Down on the farm

Saturday was Cole's birthday party. It was at Johnston Dairy Farm in Newborn, GA (AKA - middle of nowhere). It was a good time though.

When we arrived, the party had already started. It had just rained a little and it was very muggy. Here, Ethan and Cole are taking a break from running on the hay bales.

Evan gave the bales a try too

Most of the time, Evan just sat back, relaxed, and watched all the big kids play.

Evan giving Aunt Christina a kiss

Cole and Jeremy hamming it up for the camera

It was the first time that Jing and Kayla had met Evan, so we took a picture

Inside the milking room, Bessie #534 was eyeing Mike.

Baby cow

Evan and me on the hay ride

We stopped while on the hay ride to feed the pregnant cows and the heffers (heffers are cows untouched by a bull if ya didn't know, because I sure didn't). There were about 100 of them with one male bull. Busy guy!

Evan and Mike looking at the heffers :)

As we pulled away, the ladies were still eating

And then there was cake. Happy birthday again, Cole, we had a great time at your party!

And then on Sunday, Evan thought it was way to hot to sit around so he jumped in the pool

with some wardrobe help

Hope you all had a great weekend! We sure did and wish it were longer.

Happy 4th Birthday, Cole!

Today is Cole's 4th birthday. Happy Birthday and we hope you have a great day! Here are some of my favorite pictures of you.

Cole, you mean the world to us. We love you very much and are so glad to be a part of your fun-filled life. We will see you on Saturday!

Love,

Tara, Mike, and Evan

I never would have thought....

I never would have thought that I would be a mom, especially not to an 8 month old. I can't believe we've made it this far and in 4 more short months, I will be singing Happy Birthday to a one year old. This is definitely one of the greatest joys in my life and so rewarding.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend

My two men, happy as can be

We are trying to hold our sippy cup. He still won't hold his own bottle, but I keep reminding myself that it will come in time.

I'm not one for bad pictures of myself but Evan fell asleep on the couch and I was afraid he would fall off so I laid down beside him and fell asleep too.

And lastly, our baby fighting sleep in his swing.

By the way, he is not trying to bring Flashdance back, those are his new Skid Pants to protect his knees when he crawls. (I also got him the black pair in the picture two up.) I recommend these things though they look funny. His knees aren't near as red as they have been without.

I hope everyone has a good start to the week.

Like Father, Like Son

With the heat we're having, who can blame them for playing a few video games?

Life is Beachy!

Today we went to Babies R Us and took Evan's "almost" 8 month pictures. He hasn't had any solo shots in a month and a half so we were due. We had no plans for the pictures but we rolled up his pants and shirt sleeves and hit the beach.

He had a great picture taken in this chair last time so we gave it another shot

My favorite!

This almost looks like he's crawling in the desert

Then we hit the forest or meadow (or whatever)

He looks absolutely terrified in this picture. He doesn't always smile for those of you that have questioned.

And the close up... This one just made me shake my head a few times. He is getting so big, so fast. Thanks for sharing my picture obsession with me. We spend a small chunk of change on these things so I definitely need to share.

Hope your weekend was great!

Lazy Friday Afternoon

The boring details of our Friday afternoon....

I decided to put Evan's wagon together and it took me so long that he hit the bottle a little early.

He wouldn't look at me for any more wagon pictures. He was watching Daddy pull weeds. Everyone knows that weeds are more interesting than Mommy taking pictures.

One of the many faces of Evan at mealtime.

"Now you know I want more food."

If you click on this pic to make it larger you can see the makings of his first two teeth. The teeth started making their debut last Friday. The firsts just keep adding up!

We wish you all a wonderful weekend!

Pacman

So I noticed the comments were running low on my blog so I put up the Pacman game. Katie has already discovered it. I figured I needed to add something to draw my readers in, even if they play Pacman and just glance at Evan every once in a while. I am trying to post more too and I leave other people comments. After my computer outage for two weeks and posting about once a week, I lost people. Enjoy the game and be sure to visit us often!

Looking for dry weather

Hope you are staying dry with all of our recent rain!

