I started watching a little friend of Nathan’s a few days a week so I feel like we’re a lot busier now than we used to be even though we still do the same things. 😉 I have really enjoyed it! And Nathan has loved having a little buddy to play with.

My silly bean. We went with Gammy to “help” her find running shoes and Nathan discovered a track in the store. He ran back and forth the entire time we were there.

We registered Nathan for Awana! He was SO excited all day to go meet his teacher that night – I think he started trying to leave the house about 10:30am and the meeting wasn’t until 6pm! Ha! He even wanted to dress up for it – notice the light up Woody cowboy boots. Those are Nathan’s version of “fancy shoes”. I guess the excitement was too much because he barely got in the car before he passed out. 😉

Love finding these notes from my Jon in the kitchen in the mornings! 🙂

Yesterday was my brother Bryant’s birthday! So blessed to have a brother who adores my son and is lots of fun to hang out with. 🙂 Nathan has managed to convince Uncle Bryant to read to him every time we lay him down to bed at Gammy and Pops’ house (we usually put him in bed so we can hang out later with the family and then just transfer him to the car and then to his bed at home – we’ve been doing it since he was a few weeks old so he’s an old pro now. He doesn’t even wake up!). Happy birthday brother!!

What a wonderful, wonderful time it is here!

This week, my brother, Caleb, proposed to his beautiful girlfriend, Nicole, and she said yes!!!

We are SO happy. We absolutely adore Nicole and I’m so glad she is going to be in my family forever! I can’t wait to see what amazing things God has planned for these two together!

The happy couple! Praying for so many blessings on this engagement and marriage!

And I HAD to include these…. 😉 Caleb, Jon and Bryant went to the proposal site a few days before to figure out camera angles so Jon and Bryant could hide and take some pictures of the proposal. I found these on my camera the next day:

HA! Love these goofy boys. 😉

We had such a lovely weekend!!

Friday night, Jon and I got a little evening away at my friend Jocelyn’s wedding. Such a beautiful wedding and a beautiful bride!

Me and my favorite guy. 😉 It’s always fun to dress up and go watch friends get married – particularly when you aren’t shushing a little child from yelling “HEY! THEY ARE KISSING ON THE WIPS! THEY ARE MARRIED!”

I’m not sure where his fascination with marriage originated from but my son has marriage on the brain. And he is always saying things like, “Well. I really like grills.” (aka girls) It worries me a little bit. Isn’t he supposed to think girls are gross by this point? 😉 He loves “grills” and “dolts” (adults). He can’t wait to become a dolt so he can be tall enough to reach the ceiling fan.

It’s the small goals, right?

We spent the majority of Saturday morning lounging around in bed watching Pocahontas. Nathan thought the Englishmen were pirates, naturally. 😉

Saturday night, we went to Freddy’s for dinner and Nathan ate enough of his dinner that he could get an Oreo ice cream sandwich. Those things are HUGE. Love his face. He’s the boy of a million expressions.

The aftermath… REALLY should have invested heavily in Oxy-Clean the day we found out we were having a boy.

Oh that boy. I just adore that little face.

 We have done a lot of this…

A lot of this…

And a lot of this lately. 🙂 Play, play, play, eat, eat, eat until we are completely wiped out and fall asleep on the couch.

Not a bad way to start off the month of August!!

It’s nearly back to school time around here and I’ve been thinking about all of you in school or soon to be heading off to college. Praying for an amazing year for all of you!! Got anything specific you need prayer for? Leave it in the comments – I know I (and lots of others!) would be happy to pray for you!

Also, just a fun heads up if you’re needing to fill a few more days before heading off to school – Sandra Byrd’s hilariously adorable novel, Let Them Eat Cake, is free on Kindle today!

Have a wonderful weekend!!

We had a wonderful long weekend with Nonnie and Papa O!

Jon’s parents came in on Friday and it was such a good visit with them. We didn’t do hardly anything exciting but it was exactly the relaxing hanging out time we needed with them! We did another little birthday celebration for Nathan and he loved it. This boy is always going to think that his birthday should last for a month.  Ha!

We had rain almost every night they were here and then a TERRIBLE storm last night – oh my goodness. We haven’t had a storm like that in a long time! It flooded our backyard and street and there was TONS of hail.

Jon and Greg were troopers and kept on barbecuing our dinner (in between videoing the storm). Ha! Poor guys. I’m thankful we weren’t using the oven though – our power got knocked out! Thankfully it was back on by bath time last night – as much fun as bathing Nathan by flashlight sounded, I was glad we didn’t have to experience it. 😉

Jon and his mama. 🙂 Love this picture! And check out the old windows I found this weekend behind them – I love how it looks! Connie was super sweet to help us get them in hanging-on-the-wall condition. They were pretty yucky when we picked them up. Greg and Connie are always so willing to help us out with all the little projects we’ve been working on around the house when they come – so wonderful! We had so much fun!

Jon has been working landscaping most of the month of July, so he had a four day weekend this weekend too and it was SO NICE having him home! We were very bummed when he went back to work today. Someone loves their daddy. 🙂

Such a wonderful weekend! Thanks so much for coming, Nonnie and Papa O!! We love you guys!

Sweet boy. This is his favorite song to sing right now. 🙂

Bless the Lord from Erynn Mangum on Vimeo.

Love this age. 

So is anyone else in shock that it’s the end of July on Wednesday? Where did our summer go??

