The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

A very special birthday!

Today is the birthday of someone very special.

Someone that we all love very much.

Someone who is as kind as he is smart (and he’s really smart!).

Someone who has shown me how to be the very best parent one can hope to be.

Someone who always keeps a positive outlook.

Someone who many people say I am just like.

Someone who I hope I can be much more like.

Someone that we hope has an especially good day filled with whatever chocolate treat he wants!

That someone is…DADDO!!!  Happy Birthday Daddo!!

Hey Maxwell, why are you looking so sad?

Because today is Daddo’s birthday and I don’t get to give him a hug.

Oh Maxwell, I’ve got good news for you!  You get to see him this weekend!

What? I get to see him this weekend? Me? see Daddo?

You sure do, buddy!  And you get to see Santa too…and maybe even Mickey Mouse!

Oh my, Momma! That sounds like so much FUN!

I don’t even know who these Santa and Mickey people are but I’m so excited to see Daddo I can hardly stand it!

I know, buddy!  I feel the exact same way!  

Daddo – we all can’t wait to see you this weekend and give you a big hug around the  neck!

ps – like Maxwell’s shirt?  I made it!  pat on my back thankyouverymuch!  🙂

Weekend Re-Cap

Here’s what we did this weekend as captured by my iphone…

On Friday we watched the giant Alagasco truck outside of our house…

For a little boy who loves trucks, it was pretty awesome!  For a driving mom whose driveway was blocked, not so awesome.

A little later, Maxwell fell climbed into his toy box…

After getting turned right side up, he was happy as could be in there!

That night, we had the Alagasco truck move so we could get out of the driveway and go to Home Depot to get a Christmas Tree!  Maxwell surveyed the trees…

and quickly found one that he thought was juuuust the right size!

But then Robert gave him another vantage point…

and he found one that really was just right!

Proof that I was there too…

When we got home, we went and surveyed the damage that the Alagasco crew was doing to our street.  What we found was this giant hole in the ground right next to our driveway…

Lovely.

Robert then worked hard to get the tree on the stand and up in the house…

I then worked hard to get it all decorated…

Isn’t she a beaut?  A crooked beaut, yes.  That’s what you get for buying your tree at Home Depot.  But, considering we paid $60 less for our tree this year than we did last year, I’ll take a little crookedness!

Saturday was GORGEOUS so we headed to the park to play…

and enjoyed the temps in the high 60’s!

That night we went over to some friend’s house for a Christmas Light Display Extravanganza!  After hanging out for a bit…

we then walked down the street to their neighbor’s house that puts on the biggest Christmas light display I’ve ever seen.  Well, the 2nd biggest.  I’m from Arkansas and lived through the Jennings Osborne red light years.  This was still impressive though.  They do a whole Christmas movie montage before flipping the switch.  We didn’t see much of the montage though because Maxwell got a little cranky-pants and we had to go next door and push him around a driveway on some girl’s pink tricycle that we found.

The movie montage ends with Clark Griswold getting ready to light up his house in Christmas Vacation.  Right before he plugs it in, the movie goes off and this guy flips his switch…and the whole place GLOWS!  It was pretty cool…these pics don’t even remotely do it justice.

Maxwell was clearly enthralled…

While he’s not showing it in that picture, he really did have fun.  Mostly just running around trying to get lost in the crowd but, hey, he thought it was a blast!

On Sunday Maxwell got to go to church in his awesome new nubuck Jumping Jack shoes!

The cuteness is too much. And, yes, I know his pants are a little high water there.  The better to see his shoes, right?!

Believe it or not, I even took more pictures this weekend with my real camera.  Those to come this week!  Hope you all had as great a weekend as we did!

Advent Workshop

Last Sunday we went to our church’s advent workshop.  While Maxwell is really too young to do most of the crafts, he still had fun checking everything out.  His favorite part was getting to color a crown for himself.  I think this might have been his first time to use a crayon!

He was so proud to show off his finished project…

So proud that all he wanted to do was walk around…

and around…

and around to show it off!

Please notice the blue crayon in his hand that he would not put down.  He also tasted that blue crayon later.  Ah, life with a 1 year old.

After walking around, Maxwell went back in to color the reindeer that I he had made earlier.

He then thought it would be nice to share his crown with Dad.

We then tried for a picture in front of the tree but it didn’t go so well.

That’s ok…there are many more trees to pose in front of in the coming weeks.

Happy Friday and Happy Holidays!

15 month check-up

We got to visit Dr. Walley yesterday for Maxwell’s 15 month check-up.  He had a great visit with an overall A+ report!  He’s now 23 lbs (50th %) and 31 inches tall (75th %).  Unfortunately, they don’t measure head circumference after 1 year…that was always where we excelled!  🙂  Maxwell is progressing and growing just as he should be and we are so thankful!

What do you wear to visit the doctor?  Overalls of course…

But, once you get there they make you take your cute overalls off.  It’s COLD in that room though so Maxwell went for the flasher look…

When Dr. Walley moved in, Maxwell wasn’t too happy…

But a tongue depressor makes everything better…

Things were going pretty well until this happened…

Luckily these are our last shots for a while.  Thank goodness for that and thank goodness for good doctor reports!

More park

Continuing on with our day at the park…

Maxwell is getting to be big enough to really enjoy all of the tot lot, not just the swings.  He loves when we walk him across the bouncy bridge and bounce bounce bounce…

I took him across the bouncy bridge…

and up to the big slide to slide down together. His favorite!  And, yes, I let Robert take some pictures of it…but only if he let me take pictures of him doing the same thing!  🙂

The slide was very slick that day and we went down fast and then popped right off onto the ground! Oops!

I love Maxwell’s face in that last picture…he is clearly not impressed with my slide steering!

Robert hasn’t quite perfected the art of picking up his feet while going down the slide so he and Maxwell bumped their way down…

I think we both need to work on our technique a little!

Just another fun day in the hood!