blessings

It is hard to believe that this sweet, tiny little boy has turned into....

....this sweet precious BIG boy....

This little boy has turned our lives upside down. He has given our lives more meaning than we ever thought possible. Even on his most rotten days, we wouldn't change anything about him for the world.

Enjoy a few of our newest family pictures (October 2010)

Potty Training

So it begins, potty training of our sweet little 2 year 7 month old boy. I never thought this day would come, the day that we would no longer have to buy and change dirty diapers!! But, at last it has arrived. We knew Barrett was ready to be potty trained as he showed many signs. He would wake up dry just about every morning, hated being in wet and dirty diapers and was telling me when he was peeing. I waited until this weekend because we didn't have many plans to be out of the house. He woke up early on Friday morning, I rushed into his room to take him to the potty before he went in his pants. He successful made it to the big boy toilet every time that day, expect for once because we were in the car (thankfully he was in a diaper for the car ride). On Saturday he did really well again with only 2 accidents all day. We even went on a 2 hour venture out of the house in "big boy undies". Although it makes Jon and I sad to see our little guy growing up so quickly, we are also very excited about the fact that he won't be in diapers any longer. I'm sure we won't even notice the money we will be saving because it will just go toward something else....but, we are very proud of Barrett making the transition from diapers to big boy pants!! Just in time for Christmas!

Seeing Santa is Magical...

Last Saturday morning, before Barrett got really sick, we went to Washington Square mall for breakfast with Santa. Barrett wasn't feeling well and was really needy. I didn't know how it would go at the breakfast, but we went anyways. After we ate a catered breakfast, all the kids gathered on a rug on one side of the food court. A magician was doing a quick show and then the kids started singing some Christmas carols. Santa snuck up on one side and surprised the kids. Barrett was in the middle of the group of kids just watching everyone sing (he doesn't know the songs yet). I cannot even begin to explain how precious his reaction was when he saw Santa walk up. Watching from a ways away I actually started crying. He instantly lit up and didn't know whether to clap or wave. I have seen this little boy do some very amazingly cute things in his 2.5 years of existence, but this was the cutest, most candid reaction I have ever witnessed. I couldn't believe it actually brought me to tears and I got that little lump in my throat. I can't wait until we can visit Santa and Barrett can sit on his lap, it'll be another magical experience.

Christmas time with a 2 1/2 year old...

I'm getting sooooooooooooooo excited for Christmas with Barrett this year!!! This is the first year the whole 'Santa' thing is starting to make sense. Makes for a very good bribe when he's being naughty...we can simply say "Santa won't bring you anything if you are naughty!" We have told him over and over that we will leave Santa some cookies and milk on Christmas Eve before we go to bed. He gets a little confused because every time I've asked him what Santa is going to leave him he says "Cookies and Milk". Barrett would be very happy with cookies left, but the kid hates milk, so that would probably be a little disappointing! Every day this week he has came home from daycare with a Christmas project of some sort. We have 3 new ornaments for our tree courtesy of Barrett! I promise to post pictures of his beautiful ornaments before and after they are on the tree. I am so very excited to see his little face on Christmas morning...what a special time of year this is!! Zoo lights this weekend...outta be a blast too!!! Pictures soon to come.............

Bad blogger...

I've been a very bad blogger over the past couple of months. I only posted 1 or so in October and only 1 in November. I promise to be better at blogging in the month of December and into next year. 2011....I can't believe it's almost a new year already!!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!!!

Wordless Wednesday {stud muffin}

Flashback Friday

Flashback to the 2009 football season...Nebraska lost the Big 12 championship game against Texas by 1 point. Nebraska was ahead by 2 points when the game clock expired...or so we thought. Mack Brown had the previous play reviewed and the officials ruled there was 1 second left on the clock when the ball went out of bounds. The Longhorns were in field goal range, they kicked and it was good. It was probably the biggest let down I had ever witnessed in my lifetime...we were all on such a huge high thinking Nebraska had just beat the #2 team in the country, taking them out of the National Championship race.

