and then I can convince him to accompany me to get some waffles.  One Saturday morning, I decided I needed waffles and hash browns.  Now you must understand that I don't usually keep juice in the house (really because I'll drink way too much of it).  I treat it like a treat...

Decided he was in fact a fan of the hat after grumpily accepting one from the nice older gentleman.

... and when Little Man gets it... it's oh... soooo...good.

Have you ever seen a more intense face of satisfaction?

--- 5 ---

Speaking of Little Man, I try to find jobs for him around the kitchen.  He stacks cans.

He just did this one day when I left the pantry door open and it has become a daily habit.  He is really good about putting them back in the pantry when asked, so now his new job is helping me put away food in the pantry after grocery shopping.

I asked him to smile.

--- 6 ---

We met with my friend Bridget and her son Bo at the mall fountain the other day.  The water was. so. cold.  The boys played in it anyway, and I did not get out dry.  It has very strong streams of water... that change patterns.  During one pattern, all of the streams are hitting the center of the circle and it hurts a bit if they hit you.  Well...

...Matthan had run into the center of the circle and sure enough the pattern changed nailing him with full force of all the streams, and I had to rescue my dear panic-stricken boy from the deluge.

--- 7 ---

A drastic change has occurred as of recent.  Inspired by my five year old niece who recently donated her hair...

... I decided if I was going to cut my hair, I might as well do something good with it.  It's the second time I've contributed to Locks of Love, but it's still pretty weird to see that much hair come from me.

Happy Friday everyone!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Summer Travel and Family Fun

Today, I'm doing a double link-up!  Because my brain is on summer vacation still (despite all of the schools around us beginning this week) and can't come up with my own ideas.  I'm linking up with the ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter for "Pretty Happy Funny Real" and Cari at Clan Donaldson for "Theme Thursday" (the theme is "Panic").

~ Griffin ~

Actually labeling the "pretty" and the "happy" etc seems moot because there has been a lot of it going on around here.  Well, not exactly around here, because we haven't been around here for a lot of the previous two weeks.  Three Mondays ago (I'm way behind on blogging), Little Man and I packed ourselves up (I packed, he ran around like a crazy person) and headed on down south of Atlanta to my sister and her family.  Do not let these limited pictures fool you.  It was not this calm.  There was craziness, and laughter, and feeding the Little Man with imaginary food while playing "mommy and babies".

Cousins

Can't resist the kisses

~ Savannah ~

After telling The Hubs that it was really quite ridiculous that we made it through all of last summer without going to the beach (it's appalling, really), I insisted we take the Little Man to the beach.  With relatives very close to the beach, I think it must be some kind of sin that he had not set foot on a beach yet.  Matthan is a pretty chill kid but I have noticed that he adjusts quicker to new situations if I prep him for it.  So before we embarked on our trip to Savannah and the beach, I YouTube-d "ocean" and had him watch a video of the ocean while he was eating his lunch.  He liked watching "ocean".

Mommy, Matthan, cousin Ava in the real ocean

He did great!  He had his freak out moments and clung to me but after a while would go to Grandma and Daddy too.  He had so much fun.  His cousins dug him a little pool in the sand that he just loved.  He also did not have an aversion to the ice-cream that we got afterwards either :).

Eating cookies on the beach

I know, I know, beach pictures don't exactly scream "Panic", this weeks theme for Theme Thursday, but I'm doing you a favor by sparing you from pictures.  See...while we were visiting ye 'ole beautiful Savannah, I was in the kitchen with my husband's family.  I bent over to pick up something off of the floor ... (ok!! It was a chocolate chip from my cookie!  5 second rule so not worth it this time!)...

... and WHACK!!!

While I had bent over for glutton-ess reclaiming of the fallen chocolate chip, someone had opened the freezer door, and upon standing, my head and the corner of the door had a painful, aggressive meeting without my permission.  I immediately crumbled into a heap of pain on the floor trying to figure out if I was going to black out (which I figure now is not something you think if you black you, you just black out? I don't know).  I asked for an ice pack and when I pulled it away, there was blood dripping down the ice pack (aren't you glad I spared you the pictures?).  I was panicking about the idea of having to get stitches while my husband had gotten me into a chair and handed me a bowl because my body had made a couple attempts to dislodge it's lunch contents.  I asked him why he was getting a wet cloth for to which he replied "you have blood all down your face".  Commence more attempts at lunch dislodgment.  After removal of my bloody sweater and the blood from my face, my husband got me to a chair, determined I did not need stitches, and took care of me for the rest of the day... which was kind of nice... but not worth the head injury.  I'm ok now... I think.

