Friday morning my friend, Emily, called me up with an awesome idea for how we should spend the day with our little one’s. She suggested packing the kiddos up and taking them on an adventure downtown. Her plan was to take the kids to ride the trolley, eat a picnic lunch in the park, and go see the ducks walk. Downtown Memphis is the home to the Peabody Hotel and some really cute and famous ducks. Everyday at 11am the ducks are escorted from their 12th story duck penthouse down to the lobby’s grand fountain. All while walking on a red carpet…of course. The ducks play there all day until 5pm when they go back up to their little ducky home.

Emily and the girls stopped by and picked me and Gray up and we headed downtown to our first stop of the day…the ducks!

After the ducks we headed to a nearby park in the downtown area and had ourselves a wonderful little picnic. Grayson only tried to run off 2 times. That, my friends, is what we call progress!

Here I am chasing him down. In the background, you can see Emily with her well behaved children sitting on the blanket.

After lunch we hopped on the trolley. It’s only $1 for adults and free for children. Hayden and Grayson love trains so this was the perfect treat for these two little cuties. Gray is saying “choo-choo” in the pic below. I love his lips when he does this, so I make him say it all the time.

I tried to get Gray saying “choo-choo” on video, but my very non-shy child was mesmerized by his very first ride on anything close to a train. Little Miss H stepped up and made the video taking worth while with her own cute little version of “choo-choo!” I’m pretty sure the trolley ride was a winner.

How stinkin’ adorable are these two? Grayson is a full year younger than Hayden, but pretty close to the same size. I mean, come on kid…stop growing already!

After 10-15 blocks the trolley started having issues with one of it’s doors, and was stopping a lot. This was making our quick trolley ride last quite a bit longer than we had planned. We thought we heared the conductor tell everyone that if they wanted to get off and get on the trolley behind us to head back the other way we could. So we did. Turns out we were wrong. After trying to get on the trolley behind us, and being told by a fairly rude conductor that we had to pay again (which we weren’t expecting to have to do) we pulled out our money, but then he stated that we needed exact change..which we didn’t have. That meant we were walking back to the car.

Let me just tell you…our car wasn’t close….at all. Emily was carrying her 1yr old and I pushed the two toddlers in the stroller. Praise the lord for bringing the stroller! Hey, at least we got something good out of that super long, hilly, and unexpected walk. My blindingly white legs got a bit of sun, and Emily said that it seems she lost a pound. Nice! I’m gonna try to ignore the fact that this very long walk was really God making my lazy butt exercise. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Nope, not me. I don’t see any signs. Not-a-one.

Even with our unplanned foot tour of downtown the day was perfect. I love Emily, because she always has the best and inexpensive  ideas on how to entertain our crew of houligans.

I’m back, from my own personal black hole. Last week was a busy one. Gray had music class, I had 5 photo shoots waiting to be edited, Grayson fought nap most days, we were prepping the house for a real estate agent to come look at it, and preparing for a gender reveal party we were throwing at our house (for friends…not us).

Oh, and on Friday night (the night before the party) we were going to a concert. The concert was awesome, except for the fact that we really HAVE gotten old. The show didn’t start till 9pm, and at 10:30pm we were telling ourselves “it should be over in the next few minutes, right?!” Wrong! They were still going strong at midnight. Plus, we were standing and dancing the whole time.

We went to see Leftover Salmon and Keller Williams at Minglewood Hall. It was such an amazing show. Leftover Salmon classify themselves as the creators of Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrass. Yeah, try to figure out what that sounds like. And Keller…well he does a bit of everything. He mixes elements of bluegrass, folk, alternative rock, reggae, electronica/dance, jazz, funk, and various other genres. He’s kind of known as a one man jam band. 

Yes, I listen to hippie music, and I’m proud of it. Being 1/2 cajun this was right up my alley. I love this stuff. You can’t help but move when you are standing there listening to something like this. It’s just such happy music. Here is a pic I snapped with my phone of Keller playing with Leftover Salmon.

I know all of you are just dying to find out what Polyethnic Cajun Slamgrass sounds like. I recored a tiny bit of the show for you.

And now you know. Yes, there were quite a few people dancing like they just finished off their 3rd jug of moonshine, but I assure you no one had a corn cob pipe in their mouth. Does anyone else out there listen to my flavor of music? And if you don’t already listen to it, but now kind of have the bug, go here to listen to more.

Come back tomorrow, I’m sharing all the fun, cute decor we had at the Gender Reveal Party.

Every good baseball fan has at one time or another uttered the phrase “hey batter, batter, batter”, so we though we would see if Gray would say it. While at a local baseball game last night Derek, Davis (my brother-in-law), and I took Grayson to a near by empty field to hit some balls. He didn’t always make contact, but that was all forgotten when we saw and heard him do this.

(Watch his mouth and tongue.)

