Quick weekend trip...

We took a last minute trip to Charlotte on Friday.  Right away Colin jumped into his car and starting driving...

... check out the tongue!  Silly boy!
While we were outside, I heard something behind me...

Two crazy rabbits!  And I mean they were crazy!  They got so close to me! 
We had a good time... when we were packing up on Sunday morning we realized we were missing something...

(yes that is the Today Show...) Can you find our missing item???

ha!  Funny what you will find and where!

So yesterday (Mother's Day) on our way home, we stopped by my best friend Marsha's house!  She has two horses and so I got to ride with her!  Meet Brody:

Marsha has been my best friend since kindergarten!  (That is about 25 years for those that are counting!) We grew up doing e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. together!  Including riding horses.  Marsha has always owned horses, I got my first (and only) horse in the 6th grade.  It was our absolute favorite thing to do!  Here is Colin being introduced:

Since college, I sold my sweet horse, and didn't really ride much until we moved to Alabama.  There I met a lady and rode with her, as well as watched her horses (and other animals) when they went out of town.  But that has been over 3 years ago!! 

So, I was in heaven when I got to get on this sweet horse and ride with my best friend! 
We went on a trail behind her house.  Garet, Colin and Skip (Marsha's husband) rode the four wheeler by us where Garet snapped this picture with his phone:

I was excited to let Colin meet the horses and was even more excited when I held out my hands for him and he readily got on the horse with me!

Don't worry, Marsha was holding Brody the whole time (I just did a bit of photoshopping in the last picture)  =) 
And one of my favorite pictures of Colin and I is posted on A Beane A Day if you want to see it.

Then Garet came to get him off the horse and he didnt' want to get down!!  So we walked a tiny bit.  Colin loved it!  And so did I! 

I had a great Mother's Day - I also got treated with breakfast, a massage certificate, and dinner!  I am so blessed and thankful to be a mother to my sweet boy! 

My boy and me...

Garet had to go to Wilmington for a work conference for a few days... so Colin and I have been having fun here!  Want some milk?

I have enjoyed our time so much!  I have just soaked up every bit of him.  I have really, really loved having this time with Colin.   =)

 We have spent a lot of time outside... Colin found a limb of pine needles that he swept with...

Like he really went around the yard sweeping.  It was so cute.  He would sweep, then look up at me to make sure I saw him "cleaning"

We have gotten a lot of housework done too, believe it or not!  Just like sweeping outside, Colin is a big help cleaning inside.  It may take me a little longer to do things - but it is much more fun having him helping. 

For Easter (I know it was over a month ago!!) Colin got a water table, and we haven't even taken it out of the box yet!  But I have a feeling this week could be the week!  Especially since Colin popped a hole in the box!

When I am cooking Colin likes to pull up a chair and hang out at the counter.  He watches, plays with whatever I have on the counter, drinks his milk... and sometimes he makes messes...

Guess he doesn't like milk on his face.

Colin also figured out how to eat his popsicle!  (Remember he was grabbing it by the actual popsicle part)

The only thing about this was that he sat in his wagon to eat it, and I pulled him around some.  And then realized that he wanted me to pull him around the entire time he was eating the popsicle... which was a LONG time.  At least I got some excercise =)

Today was raining and gloomy outside, so we decided to do some drawing...

Check out his hand!
He really wanted to cap the markers himself...  at least they are washable!
In this next picture I had just said to him, "Hey, Colin... you have something on your face."

He was like, "right here mom???"
Oh I love this kid so much! 
We had tons of fun together, but we sure are glad Daddy is home!!

Love...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMAMA!!!

Today is my mom's birthday!!  Wish we were there to help celebrate!  I will be there in a couple weeks though - and after I give her her present I will have to do a post about it =)

I love you mom!!  Hope you have a fantastic day!  Can't wait to see you again!

Our Thursday...

This morning we woke up to a sick dog...

Poor sweet Suzi... if you know her at all, then you know she gets really weirded out by people coughing - well I happen to be sick right now, and I coughed myself to sleep last night. So she must have gotten so worked up and nervous about it that she got sick.

Sooo that was the way our morning started. Fun.
Then I got Colin up, to discover that Daddy had fun dressing him in his pjs last night:

After breakfast we all went on a walk around the neighborhood, then Colin and I took advantage of the awesome weather! We grabbed a snack and headed outside. Colin had his snack in one had and dirt in the other...

... isn't that the way you do snack time??

After lunch and nap, we headed back outside with a homemade popsicle!

We didn't want to use fruit juice, so I used some mixed frozen fruit I had in the freezer (strawberries, peaches, cantelope) and then I added broccoli. Sounds good right? =) I saw it in a magazine and, hey, my boy doesn't eat his veggies, so why not?!
He hasn't ever had a popsicle, so he doesn't seem to know exactly how to hold it - and he wouldn't let me show him, so I guess he'll figure it out eventually...