This Saturday the Huskers take on Texas...this time Nebraska is going into the game ranked #5, while, for the first time in over 10 years, Texas is not ranked in the top 25. We are anxiously awaiting the outcome of the game. Even with the odds in Nebraska's favor, Texas is never an easy opponent. You better believe that Jon, his whole family and thousands of Nebraska fans will be cheering hard this Saturday!!

Gooooooooo Big Red! Beat Texas!!!

Need a little inspiration!

I have really been slacking on blogging lately...I have sort of ran out of inspiration! Hopefully, I can come up with some new and exciting subjects to blog about. All in all, life is going good and Barrett is growing fast. He's so sweet and has a great personality. I have taught him how to do the "boom-chicka-boom" song. At the end he says "uh huh, oh yeah, one more time, mommy's style". We just got his Halloween costume last night. He is Buzz Lightyear (or in his words, Buzz Light Here) this year. The costume is beyond adorable on him. Our nephew, Lucas is dressing as Woody...it'll be fun to have a little theme in our group of trick-or-treaters. I just wish there was a way to get our niece, Taylor to dress as Jesse and our other newphew, Isiah could be some other Toy Story character...perhaps Bullseye or the Prospector. That would be perfect, but I think Taylor and Isiah are way to cool for Toy Story Halloween costumes since they are 10 and 12!

Nebraska doesn't have a game until this next Thursday evening. It's weird to have a Saturday that doesn't involve an exciting Husker game. We will actually be in Hermiston when the game is on. On our way to my cousins wedding in Nampa, ID. Barrett is the ring bearer in the wedding. I am getting pretty excited to see him all dressed up in a suit...let's just hope he 'performs'! My niece, Elle will be the flower girl...so hopefully having her to 'perform' with will make Barrett a little more relaxed.

I guess we always have things going on in our lives I just haven't known what to write about. Soon we'll be going to the pumpkin patch, carving pumpkins, trick-or-treating, etc...that should provide lots of new pictures to post!

Wordless Wednesday {Husker Football Game}

Flashback Friday {September 2007}

This is a flashback to almost 3 years ago exactly. It was 4 football seasons ago and my first ever trip to Nebraska. I do have family that lives in Nebraska but I had never been there myself. I was about 8 weeks pregnant at the time. Although, I never got sick with my pregnancy I did get a little "pukey" feeling on one of the flights there. The first flight was fine but the second we were flying in a small prop airplane and there was a bit of turbulence. I didn't know if I was going to survive the flight without losing my lunch...but, I made it! After that I just had to deal with my father-in-laws some times jerky driving. Since I was pregnant and not feeling the best I was lucky enough to be able to sit shot gun in the rental car.

We made our way to Lincoln, NE for my first Husker home game experience. I had heard Jon talk about how awesome it is to be in the stadium along with the famous "Sea of Red" but I don't think I really knew what to expect. It was amazing! It was Jon, myself, Val & Larry (now my in-laws) and about 90,000 other screaming/fanatical Husker fans.

They were playing the USC Trojans that game and the outcome was a little grim. Nebraska lost the game and we were all a little disappointed. The team didn't do that well that year and at the end of the season the head coach Bill Callaghan was fired. They hired a new coach by the name of Bo Pelini. He had been a defensive coordinator at NU before moving on to LSU and helping them earn the national title right before leaving to take his new position in Nebraska.

Since then, Nebraska has turned the football program around and started the 2010 season ranked 8th in the country. This picture is a forever reminder of my first experience at a Husker football game. Win or lose it's an amazing experience!!

Wordless Wednesday {spouses that buy the exact same anniversary card}

Go Hussers!

