Love must be in the air - this bag on the floor looked like a heart to me so I took a picture.

Max is fianlly big enough to fit into his Flight Jacket he got last Christmas - aint he cute!
I feel the need... the need for speed!

Lowes Build & Grow

Max is an official member of the Build and Grow team now at Lowes. This was the second time he has been and I hope that we get to go many many times more!

Christmas 2.1
Back to the Johnson's to celebrate Christmas with all the Great Grandparents! Finnley gave Max an old tricycle. Max always enjoys his Great Grandfathers company. I would also like to note what a great photographer my husband is!

Christmas at the Olsen's

our 3rd and final Christmas was spent at the Farm with Jack and Fran, My brother Kem and his fiance Carla and my sister Sandra and her husband Stan. Max was the only kid at this one and bless his hart he was not feeling well still. The only thing he ate was icecream and lot of it! Oh and M&M's (what happens at Grandmas stays and grandmas) Max got this wonderful airplane bike from Ben's Uncle Gordan and a whack a mole game and some cloths. I got a bunch of neat stuff including a musical instrument made out of a gord and ben got a great new tripod for his camera. Fran cooked an outstanding dinner with some old favorites like my Grandma Olsen use to serve and Sandra baked a delicious chocolate Cake. Max started a round of Jingle bells and we all sang it while cleaning up the dishes - it was nice and I think we sounded great!

More photos from christmas. The sponge bob bandaid was just for fun to make him feel better and you can see in one photo he got ahold of the underarm thermometer. After Christmas he saw the dr. and they gave him antibiotics for the ear infection and something for his cough. He was a little trooper!

Well I"m finally getting around to Christmas no. 2 at Maggies. We arrived on the 24th after out morning at Mike and Ron's. Max fell asleep and since he was so sick we all sat in the car with him (maggie too) and let him sleep for an hour or so while we softly chit chatted. That evening we decorated a cho choo train ginger bred house and all went to sleep. About 1am Max woke up getting sick. Mom helped me clean him up and we tried to give him tylenol but he wouldn't take it so.... we had to resort to other means ( ew - I know!) all I can say is thank Gawd! my mom was there!!! after that we all slept till a respectable hour in the morning. Mom made us a great breakfast and we watched Max open presents and eat candy off the ginger bread train. He seemed to be feeling much better just a tiny fever and he took his medicine no problem! We got mom a Snuggie in pink that she loves and a home made gift that Max made of a hand print in clay painted and decorated. It was a wonderful christmas and I'm so glad we all got to spend it together.

Christmas #1 with the Johnsons.

Poor Max not feeling well, fever and such but we couldn't miss Christmas!

List making... Shopping... wrapping... hiding.
Who did I forget? Will they notice?
Ah! Christmas!

I really am excited this year for Max! this is going to be a wonderful Christmas for him. He knows all about opening presents. And saying WAAAAAAAAOOOW when he sees something cool. I'm sure there will be some lessons on sharing as well.

I had to empty a linen closet to hide all the gifts. I wasn't sure if Max would be tempted to open them. Never had to hide gifts before but I know it's something my parents did and now I suppose it's my turn. We'll need a better spot next year and as he gets smarter, taller and sneakier.

We didn't see Santa this year for photos. I totally intended to it just never happened. I kept waiting for a Monday off to avoid the crowds and missed my chance! Seems like everything got very buys towards the end of December. They may have done Santa photos at daycare so maybe we will get one of those and I won't have the guilty mommy feelings for missing a year.

We were going to try and do hand made gifts for Johnson Family but the idea was canceled due to short notice issues. Now what am I supposed to do with that oil painting of Reese? Oh well It doesn't look like her anyway, pressure is off ! SHEW!

Just 2 more days of work then the wonderful craziness begins... I feel full and tired already just thinking about it. :) Cheers everyone! and Merry Christmas!

Our Little Tree

We went back to Jacks Christmas tree farm again this year. We got a smaller tree and I really like. I love the hodgepodge of family and homemade ornaments.

Ben did some experimenting with setting on the camera and got some cool light show stuff. He is so creative!

Yesterday we were invited to our first cookie decorating party! It was..... fun and messy. I'm so glad Max has some neighbor hood friends so fun to walk down the street for a visit!

I'm so glad Max's school picts turned out so cute. We had a ruff morning that day and he didn't want to got to school. Instead of arguing with him about what shoes I let him wear the boots and threw shoes in his bag. His hair was a mess we had all woken up late and I grabbed the first sweater I could reach and headed out the door in a mad dash.

As we walked to his class room and I reassured my tearful boy that everything would be okay I noticed a photographer setting up... ut oh! Yep! Picture day! What you didn't get the memo!

I told his teacher the sweater was cute and his shoes are in his bag. I was very surprised to see he had his fireman boots on in this picture but also very glad! I love them and the story they remind me of - it all turned out perfect!

A Star is Born!