Notice he is shirtless now... we headed into the backyard after this and he may or may not have laid the popsicle in the grass then continued to eat it. When he finished he was so messy that I got out the hose and we both ended up pretty soaked! It was so much fun!

Day at the beach...

This morning, we headed to the beach!

It was perfect!  We went to Ocean Isle (about 40 min away) and we were pretty much the only ones on the beach!  Perfect!

Colin had his bucket and a few shovels, and he had a blast!  At first we spent lots of time down at the water.  The tide would knock Colin off balance some, but he didn't seem to mind.  He kept wanting his bucket filled with water.

Then we headed up to our "spot" and played in the sand.  I knew Colin would love that part - and boy he did!  We had fun digging a hole and filling his bucket with the sand.  I love the next picture with his tongue out!  (He does this when he is totally concentrating on something)

After that, Colin enjoyed running to the water, then back up to the sand.  I caught a picture of the run...

 Hilarious!  You can see the smile from ear to ear!
Colin also gave me a nice collection of seashells.

Garet took a 15 minute break and relaxed while Colin and I played, then I took some time to relax.  Though I don't think either of us really "relaxed" we were too busy watching the other with Colin!  He had so much fun, it was really awesome. I had to capture Colin running to Garet all the way down by the water...

When we decided it was time to leave, Garet stripped down Colin and took him in the water to rinse off the sand...

We had soooo much fun!  The weather was perfect, the beach was clear, no traffic, no sunburn, it was a really good day! 

Bubbles...

My sweet boy has so much fun blowing bubbles!  He gets a little close to the wand though (as in it pretty much ends up in his mouth!)

He is so funny!
I had these bubbles on the counter and Colin kept pointing saying "bubble, bubble". 

What a fun kid!

Back in the groove...

We got back on Wednesday and quickly got back into our routine here.  Colin watched Garet unpack the car...

I decided to clean out closets and drawers.  In Colin's room I had an empty box of wipes, which Colin sat in...

Ha!  Silly kid!

We had a good weekend.  We didn't do too much - Colin did come up with a new game while I was making dinner one night.  He loves balls - so he climed up on one chair, and tossed the ball into his highchair!

Then we yelled "YAY!" and he got down got the ball, climbed back up, threw it again... it was very entertaining!

When he missed it I said "oh man" then Colin started saying "oh minn", it was soo cute!  Love him!

 We have a little cut out upstairs that looks out into our dining room.  Colin loves to look over it at whoever is down there.  This is on his way to bed Sunday night =)

Our family time...

Garet got to Charlotte Friday night, so Saturday the Beane's were all together again!  It was soooo great to have Garet back!  I missed him so much!  And Colin was so excited to wake up to Daddy! 

So, we decided to have some family time!  We went to a nice area down the road from my parents and took Colin to a bounce house.  The area for kids his age was just these soft things that you could stack...

But with Garet with him we were able to take Colin on the "big" kids toys!

Colin LOVED it!  (so did Garet!)

Everything was a bouncy, blow up thing!  At the end was a BIG slide!  We weren't too sure how he would like it... here he is at the top...

... and on the way down!

HA!   He LOVED it!  And kept wanting to do it over again!  He is like a blur in these pictures!

There was also this basketball bounce thing... perfect for Colin!  He spent most of his time here.  None of the kids came close to getting the ball in this (super tall) net, but they had fun.  Colin would try to throw the ball to the other kids for them to shoot it. 

That night Garet and I went out.  We went downtown, which we never do!  And we had so much fun!  We had dinner, then went and got some frozen yogurt.  It was perfect.

On Monday we had another family outing... to Discovery Place!  Colin is still a bit young to enjoy everything there, but the things that were his age were awesome!  As I have mentioned, Colin loves water... so when we walked into the first area and there was a HUGE water table, he was in heaven!

It was pretty cold outside, so we took off his shirt so it wouldn't get soaked (then freeze him when we went out...) and they had these cute little aprons to put on.  He was so busy and into this water that he didn't notice us at all!

We finally got him to look around and discover that there were other things to do... like this light table...

... and there were tons of other fun, hands on activities in that area.  Then we walked down the hall some, and Colin got really excited to see these bears!

I mean he ran so fast to them!  It was hilarious - I mean  don't these look scary to you?! 
Then we got to the aquarium.  Colin was so interested in all the fish! 

There was a little rainforest that we could walk through... there was even a little net bridge that you could walk over.  I wasn't sure if Colin would do it... you could see through the net and it was high off the ground... but my boy seems fearless!

Upstairs was pretty much too old for him.  But he had a blast running around looking at everything!  There were lots of older kids that he liked to watch.  The next picture Colin was putting torn newspaper in this tube, and there was air that blew the paper up and out the top of the tube.  So simple, yet so interesting =)

We had so much fun!  There was even a few little computer monitors that Colin could look at...

After this we went out to lunch - where Colin filled up on two big cups of milk - then it was back to my parents house for a nap.  It was nice to get out as a family and play!  We had the best time!