Tomorrow is the first Nebraksa football game in the 2010 season. Not only is Jon excited but Barrett and I are too!!! Of course Barrett is always told to say things like "Go Huskers!", "Go Big Red!" or "Go Nebraska!" But all the sudden he has started saying it on his own without Jon or I encouraging him. For some reason he's been getting the urge to yell "Hussers! Hussers" while he's in the bathtub?? Not quite sure what that's about. I know it makes Jon very proud each time he hears our litte guy utter that word. He must have known that football season was drawing near because 2 mornings this week on our way to daycare he said "mommy, i want the song with Go Hussers!" At first, I wasn't sure what he was referring to but after thinking for a bit I realized he wanted me to sing him a song that Jon has on his iPod. It's the Nebraksa fight song. It goes like this (and yes, I did sing it for him in the car!)

"There is no place like Nebraska, dear old Nebraska U. Where the girls are the fairest, the boys are the squarest of any old place that that you knew. There is no place like Nebraska, where they're all true blue. We'll all stand together in all kinds of weather for dear old Nebraska U!"

After all the words the band plays and then the crowd yells "Go Huskers!" a few times...this is the song he had been wanting to hear.

Some may think it's surprising that a girl that was born and raised in Oregon would actually go along with all of this Nebraska hype but I honestly do enjoy it. It's so much fun!!! I love watching the games (before I met Jon I don't think I ever watched an entire football game in my whole life...now I watch every play!), love buying new Nebraska gear, and love the tradition that goes along with all of it. I may not be as rilled up as Jon is for the game tomorrow, but I too am very excited!!!

So in Barrett's words.....GO HUSSERS!!!!

Boating :)

Finally!! We were finally able to go boating before summer comes to an end. Our friend Jason offered to take us all boating yesterday after we got off work. At first, Jon didn't think he had time to run home after work, gather all of our gear, pick Barrett up from Daycare and make it out to the boat launch in time to really enjoy an evening on the water. He called me at work to get my opinion. I knew how much Barrett would love it so we decided to go ahead and give it a shot.

Jon and Barrett headed out before I was off of work and enjoyed a little 'guy' time along with Jason and his brother Matt. I got off work at 5pm, grabbed McDonald's and met the boys on the Willamette. When I got to the dock for them to pick me up I could hear Barrett yelling from the boat "french fries!" He knew I was bringing McDonald's and has grown to absolutely LOVE french fries. I can't say that I blame him! I got on the boat and off we went, slowing down to feed some ducks a few fries. That of course was very exciting to Barrett, he would have been perfectly content just feeding the ducks all evening long. Jon was able to do some wake boarding and then we parked the boat at the beach for a bit. Barrett loved playing with sticks and throwing rocks into the water.

It turned out to be a great evening. Jon and I were both very glad Barrett was able to experience a fun, spontaneous evening on the river!

Close up of his face as he was driving the boat...he took it very seriously

It's almost.................

FOOTBALL SEASON!!!!

Once again I'm gearing up to 'lose' my husband for the next 4 months. Hard to believe that less than 4 years ago I literally knew close to nothing about football. I'm very proud that I have learned a ton about football and actually enjoy watching it now!! Good thing, because that is just about the only thing my husband can concentrate on once college football has started each year!

Go Big Red!!!

Wordless Wednesday

August 11th? Where has the year gone.....

Middle of August?? Really?? I can't believe how quickly time has flown by. Seems like just yesterday we were celebrating Christmas and then mine and Jon's birthdays in January. Here we are almost all the way through summer. I'm convinced that time goes by much quicker the older we get and even faster once we have children. I remember the years seeming to d-r-a-g on and on when I was young and in school. Feels strange that Jon and I will already be celebrating our one year anniversary on August 21st.

Before summer had arrived I had all of these grand ideas in mind...tons of bbq's with friends, fires in our backyard fire pit every weekend, boating & wake boarding. Sadly, we haven't had any bbq's and haven't went boating ONE single time. I think this marks the first summer in my lifetime that I haven't been boating. Don't get me wrong...we have done a lot of very exciting things this summer! We went camping over the 4th of July, went to Vegas a couple weekends after that to stay with friends, we've went swimming, spent time with family, attended concerts at Oak Knoll winery and just enjoyed the beautiful weather. This past week Jon flew to Nebraska with his brother for his grandma's funeral. His parents had driven back in their motor home 2 weeks before. They all made the journey home in the motor home and from what I hear, had a great time. Jon said all of their stomachs were sore from laughing.

