Date Night (with Coby)

I got to thinking the other day and we have not taken Coby out to eat since Robert's birthday in July - it was long overdue and a perfect excuse for us to go to Satchel's Pizza! The nice thing about Satchel's (besides their yummy salad and pizza!) is that they have a play area for kids to entertain themselves while you wait for a table. Coby had a great time playing in their toddler kitchen with the other kids in the restaurant and made us some delicious drinks.


I am proud to say he behaved wonderfully at the table, even entertaining our table-mates with the Gator chomp. He ate his salad and destroyed his pizza.

A great night for all of us =)

Merry Christmas!

A friend asked me a few weeks ago about our Christmas traditions...some were easy to rattle off. We all have the same stockings, we buy a REAL tree for the house, and we put up lights on our house right after Thanksgiving. Now that we're on our 2nd Christmas on our own, there are a few other events that are turning into "traditions."

First of all, there's getting our picture taken with Santa. I wasn't too crazy about it at first (he cried his head off last year and even this year wanted nothing to do with Santa) but it makes Aunt Lulu happy. Besides, I figure now that we've gotten the first two years under our belt, it will only get easier. That's what Santa told me this year anyway...

We also go see the lights at North Florida Regional Medical Center every year. This year Coby and I went with our good friends Shellayna and Sofia, who coincidently, we met at our Birthing class at NFRMC when we were still pregnant!
The last two years we have had Gram, Aunt Lulu, and Uncle Jon over for Christmas Eve dinner. Lasagna both times as per Robert and Aunt Lulu's request =o)
Robert and I stayed up late last night putting together the train table we got for Jacoby. It was the first thing he saw when he came into the living room this morning at 6 AM and he didn't stop playing with it until he went down for a nap at 11:00. He LOVES it!!!
After I took the above photo Coby says to me, "Happy choo-choo!" Christmas is just so much fun with a little one. I want to keep him like this forever...

Christmas Lights

We've been busy the last couple of weeks...

First Coby had a party with the play-group.
Then I had a staff holiday party.
Robert had one too, but no photos :o( Then Coby was sick Thursday, Friday, and most of Saturday. I know the doctors always say that teething does NOT cause a fever, but it seems like a pretty big coincidence that my kid always has one when a new tooth comes in!!! He's getting all of his canines in. One down, three more to go...

On Saturday we went out to Newberry to see Aunt Lulu in the Christmas parade. I credit his getting better in large part to the good time we had out there.

Lots of floats (including Aunt Lulu's) threw out candy, which Coby liked very much.
Even after the parade he wanted to stay on the sidewalk and watch the traffic go by! We finally got him in the car, but not without some crying...

Once we got home we turned on the Christmas lights.
And then Coby worked on fixing some of his toys.

Most of our Christmas break will be spent at home doing chores we've put off since Thanksgiving...like raking the leaves.


Tonight we went cruising through the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights.



This week we've got another long list of things to do: get photo taken with Santa, finish painting our bedroom, wrap presents, fix bike tires... Not to mention Christmas Eve excitement!

Magic Kingdom

Last December Robert and I signed up for Disney's "Give a Day, Get a Day" program. You have to give your time and volunteer one day and then you get free tickets to Disney World. We got a hotel so we wouldn't have to drive right back and took off for Magic Kingdom with a short "must-do" list.
1. Get a picture with Mickey.
2. See Cinderella's castle all lit up.
3. Ride Dumbo - this ended up being revised after a friend told me that Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride was exactly the same thing only the line was about 15 minutes and Dumbo was 2 hours.

First thing we saw when we got there were Chip and Dale.
Coby's favorite part about the park was definitely the characters. He went nuts when he saw these guys!
After waiting in line to buy popcorn, we went and waited in line to ride Aladdin's Magic Carpet Ride. My friend was right, the line went VERY quickly and it was exactly the same as Dumbo.

Then we decided to try Pirates of the Caribbean since the line wasn't too bad. This we could have skipped. Coby's favorite part was when Goofy ended up walking by our line and saying "hi" to him. It gets a little dark in there and one of the caves a pirate ship is firing canon balls at your boat! He jumped into Daddy's lap after that one!

At this point we decided to start heading over to Mickey's house. Coby went nuts inside! It has all this stuff he recognized from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on tv. Then we got in line to meet Mickey. Just like every other line at Disney it wound around and around, with no Mickey in sight. At least they had a movie screen playing old cartoons. So we get up to the front of the line and it's finally our turn. They lead us to these double doors, let us in, and there's Mickey! Jacoby lit up like the 4th of July - it really was magic!
I mean he literally couldn't decide what to do! He tossed Mickey his football and then went right up to him. This was definitely the highlight of the trip. We went from thinking okay...maybe we'll come back when he's 8 and can ride all the rides...to we have got to come back while he still believes this is really Mickey Mouse!

I was telling one of the Disney workers how much we loved our visit - especially meeting Mickey Mouse - and she said that the secret is the door. The little ones have no idea what's going to be inside and when they see Mickey, it's magic. It was so cool.

Nothing was going to top Mickey and it was getting late, so we started to head out. The castle was lit up so we crossed the third thing on our list off.
I had wanted to get Jacoby a pair of Mickey Mouse ears as a souvenir, but he saw the Mickey Mouse stuffed animal and Robert got that for him instead.

Now we have the lovey, the football, and the Mickey to keep track of everywhere we go...

When we got home today Coby finished up his nap and then was ready for a little cooking.

Thanksgiving

Somehow we didn't get any pictures of us on actual Thanksgiving Day - I guess we were too busy cooking and chasing Coby. But today we went out to San Felasco Hammock Preserve to work off some of the calories we packed on this week.
We brought along some trail mix to snack on along the way.

Here are Coby's rejects:
He also wouldn't eat the peanuts or almonds. Maybe we would have been better off to just buy a bag of M&Ms?

The trail is about a 3 1/2 mile long loop and Coby walked about half of it.
There were plenty of pit-stops along the way though. We were at this bridge for 10 minutes while Coby played Pooh-sticks =o)

He also learned the word, "spider" after finding one crawling on a tree as we walked past.



About that same time he started to slow down...
...eventually getting carried by Robert...
...and then falling asleep.
While he slept, we got ready for Thanksgiving Part II out at Gram and Aunt Lulu's. It was great to see Cory, Ada, Chaz, and Valerie and Paul too!

We tried to get a picture of the cousins looking at the camera together. Here's the best one of Cory and Ada:
Here's the best one of me and Coby(not sure what happened to Cory???):

And here's the one where everyone is at least looking at the camera:
Chaz is thankful for pie.
Great-grandma Malcolm is thankful for all of her grandchildren (she's talking on the "phone" with Coby right now. She has a remote and he has the chair adjustment controller up to his ear).