Boo!

A year ago our little guy was too tiny to really dress up for Halloween, but we did manage to find a cute Winnie the Pooh onesie and hat for him to wear. I miss this tiny little man, but love the little boy he is becoming! Take a look at our little Pooh bear last Halloween...

Our little Pooh bear with his protector. 

a month and a half

Precious baby boy!

This year our Halloween festivities started out with attending our first Octofest at Luke's school. They decorated the inside and outside of his school with hay bales, orange and black lights, pumpkins, scarecrows, you name it! They did a great job getting ready! Luke will love Octofest a little more once he is walking more and able to participate in the games. This year we just wanted to stop by to check it out, take a few pictures, and see what we could expect in the future. Mr. Luke was exhausted by the time Octofest even started and ended up falling asleep on the way. Poor guy! We were able to wake him up and let him make his appearance before heading home to tuck him into bed. If only they could have started Octofest at 6 instead of 7! 

Sleepy little lion at Octofest!

We loved getting another opportunity to dress up out little lion at Jeremy's office party. Every year they invite families to get dressed up and join them for a costume party at the end of the work day sometime during the week of Halloween. Our little lion loved seeing everyone and trying to steal candy from some of the other kids. They should learn to not leave their candy on the floor where our little vacuum could get to it! Not only was Luke a sweet lion, he was also part of our "Revit family". I honestly have no idea what that means, but, supposedly "revit" is some kind of engineering term, and, when you have a group of revits, they create a revit family. That's the extent of my knowledge on Jeremy's plan for our family costume. I think I need to be in charge next year!

Hanging out at Dad's office.

Mr. Revit and Baby Revit

Halloween night was greeted by yet a another chance to dress up our little lion. Unfortunately, we only ended up with 5 trick-or-treaters, 2 of which were our friends. Check out how much candy we had left over at the end of the night!

Yum!

Baby Luke had fun hanging out with his pirate and vacuum friends, Lincoln and Aaron!

Precious!

The most ferocious lion you've ever seen!

 

Look at this little man!

Hopefully we'll have a better turn out next year! Who knows, we may be taking our little guy to do a little trick-or-treating!

Howdy Folks!

Last Sunday we took Luke to the State Fair of Texas for the first time. Since Luke was only a month old last year during Fair season, we decided to not take him to the craziness that is the Fair, and just went by ourselves for a couple of hours. That actually happened to be our first time away from Luke since he had been born. As much as we enjoyed getting away last year, it was fun to introduce our little guy to some of the things we enjoy about the Fair. 

For the past 6 or 7 years (I have lost track) we have planned a Fair date with our good friends, Sterling and Shannon. This tradition started out with just the four of us, but has since grown to including our little ones. One year we were joined by Sterling's brother and his girlfriend and this year we were joined by Scott and Vicki. Our original plan was to go on Saturday, but the weather was a little crazy, so we decided to hold off. I am so glad we waited because Sunday was beautiful! Apparently, a lot of other people thought so, too! It was packed!

Our first stop was to visit the new Big Tex. The Big Tex that we grew up with caught on fire last year and, unfortunately, was unable to be saved. We stopped by to introduce Luke to Big Tex and meet up with Scott and Vicki. 

Our little sleepy-head who was powering through with no nap!

Luke with Uncle Scott and Aunt Vicki. Look how stinkin' cute Luke is in his cowboy boots!

We headed straight for our first "snack" at the Fletcher's Corny Dog stand. It is a given that we have corn dogs when we go to the Fair. Luke and I "shared" a corn dog. 

Here we go!

Shannon mentioned that we pretty much have the same picture in front of one of the fountains at the Fair from every year that we have been going together. So, of course, we had to take this year's picture! 

You can tell how excited the little guys are to be stopping for a picture...

After checking out the new cars in the car buildings, we decided it was time to get another fried treat for dessert. We usually try something new, but this year we went with what was close and easy: funnel cake. You just can't go wrong with getting funnel cake and we hadn't had it in forever. The little guy wasn't too sure what he thought of all of that sugar...

He wanted to make sure he got it all off his little fingers!

The boys.

Before heading home, we ended up stopping to take a break and watch the end of the Cowboys' game. (Too bad they lost!) Luke, again, was not interested in this stop. He was a squirmy little thing who was ready to keep moving! 

At least he was a happy little squirmer!

I remember the days when I used to be so annoyed with people who brought their kids who were in strollers to places like the Fair. We are officially those annoying people! Luke has the whole people-watching thing down and seemed to enjoy himself. I fear that next year will be a challenge because I won't be able to contain him as easily in a stroller. He is already showing signs of independence at times, so we'll see what happens! We lucked out with having free tickets to get in, extra coupons my parents passed on to us, and ended up only paying for parking. Not too bad! I can see how easy it will be to one day blow quite a bit of money once kids want to ride rides, play games, eat their own food, you name it! For now, we'll stick with being those stroller people and enjoy our fairly cheap tradition!

Until next year...

Happy birthday to you, "baby" Luke!

I can't believe our sweet little Luke is officially one! People weren't kidding when they said time would go by in the blink of an eye! As much as I miss our tiny baby boy who struggled to gain weight his first 4 months of life, I am completely in love with the one year old little boy he has become. 

For Luke's 1st birthday we decided to have family over for his party. As much as we really wanted to have our friends and their little ones, it was probably better we just had the 20 family members we invited. I don't know where anyone else would have sat, stood, ate, etc. in our house! Luke is pretty lucky to have most of his family members living so close to us that we are able to get together throughout the year, rather than just as Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

I promised myself, well, Jeremy, that I would not go too crazy getting ready for Luke's birthday. I realize he is only one and doesn't really get the concept of a birthday party or decorations, but I also love planning, organizing, and creating. So, it is what it is. I had fun making banners and signs and pulling together decorations for his monkey-themed first birthday. (We chose a monkey theme because the little guy loves his monkey paci. He really only uses it at nap time and bedtime. It's going to be a sad day when monkey goes away...which should be sometime soon. Luke lights up and gets so excited when we bring monkey out at night.)