Kaitlen Raymer was born on her mothers birthday Nov. 24th, 2009. She arrived very quickly, didn't even give the Dr. a chance to get there! She is 7lb. and georous. Mom and Baby are both healthy and excited to go home today. Gloria says she looks more like her dad and has dimples on her cheeks.

Here is a photo Ron took with his iPhone.

Halloween was good. Maggie came and went trick-or-treating with Max and spent the night. Max was a skeleton and he did such a great job of waiting his turn and saying trick or treat and not getting scared. Now all he ever wants in CANDY! We had to explain to him that Halloween is just once a year.

i didn't get very many good pictures, I did get some video that was cute.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Truck Weekend in Athens!

Athens puts on an event for the all the boys in Athens each year called Truck week. Ben and I weren't sure what to expect maybe just some big trucks but it was so much more! There was a bomb squad robot and a mobile command center, a city bus and even the Athens city sewer camera on wheels. The Fire-truck, bulldozer and garbage trucks were his favorites. He got in the garbage truck and grabbed the wheel and said "bye mommy" and asked me to close the door.

We both brought cameras and Ben's photos are much better than mine so I'll try to get some of those on here too.

Sorry I've been so slack on the blog lately. October starts the end of the year craziness of saving money, working hard and attending lots of parties and festivals. I know Christmas will be over before i know it and I have so much I want to do. Work has been a bit crazy too. I have 6 schools that I'm helping to do there yearbook and more new schools we are visiting to try and get there business. I do like getting out of the office but the travel days make the desk work pile up. Okay enough about me! Enjoy the photos of my wonderfully funny and adorably handsome husband and son.

A rainy weekend

We intended to go to a pumpkin patch place with a petting zoo and corn maze last weekend. And although the forecast called for sun it decided to rain and get super cold! So we opted for the Library instead. The Athens library has an awesome kids section were we can be loud and pull down all the books we want!!! While Max played with Grandma Ben and I visited the non fictions and got a few book and a library card and we all had a great time and picked up a pumpkin at a local church on our way home in the rain.

A Day at the Park

Some photos from the park nearby we took a few weeks back.

Our Trip to the Big City

Max stayed with his grandparents the weekend of the 10th so Ben and I decided to take a little vacation away from Athens. I tried so hard to find something in the North GA Mountains but everything was ridiculously priced and booked - even camp sites were booked solid!

So we decided to visit Atlanta, it gave us a chance to check out our old neighborhoods and hangouts. We could see Stone mountain and my mom's apartment building from our hotel. After breakfast we drove around looking at what has changed and what has stayed the same in our old neighborhoods. I noticed some of the stuff they built just a few years ago is abandoned now. Makes me feel old as I think 'they just built that..' then I realize it was 10 years ago. Shops that were so big and bright and shinny have since been closed, sitting there with no purpose while a sign Coming Soon goes up across the street where more shops and restaurants are going to be built.

Ben's house is gone replaced by a mansion as most of us know. My 1st house is still there, same ole brick ranch and looking beautiful.

My 2nd house over by Oglethorpe U is gone and replaced with a HUGE dirt pile and HUGE weeds. The old downhill driveway just disappears into the dirt and the dirt goes out straight then drops off. It was kinda scary at the edge and seems very dangerous. I Feel bad for our old neighbors who have to look at that huge pile of weeds everyday. We ran into one of them, Tallys Dad, Dr. Tally and told him how sorry we were. He told us that the new owners started to build then stopped then filled it in and that's the last they have worked on it for a long long time- weird. He also mentioned that Mrs. Tally won yard of the Month for October so it wasn't all bad I guess.

The drive around Dunwoody and Muphy Candler really made me miss it there and wish I was raising Max there simply for the fact that I grew up there. He would probably get tired of hearing the stories every time I dove him somewhere.

A few "catching up" pictures.
a MeMike and Pop's visit
a new rain coat
an awesome block tower
Cute photo of Father and son

I have been so slack about the blog, seems the older Max gets the less and less we post. I do have some photos to post of our growing boy as he gets bigger and bigger. His vocabulary seems to have exploded. My current favorite is when he says, thru laughing, "your funny daddy/mommy" it melts my heart.

Max is going to have a slumber party with Grama & Grampa Olsen this Friday and coming home Sat. All the mothers out there can understand how excited Ben and I are about that. Funny a year ago I would have been sad. I don't think I can fit in all the thing I want to do while he is gone but I'm going to try!

I've been working on a portrait of my niece Reece in her fluffy birthday dress I'd like to show everyone. I'm not sure if it's finished yet. I paint here and there when I can between daily duties. Nice thing about oils is they don't dry up so I can do 10 min. here and there. I really like painting and would love to take a class because I really don't have any idea what I'm doing. Ron (Ben's dad) has taken some really beautiful portraits I would like to paint. You can check them out at his flicker page.

More interesting stuff soon I promise!

Love you all so much! Give yourself a Big hug for me!
Step back - Hug yourself - Good Gawd!

An Amazing work of art by Chris Dorosz and long but neat video of assembling the work - had to share!