PURE

We're moving into some unchartered territory with our little guy. As we get ever nearer to that famous 2 year old mark, Garrett is getting more and more independent. With it comes a lot of attitude and spunk. (Remember the red hair.) He is generally a happy and fun little guy, but has recently started whining, yelling "NO," and throwing a few fits. This is obviously frustrating for Greg and I as first-time parents. It's easy to wonder what we're doing wrong and think our kid wouldn't be acting like that if we were better parents. Do we need to be stricter, firmer, kinder, more loving and understanding? We're not sure. This parenting thing is tough sometimes.

Thankfully, we were blessed with a sweet reminder today of the goodness of our little guy's heart. There is a young man in our Church congregation with some sort of mental disability. It is my understanding he has autism, but I'm not sure. He generally sits apart from his family on a row by himself and doesn't seem to ever associate with anybody. I think most people are intimidated by him and just don't know how to respond to him, so they avoid him. (Myself included.)

This young man came in and sat behind us today. As soon as Garrett saw him, I could tell he was deeply concerned. He kept looking at the kid and then back at me with a very concerned look on his face. I tried smiling reassuringly at him and telling him it was okay, but he was very worried about this boy sitting behind us. He got off my lap and got some toys out of his bag. I thought he was just going to play with them, but before we could grab him, he was behind us and trying to share his toys with this young man. The poor kid didn't know quite what to do and reluctantly took the toy from Garrett. He handed the toy back to me and we tried to keep Garrett with us, but he was determined to share everything he had with this young man. I could tell it was making the kid uncomfortable and did my best to keep Garrett away from him, but Garrett didn't stop looking at him or worrying about him for the rest of the meeting.

As I watched Garrett looking at him and trying to make him smile, I was touched with the goodness of his little heart. Sometimes it's easy to get frustrated when he's whining or throwing a fit, but it was a sweet reminder of how pure he really is. Most people just ignore this young man at church, but Garrett noticed him and wanted him to be happy. It made me stop for a minute and realize what a blessing it is to have this sweet little spirit in our home and what a great responsibility we have to teach him to be kind and always keep his heart pure.

By the way, what good is a post without a picture? Here's my fellars after they got in from feeding the animals tonight.

Time for an Update...

Here's the latest and greatest from our clan.

Our house is moving right along. (I think I say that every time.) It's all framed, the windows and doors are in, rough plumbing is finished, HVAC is almost done (or maybe they finished yesterday? Not sure...), Greg said today the electrical is about 2/3 done. Good old Greg is working there every night until about midnight. If he looks a little tired the next time you see the poor guy, now you'll know why. I wish there was more I could do, but my current "condition" and Garrett make that a little tough. It's all coming together now and we are getting so excited. I'm really hoping to be in by the first of the year. (Greg laughs when I say that, but I still believe it's possible.)

They have started bricking the outside and it looks great. Here's a lovely picture of Ryan the brick guy on the basement patio. (I really need to take more pics. I have a few, but pictures of framed walls and electrical wires just aren't really that exciting.)


We had our first big snowstorm of the season. The G-Man was absolutely enthralled with the white stuff falling from the sky and couldn't wait to get out in it. He was relentless until finally Grandma caved in and took him out. (Please disregard his attire.)

I've mentioned this before, but Garrett is OBSESSED with the vacuum. I'm not kidding when I say he would spend all day, every day vacuuming if we let him. I've started hiding the vacuum and trying to distract him with other things for the pure reason that I don't think it's good for my trusty old Hoover to run that much.

The highlight of Garrett's day is undoubtedly our daily visits to Greg working at the house. He goes straight to the 4-wheeler and sits on it until we take him for a ride.

Uncle Mike is in town from NC, so we headed down to Grandma and Grandpa's for our first Thanksgiving dinner of the season. FANTASTIC meal! Garrett especially loved Grandma Jan's birthday cake.

Cousin Annabelle looked smashing in these lovely camo cowboy boots. Great look for her, don't you think?

Garrett and Uncle Mike had some good times playing on the stairs. (We're always so grateful for a new and energetic person who is willing to chase the kid around.)

When he isn't vacuuming, Garrett is most likely spending time with his second love--Clementine Cuties. He honestly eats at least 5 of them a day. He discovered where we keep them in the pantry and drags the bags all around the house. He also loves to take them all out of the bags and put them back in. Every orange I've pulled out recently has some suspicious looking bite marks and is usually missing a big chunk. Hopefully this Vitamin C overload will keep him healthy (and happy) through the next few months.

