Explaining Christmas to Beau

So, Rodney has been reading a book about Christmas to Beau at night for a while. In it, Jesus is covered up by a purple blankie in the manger. Beau wants to have a purple blankie now because Jesus has one.

My Mom has a hand made nativity set that was made by my Great Aunt. It is in our dining room, so we talk about it a lot over dinner. Beau knows who all the people are in the nativity and he likes to feed baby Jesus milk. Rodney asked Beau what gifts the wise men brought Jesus and Beau said "candles, lotion, and money." I laughed because I thought Beau made it up. Apparently Rodney has been teaching him that the wise men brought candles (frankincense), lotion (myrrh), and money (gold) to Jesus.

My Mom told Beau that Baby Jesus grew up to be a carpenter...like Handy Manny and Bob the Builder. I was laughing so hard at the Handy Manny comparison that I was crying! So, if my child tells you any of these things, please know that he learned these things from his Dad and Granny!

Happy Thanksgiving....a little late!!

We had a great Thanksgiving with family this year. Everyone came to our house to celebrate and it was so nice! Beau had a great time with his cousins and entertaining all the ladies in the family. We also discovered that Beau has a love of candy corn. We were making turkey cookies (cookies that looked like turkeys, not cookies made out of turkey). I looked over and Beau had his hand in the bag of candy corn and he was shoving it in his mouth. Here are a few pictures:








He has a mouthful of Cookie in this picture!

Fun Times

We took a few pictures of Beau with a pumpkin in our yard a while back. We never made it to a pumpkin patch this year, so we were "pretending" with the fake pumpkin in our yard. We had so many good pictures this day, but here are 2 where Beau was cracking up at his daddy..




We went to a friend's birthday party at the Galleria (it was supposed to be at a park but it had been raining non stop for a week, so the party relocated to the food court). Beau loved it because he got cake and a juice box. He did not, however, love the carousel ride. I had to hold him the whole time on it!

You can see the look of terror in his eye when we were trying to make him ride an animal on the carousel....we all ended up sitting in a sleigh type booth on the carousel and riding as a family.

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When we go to the Galleria, we always go to the Auburn store so Beau can rock in the "Future Tiger" kiddie rocking chair and so he can pet the tiger.

We could not figure out what he was doing to the tiger at first....

Then, he told us he was feeding him 2 ice cream cones....

And this is a picture of "Muddy Muck" from Bob the Builder. I found this at Kid's Market at the fall sale and knew Beau had to have it. We gave this to him when we had to move out of one house and into another during the course of 4 days...he was very confused during this time, but Muddy Muck went with him to the new house and that helped a lot!

A Weekend in Auburn

We spent the last weekend in Auburn for the Auburn Homecoming game. We stayed with Rodney's parents and had a great time. Beau loved being at Nona and Papa's house and told everyone all week long that he was getting to go to Auburn. He was a perfect angel on the car ride down...which is rare for the 2 1/2 hour drive(in traffic). We took him to his first Auburn game and he was so excited to go! He was just in awe of all the people in the stadium. I thought he would be scared of the noises on the jumbotron, but he just ate his granola bar and looked around. He did LOVE to see the Eagle fly. He could not tell that she started from the American flag, but did see her land on the field to eat her treat. He has been talking about it for days!


What a cute couple!


This picture is special to me because Beau and I are standing in front of the mural on the stadium that has my grandfather "Bo" on it. We named our son after him (even though we changed the spelling of the name). He is #45 on the mural. I tried to explain to Beau that his great grandfather was on the picture above us, and I got a little teary. Beau said "Mommy you upset...you need a kiss!" What a sweetheart!


Beau is not a fan of the real Aubie and apparently not a fan of the life size fake Aubie either....


When we were unpacking, Beau found his lovie named "tigey". He wanted to take him into the game too!


Papa and Beau in the stadium...this is Beau's first look at the field. He was in total amazement the whole time!

I loved holding him at the game....those times where he will sit in my lap and be still are rare the older he gets, and I take advantage of them as much as possible!

Beau fell asleep on Papa 5 minutes into the first quarter....precious! And, yes, he fell asleep holding his half-eaten granola bar.



After nap time, we went to Toomer's Corner. We let Beau take some toilet paper with him to roll the trees. At first, he would throw some toilet paper and run really fast, like he did something wrong! Once he found out he was not going to get in trouble for throwing toilet paper in the trees, he ran from tree to tree having a great time!