~ Visit from Grandpa ~

Before I even had our suitcases unpacked from visiting Savannah, Grandpa Jim came to visit us.  We had good intentions to head to the pool, but cool, cloudy weather had other plans.  We did make it to the park for about 30 mins before it got stormy.  The next day we were able to make it to another park and walk the two mile path around the lake.  

Grandpa Jim and Matthan

Now go check out more posts at Like Mother, Like Daughter and Clan Donaldson for "Theme.

Because I Wouldn't Let Him Play in the Street and 1 Million Bean Pickup (7QT)

It's that time again (where I publish this with Friday's date so in the future it looked like I had my act together when really I posted this on Monday).

--- 1 ---

Have you seen the Reasons My Son Is Crying website?  Sometimes as a parent I have to step back and realize that my child's crying is completely out of my control and that this little being in my care is, as my sister puts it, "irrational and uncivilized".  

So, I'm considering the following as my submission to ReasonsMySonIsCrying.com...

I wouldn't let him play in the street.  #meanmom

...because I didn't capture a picture to go along with this:

This weekend I heard my son crying and I walked into the kitchen and asked my husband "what happened?".  His reply was, 

"he wanted some watermelon, so I gave him some."  "And that's why he's crying?"  "Yep."  

--- 2 ---

We have been showing our grill a lot of love on the weekends.  I had hung the diapers out on the line while The Hubs was making a particularly good batch of BBQ and I asked him to help me keep an eye on the weather, because according to the forecast we were supposed to get thunderstorms in a few hours.  Thirty mins later...

The Hubs rescuing his thermometer.  Diapers...soaked.

--- 3 ---

Our Georgia weather is just wacky with drastic changes in temperature and thunderstorms hitting at any moment.  So inside entertainment is a must.  I thought giving him something to put in his pots and pans would be fun.

It's all fun and games until Momma is cleaning up a million beans off of the floor.

--- 4 ---

The new slide from Grandma and Grandpa has not yet ceased to entertain.

--- 5 ---

I trekked the Little Man and myself out to the Farmer's Market (just too far to justify going every week), and purchased some peaches, blackberries, and tomatoes.  The market is in the downtown area near a mom-of-a-friend-owned candy shop, so we dropped in to say hello.  Our friend happened to be there and he gave Matthan some Smarties because those are his son's favorite.  We also ruined our dinner with their homemade ice-cream and blackberries (that they get from the market), YUM!!

--- 6 ---

And because the e-mail gods are against me preventing me from getting other photos that I had planned to share, go see this post:

Six Years and Several Frisbees Later

--- 7 ---

Or this post:

Splashing and Hiking at Angel Falls

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

 

Six Years and Several Frisbees Later

Click on picture to go see more wedding pictures

When we picked our date to get married (July 5th), part of the reasoning was that we'd get fireworks every year to remind us that something special was coming up.  Ergo, we'd never forget our anniversary.

Due to the willingness of my in-laws to hang with Little Man all weekend, The Hubs and I were able to head back to place where it all began.

{pretty}

Who knew that when we met ten years ago at UGA in Athens, GA that we'd be here now with 4 years of dating and 6 years of marriage behind us?  Well, according to The Hubs, he did.  Athens will always feel like home to us.  And so we left home to head home for the weekend.

After eating some pretty sub-par Chinese food (because we forget EVERY YEAR that most places close on the 4th) we headed out to watch some fireworks.  We sat in our camping love seat (because we are that cute), and just... sat.  It's amazing what a luxury sitting is when you realize you don't have to chase a kid.  So we sat, and listened to a couple of military bands play, and people watched.  

Then we ran into some old friends and hung out with them and their family the rest of the evening and watched some pretty awesome fireworks, and reminisced about our rehearsal dinner that included fireworks off of River Street in Savannah (because, hello, free entertainment for our wedding guests).