A Fabulous Weekend

I started off the fun Friday by going to the Collin Raye dinner show at the Desert Star Theater with my mom, her BFF Susan, sister Emily, and cousin Jan.


My mom and Suey LOVE Collin and paid the big bucks for front row seats.


Jan, Em, and I got the cheap seats in the back.

The front row paid off for these gals, though! Here they are proudly displaying their hands that had been kissed not once, but TWICE from Collin. He even said to Susan, "You're awesome." They were flying high the whole way home!

I had to run some errands Saturday morning and Greg was working at the house, so Garrett helped Pops rake leaves and clean up the yard.
The lawnmower breaking down was a big bummer for Sparky, but a major score for Garrett who was then able to have it all to himself!

Aunt Chelsea took Garrett down to the house to visit his dad and the boys. They had managed to catch a little pheasant hunting in the morning before starting to work, and Garrett apparently found a new friend. So sad I missed all this...

Chelsea said he hauled it all over the place and just kept saying "Ruff" and petting it. Oh Garrett...

We headed down to Grandpa and Grandma Phillips' house on Sunday for dinner and haircuts. Uncle Eric is Garrett's official haircutting buddy and gets the privilege of stripping down so he can attempt to hold Little G still.

It was getting rough and we had to call in Daddy for reinforcement. After a few tears and many treats, Garrett lost his mullet and is looking fantastic. I haven't gotten a picture of him yet, but he looks great. Thanks, Grandma Jan!

October 31

Our Halloween this year wasn't full of ghosts and goblins, but hammers and nails! We had multiple people volunteer to help us on Saturday, so we decided to take them up on it and threw together a major Halloween "party" at the house. Greg's dad and brother Brian, my dad and brothers Brett and Brian, my uncle Ric and cousin Tyler, and our friend/Brett's father-in-law Chad all spent the day helping us and oh boy--did we get a lot done! They started roofing and got lots of electrical work done, along with hanging windows and a bunch of other random things. By the time this house is built, we are going to be indebted to many, many people. We are already planning a big party once the house is done to begin the insurmountable task of trying to pay everybody back!

Now on to the fun stuff--Garrett the Dog! As previously mentioned in other posts, Little G LOVES dogs and as far as he's concerned, all animals say "ruff," so we decided a dog was the perfect choice. I had mentioned this to my aunt Paula, and she got right on it and found him a cute (and very affordable) costume on Ebay. (She actually ended up with 3 costumes, but that's another story for another day.) Garrrett has loved his costume and has worn it pretty much all day, every day this whole week. He would bring it to us as soon as he woke up and want it on. When he wasn't wearing it, he would play with it and drag it around the house.

Here's our little doggy...
I forgot to mention--he loved the costume, minus the hat part that actually makes it look like a dog and not just brown pajamas. Oh well. (He did like the hat when he was looking at it in the mirror, but that was about it.)

My cousin Kami and her new husband Kyle came out Saturday morning to check out the work on the house and volunteered to take Garrett with them for the day. I felt a little bad not spending Halloween with him, but it was a good opportunity for me to work at the house and it's pretty tough to get much done with him there, so we took them up on it. Garrett had a great day with them and we got much more done at the house than we would have chasing him around, so I guess it was a win-win. Thanks guys!

Kami and Kyle were hosting a Halloween party Saturday night, so once it was too dark to work and we were worn out, we headed to the big party to pick up our boy and enjoy a Halloween feast of chili, cinnamon twists, and homemade root beer.

Garrett's favorite part of the night wasn't the candy, but chasing people around with some kitchen tongs.

Brett and Chelsea showed up as Alaska and Hawaii (or something). Great costumes!

A rare happy moment with the dog hood on...

This scary guy showed up and started hitting on Chelsea.

The kids had a nice ride on Sean. Little did he know he would end up being a horse for Halloween!

My dad found his old army coat in the basement and dressed up as a younger version of himself.

It was a busy, but fun Halloween! We went to bed totally exhausted and were very grateful for an extra hour of sleep today. Greg said he felt like an 80 year old man when he got out of bed this morning. I guess that means I felt like an 80 year old pregnant woman...