I'm sad to see summer getting closer to coming to an end. Thankfully, the Fall in Portland is something in itself to look forward to. I always look forward to the trees starting to change colors and the cooling of the weather from hot to a warmish cool temperature (if that's really a type of weather??) . Jon is anxiously awaiting the start of another season of Nebraska football. He's already reading the daily articles online about how the beginning of practices are going. Just another month and we'll be traveling to the University of Washington to see our beloved Huskers play on this side of the country. Go Big Red!!!

Another summer almost done and gone...............

Wordless Wednesday

Flashback Friday

I don't have a picture to add to this Flashback Friday but today has brought back a lot of memories from my past. Jon, Barrett and I are visiting my best friend that dates all the way back to junior high. Tori and I have experienced so many fun and exciting things together through out our friendship. Staying with her this weekend reminds me of all those fun times and I've been doing a "flashback" in my mind. One of the most exciting things about it is watching our two young boys (Kai is Tori's little boy) play together and have fun. I'm so glad we were lucky enough to have little boys just 5 1/2 months apart. Today they swam together, jumped on the bed together and just enjoyed eachothers company. Jon and I took Barrett to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay today and on the car ride home he said "I miss Kai!" I hope that someday we can live closer together and that Barrett and Kai can grow up to be close friends just as Tori and I have for all of these years!!!

Wordless Wednesday

What happens in Vegas...

Just a quick post to tell everyone how excited I am for our family trip to Vegas this Thursday. We fly out of Eugene, Or. on Allegient Airlines...all 3 tickets (including tax) for $380. My husband surprised me with this trip. He knew just how badly I wanted to go because my best friend (going back to grade school) lives in LV. She just had her second baby on May 25th and I was SOOO anxious to go visit. Anyways...this will be our first official family trip!! I will be sure to take tons of pictures of our adventures! Stay tuned....

Camping Trip: 2010 Addition

Annual Camping Trip Photo Preview

Family Photo

Us

Barrett shooting the 22

Ready! Aim! Fire!

Visiting the horsies

Barrett with Lucas & Grandma

Barrett eating marshmellows

Watching Grandpa start the fire

Last weekend was the big 4th of July annual camping trip I spoke about in my last post. The whole family loaded up and drove down to a KOA campground just outside of Madras, Or. We were all excited to enjoy some sunny weather since Portland has been so rainy lately. The weather turned out to be pretty perfect all weekend with the days in the mid 70s with a slight breeze. The nights got pretty cold but we bundled up in our tents with thick blankets. Barrett never sleeps with us when we are at home but we didn't want him to get cold in his portable crib all by himself so we let him sleep with us at night. It always amazes me to see just how much space a 30lb toddler can take up on a queen size bed. He was sprawled out on the air mattress while Jon was pushed up against the edge of the tent wall and I was hanging off the other side of the mattress. We wouldn't trade the slightly uncomfortable sleeping arrangements for anything. We had fun swimming, sitting by the fire, talking, laughing at funny jokes that were way over used by the time the weekend was over! wink wink!!! Jon and I were so proud of how well Barrett behaved...he minded well, slept great and was just an all around good boy!

Annual 4th of July Family Camping Trip

I normally do a Wordless Wednesday post but I decided not to this week! Every 4th of July for most of Jon's life he and his family have gone to a KOA campground outside of Madras, Oregon. My first time going along was the summer of 2007. Little did we know but I was actually pregnant on that first trip. The next year Barrett was 2 months old and was able to enjoy the family tradition that started so many years before. It's a fun-filled time that includes relaxing, eating, swimming, eating more, laying in the sun, playing games,campfires and an ice cream social every evening. We are getting really excited to take Barrett this year because he'll have so much more fun than he's had in the past years. There are horses for him to see, dirt to play in with his cousins and I think sleeping in a tent will be much more exciting this time around. I've included some pictures from our trip last year...I will be sure to post new pictures from my 4th, Barrett's 3rd trip on the "Laws Annual 4th of July Camping Trip!"

