Got it!

I don't mean to gross anyone out, but I just wanted everyone to know that I got that dang spider. My Dad called me and told me that I needed to kill the spider before Craig got home, just in case it "disappeared." It was good advice, I really would have been worried if I waited for Craig to get home, only to find that the spider was gone. Yuck. Me and my baseball bat took out that spider and all is good. I cleaned the slide really good and another not as big spider crawled out from one of the cracks, so I killed that one as well. Spiders 0, Lisa 2. Oh yeah!

Another Eww!!!!

You can see the spider in the mailbox which is right in the center of the picture under the doorbell.


I really do not like spiders! Not at all. I was walking out to the mailbox to mail off my brother's soon to be belated birthday card, when I just happened to notice this giant spider just lounging in Peyton's "mailbox" on his slide. Yuck! I really hate spiders and I don't know how to kill it. Usually I just smash them, but this one is hard to get to and I really feel like it might get me. Plus I don't know what kind of spider it is. All I know is that it is huge and it is on Peyton's slide. Maybe when Craig gets home, he can be a hero and save the day and get rid of the spider. Yeah right, I think he is even more afraid of spiders than I am. Anybody else want to come and save us? Eww, maybe I don't like living here after all. Too many giant critters! Nothing like Texas critters, huh Kelly, and Dustin and Jen!

Eww!!!

These pictures are kind of gross, but everytime I tell my family that we are pressure washing the house, the driveway, or the deck, they really don't understand what in the world that needs done for, so this time I took pictures of our driveway while we were cleaning it. We did the entire driveway when we first moved in 18 months ago, but it was time to do it again.

This part of our driveway doesn't get much sun, so slime grows on the concrete. You can see the clean part that Craig is standing on has already been cleaned. The dark part at the bottom of the picture has not been cleaned yet.

See the nasty slime. Yuck!

It is hard to believe that all that slime grew in 18 months

Yuck! Last year, Craig had a huge part that he hadn't cleaned yet and he wrote "Craig loves Lisa" I should have taken a picture of that. I guess it is like writing in the sand.

Our new little artist

I loved to color when I was little, so I figured Peyton would too. I decided that he was old enough to have some crayons, and up until today, he has just written on paper. Well, silly me, I forgot to put the crayons up, and he decided to see if the crayons drew on the wall just as good as paper.

They do!

He is mad because I took the crayons.

Just looking at his masterpiece.

He did a great job. I wasn't mad though. My wall was a little bit too white anyways. It was easy to clean off with a magic eraser, so no harm done. I did learn my lesson and will be keeping the crayons always in my sight while he is coloring.

Stop and smell the flowers

We have been trying to teach Peyton to be soft and gentle with flowers when he smells them. He is trying really hard to smell this flower without breaking it. I think it is cute.

Grab a flower.

Gently bring it up to your nose.

Mmm...Smells good.

Mmm... really good!

Ouch!

Peyton had his very first banged up bleeding knee. (I know first time mom here, has to document everything!) He didn't even cry and it didn't even seem to slow him down much!

Peyton's new slide

We have some friends that moved into a house and this slide was left in the yard, so they cleaned it up and gave it to us. Peyton loves it! It couldn't have come at a better time. This child loves to climb up on things and this is a safe alternative to climbing up the piano.

Fun times!

He is even really good at standing up real tall on it.

This is his favorite way down, although he does like to go on his stomach face first as well.

Silly boy!

Hives!

Poor Peyton has been gettin hives all over his face, arms, and legs lately. You can see a hive on his cheek in this picture. Poor little boy. Craig has bad allergies and we think that this is just allergies. They go away after about 30 minutes.

April 26, 2008 A day at a traveling petting zoo

Ok, so here I am trying to catch up again. One day, I really will be caught up on my blogs. Hah! Well, back in April, a petting zoo came traveling through little mayberry here, and we took Peyton over to see the animals. He loved it! They had goats, ponies, a calf, a llama, even a tiger (although you couldn't pet it), an snake, and a camel. We pretty much just pet the goats, and the llama. Peyton really thought the goats were dogs, and he kept barking at them. He wanted to feed all of the animals straw that they had all down on the bottom of their pens. It was really fun, oh, and it was all free. Even better!

Here is Peyton getting some straw to feed the goat.

Peyton loved petting the llama.



I actually hate llamas, so I was a little bit uncomfortable being this close to one. Back when I was little, I was feeding a llama a carrot, and he spit it all over me. It was horrible. I am still traumatized by that, so I hold a grudge towards all llamas, but not bad enough to not let Peyton near one. I guess that is what a good momma should do huh!

Time to feed the goats

This was a little pony that Peyton really liked looking at.