Though, granted, fall brings pumpkin spice lattes back so… who am I kidding. Come on fall!! 😉

We’ve been up to lots of fun!! Last week, we went to an Isotopes game with the fam. Very fun! Nathan had a complete blast. We didn’t get him in bed until after 11 and he did great the whole time.

The bean with the Gammy 🙂

During the fireworks. Someone was starting to wilt a bit. 😉

Game’s over! We can go home!!

 We’ve been having some moderate success in our garden this year! Yay! Considering we are known about the vegetation world as the people to send a flower to if you want it to die, this is a miracle. Nathan has LOVED getting to pick and eat the veggies. Particularly the “matoes”.

With our first zucchini! He woke us up early to go pick it since we made the mistake of telling him the night before that it might be about ready.

Such a silly head.

Walked in and found him like this one night and he just looks SO OLD now. For a long time he still looked like a baby when he slept but apparently no longer. 🙁

My little Handy Manny helper guy. He’s been helping Jon with projects lately which I know he absolutely loves. He always asks Jon if there’s work to do. 😉

About to work! Jon let Nathan hold the drill…

And this picture just terrifies me. Plain and simple. TERRIFIES. I will never let him near power tools again. It’s gone to his head.

Last weekend, we did a dinosaur themed party with a our good friend Joel, who turned 6 four days after Nathan turned 3. So much fun!! I was so busy visiting with people that I totally forgot to take pictures for most of the party, so these are just the highlights (and a lot of these were taken by people who just happened to grab my camera for me!). We had the party at Gammy and Pops’ house so everyone could swim. Thanks so much, Mom and Dad!!

Buddies. 🙂 Nathan adores Joel. He’s the cool, older kid.

Love the dirt cups my friend Jamie came up with!! She did so much work to make this party super cute!!

Slip N’ Slide!!

Sweet kids after blowing out their candles. We had to talk the kids into getting out of Gammy and Pops’ pool to come eat dessert. 😉

Love these tired, partied-out boys. 🙂

We’ve been busy, busy this week and I’m tired this afternoon!! Looking forward to an evening of lounging around at home in my jammies and watching our new favorite Netflix show – White Collar. Other Netflix watchers – what is your current favorite show???

Ack! So sorry for the very, very long blog silence, friends. We have bounced from birthday party to birthday party for the last few weeks – apparently July is a popular month for family and friends to be born! Ha!

So, without further ado, here’s Nathan’s 3rd birthday party – take one!! 🙂

We started the day with streamers hung over his door!! 🙂 When he first woke up, he just marched right through them with his eyes half closed but once we started singing “Happy Birthday” he woke up quick and had to run through them several times. Ha! 😉

He already looks older!! 🙁

Birthday “Frinkled” Doughnuts for the Birthday Boy. 🙂

Then it was time to head to Chuck E Cheese!! We’ve never been before with Nathan and he LOVED it. He ran himself completely into the ground here. And it was hilarious because I think his uncles and dad had more fun there than Nathan did. 😉 So fun! They all racked up a million tickets for him – he made off with a great prize!! 🙂

Me and my baby at lunch at California Pizza Kitchen. 🙂

I can’t believe he’s three!!

The birthday sundae was a lovely touch to lunch. 🙂

Then it was time for a quick nap in the car before heading over to Gammy and Pops’ for swimming and “sketti” (spaghetti), per the Birthday Boy’s instructions. 😉

Silly boys in the pool! 🙂

Our pirate decor. He was SO stoked about that skull. Ha!

And, as usual, someone got completely spoiled rotten again for his birthday. I’m still in the process of trying to clean out the playroom to make room for the new toys!! Thanks so much, everyone!!

Our Jake pirate cake than Jon and I made at like 11PM the night before. It was worth it. Nathan was ecstatic about it. 😉

Sweet baby. Such a wonderful day! We are so thankful for our amazing family who made the day so special. 🙂

I have so much to catch up on here. Oh my goodness.

Last week, my amazing grandmother came into town and we were SO EXCITED to see her! A lady saw Nathan holding this sign and asked him where his Nama lived and he said, “On the airplane” in a duh-tone of voice. Oh that child.

Nathan was so funny. He about bowled her over when she came through the doors and we had to grab him before he ran past the security border to give her a hug. We have absolutely loved, loved having her here!

Nama and Nathan after lunch at Freddy’s!

He started laughing at the table because he’d bitten his roll into “Little Nathan”. 😉 Ha!

We got our prize at the library for reading books and it was dinosaurs!! It was a happy day in our house.

Cow Appreciation Day was Friday and since we love CFA and we love free food, we thought it would be lots of fun to have a family dinner there. SO FUN. Oh my goodness. It was hilarious to see how everyone dressed up!

My cows with The Cow.

After dinner, we went over to Menchie’s for Frozen Yogurt and a firetruck drove up. Nathan was jumping up and down waving at them and two of the firefighters who were just so, so sweet took him over to the fire truck and gave him a little tour.

He got to try on a fire hat and stand on the back.

 And the BEST part….

He got to shoot a stop sign with the water! Ha! Nathan was OVER THE MOON. He has mentioned it every day since then! We were so grateful for the kind firemen!

Reenacting how he shot the sign for everyone. 😉

My tired little cow. 😉 What a great way to end his second year!! 🙂

Birthday Party #1 coming up next! 🙂