Here is a peek at the decorations I made for Luke's birthday...

1st birthday banner

above the food table

chips and queso were on the counter, too

homemade cupcakes with monkey toppers

My dad insisted we have party hats...a few people embraced them!

Luke's smash cake my dad had made.

Other than dropping the entire bowl of banana pudding right in front of Luke 30 minutes before the party started, everything else went well! I was so worried that the bowl had hit Luke, but thankfully, it didn't! My in-laws saved the day by going to the store to get some more pudding to recreate what we lost.

Oooo, cake!

Someone could have cared less about taking our family picture...he was ready to dig in!

Yummm!

Destruction! I've been told Luke is the neatest eater in his class...

Luke and his grandparents...look who's still eating!

presents, galore

Where is all of this stuff going to go???

Luke's birthday loot!

Once the party was over, we had family nap time. We were all exhausted! We did find time to take a stroll to the park. Check out Luke's new ride!

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for my new wagon!

I think he likes it!

Happy birthday, sweet Luke! We love you!

Our Little Fishy

Our little fishy just finished his last day of swim lessons at Emler Swim School. He has been taking lessons since the middle of June and has loved being in the water! Although he hasn't quite gotten the hang of kicking his little legs in the water, he has done a great job with jumping (falling) into the pool from the edge, chewing on the rings, rope, crab mirror, balls, and other toys we use to distract him in the pool, floating on his back, sliding down the slide into the water, and holding his breath for 10 seconds underwater. Luke is definitely not afraid of the water and has enjoyed meeting up with his buddies Lily and Aaron every Saturday morning for class. 

At the start of each lesson, we always greeted each little one and their parent. Jeremy and I took turns each week with getting into the pool with Luke. I bet you can guess who took most of the pictures...

The start of each lesson. Luke seems pretty happy to be in the pool!

Our little guy enjoyed getting into his "motorboat", but then seemed more interested in drinking the pool water rather than practicing kicking to get the ball. I try not to think about what is going into his little body!

Motorboat time!

Luke was a pro at floating on his back. He really liked looking at himself in the crab mirror and chewing on it. 

Yum!

Next, we would move around to different stations. Luke spent time climbing or jumping/falling off of the tower, hanging onto the rope/trying to eat the rope, fishing for the rings/eating the rings, crawling along the wall or falling into the pool, and then practicing holding his breath underwater with Ms. Amber. 

Climbing the tower. Do you see his little fins? So cute!

I promise we feed our child!

Tasty!

Click on the link below to see a video clip of our little fishy holding his breath for 10 seconds underwater. Way to go little man!

Underwater Baby

Luke played "Humpty Dumpty" as he jumped into the water, turned around underwater, and then climbed up the wall (elbow, elbow, tummy, knee). 

We sang "London Bridges" as we floated under the bridge. 

We sat on the duck and practiced falling into the water again. 

Luke loved going down the slide and getting a big hug from Mama and Dada!

Jeremy was good at catching him, while I always got the big splash!

Click on the link below to see a video clip of Luke going off the slide...

Sliding to Dad 

At the end we always sang goodbye to each kiddo before hopping out and quickly hurrying out of the way for the next group of kiddos to start their lesson. 

Good job, little monkey! We had fun swimming with your this summer! We love our little water baby!

Luke's Baby Dedication

Our family gathered together to celebrate Luke's Baby Dedication at Wilshire on Sunday, May 26th. A good friend of ours (who happens to be a pretty great photographer) just sent us pictures that capture our experience perfectly! I have been holding off on publishing this post until I had our pictures. :)

I have always loved how our pastor, George Mason, does Baby Dedications and always seem to struggle holding back tears every time a baby gets walked up and down the aisles at Wilshire. I think what really gets me is that before handing a baby back to his/her parents, George tells the parents, "This child does not belong to you. He/She is a gift from God..." Wow! What a statement. Jeremy and I have been given a pretty big responsibility in raising a child in within the walls of the church AND in this crazy world. Our biggest challenge is now praying and hoping that Luke will choose to follow Jesus. I hope that we are able to model for Luke what it looks like to be a Christian and provide for him opportunities to get to know Jesus on a more personal level throughout his life. I know we will have great support at Wilshire and have loved helping Luke start his Christian walk with the help of a lot of wonderful people at our church.

Our pastor, George Mason, getting ready to take Luke for a walk up and down the aisles of the church.

Introducing Luke to his church family.

Asking the church to help raise our little man.

Praying for Luke to come to know Jesus.

Our sweet family who joined us.

What awesome role models and supporters we have in this journey of being parents!

Proud parents with baby Luke.

Look at that sweet face!

Luke was tired of taking pictures, but appreciated his Grandpa and Nana for being there!

No more smiles from this guy! Thank you, Grandad and Jammie for coming!

After Luke's Dedication we had our family over for lunch and were excited to be joined by my Uncle Ron and Aunt Linda. They really wanted to come to the Dedication, but Linda had only been home a few days after being in the hospital and decided that it might be best if they just came by the house afterwards. We are so glad they came!

I wish I had a picture of Ron and Linda with Luke, but love this picture of Luke and Ron.

Hanging out with Natasha and Diana.

Worn out from a fun morning with family!

We loved celebrating Luke's Dedication with our family and missed those who couldn't be with us. Now that Luke has been dedicated, we are continuing to introduce him to our Father and Creator and pray that he comes to love Him as much as we do!