Happy Birthday to Drew!

In honor of Drew's Birthday today, I thought I would post some of my favorite pictures of my boys.

Happy Birthday sweetie, we love you!

Now just a cute Braylon story. Tonight while taking his bath Braylon was pretending to be a seal. I got him out of the tub and took him up to get his p.j.s on. As he was getting dressed I said "look at that picture of me and you when you were just a tiny baby." Bray looked and said, "yep, but now I growed up into a seal." It is true, he has grown and so has his imagination!

Braylon and his gals

Last year on Andrew's Birthday we were in town for Drew's job interview. We got together with our friends to celebrate Drew's birthday and got this picture of the little ones (Lydia, Braylon, and Paige).
Check them out now! They have all grown so much in a year. Thanks everyone for helping celebrate Drew's birthday!

Snoozing...Again

Here is Braylon on our way to April's house for dinner yesterday. Although he was sleeping, he was not going to let go of his Darth Vader bucket full of Star Wars characters. He was so out of it...the open mouth shot, while not the most flattering picture, sure does make me laugh. He will pay me back some day I'm sure...I sleep like that too.

Playing with Paige

Last Saturday our friend's John, Stephanie, and Paige came down for a visit. We packed a picnic and took the kids to the park to play. I think we all had a lot of fun. Braylon loves having someone to play with and Paige is such a cute playmate! Braylon and his Daddy with their "long" summer hair.

The sandbox was fun...what I am sure was not fun was Paige's Mommy and Daddy trying to wash all of the sand out of her hair before she went to bed.

What a Whopper!

Last weekend Mom and Dad took Bray on his first fishing trip. Braylon would not use the cute little fishing pole Mom and Dad got him. Instead, the little time he did fish instead of throwing rocks into the water and playing with the worms, he used either Mom or Dads pole. When he did finally catch a little bluegill he said "that's a whopper!"

The Whopper

Helping MaMaw bring in her catch

Snoozer

When I got home from work today I could tell that Bray was exhausted. He and his daddy had gone to the park for a couple of hours earlier in the day. We cuddled and I hoped he would take a little nap. After a while Braylon got up and said he wanted to watch a movie. A little later as I was doing a few things on the computer I turned around and found this. Do you think he could get any closer to the TV?

Here are some other cute snoozing pictures.

The day he came home from the hospital.

Precious!

Using tigger for a pillow.

So sweet!

Braylon napping with PaPaw.

Drew takes advantage of every sleeping moment.

Hide and Seek

More random zoo pictures

Bray saw someone with one of these suckers as we were looking at the last exhibit...he had to have one...it was the only thing he had requested all day and he had been so good even with the heat...we had to back track back up to the top of the hill to find a place that was selling them. We couldn't have gotten him anything else that would have made him happier.

The standard on the turtle pic, which my son of course would not sit normally for. He laid on his belly backwards on it, he pretended to be sliding off one side and then another...finally, I just had to snap one.

I just thought this was a cute picture of my little man.

Of all the exhibits, this gold fish pond is the only thing that made him cry when we had to leave. Notice he had made a make-shift fishing pole out of a weed. MaMaw and PaPaw bought him a real fishing pole and we are going to try it out in MaMaw Bug's creek this weekend.

Bray was so tired, he fell asleep within three minutes of getting into the car. He woke up requesting to have his sucker back. He was such a mess!

The Zoo

Let me start by saying that I HATE driving through Pittsburgh...actually, I'm not a big fan of the city in general, nor was Braylon (for college sports rivalry reasons, which he sums up by pointing his thumb down, making an obnoxious noise and then stating "down with Pittsburgh"). But our trip to the zoo sure did change Braylon's mind. By the end of the day he was saying "I like the Zoo-Pittsburgh, but not that other Pittsburgh." Braylon was very excited about getting to see lions and bears initially, but I think he actually enjoyed the aquarium the most.

Bray and his folks!

A few disappointments:

Braylon: No snakes and the lions and most of the bears were sleeping.

Me: No orangutans or chimpanzees or hippos and the glass on the exhibits was very dirty (fingerprints) making it difficult to get a good look at a lot of the animals and even harder to get a good picture.

Drew: Not too impressed with the number/variety of animals in general compared to other zoos he has been to.

But some really cool things (besides the fact that it is so close):

Braylon got to pet a kangaroo and a deer. The lady monitoring the exhibit said the deer was 17 years old...no wonder it just laid there and let the kids pet it.

This one sea lion loved to show off and would smile and blow Braylon a kiss every time it swam past him. Look close you can see its fin up to its mouth for Bray's kiss.

We got to see a brand new baby elephant...just one week old. She looked so tiny next to her mama, but next to one of the zoo employees she was about the size of a pony.

We got to see a one-armed monkey. She was very interested in all the humans staring at her and was probably more aware of us than any other animal we saw.

The penguins were very cool. Some of them loved swimming around as close to us as they could get. It was hard to get good pictures because of the glare from the glass, the fingerprints, and the dim lighting, but I thought this one turned out pretty cool. Notice Bray's reflection in the glass.

Some other penguin pics for Paula. I loved Grandpa penguin...the white one...this penguin could hardly move and looked like he could fall over dead at any time. The other ones knew to leave him alone...I bet he is grouchy in his old age.