I just realized that I haven't posted a blog in six months. It has been a busy few months, mostly with naps. Now I'm trying to finish up my masters so I can start making Christmas gifts. I have very fun ideas for what time make all the kiddos I know this year. Anyway, here is a few recent favorite photos of Jamesie this summer.

I downloaded Picasa and am in love with it. So far some of my favorites (original and then new)

Showin off his cute homemade pants that go great with his starwars shirt.
I love these boys.

Happy Birthday Scarlett

To start with, Jamesie has a new favorite way to watch tv, curled up and in chill mode.

On to the rest of the post! I finished Scarlett's birthday gift! Now, I have never seen yo gabba gabba but a few google images helped me make this cute bag. I love it so much that I kinda want to keep it, except the strap is too short for me so I guess i will have to pass it along. :)

The front of the bag has spaces to hold markers and a peek a boo from the unibrow guy because as I told Jason, no gift is complete without a unibrow. I hope she loves it and if not Jamesie has offered to take it off her hands. Happy Birthday Scarlett, I can't believe you are already two!

Pants

I made pants for Jamesie!! All by myself because I'm awesome (and modest). Halfway through I decide to be uber impressive and make them reversible. Wow! They aren't finished yet because he isn't awake for me to measure his waist and his height. However, here are the pictures of what they look like right now. Tomorrow I will post a picture of him hopefully being cute in them.

Here is one side. Though I don't know if I will keep the cuffs.
Here is the other side. This side is soft. I want to turn it into sheets. Or just a pillow case.

I made a cute little tag to hide where I messed up the elastic and forgot to hide it in the first place. But apparently it is geeky. And Jason is a jerk.

James is 20 months old today! Dang I can't believe it. Here are some of the amazing things he can do now:

-Yesterday he wanted help with something and said "help please" without prompting from us.

-This morning he wanted out of his chair and said "please get up"

-He pretty consistently will say "hi ___" or "bye ___" to whoever he is talking to.

(Can you tell I'm impressed with his talking skills?)

-He LOVES Bob and Larry of Veggietales, Bob mostly. He is learning to be patient and do the "loading" dance when waiting for netflix to load Bob. He will let us know it is time to watch Bob by saying "Bob," pointing at the tv, and bringing us the proper remote. He is also getting the point where he knows how to work some of the controls and can restart Bob on his own at times.

-He LOVES Ernie and other Sesame Street characters.

-His favorite foods include: blueberries, cake, cookies, cheetos, cheese, and bread. He has become a picky eater though and most nights chooses to skip dinner rather than eat what I make.

-He can identify 17 letters (wow!)

-He sleeps o.k. Not great. Not as terrible as before.

-He loves having a house and a backyard to run around in.

-I think maybe that is all for now.

food blogging for coworkers.

So Darcy and Alex didn't believe that I could make pizza on a bbq. To prove them wrong I thought I would food blog it. :)

So you start with pizza crust dough. SOOO easy. 1/2 c water and that box of mix. Stir then rest for five minutes. (This is two boxes worth)
Next you knead it for a few minutes.
Roll it out all romantic like, it is Valentines day after all.
Prepare your toppings. Or if you are like James, you could just do this stage and eat cold pepperoni for dinner.
Toss it on the bbq. :) (see it does work!) Here it has already been flipped over, I didn't leave this batch on long enough to get the lines though. About 4-5 minutes per side. After you flip it you add the toppings and then close the lid for 5 minutes. Opening it to check on it will slow the melting of the cheese.

Tada! Pizza heart for the hubby and pizza face for the Jamesie.

(Mine was cooked up with sausage, grilled onions, and peppers, much tastier than the boys pizza.)

seriously hearts her kid.

James is developing such an unique and cute little personality. I'm totally loving it and wish that I could capture it all on film so I will never forget.

My favorite things from today:

He found our mini baseball bat. He took the bat over to the sliding glass door and swapped out the big similarly shaped wooden stick for the mini bat as our new security system.

Then we were cleaning up his letter squares and one is missing. So we walked to each bedr

oom and looked for it. In each room I said "nope" and moved on. A few minutes later he walked to each room and in his VERY sweet voice said "no" and then moved on to the next room until all rooms were checked. So cute.

From the last comment it is clear he has learned to say "no" but he hasn't learned it in the obnoxious way. He mostly just says no when he doesn't want more food or what not. So it is cute and nice to have him communicate better.

Currently he is wandering around the house "talking" on my cell phone.

He loves our new house, as do I. It is so nice to give him space to play and run and be silly. He also has room to enjoy his little chair which he loves to lounge in while reading books.

This week we are having Sam stay with us. It will be a nice trial period to see how James does with a dog in the house. Hopefully he will like it since we are getting him a puppy for his birthday this spring.

