Birthday Boy

Six years ago God blessed us with a six pound screeching bundle of JOY that has made our lives so full and rich! Watching Sawyer grow over the years has been like having front row seats at the best movie ever. 

We went and surprised Sawyer for lunch at school-he was SO surprised! 

It was fun to sit with him while he pointed out all of his little friends and jabbered away about how excited he was to have his Birthday cupcakes that he had brought to share with his class. 

That evening we went to Nana & Papa's house for a birthday dinner! 

As always, Sawyer got to choose the menu and he chose......HOT DAWGS! 

Liz and Raylan*

Great minds must think alike, because Daddy and Uncle Alex both ended up getting him scooters! We decided to keep both of them so that Bill could ride with Sawyer too. (I know that Bill was secretly stoked that we ended up with two!)

Sawyer is ALL about Star Wars right now, so lots of his gifts ran with that theme. He got Star Wars shirts, jammies, books, light sabers ect. He loved it!!!

When we asked Sawyer what he wanted for his birthday, he kept saying, "I want one of those cards with the money in it." (As if you buy those kind at the store??) He wants to save up money to buy a Wii You later on this month, so he was pretty jazzed that he ended up with one of them 'money cards' too! 

Then Bill and Alex chased each other around the kitchen on the scooters!

Raylan thought he won the lottery when he got his chubby little hands on some tissue paper!

One of the games that Sawyer got was Perfection. That really noisy one that ticks down the time and you have to put all the little shapes in the right slots before the time runs out and all the pieces fly up in the air.....now if that doesn't get your blood pressure sky rocketing, I don't know what would!

Nana Kathy made a really yummy Star Wars cake!

Is that my six year old riding his scooter down the middle of the street at ten on a school night? Why yes it is. 

This was the next day when Sawyer was showing off his new game to his buddy, Dane. When it popped up at the end and all the pieces flew out, they both jumped and screamed! It was so cute!

We have two more parties to go: a big family dinner with the Aunts and Uncles and then a bowling party with  his school friends. Sawyer had a great day and is still able to look forward to his other parties :) 

What's been going on...

During breakfast this morning, Sawyer was telling me about the decorations that he wanted to get to decorate the yard for Halloween.

"We can get some spiders to hang from the trees and some spooky pumpkins. Oh! And we need to get those 10 Commandment things that Moses had too!"

I guess we need to have a little chat about the difference between the stone tablets of the commandments and gravestones....

We are having a little bit of a late start to fall but I'm not one to complain! It was 78 degrees out yesterday! It  was just beautiful! I would love for it to stay this nice until Halloween so we aren't freezing our toes off while out trick or treating! 

We went to our very first Parent Teacher Conference the other night and it went GREAT! Sawyer's teacher, Mrs. Johnson is very pleased with where he is at and says he is such a JOY to have in class! Wahoo! I didn't realize how busy our schedules would get once he started school! It's been a never ending stream of class mate's birthday parties, fall festivals, conferences, class Halloween parties, fund raisers ect. It's been busy, but I am LOVING it! 

Sawyer has fallen in LOVE with all things Star Wars! He just started watching the movies a few weeks ago and has a Star Wars Lego game on the Wii. So it was no surprise that he wanted to be Darth Vador for Halloween! He could barely keep it together when his costume arrived in the mail :) And our little Raylan is sure to be the cutest little Yoda you'll ever see!!!

I was walking by Raylan's room the other day to find the two of them just chillin' out in his crib! 

Let's talk about Raylan shall we? Why yes, we shall!

Raylan is getting so big! He is at that adorable, squeezable chubby stage and we are loving it! He also has been showing us all how much he loves us by squeezing everything he can get his hands on. Those chubby little fingers are like the jaws of death! He really likes to go for your eye lashes, bottom lip, back of your neck and your hair. He then proceeds to squeal like a little taradactle at dog maddening decibels. 

Let's talk about baby poop. Yesterday when we pulled up to the front of church, I reached in to pull Raylan out of his car seat and just knew it was bad. I had just jammed my hand into a large pool of yellow mustard poop that had worked it self all the way up to the back of Raylan's neck. Yup, it was lovely. So I just grabbed the whole seat out and made a bee line for the nursery. Our nursery ladies are pretty much the bomb in my book-they scooped Raylan right up, whisked him to the back and into a sink of warm water. They also made it their mission to clean his car seat and have it dried out by the end of the service! And of course during all of this, Raylan looks so very pleased with himself, you would have thought he had solved world hunger. 

We are gearing up to celebrate Sawyer's 6th Birthday on Thursday! I cannot believe how old he is getting! 

Dirty Girl Mud Run 2012

A couple weeks ago a group of my girlfriends and I signed up for the 'Dirty Girl Mud Run 2012'. It was a 5k muddy obstacle fun run for breast cancer. Besides raising money for cancer research, the run was supposed to be a fun team  camaraderie event that was sure to produce lots of laughs and loads of filthy laundry! 

Our team decided to hit the local thrift stores and  grab up the most hideous, tacky and outdated wedding dresses that we could find and run the race in them! And as you can see, we found some real doozies! We hacked off the puff sleeves, trains and eight layers of tulle for practical reasons and man did we look amazing!

It was a beautiful day-just perfect for getting down and dirty! :)

I do have to say.....We had THE BEST dressed group there! We got so many hoots, hollers, whitles, compliments, laughs and "what a great idea!" comments :) 

On your marks....