Our home for the weekend

Barrett & Daddy at the campsite

White Trash baby :) Chubbbbbbbbby legs!!

Getting dirty with Lucas

More relaxing with daddy!

Flashback Friday

2007: New friend, great friends, new boyfriend

2010: Great friend, still great friends that have moved away, husband

I will always cherish these friendships no matter how far apart we are or where ever life takes us. I know that in 20 years as I look through old photographs all of these people will still be considered my friend. Oh, and in 20 years from now...the guy that was once my new boyfriend will be my husband of 21 years.

Wordless Wednesday: Perfect Profile

Movie Date

Wow! Two posts in one day!

Today was Barrett's first trip to the movie theater!! We went to the first showing of the Toy Story 3 the day it came out! I figured the theater would be pretty empty at 10:05am on a Friday morning...boy was I wrong! Tons of little kids were there to help celebrate a first for Barrett :) I was a little nervous about taking him to a movie since he did just turn 2. I was worried he'd get tired of sitting and want to run all over the place and ruin the show for all the other families. I came prepared with a few packs of fruit snacks (toy story ones of course) and a giant bag of grapes. All and all he did pretty well. He stood up most of the time but watched the movie and didn't really make much noise. It was fun to go on a movie date with my little guy...I know it will only get easier and easier the older he gets. I was expecting him to be in awe of the huge movie screen...but he didn't even seem to notice it. He didn't act any different than he would have had we been watching it at home. I know he had a good time because when the movie was over he was saying "buzz light-here again!" Another Friday well spent with my favorite little guy.

Flashback Friday

Just to show off a little bit of our silly side..........................here is a picture from Jon's annual work dinner. This dates back to before we were blessed with our little man (i was about 6 months pregnant at the time). Back when we had so much time on our hands and didn't have any real responsibility. As nice as that felt, neither of us would ever trade parenthood for the entire world. As I look through old pictures trying to find ones to use on my 'flashback friday's' I realize how many more pictures we've taken since Barrett's arrival. Sometimes makes me wonder what we took pictures of before he was here! Jon and I can both be serious people at times...but, the majority of the times our true personalities are reflected in these pictures. We already know that Barrett will be just as silly as his parents when he's all grown up...because he's already super silly at age 2!

Wordless Wednesday

Random Cuteness

This little boy never ceases to amaze me! He gets cuter and funnier just about every day. He has the most amazing little personality! It's so fun to watch him grown into his own little skin and become an individual. Barrett has always been such a good little boy...but, being 2 has already brought along some new personality traits. One minute he'll be as independent as ever and the next minute all I hear is "mommy hold me" or "mommy hug me" and I remember just how dependant he is on his mommy & daddy. Every day is a new adventure with Barrett...I wish I could record his whole life because I never want to forget any of this!! It's so much fun!!

Flashback Friday

Do you ever look through old pictures at your parents house and wonder "what in the world was my mom thinking letting me out of the house looking like this??" Well, I wonder that exact thing every time I look through pictures from my childhood. My aunts and uncles always tell me how cute I was. I am convinced they are all LIARS. Take a look at this picture and I'm sure you'll agree. (sorry it's a bit blurry...i took a picture of a picture with my cell phone)

With out any further explanation....here is the beautiful picture you've all been waiting for. I am glad Jon had never seen this picture before he met me....he would have second guessed contacting me in the first place! :)

Wordless Wednesday

Flashback Friday

Flashback to a little over 2 years ago. Barrett Matthew was 9 days new and was already posing for his first photo shoot. Our favorite photographer Jenni Price came to our house to capture some of the first images of our precious little boy. Since then we have been lucky enough to have Jenni take his 1 year photos and also our beautiful wedding pictures. Can't believe our stocky little 2 year old use to be so tiny and fragile. Check out more of Jenni's work at http://www.jennipricephotography.blogspot.com/ or http://blog.jennipricephotography.com