Happy Belated Birthdays to Katy and Jimmie on Sunday! We love you!

Enjoy the simple things

Evan would like to take a moment for his own public service announcement about enjoying life:

Smile at all times,

Enjoy crawling back,

and forth.

Celebrate your accomplishments,

(he did this all by himself)

and enjoy the outdoors.

(Especially the swings at the park)

Evan wishes you all a great weekend... and me too!

What a weekend!

First, we started out Saturday evening with my 10 year high school reunion. Good ole Berkmar people know how to drink too! Just about everyone was toasted at the end of the night. I don't drink so it was probably a good thing I was in charge of the money at the end of the night. Four hours of an open bar costs a lot of money for 100 people.

After we woke up on Sunday and were 3 hours late to a birthday party, we came home and put Evan in his pool. He enjoyed it for the most part.

He's pulling himself up now, which includes pulling himself out of the pool. If he can reach your hand or arm, he'll take hold, stand up, and try to walk out in a heartbeat. We are about to be in so much trouble.

Sunday evening ended with an evening at La Cazuela. Beers and Margaritas all around, except for Evan and me. He's wearing the jacket because since he is so tall, we figured he won't fit in it when it gets cool again. My mom bought him his "My First Levis" outfit so we gave it a one time shot.

And lastly, I thought this was a cute shot even though he wasn't looking at me. He was just content at this moment.

Our weekend was good but way too much packed into 48 hours. My mom took care of Evan for most of it and we appreciate and love you so much for that. Thank you!

To Andy, Brandi, and Ethan, we are so sorry we were 3 hours late to your 2nd birthday party. We're losers, we know it. That's what you get when you stay out too late on a Saturday night and lose the party invitation. We owe you dinner soon!

To everyone else that reads this fabuloso blog, lots of love to you! Have a great week!

Trying new things

Who knew that this...

and this....

Could do all this....

Stand and type

Try new foods

Make a mess!

Climb on people

and get into everything!

Cheers! Hope you all are having a wonderful week.

We Missed You All!

Trying to master the crawl




Elmo and Evan


So glad to see you all again

We are definitely back and we missed you all. First, we had a dead cable line in the yard. Next, it was replaced but had an internet block (go figure!). Lastly, we had a dead modem sometime between the 3 or 4 service calls Charter made. Either way, it is all fixed and better than ever. I will admit, I'm very internet dependent and I was going crazy without it.

Evan is 7 months today! I can't believe how fast he's growing. He is trying to crawl right now and still working on his first tooth. He has gotten very tall, somewhere around 29 inches now, which puts him in one year old clothes. He also weighs 19 lbs, 1 oz. This year is flying by but we are enjoying every minute.

I want to send out huge congratulations to my friends Erin and Sarah who are both pregnant, again! Erin, Brent, and Lana will have add a new member to their family in late February or early March next year and Sarah, Chris, Katie, and Aidan will add to their family around Christmas.

I'll try and put a few more posts up over the next week since I haven't had a chance to blog in 2 weeks! Blog with you soon!

Hmmm... blogger won't let me title this post. If they would have it would be, "Charter Still sucks!" Today, I told off the Charter rep because we were supposed to have service again as of Friday. That didn't happen and the second promise of today sure didn't happen. Sometime between 8 and 10 AM tomorrow, we hold yet another promise of restored internet and phone service.

My mom has been wonderful and let us come over every night to check email and the internet but I'm tired of it. A few things have happened over the last week that I just haven't gotten a chance to blog about.... Evan's lovely cold and trip to the doctor on Saturday for nothing, me quitting the wedding guild (yay!) and us looking for another church, me trying to collect high school reunion money without a computer with two weeks to go, and just other non-important things. I hope to blog again with pictures and I hope it's tomorrow!

Love you all!

Computer's Down

I won't be posting all week because our Charter service is down which means our home phone is down and so is our internet access. Don't get Charter, they suck! I'll read your blogs when I visit my mom's house, otherwise, the stupid people will come out for service on Friday. We might cancel them before that too. Have a good week!