Don't ask me what I'm doing...I have no idea. Even though we cut out quite a few layers of tulle, as soon as those hideous bags of white fluff hit the mud, they weighed a thousand pounds! 

We had such a FUN time! We laughed and laughed and laughed some more! And don't you think it's interesting how dirty we got but we all managed to keep our bows on and totally white?!?

Down through the ravine....

Up and over....this thing....

We all finished together, everyone in one piece, and super dirty!

And yes, we all ditched our shoes and dresses :) 

Thanks girls so much for such a fun day! Now who's up for Tough Mudder 2013???

Raylan's Dedication

 Last Sunday we had the opportunity to have Raylan dedicated at church! This is a time when we publicly commit him to Christ just as Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple to dedicate him. We are committing as his parents to bring him up in home that loves and follows God. 

It was really fun to have Raylan's little girlfriend, Bella being dedicated too that morning! (Don't you just LOVE that huge flower on her head?! Adorable!) It was a very special morning for us and we were blessed to have lots of Bill's extended family with us that morning to celebrate. It was a bummer that Nana Jane couldn't be there in person, but since our church does a live feed online of the services, she was able to watch it all the way in Brazil! How awesome is that?!?

We went out to lunch afterwards with the grandparents. (Sorry the lighting is terrible in these pictures!) Raylan really loves chatting with Great Grandma Jo.....I think he really likes looking at himself in the reflection of her glasses too! 

Raylan, you are such a wonderful gift from God and we are so blessed that God chose us to be your parents. It is our prayer that you will have an ever increasing hunger for God. We pray that your eyes be focused on what's really important in life, that your ears be attune to God's voice and that your mouth would be used to speak words of truth to those around you. And most of all, that your little heart be full of God's love and love for others. We LOVE you SO much*

Labor Day

I don't know why, but for some reason I kept calling Labor Day, Memorial Day this year! Even when I typed in the title of this post, I wrote "Memorial Day"....good grief. Anyway, this year we had planned to meet up with our group of friends for a BBQ at the park and the kids were going to go fishing ect. But it was drizzly and gross out so changed venues to our friend Chase's house instead. Sawyer and I made some super yummy scotcheroo bars (Rice krispie treats with peanut butter and then a dark chocolate butterscotch topping.....D-lish!) to take with us. 

Sawyer has fallen in love with the game of chess, which makes his dad VERY happy! Sawyer challenges anyone and everyone to a game of chess whenever he gets the chance. So they played a couple of games before we headed off to Chase's house.

Everyone just brought their own stuff to throw on the grill and then a side to share and it turned out so well! We had a great time eating, playing games and hanging out together! We are so incredibly blessed to have such a wonderful group of friends that we get to see so often.

Kansas City

Last week Bill and I decided to take a last minute trip to Kansas city over the weekend! It's been a while since the two of us have gone away together without the boys and we thought that Kansas City would be a great option. This also meant leaving Raylan overnight for his first sleep over at Nana and Papas house....which I had a minor melt down, but everyone survived just fine! :) 

My sweet husband came home with some chocolates from this fancy chocolate shop, whose windows I drool over all the time when we walk by....and a very sweet card! What a great way to start off our weekend together!

 We stayed at this really nifty historic place in the Power and Lights District called Hotel Phillips. We enjoyed some drinks and appetizers while listening to the live jazz music at the hotel bar!

We had planned to spend the majority of Saturday just meandering around the plaza, shopping and just enjoy not having a stroller with us...but of course it was raining....we decided not to let that stop us so off we went! 

As we were headed to brunch, we walked past the grand opening of a store called Moosejaw and popped in for a bit. In honor of the opening, they had a photo booth, a fortune teller, free mustaches and free beer! (It's ten in the morning for goodness sake!) Yes, I wore my mustache around the entire time and thought it was great fun until we left the store and realized it wasn't quite as fun when no one else around you was wearing them anymore....so I took it off.

We headed to Brio for brunch and man did they deliver! I had stuffed french toast with berries and vanilla cream! I think I just about died right then and there......they were sooo good!

Bill had a bit more of a manly dish of some sort of spicy sausage omelet with potatoes or something...I really didn't give his dish the time of day since I was so engrossed in my own. 

Even though it rained intermittently, we had such a GREAT day ducking in and out of stores, eating way to much, saw a movie, hit a bookstore and just enjoyed a kid-free day!

The main reason we decided on Kansas City was to use up a gift card that I had given Bill for Father's Day to our favorite Brazilian restaurant, Fogo De Chao. 

They have a wonderful salad bar and then you turn your card, green side up as Brazilian servers bring around  over fifteen different fire roasted meats. They bring them on huge spits and you grab them with these little tongs! You can just sit and eat forever :)

 For the Brazilians: they had polenta, caramelized bananas, aroz e feijao, pao de queijo, guarana, creme de papaya and of course.....Caipirinhas!

We had such a fun dinner, with the servers speaking Portuguese to us and giving us the special treatment, since they knew I was from Brazil :) 

Even though it was short, we had SUCH a great time away! 

......but I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty antsy to get back to Omaha and see the kids :) I swear Raylan grew while we were gone! And what trip wouldn't be complete without getting pulled over by the popo just a block from Nana and Papa's house? (No ticket....just a bored cop on a Saturday night....)