Brandon learned how to ride his bike!

He asked if we could get his Spiderman bike out so that he could ride it in Mama & Papa's basement. It took him about 5 minutes to figure out how to pedal correctly. This is something we tried a lot at the end of the summer, but he wasn't quite tall enough and couldn't quite figure it out. This bike sits him up differently than the tricycle he's used to riding, so this was quite a big accomplishment.

This is great timing because now when the weather gets nice Brandon will be able to ride his bike and I'll be able to take the "little ones" in the stroller. Great times ahead!!!

Karate Kid

Looks like he just had a tough loss.

January Photos

Saucer riding.

It certainly didn't take long for Brandon to realize that he would much rather pull Jordon along instead of sitting on the saucer himself. Jordon was a pretty good sport....


...considering Brandon didn't have too much experience in pulling a sled.

Good thing for all the extra padding!

SNOW DAY!!

Men at work.

Playing pilot, notice the "pilot" goggles and driving gloves. I'm not sure what the winter coat has to do with being a pilot though.

Jordon, King of the Boxes.

Happy New Year!

We decided to start 2009 off with a BANG!!
Within the first 6 months of 2009 we plan to:

• pack up and move out
• partially unpack and settle in a "new" house
• have a baby
• sell our old house
• watch our new house being built
• repack, move and settle into our new house

Don't worry we know that some might say we are crazy for choosing to take on all these stressors at one time. However, we feel confident that this is the direction that God is leading us and so we are anticipating on experiencing peace throughout this crazy adventure!

On January 4th we moved out of our house and into the house where Kacy grew up. Her parents still own it, but don't live there. We wanted to get the boys fairly settled in to their "new" place before the baby arrives. This also has allowed us to leave behind most of our furniture to help stage our home in hopes that it'll sell quickly. We plan on being in this house until the new house is done being built, earliest being the end of May. It's a blessing to have this house available to us; otherwise, I don't think we would have attempted to try to put our current house on the market and open for showings with our crazy/messy lifestyle and a new baby on the way. We think that would be way more stressful for us!

So as of now, we are living about 20 minutes away from our other house and we are adjusting fine to a more simplistic lifestyle-no tv, couch, bed frames, cribs, etc. So far it's fine, but we are guessing that by the time our new house is built we'll be itching to get fully settled in and open some boxes of stuff that we haven't seen for awhile.

Christmas 2008

Here are some Christmas highlights!

Brandon carefully lined up all his cars in a row from biggest to smallest and then started a new row with his three sets of keys.

TANK came for a visit. This was Jordon's first real interaction with him, so it was pretty fun to see how much they liked each other.

Brandon got this Colts pillow and his baseball pants and socks for Christmas.

Uncle Rob was home for Christmas and his birthday!!

The Nees Boys

Brandon was so excited for me to get them matching outfits. (Of course they have a baseball theme to them too.) He was so happy to be matching Jordon all day. I tried to get a good picture of them all day long and these are the only two that I was able to get.

No, I do not allow Brandon to do this, but it was almost the end of the day and I still didn't have a good photo of the two of them, so I didn't make him get off the window sill until I at least snapped a picture. (Too bad it didn't turn out better!) This was pretty cute though because they were working together with tools and playing so nicely together. I just love it when they play well together.

Here's Jordon going in for a goal!

Brandon the Builder

A Lowes was just built right in front of our neighborhood. Which is great news just by itself, but they also offer these Kid's Workshops every other weekend. This was the first one we went to and Brandon had a great time.

Here he is playing with his finished product: a truck that carries a car in the back. How fun is that!!

A job well done!

Brandon with cousin Isabel having a picnic on the porch. My cousin Allison and Aunt Lynn were able to come visit for a weekend in October. Brandon and Izzy loved playing together.

Uncle Rob also came for a visit that weekend. They too had lots of fun wrestling building blocks-and of course watching Bob the Builder!

Jordon just thinks he's king of the world here riding this little car. He knows this is Brandon's toy, so I think he thinks he's pretty big stuff getting to ride on it.

Happy Halloween!

I was able to get some of the photos from my dad's camera.

Quick run! I just stole a Snickers bar!!

Candy snatcher!

We had a great Halloween! The weather was absolutely wonderful so we didn't have to hide layers under the costumes which was very nice. Brandon was able to wear his costume to school on Thursday. That was lots of fun! Just about every girl in the class was decked out in a puffy princess dress and most of the boys in the class wanted nothing to do with their costume, but Brandon wore his proudly!! After school we also got to go to Pete's work for a big party. Brandon painted a pumpkin (all green) and watched other kids take pony rides (he wasn't at all interested in doing it himself). Jordon cracked me up with his monster costume because it just seemed to be so fitting for him. That outfit was just made for him and I just loved watching him crawl around and play with it on. I think I might dress him in it more just to get more use out of it and just so I can have a laugh.

This is Brandon as he walks away from the first house he Trick or Treated at. I'd say he looks like a satisfied customer.

Carter (a firefighter) and Brandon (a baseball guy) had a great time going to several neighbors houses to collect candy. What great friends!

Run away monster!

Jordon and Brandon at our neighborhood Halloween Bash. Unfortunately they didn't get to participate too much in all the fun because Mommy was working at the event. But they showed up just in time to get a hot dog and get their picture taken!

October trip to the Pumpkin Patch

This is the second year that Mama has taken us to the pumpkin patch during her fall break. It was a bit chilly, but the sun was out and we all had a great time!

This was the tractor ride out the pumpkin patch. They didn't bother telling us that the only pumpkins left in the patch were split and yucky, so we just walked around and didn't pick any.

There was a fine selection of pumpkins pre-picked. Jordon got to ride in the cart. It's amazing how much heavier he is to hold when he's wearing an extra pair of pants and a jacket!

There was an apple orchard there too. Brandon liked looking at all the apples that had fallen on the ground. He also really liked watching them bottle up apple cider!!

Uncle Rob's Visit

Rob was able to visit for a weekend. Brandon and Jordon enjoyed playing with him.

Notice how Brandon is charging at Rob.

We'll see if Brandon ever grows at tall as Rob. He's taller than most kids in his class, but only time will tell if he's got the Smith height genes!

Brandon hammered this bird house together all on his own. It's part of this really kit that Home Depot offers for free on the first Saturday of everything month. This was our first time going and we'll definitely be going back. Brandon got an apron, which he called an apricot. He couldn't wait to come home and paint it all green.

He's a very careful painter. He covered it with a dark green and bright green and now displays it proudly in his room--too bad birds!

Happy 1st Birthday Jordon!

He sure did a good job destroying his cake; however, he was a little too full to eat any of it. Yep, that's right, he didn't taste one bite of the cake-just tore it apart.

(it's carrot cake with raisins in case you were curious)

Brandon wrapped up a drum and gave it as a gift.

I think he likes the truck!

He couldn't decide what toy to play with...the drum or the truck..both so fun!

I think we all agree that it was a great birthday!