I love this picture. I almost didn't get him in the shot, but I love how it shows how dang excited he was.

Peyton was really interested in feeding the goats....

but what he insisted on doing is feeding them the straw that was on the ground.

Peyton petting the goat

Peyton loved petting the goats. He really thought they were dogs though and kept saying "ruff ruff".



This was a little calf. It kept licking us.

Peyton is growing so fast!

I really had good intensions to really keep up with posting on my blog here, but I guess I have just been really busy. With what I don't know, but anyways. Here I am and here is a quick update about just how much Peyton is growing and about the things he is "into" right now.

Last month he went to the doctor for his 15 month well baby checkup. He really hasn't grown much lately. It seemed like during his first year, he would only wear some of his clothes for a few weeks, then it wouldn't fit, but now (thank goodness) he is getting more "wear" from his clothes. In fact, if the weather hadn't changed, he would pretty much still be wearing most of the clothes that I bought for him last fall. I am glad that he stopped growing so fast, because he is already wearing 2 toddler clothes and he is only 16 months old. Dang. Well, anyways, here are the stats from his doctors appointment.

Weight: 26.8 lbs (which I could have sworn he was 30 pounds by now) and he is in the 75th percentile.
Length: 33 1/2 inches and he has dropped from off the charts to only the 96th percentile.
His head is 18 3/4 inches and in the 50th percentile. Hmmm.

Peytons's favorite foods include the following:

Fruit of any kind, strawberries are his favorite (in fact, we can't even say the word, or he runs over to the fridge and tries to get them out), grapes, pears, peaches, oranges, watermellon, cantelope, and honeydew.

Vegetables of any kind, green beans and peas are his favorite, carrots, corn, olives, pickles (another favorite), potatoes, tomatoes, squash, cauliflower, and brocolli. He loves it all.

He really doesn't like too much meat, but will eat the occasional chicken nugget and deli meat, but we have recently discovered that he loves meatloaf and Whoppers from Burger King and he ate an entire bean burrito by himself while we were in Utah!

He loves pasta of anykind, cheese quesadillas, ramen noodles, and french fries. Whew! This kid loves to eat, which is really nice.

Words that he says now:
Meow, kitty, rufruf (for dog), daddy, momma, yes, ball, bath, bubbuh (for bubbles), pacie, uh oh, fishy (for goldfish), nana (for banana), this, somthing that sounds like "what's that?", and the all important no.

Words that he signs:
More, milk, drink, eat, all done, and he shakes his head yes and no. It is funny when he is trying to tell us something and he doesn't know how to sign it, he will go through all of his signs in frustration and then scream.

Body parts he knows:
Toes (he knows them as piggies), head, ears, tummy, and nose.

Peyton loves to climb on everything and empty any drawer, cabinet, box, shoe rack, etc.

We have really enjoyed our time so far with Peyton. He is such a blessing for us and we thank Heavenly Father everyday for our little family.

A few spring pictures.

I realized that I really haven't taken any pictures of Peyton sleeping, so I snapped this picture. He loves to have a ton of blankets in his crib to snuggle with. He has to adjust them just right before he can fall asleep. He is such a good sleeper. He sleeps for at least 10-12 hours at night and then takes a 3 hour nap in the afternoon. I love it. I used to rock him to sleep at night, which was a really bad habit, but I think it was more for me than for him. He is such a busy boy, and he is always on the go, so he really doesn't snuggle very much, except when he is sleepy. So at night, I would read him stories, sing him songs, and rock him until he was asleep. Sometimes this would take an hour! We have since condensed this bedtime routine and he actually points to his crib when he wants to go to sleep. It is wonderful. I just put him down and he is asleep. He doesn't even cry when I leave the room. I really should have done this sooner.

Peyton is such a good picture taker when he wants to be. I set him up on this small ledge to take his picture, then I realized that there were a ton of ants. Whoops!

Peyton loves to play outside and see everything there is to see. He bangs on the windows and our patio door and wants to go outside. I am very grateful that we have had such nice weather.

Azelas

As we were driving home from the airport, I saw all of the azelas (I hope I am spelling that right) were in bloom. I was so excited to see what ours looked like. As we pulled up, our yard was beautiful. Utah and Idaho were really brown still, and it was nice to return home to beautiful North Carolina. Last year, I was excited for these bushes to bloom, but just when all of the flowers were about to bloom, we got a deep frost and killed all the blossoms. I was really bummed. This year it was spectacular.

We have about 30 bushes in our front yard.

Here is what our house looked like. So pretty.

Peyton even got out to see the new pretty flowers.

He really liked them and so did the bees, so we had to be careful.