McWane Center

We spent Saturday at McWane Center. Beau loves this place and so do we! He plays so hard there, then we eat at Subway in the cafeteria area and Beau gets to drink a juice box. This rarely happens, so he drinks it so fast he is "all done" in a minute. Too funny!


Checking out Fish











Playing at the Water Table





Playing at the "Garage"







Digging for Dinosaur Bones




Light Bright

Catching up on the fun!

Loving wearing his helmet and knee/elbow pads at breakfast!


Chilling out!


Feeding "Monk-Monk" some water (He also likes to cover Monk-Monk up with a blanket, and feed him bottles, cups, etc)


In his hand you can see him gripping his "treasure" he got at the dentist. Now, he hands us random things all the time and says "Here's your treasure!"


Tailgating in Auburn



< Picture of his cute, tiger smocked outfit at the tailgate....Rodney was not loving it, but I think he looks so precious!




At a friend's "beach" birthday party at Oak Mtn. State Park



Loving the water

Moving....Again

We moved most of our things into the house from the previous post. It was a cute house in Vestavia....big enough for us and my mom to live in for a year until our house in Homewood sold and we could buy another one. But, we started unpacking and I got sick....sinus infection, cough, sneezing, etc. I told Rodney I thought the house had mold because I got so sick so immediately after staying there only a few hours. Then, a few of our other family members got sick after being in the house to help us move. We asked for our money back because we had been there 4 days....the rental company said no! Only if we could prove there was mold, then we could get our money back. So, we hired a super duper eco-green-dust-mold-etc. inspector. He saw where someone had painted over mold in the downstairs and thrown glade plug ins in cabinets where we could not see. So, all the mold was circulating through the air vents throughout the whole house=why we all got sick. However, the rental company has been VERY uncompliant with our requests for money back, even though we proved the house has 95% mold in some areas, which equals an unsafe environment!!! Anyway, we are currently in the process of using a great law firm in Bham to help us in this situation....The silver lining to this situation is :
(1) We are healthy and not in an unsafe home
(2) We have already moved into a new house in the Crestline area....Yea!!! No more moves for us for a while!

Sweet Beau was so confused during this process....he still tells us he left toys at his old house or the broken house(what we call the vestavia house). But, he does love that he now has a dog! When my Mom moved in, she brought her dog, Sam. Beau has taken over in feeding Sam, giving him treats, and in everyday bossing around. He likes to be able to tell him to go downstairs, lie down, and tucks him in to his blanket at night before he goes night night! I am not sure that Sam is loving having Beau as much as Beau is loving Sam...Oh Well!!

We're Moving....Again!!

Yes, we are moving for the 4th time. This makes 5 years of marriage, and 4 different houses. This will be our 3rd time to move over a 31 month period of time. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! I do hope to one day live in a house for more than a few months at time! But, I am very thankful that we are moving again. A little background info. on all our moves:

House 1:


Our sweet little townhouse that we lived in for our first 2 years of marriage (our longest stretch to live in 1 place). We moved because we found out we were pregnant and wanted more room.

House 2:



This was the house we intended to stay in for a very long time. We had our son a few months after moving here, and then I asked Rodney if I could quit my job to stay at home with him. His answer was "yes, but we have to sell our house and downsize." I jumped at this idea. I would have done anything to stay home with my baby because he captured my heart and I felt like I was supposed to change careers and stay at home for a season.

House 3:


(this is not the best picture of our cute little house, but it is the only one I had!)
We moved here so I could stay at home with Beau. A few months after we moved, my Mom went through some major health problems. Rodney told me one night that he thought we should move her in with us. (what a great husband to want to take care of his mother in law!). I agreed, but we knew our cute, little 3 bedroom/1 bath house would not be big enough for us all.

House 4:




This is a temporary 1 year move for us. We are renting this wonderful house until our other house sells. This house will allow us to live upstairs with plenty of room and my mom can have the "mother in law" suite downstairs with plenty of room. Then, we can save and find or build somewhere for mom and us to move that we can actually really live in for a long, long time!

***This is why I have been a terrible blogger recently....we have been looking at real estate online, going to look at homes, cleaning our current home for showings, etc.... Hopefully, in October, with the move behind us, we will have more time to breath and relax!***