the pals

Well, I know Bo considers Moose a pal.  

I'm pretty sure Moose thinks Bo is more of a nuisance BUT just this morning Moose sat by Bo's door and whined a second before I chased him away (the cardinal sin in our house is barking during Bo's sleeping hours).  So I guess Moose knows that behind every too-rough hug is just a little boy loving on his brother.  

Watching trucks.

Feeding Moose a "carrot" aka an earplug.

 Just some kisses for "Moosey Goosey" as Bo calls him. 

Sleeping Beauty.

I am a lucky lady- check out my Mother's Day breakfast in bed. 

Beautiful. 

These pictures from a road trip made me laugh.  We might be outgrowing our car. 

Are you going to eat all of that? 

And then Bo crying because Moose ate it. 

Scrub a Dub. 

Bo's 2nd Birthday

Exactly a month ago our little buddy boy turned TWO years old.  It has taken me 30 days to get the pictures off my camera but I am so glad we have them.  It is sweet to celebrate his life and the wonderful gift of being parents.  My parents were in town that week and I'm thankful they were able to stay for his little party.  

After looking at party ideas on Pinterest I got totally burned out on themes and just felt overwhelmed... so we went with a classic 'birthday party' theme and I still got to get a little creative with some banners and the piece de resistance... my homemade pinata.  

Little B-O cookies were a hit with our buddy.  Thanks to my mom for the help! 

 

The pinata was a lot of fun for the buddies and it survived enough to be sent to NC for another special 2 year old's birthday!  I was happy to see my hard work reused.  

Oh my goodness, after hours of sugar and rolling around with cousins and the spider man bubble blower . . . an hour after bedtime and dirty dirty dirty.

We still managed to get this photo with Coco and Poppy.  I'll have to get more pictures from their visit up here soon.

more sweet friends

Right after the Mulandis visited, another one of our Kenyan connections came out for a visit!  The Nagles live in Atlanta now and it had been almost a year since I'd seen them.  Even though they have 3 kids to our 1, they made the drive to our house and we enjoyed having their sweet family in Franklin for the weekend!

We started off our weekend with an Easter egg hunt at a local park. 

Bo did not like waiting for the hunt to start.

Ty was enthusiastic about the visiting Chik-Fil-A cow. 

Since it was a cold day, we spent the afternoon at an indoor play place.  This particular one was a great place for them to run, climb, and burn off energy.  Unfortunately, we had an 'incident' with Bo that will go down in our family folklore.  He was playing on some equipment and was crawling through a tunnel when I heard him scream.  I was standing right there but on the outside of the tunnel, so I couldn't see what had happened.  A chubby toddler was perched smugly inside and my little lamb was bawling in terror.  As I tried to calm him down, I noticed a raised circle on Bo's face and thought at first he had been kicked, but it soon seemed too pronounced and circular for a shoe print - it was definitely a BITE.  The offender's mom came over and apologized but as the day went on, the mark got more pronounced.  By the next day it had faded so that it looked more like ringworm - we definitely were questioned by the nursery staff at church, which was awesome.  Anyway, he's fine and it will be a funny story, but of course I felt so bad for him being assaulted by that ruffian.  He still pats his cheek and says "my bite" when you ask him about it. 

After naps we visited a nearby horse farm turned public park for some family picture time.  Allyson recently got a new camera and I wanted to take advantage of her skills.  We had a lot of fun corralling the little ones and trying to get all of them looking in the right direction and smiling at the same time.  

 

Thanks for coming, buddies!! We love you!

catch up

Wow, it's been a while!  Life has been very FULL lately with some very good things and some very hard things.  We've had to put aside some things in order to keep up with the rather hectic pace of our days, and blogging was something I haven't had mental energy for.   Since March we've been hosting some of our very favorite people at our house, as well as house hunting, birthday planning, carving out time for new and old friends, running a little business, keeping up with our busy little boy, and somewhere in there we flew to the East coast and then the West.

Over a month ago our sweet friends Dexter, Jenna, and their son Kaylo drove all the way from New Jersey to spend a few days with us.  We had an awesome time catching up since our last visit in NYC and watching the boys play together.  Kyalo and Bo were born just a couple weeks apart and got along pretty well!  It was so fun watching them interact.

buddies!

I had to steal the following two from Jenna because

1) I need a picture of their family 

2) My son is a monkey

We spent time at the zoo, ate a good country breakfast and had barbecue for dinner, played at the park, and shared some nice time catching up on the last year.  Kyalo bonded well with Moose which made our family super happy.  :) Thanks for spending part of your vacation with us!!