Gardening Gabe

This past weekend, Gabe and I turned our oh-so-lovely weed garden (which by the way, has taken YEARS to grow!) into a cute little purple flower garden.  Gabe, our resident dirt tester, and made sure that all of the rocks from the surrounding garden beds were scattered throughout the other garden beds and all over the lawn.  He also conducted velocity testing while throwing handfuls of dirt everywhere, and smear tests when rubbing dirt on mommy's leg.  (He thought this was hilarious... mommy did not.)  Gabe was a great helper, and helped rake the weeds, pack the new dirt in, and even helped dig holes for the flowers to go in.  He was absolutely filthy and covered in dirt afterwards, and couldn't have been happier.  

He darn near took mommy's hand off with the shovel, so we switched to something less life threatening... like a spray bottle

Digging up the weeds

Packing in the new dirt

Grabbing yet another handful of dirt to throw

TA DA!!!  Our lovely purple flower garden.  

My dirt covered little man

Gabe's Prayer

Gabe is such a good little boy, and likes to say his prayers.  Most of the time they are in tongues.  :)  Here is his prayer at Ruby Tuesday.  

A few of my favorite things...

Here are my 2 favorite boys in the whole world!  Thanks to Dad Eldredge for the great photography!  Click for more of Lloyd's photography

Brave little Gabe

This Friday, Gabe surprised the heck out of me when I saw him climb up the BIG slide at the Park and go down it by himself!!!  This little man is fearless!!

Our 5 year Anniversary trip!!!

Michael and I celebrated our 5th Anniversary this past weekend!!  Since Michael whisked me off for a surprise honeymoon after we were married, I thought it would be fun to celebrate by whisking him away for a weekend alone together.  Duste' and Ryan and Lacey were kind enough to watch Gabe for the weekend for us.  Gabe had a blast!!!  

We went up to Baltimore to the Inner Harbor.  I had gone there last year for the marathon, and as soon as I laid eyes on the Inner Harbor, I knew I had to bring Michael there.  It's a beautiful stretch of harbor with a large shopping mall, and tons of awesome restaurants with outside patios to eat on.  We spent our mornings sleeping in (true heaven!!) and then drove to the harbor every day.  We ate delicious food, watched street performers, and shopped a little.  We may have single handedly kept the Cheesecake Factory in business while we were there (can you blame us!?!?)  We also went to the Aquarium - which we highly recommend!! - and to the EPSN Zone in hopes of watching the National Cheerleading competition that was happening that weekend.  (we missed it - it was at another conference building).  We had a wonderful weekend, and are looking forward to many more happy years together.

At the Aquarium

Outside the ESPN Zone

Our delicious (and VERY filling) sushi lunch

Baltimore's Inner Harbor

The happy couple at the Inner Harbor

Playgroup Fun and Binki Love

Today we had a super fun playgroup!  The kids brought their bikes to decorate, and then we had a bike parade.  Gabe was absolutely horrified of the bike at first and refused to have anything to do with it.  That didn't last long.  As soon as he saw how much fun the other kids were having, he hopped right on the bike (that we borrowed from Duste'!) and rode all over the track.  

On a second note, Gabe is going through a major binki phase right now.  We're slowly trying to wean him off the binki, and it seems like the more we try, the more he "needs" it.  I lamented with other moms today at playgroup who are having the same issue with their boys.  I got some good advice, and hopefully Gabe will be off the binki soon.  Any other advice... send it my way!

The binki king himself

Michelle and Sidney Mahaffey

Trae, Landon and Seani

Gabe, finally happy to be on the bike!

Building a block tower