He also says the word watermelon like this. He’s trying so hard to get it right, but it just comes out all adorable and stuff.

Sorry about this video being so dark. I was just hoping to get the sound recorded, and if video showed up in the dark room…well, that would just be a plus.

Grayson loves to help clean up. Most of the time he makes more of a mess than anything, but I’ll take it. As long as he keeps wanting to help I’m all for it. I’m just hoping that one day he will be good enough at cleaning that I will no longer have to do any housework. I’m praying that day comes within the next 6 months. A girl can dream, right?

Here is a video of Gray helping put up his unfolded laundry. Obviously, just after waking up from a nap.

The Wednesday before Easter was a very busy day for my little man. My friend, Emily, had invited Grayson over for a egg hunting party, and that afternoon my mom’s work was holding an Easter egg hunt at their office for the kids and grandkids of the employees.

We started off the day at Emily’s house. The kids (well, the big kids) dyed eggs, and then we all went on an egg hunt.

My son spent most of the time riding the various toys on the back porch.

And the other portion of the time pushing around Emily’s 10 month old in her walker.

Last year Gray was only 7 months old so hunting for eggs was kind of out of the question, but this year, this year was different. Armed with his “putting things in buckets” skills he picked up at Halloween this boy was ready to find him some easter eggs. I wasn’t quite sure if he would keep with the whole egg hunting thing and instead drop the bucket and venture off in to a neighboring yard, but the boy totally surprised me. He was totally into it, and kept at it until all the eggs were found. He even attempted to knock on Emily’s front door as if we were trick-or-treating. Hilarious!

Once all the eggs had been collected all the kids headed to the deck to count how many eggs they found. Here’s how Gray decided was the best way to count his eggs. On his belly. Have I mentioned he loves doing things while laying on his belly? His Daddy taught him this and this child thinks it’s the coolest way to do just about anything.

After all that fun at we had to go home and take a nap, because at 4pm he had another egg hunt to attend at my mom’s work. It was so sweet. They had little easter baskets for the kids to use and take home, goodie bags filled with lots of fun toys, easter bunny shaped cakes, snacks, and the Easter Bunny was there too! And of course there was the egg hunt.

Even though he had some big kids to compete with Gray collected quite a few eggs.

–> Sorry, I just noticed I didn’t take out the gray background in these photo collages. Ooops! My bad.

Of course, my son went for the pink basket first. Everyone laughed and then sweetly encouraged him to go with a “manlier” color. The bottom right photo is of him stunned when the easter bunny came to visit. Gray kept trying to give the easter bunny high fives and fist bumps. He just followed the EB around with his tiny little had out saying “hi fi!, hi fi!”

How cute is his little pirate outfit? I just love it. It’s classic due to it’s JonJon nature, but not too frilly due to the pirate ship. I love the mix of traditional and edgy. See those shoes on his feet? They are Keen’s (Newport H2). Do yourself a favor and buy your son some. They are rugged, cute, and water proof. Just throw them in the wash and those bad boys are spick and span! They do cost a bit more that I like to spend on shoes, but they are well worth it. My little guy is hard on shoes and sandals. These allow him to have the coolness of sandals, the grip of tennis shoes, and the cuteness of expensive shoes. And they never look scuffed or worn. We will be using these for the beach this summer. I just can’t bring myself to put him in those weird looking water shoes.

He even stopped in my mom’s office to do a little work. What a work ethic that kid has. He must get it from his dad. No, I know he gets it from his dad. This child actually threw a fit when we tried to make him leave “his” office. He wanted to keep working. No joke.

I haven’t posted any video’s of the kiddo in a while, and this one of him playing basketball is a must see.

Grayson got this basketball goal for Christmas and has been in love with it ever since. We play basketball at least twice a day now. He even makes us “block” him. I have a feeling March Madness will be a very big part of this boys life.

I strapped Gray into the highchair the other evening in an attempt to trim his hair. I use a spray bottle to wet his hair before I begin trimming. The keys and various other objects I gave him entertained him for the 1st few minutes, and then he caught a glimpse of the spray bottle. If letting him play with the spray bottle would keep him from moving his head as I moved sharp pointy scissors around it than so be it.

At first it was no big thing, and then he figured out how to make it spray water. Most children hate water being splashed, sprayed or poured on their face. Not my kid. This child sprayed water in his face (for fun) for almost 10 minutes. No. Joke.

Did you catch the part where he told the spray bottle “No No”? It’s around 34 seconds in. He turned his head to look at me and I guess his tiny hands have a mind of their own and pressed the trigger and sprayed him. Hehe. He even would hand me the spray bottle, because he wanted me to spray water in his face.

Oh the things kids find entertaining. We finally made him stop, because it looked like his little eyes were turning red. I emptied the spray bottle and now he walks around the house and “tries” to spray water in his face. Crazy kid.