what we've been up to

thanksgiving went off with a bang. noah and jay love to play with one another and the boys know what to do with leaves all piled up.

here are all the grandkids on the wagoner side of the family. jay is holding the newest addition, seth, noah's little brother. noah didn't want anything to do with him, but jay didn't have a problem holding seth on his own.

here's my sister and my families.

jay's really gotten good at throwing balls, including footballs. i think he'll be a good little ballplayer.

here's a picture of gramps with two of his grandkids reading books. i think they all had fun.

sundays have been reserved to cheering on the panthers. maybe they will get another win some time soon. jay loves to wear his panther jersey also known as his "football player".

on november 20th, we went with our sunday school class to the lazy 5 ranch. we had a great time and got to feed and pet all sorts of animals. at one time, jay was chasing a pig with a few of the girls. here's a glimpse of our trip to mooresville.

somehow jay made it in a picture with all girls. he's our ladies man.

our little monkey

i wanted to share a glimpse of our weekend starting from sunday night and going backward. we gathered the kids together to go a little trick-or-treating around the neighborhood before it got dark. i know it is better in the dark, but with little ones, when it's light outside is way better. jay was a little taker of candy. he doesn't know when to stop. one of our neighbors just let him keep taking it. jay finally grew comfortable enough to wear is monkey costume. earlier in the week i thought it was going to be impossible to get it on him.

here's a picture of all the trick-or-treating buddies

peyton king, olivia williams, natalie rhyne (olivia's cousin), jay, noah belote

saturday night we helped to celebrate jake trent's birthday. he turned two a couple of weeks ago. he got all sorts of cool toys and even had a little fire to roast marshmallows. i was surprised they weren't in the fire themselves.

saturday afternoon we went to our church's fall festival. there were so many people and so much fun. jay couldn't get enough of his candy and putting it in his bucket. we kept running into all sorts of people we knew.

here's one of jay's friends we ran into from daycare, alana. jay always talks about her and from the sounds of it, his name is common around their house too.

early saturday morning i took jay to the grocery store where they had pumpkins to paint for free. it was a cool idea and jay enjoyed it, even the cookie and juice he got.

we will just have to wait until next year to get more candy and to paint more pumpkins.

firetrucks and pumpkins

tonight, jay and garrett were busy carving the pumpkin. since jay is really into monkey's, why should the pumpkin be any different. take a look at the finished product.

here's jay manhandling his piece of pumpkin with his own carver.

jay didn't want to help garrett clean out the pumpkin. that would be too yucky!!

on sunday we went to noah's first birthday. the theme was firetrucks and even had his own firetruck at his party.

this is as close jay gets to eating cake; dipping his fingers in the icing and licking it off. well, this is a start since he didn't want to touch his own first and second birthday cakes.

jay and kayla hurd on the firetruck.

my turn to get on with my hat.

jay with his raisons that he has come to love.

september and october all mushed together

it has truly been a while since i've updated the blog, but here is a quick look at what we've been up to lately. between parades, birthday parties, going to the mountains and work ourselves, we have found a few down times, but not many. for me, work has been all about the P's (PLC's, PEP's, PDP's). these only make sense if you are a public school teacher, or maybe they still won't because i think i'm still confused. we've really been on the go.

here's jay and mommy at the labor day parade at matthews alive

noah, jay and livvie all ready to get their candy at the mint hill madness parade (sept. 25th)

jay has really come to love blowup bouncy things. here he is with hayley and calon at calon's birthday party.

another bouncy slide at lyla and sage's birthday party, (oct. 2nd)

yes, he's king of this castle

the next few pictures are from this past weekend when we took a trip to the mountains with our friends matt, bethany and jake trent. we visited grandfather mountain while we were there and had a blast.

we didn't know we would see any animals, but got a glimpse of a few bears on the way.

here's matt on the bridge. the first time he made it halfway and turned around. he did make it to the end the second go around.

jay wasn't scared though. he wanted daddy to take him everywhere on the mountain and didn't seem to mind the bridge at all.

here's the gang!!

daddy and jay posing for the camera.

