Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Happy 3rd Birthday Braden!

A few weeks ago Braden turned 3! So hard to believe that my baby is all grown up. We wanted to make his day extra special so he would know how important he is to us and how thankful we are for him, so the night before his big day, Austin and I snuck in his room and filled his floor with 30 some balloons so that he would wake up to a big surprise. Surprised he was...here he is with some of his balloons...
The night before his birthday we had decorated our den with lots of streamers. If you know Braden, you know how obsessed he is with car washes so he was so excited to see the streamers and he kept saying "you made a car wash momma." We spent lots of time driving cars through the car wash the rest of the day.
Braden has been so into imaginative play lately. It has been so much fun watching his imagination take off these past few months as he pretends to be a fireman or a cook or a race car driver. His favorite though is anything that has to do with building. Whenever Austin has a project around the house, Braden is right behind him with a pen or a paint stick or a spoon pretending that it is a saw or hammer and that he is helping Austin. He will even want to wear his belt and pretends it is a tool belt. His imagination is huge! So we thought it would fun to get him his own tool bench. Here he is testing it out...
After lots of projects on the tool bench, I made Braden pancakes (birthday tradition) in the shape of a 3. I tried to get pictures, but he ate the pancakes before I could get to it. During Asher's morning nap we watched the movie Cars (Braden's favorite), followed by lunch at Wendy's...again Braden's choice. After lunch, I took the boys to Monkey's Treehouse for a day of fun. After Daddy got home, we opened a few more presents, followed by a dinner of meatloaf and boxed SpongeBob Macaroni which Braden had requests just the day before. We finished the night with cake which I did not make b/c I still do not have a kitchen :) Here is the cake -

So I decided to video the whole cake event which means I have no pictures of Braden blowing out his candles...oh well! Here is Boo eating his cake in his underwear!
A little family picture (minus Asher who had gone to bed before the cake had even been blown out) -

Okay and this is for me more then anyone else, but here is sweet Braden in years past...

First Birthday -
Second Birthday -

Third Birthday - Hope your day was special sweet boy!! We love you so very much!

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Missing this already...

I was in the car this afternoon on my way to a baby shower when I heard the words to this familiar song by Trace Adkins. I'm normally not a huge country fan, but the words to this song literally made me stop and think and with tear filled eyes, I found myself reminiscing back through days gone by and found myself longing for more time with my children, more time with my husband and more time to just be content. It's so easy sometimes in the chaos of days that seem so mundane to forget how quickly this season of my life is passing. Oh Lord how I pray I will cherish these moments with my family, as each moment is a gift from You!!! Here are the sweet words that made me so emotional today...

You're gonna miss this
You're gonna want this back
You're gonna wish these days
Hadn't gone by so fast

These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you're gonna miss this