Family Update with Pictures!!!!!

San Diego Summer Internship

San Diego Zoo

Back in Atlanta

My Silly Xander

Brayden eating cake on his 1st Birthday

My three boys

Brayden

Xander

San Diego Zoo

Xander and his "Cool Moves"

Ready for a 3D adventure at Lego Land

It is really fun to watch our little guys grow up.  Xander has been taking swimming lessons and loves it!  He loves to be in the water.  In a couple weeks he is going to start Shooting Stars Basketball.  That will be so fun to watch! Xander also loves to randomly sing songs.  Almost every song that he makes up starts with him singing, “Every singing day……”   Xander loves to do "Cool Moves" and constantly says, "take a picture of this one Mommy!"  He is also pretty good with the ladies.  All of his best friends right now are girls and he gets along with them so well.  There is one little girl, Addison, that is apparently quite a little chatter box.  To get a break from that, Addison's mom is always asking Wendy to let her take Xander so he can babysit her!  Addison also tells her mom that Xander is the only boy that has ever given her a kiss on the cheek.   

His other little best friend is Hazel.  He loves Hazel!  In fact, a couple weeks ago we left him and Brayden at Hazel's house to be babysat.  Well, at dinner, Xander and Hazel were sitting at the kids table having a little dinner date and apparently he couldn't stop complementing her.  Her mom told us that he said, "Hazel, you are beautiful."  "Hazel, you are pretty."  "Hazel, you are sexy."  Whoops, I guess Greg should probably watch what he says when the kids are around!  Besides that, he just keeps growing and learning.  His two favorite games to play are hide-and-seek and a form of catch where one person passes the ball to the other and then has to tag them.

Brayden has been quite the little hoot lately as well.  He started walking in September and now he wants to go everywhere.  Church is somewhat miserable (can't wait until that wonderful 18 month age comes and he can go to nursery :) ).  It is funny, because he says "yeah" to everything.  Much more pleasant than saying, "no" to everything.  He is also our mischievous little boy.  He is usually the last one to go to sleep, always trying to keep Xander up and wanting to play.  He has also learned that crying gets Xander in trouble (which to be fair, Xander quite often deserves to get in trouble at those moments).  He will often cry until Xander is on time out, then is magically better.  Brayden’s newest trick is spinning. If I say, “Brayden, are you tricky?” He will say “Yeah” and then I say, “Spin, Spin, Spin.” And he starts spinning.  He really can only make it around once before he falls over giggling. 

It is fun to see some aspects of his personality coming out.  He is quite artistic.  He already loves to sit at our little kids table and color with anything he can get his hands on.  We get a little nervous with pencils because he starts to walk around with them and I'm just afraid he is going to fall and poke is eye out (he still wobbles when he walks and isn't incredibly stable.  Xander also likes to take advantage of that).  We put them up high, but that doesn't stop him from climbing up onto the table to try and reach them!  He also loves music.  Wendy likes that because Xander used to cry when she would sing, but Brayden always gives her a big smile.  He likes to turn up the music (which he learned amazingly fast from seeing us do it a couple times, whoops) and then he dances.  It is not much of a dance, more of a bobble up and down, but no one taught him that.

I have been singing a lot again lately.  Now that we are back in Georgia I have been going to singing lessons.  I sang a duet of, “A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief” a couple weeks ago in church and I’m planning on singing again during Christmas time.  I also just bought a sewing machine that I am excited to make Christmas presents with.  I already made blankets and I plan to make pillowcases, a wall Cars Wall quilt, and a dress for me.  I hope it will be wearable. 

Greg’s been pretty busy with his research.  He has just proved a pretty awesome new optimization method.  He is really excited to time stamp it so he will get the credit of figuring it out.  It will be done soon.  Greg is going to graduate in a year and a half with his Ph. D from Georgia Tech, so we are pretty excited for that.  He has gotten quite a few publications so far so that is good news.   When he graduates we will move to San Diego where he has a job waiting.   But for now we are loving Atlanta and all the friendships and fun that we have been blessed with.