school's back in session

school's back in session and i'm back to work. it's been pretty busy trying to get use to new kids, large classes, and waking up at 5:10 each morning. jay also moved up in rooms at "school" as well. we didn't know what would be in store when jay moved to the 2-year-old class with his new teacher mrs. mary. i'm so excited to see what he does each day. last week, the class started with a letter and number of the week. A and zero. this week it is B and 1. jay comes home with so many projects in his folder each day, we really don't have room for them all. jay's also starting to be the copycat around the house. anything we say, he tells us right back. kind of funny at times when you can get him to say big words. jay really has increased his vocabulary in the last few weeks. he can be one little chatter box. jay loves to sing as well now. wheels on the bus, itsy bitsy spider, abc's just to name a few. i think garrett sings most of these on the way to school each morning.

i wanted to leave you with a glimpse of a photo shoot we had the other weekend with cara justus of Cara Justus Photography.

jay's 2!!

today, jay turns 2. you never believe when people say the years will go by fast until you have a little one of your own. these last 2 years have gone by so quickly. it feels like yesterday that we were helping him walk and crawl and now he just does so much on his own. here is a glimpse of his party from saturday. there would have been more pictures, but they wouldn't upload, but hopefully you will get the idea of the good time we all had. we could not have asked for a better day with such good weather. i think it got cooler outside just for us.

the theme of jay's party was toy story. jay had his own cake in hopes of maybe eating it unlike last year, but that didn't happen. he just put his finger in it and took buzz off the top. at least he didn't scream and cry this year with the cake. he's making progress.

here is kayla hurd and noah belote playing in the water.

jay's cake quickly turned into a cake for the rest of the kids.

the summer continues...

we've been enjoying our summer and of course all of this hot weather. to bad it's not going away any time soon, but today we beat the heat and went with lori beth epley over to her parents house for a swim. since i'm now out of summer school and have a few weeks until butler starts back, i have a few days i can spend with jay. it was a nice start to the day and jay loved every minute of it. it took him a little bit to warm up to lori beth and the water, but after he did, he was everywhere. it made me a little nervous around the deep end when he was walking around, but most of the time he stayed near the shallow end and on the stairs. by the end of the morning, he was running and jumping into the pool and was definitely not scared of getting water in his face.

this past tuesday night, garrett was out of town, megan was working, and jeremy had a game and noah was left in limbo. knowing that jay and noah play well together i suggested that he come over the house and play. i didn't know about the weather and the pop up showers that keep coming around, so we didn't venture out to the fields, but stayed home instead. they played, ate dinner, played some more, took a bath together, and played a little more. they had a great time, but really gets me thinking how did my parents do it with twins? they can be a handful and really act like boys when they are around one another.

over the weekend, garrett changed jay's crib into a toddler bed (or shall we say his own "big boy bed"). so far so good and not too many bumps and bruises. he some how got out of the bed on saturday night (i think he slept walked) and fell out of it on sunday night. other than that, jay stays in the bed and doesn't even get out when he wakes up in the morning. he just lays there waiting for me or garrett to get him out of bed. lets see how long this lasts.

another thing jay loves to do is color. normally we give him crayons, but i gave him markers one day. not a good idea because they can get everywhere. and when it says washable, it doesn't mean off of skin right away. it needs to wear off or you need to be put in the pool for a while for it to come off. he really has gotten really good at coloring. i've been really impressed, but of course it's not in the lines. if you look closely you can see his dirty, little hands.

we hope your summer is going as good as ours!!!

summer so far...

we've really had an uneventful summer so far. yesterday, july 4th, after church, we went to jason's dad's farm and just hung out and went back to their house for a movie. garrett decided he would fish a little and just look at what he caught. jay didn't want to touch the fish, but was interested in looking at it. we didn't sit and watch any fireworks, but did catch some on the way home as pine lake was shooting them off. we made our way down lebanon road through the crowd of cars so jay could see some fireworks go off, but i think being so tired, he was not too impressed.

where'd the fish go???

jay was sitting for this picture, but got away before i could snap the shot

in june the middle of june, we went to the beach with my family. we had a pretty good time and jay and noah seemed to have fun together.

such a good picture of jay

he has too much energy

the little pool hardly held both of them, but they managed too have loads of fun

sunscreen time!!! look at those little muscles!!!