Also, Jason's mom totally came over and put these super cute flowers in! So sweet!

And now some extra pictures:

I bought this shirt for James about a month after I found out we were prego. I thought it would be YEARS before he would fit into it. And yet here he is wearing it. My baby is growing up. I can't believe how big he grown up he is getting.

He is also developing a silly little personality and knows how to use his cuteness in his favor.

Things he can do:

- He can say "hi" "cat" "woof" "mama" and "dada"

- He can work sign "more" "please" "milk" "food" and I feel like something else but I can't remember.

-He understands a TON of what we say to him which is awesome.

- He can find Goodnight Gorilla anywhere in the bedroom

-He can find the gorilla, elephant, and lion on each page of Goodnight Gorilla

-He knows where his head, shoulders, knees, toes, ears are and my nose mouth and eyes. He likes to poke me in the eyes.

-He loves his cat and dog.

-He loves to give his cat and dog a snuggle.

-He is awesome.

On non James news:

-I'm half way done with my Masters

-I'm doing conferences next week which is exhausting just thinking about it

-I'm having fun making a lot of handmade Christmas gifts this year. Pictures to come after they have been given.

-It is looking more like we wont have a house by Christmas. BOOO. BOOO times five thousand.

-Next week I'm going to make pumpkin pies from pumpkins not cans. sweet.

-This week I finally redeemed my birthday gift from Jason: one full week of not having to any dishes or have to hear Jason complain about doing dishes. It is sweet.

-Yesterday I had to change ZERO diapers.

-I think that is all for now.

James is awesome.

How I want to spend my nights, but what I must do instead.

Before Christmas I have to:

-Write five IEPs

-Write 35 sets of progress reports

-Give 15 sets of reading grades

-Write a ten page paper on visual arts including two lesson plans, one to be taught

-Sew a bunch of Christmas Gifts

-Hopefully close on a house, pack, move, unpack, decorate, and create a happy home for Christmas.

But instead all I would really rather do is spend my evenings sitting on the couch and read the book I just got sucked into. Ok, well read my book and the last thing about finally getting a house.

And now for a cute picture. James like his mama also likes a good book:

James is 15 months old this weekend, which is ridiculous. He has gotten to become a fun and exciting little boy. He likes to climb, dance, giggle, and sign. He has learned to sign "food" "more" "please" "water" "up" and "bye." It is cute. Sometimes he even says "more" "food" "please." We are still working on words out loud, sometimes he will say "da" for dog and "ca" for cat when he sees a picture of them. When he sees a cow he says "mmmmmmm." Bedtime is my new favorite, for about two months now our routine is read Jesus Storybook Bible and then Good Night Gorilla. Jason reads the bible while I feed him a snack. Then I will say "go get Good Night Gorilla" and he knows what I'm asking and will go find it. Last night he found it under the mattress at the side of the room which is impressive since Jason and I didn't know where it was.

On a personal note, work is kinda stinky this year. However, I lost ten pounds this summer!

On a house note, still none yet.

I redecorated our blog! Yippee!

Now if only I could figure out how to do different formates for the pictures.

It has been forever since I posted and since James and Jason are both napping I thought I would take advantage. James has been doing lots this past month. He turned a year! Had his first ice cream (picture stolen from Megan's blog), started walking, learned to take the wii remote from me and shake it at the tv while giggling. He also forgot how to sleep well. I quit nursing him a week and a half ago. The first week went great and this week it seems to finally have clicked and he is now having major melt downs at bed time when we put him down, then cries for an hour. Awesome.

On a non James note we now have offers on two different houses and we are looking at a third possible house today. The house that we had the first offer on is by far my favorite house, it is beautiful inside and fits perfectly with everything I hoped for in a house. It has a beautiful kitchen and fireplace. A decent sized yard. We should hear on this one in about a month we hope. The second house we call the mushroom house. There used to be a tree in the front yard and they chopped it down, to make the stub less obnoxious looking they put a big rock shaped like a mushroom cap on top. The inside of the house has a lot of potential. It needs a lot of paint and a total remodel of the kitchen (including knocking walls down). Its pros are it has a GIANT yard. I could use half of the yard for a very very large garden and the kids would still have a big yard to play and room for a trampoline if we wanted one some day. Plus it is one block from the school I want him at. That one will take at least four months for the short sale to go through on.

I'm torn on which house I want more and wish I could fuse the two properties into one. Luckily we can just pray about it and God will decide for us by letting the banks approve one for us. What it will come down to is which one we get approval on first because we had our apartment.

***edited***

We now have an offer on a third house as well. This one has a pretty good sized yard, the inside is great all it really needs is a lot of paint. Also it has a pretty decent view of the sound from two of the bedrooms. It is forty thousand more than the other two houses BUT it is 85 thousand less that what it was originally on the market for and we could know as early as two months.