 {happy}

Seriously, sitting, such a luxury.

We spent the next day making up for our lack of foodie indulging by eating at some of our favorite places (Big City Bread, Utage, etc).  We also went to play disc golf on the course that we've played many times in college.  I won, for the record; a very rare occurrence, hence the reason that I'm bragging.

On the way back we stopped at The Yarn House because it looked interesting.  Some older ladies had turned a historic house into a yarn and accessories shop.  I have an affinity for yarn items and homemade things... and so does The Hubs.  He had placed his order with me a long time ago, saying that should I ever want to make him something, he would love a pair of socks.  So, an hour, a couple pets of their long-haired bunny, several supplies, and a tour from one of the owners later, we left with (most) of what I need to make The Hubs socks.  After watching several youtube videos on how to make socks...I've determined that he will receive said socks as a 10th anniversary gift because that is how long it will take for me to make them.

{funny}

Does this picture look familiar to you?  Where have we seen this scenario before?  Oh, right. 

See the white frisbee wedged into the tree branch? 

We had just spent what seemed like a good 15 mins or so searching for that particular disc before finding it and moving on to this hole.  Then he threw it, and there wasn't the usual thunk! sound reassuring us that what had gone up had come down, and we just looked at each other, and knew that the search began again.  See picture above.  We did finally get it down after throwing several large sticks at it.  On the plus side: the frisbee was white instead of green (so easier to find), we were shaded, and I was not six months pregnant out in the blazing sun with swollen, sunburned legs from the previous days crazy kayaking adventure.

{real}

We managed to only snap a couple pictures from the weekend because we were just enjoying our time in all of our old places.  We went to mass at the Catholic Center and saw our old priest friend, ate at several great restaurants, went downtown to see a jazz band, and went to the Botanical Gardens where we saw a couple deer while hiking to "our rock".

While I did stay off of my phone pretty much the whole weekend, I glanced at Facebook while waiting somewhere and found The Hubs' following post.  He's often a man of few words when it comes to feelings (he's more a buy flowers than a give a compliment guy), but every now and then he does something like this and doesn't tell me and then I find it and it makes me swoon.

So after six years (of marriage) and several frisbees later... yeah... I'd say there's still... 

Go check out the ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter for more Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real posts.

Splashing and Hiking at Angel Falls

A week ago, only two days after completing my day hike on the Tallulah Gorge Floor Trail with a bunch of teenagers, we headed out as a family to hike Angel Falls trail near Lake Rabun (maybe because I'm a glutton for punishment or maybe I felt a little guilty that I got to go on the Tallulah Trip and The Hubs didn't.)  I sucked it up and without one complaint (eckhmm) went hiking with the boys.

Group shot in front of Panther Falls

Quick Review of the trail (if you don't care, keep scrolling):  The trail to the two waterfalls is a couple miles or more one way depending on which source you check.  It is a moderate hike with some flatter path mixed in with some short but very steep parts.  Some of the steep parts are very narrow with barely enough room for one person, and only some of it has guide rails (metal rope?).  So it would be very difficult to help a small child on part of the path.  

We hiked to Panther Falls and took a couple pictures before continuing straight on to Angel Falls.  Unfortunately, the trees were so overgrown that we could only see the bottom of Angel Falls.  The falls went up much further than I was able to capture in pictures or video.  We might have to go back in the winter when we could more likely see all the way to the top.

The bottom of Angel Falls

(he was right)

We stopped to play in the water of Panther Falls on the way back down.

Not sure about the cold water

Matthan was a little hesitant but loves playing in the water.  He could have thrown rocks all day.  He was really funny about squatting down himself to pick up the rocks so he "made" us do it, which is why we didn't let him do it all day.

Getting Daddy to pick up rock after rock

Matthan-Daddy Love

Throwing more rocks

Matthan took a branch to the face somewhere along the hike which just barely missed his eye.  Daddy put some cold water on it quickly and you could barely see it after a little while.  He was a trooper.

"More rocks, more rocks!!"

A couple of sources said that you can swim in Panther falls, but unless your definition of swimming is flailing like a beached whale in 3 inch deep water, then just be prepared for a little wading.