My Little Artist

Joey loves to draw. He has few Magnadoodles and an Aquadoodle and he loves them all. He also loves to lay on his stomach and draw with crayons on his big coloring pad. Last week, he started drawing circles and people. I don't even prompt him with what to draw. This is a picture of a drawing on his Magnadoodle. I wasn't even watching him--I was watching the Olympics--and he brought it to me and I couldn't believe what he had drawn!
When I asked him who everyone in the picture was, he told me that I was the big person on the left and Joe is on the right. Apparently I am a bigger presence in the house:) I couldn't get out of him what was on the sides of my head...either I have big ears or they are my glasses. He didn't finish drawing himself or CeCe. She is the small circle on the far right.

Happy Birthday Joe! Updated with Pictures!

Today is Joe's birthday. Of course, he is working a full day today and probably won't be home until after 6. I guess I am really the only one that makes a big deal out of our birthdays. We woke up this morning and Joey said that he wanted to wear his shirt with drums on it, I guess because that is what he loves to do with Joe, play drums! So, happy birthday Joe! You don't look a day older than you did on the day that we met:)

Joey knew that cake was coming. He finished his dinner and WOULD NOT get out of his chair. He just wanted us to finish our dinner so that he could eat cake. That's my boy:)

He finally stopped crying when we started cleaning up from dinner. He does have a death grip on that spoon, though!

And of course, Joe couldn't blow the candles out alone.

Joe and Joey's First Jam Session

This is what every musician wants...a son to play in his band. We'll call them "The McKenna Two" for now, alteast until Joey can come up with a new name.

I forgot!

I just realized that I forgot to post Joey's birthday party and birthday pictures. He had such a good time with his friends at his party and he loved opening the gifts!!!

Here he is with his new wagon that his Grammie and PapPap bought him.

We had a "Pin the Tail on the Cow" game for the kids to play.

The theme was Barn Animals and I made this cute cake!

Here is Joey blowing out his candle. Right after this, he grabbed a pig cupcake and dug right in!

Happy 2nd Birthday Joey!

Today is Joey's 2nd birthday! I can't believe that he is already 2!
His favorite things are Mac n Cheese, pasta, cheese, milk, yogurt, and all fruit. He loves to play with anything that involves drawing, like his DoodlePro and Magnadoodle and he loves his books. His favorite TV shows are The Wiggles and Calliou. He loves to sing "Old Mac Donald Has a Farm" and always insists that Old Mac Donald has an elephant on his farm.
Happy Birthday to my boy!
P.S. More pictures of his birthday party and birthday to come!

I forgot...

I got an email from my dad last night asking me if I had lost my camera. Apparently he wanted to see some pictures of Joey. It's not like we weren't there less than a week ago!
Anyways, I forgot to post pictures from the rest of our trip home. Actually, I didn't forget...I just didn't feel like doing it! We had a great trip to Pittsburgh and New York, but I have been tired from the trip. And just when I thought we were home and done, my luggage made a side trip and finally got here yesterday(5 days later)!
Anyways, our Christmas trip was great. We saw lots of family and friends. Joey got to play with some old friends and new friends and so did I! A highlight of my trip was visiting with some high school friends that I have seen in the past 6 years but never all together! The 4 of us haven't been all together since my wedding! So we had a great time catching up. It's amazing how things just go back to being the same even though we all have different lives and live in different states.
From now on, I need to try to post pictures as I take them, especially on two week trips! Maybe that should be my New Year's resolution. I am sure that my dad would love that!
Christmas 09 Pictures

Joey the Abominable Snowman

We got to Pittsburgh safely on Thursday. On Friday, we woke up to snow! I was really excited because I haven't seen snow in over 2 years. Joey has never seen snow. We bought Joey a winter jacket before getting here but my dad went out on Friday morning for us and bought Joey snow pants and boots. Before going outside, we let Joey touch the snow that was right outside the door. My dad helped him to put some snow on his toy helicopter. He said that it was "hot". Really, he doesn't know anything but hot since we live in the desert! He wanted to go outside, just not in all of the heavy clothes tha the had to wear. He wanted to be outside in the snow, but he didn't want to touch it. When it was time to go inside(he wouldn't keep his mittens on) because his hands were red and freezing, he screamed and had to be carried in.

Getting him dressed was a bit of a chore. He fell to the ground and cried. Oh what fun...


The mittens were on and he was happy.


Then he decided that mittens were for wimps and he took them off. Really, why do they only make mittens for small children...why don't they make gloves for them?

Children's Christmas Party

On Sunday we had Joe's work's Children's Christmas party. Santa flew in on a KC-135. Who knew?

It was REALLY windy so I refuse to put any pictures of me with my Medusa hair on this blog. I will mention, however, that my hair was in a big knot from standing outside and it went straight up into a pony tail. Anyways, here is Joey with Joe waving to Santa. Although we saw Santa last week at the BX, I am pretty sure that Joey thinks that Santa is a little tin man that hangs out on our Christmas tree all day long.

There were activities for the kids to participate in while they waited their groups turn to go in and see Santa. We had to cut a few activities short because Joey is still a little young. He tried to eat a bead that was supposed to go on his necklace, wanted to eat a whole tub of icing intended for cookie decorating, and he didn't want the reindeer ears on his head.
When it was our turn to sit in the room with Santa, Joey sat "criss-cross-applesauce" on the floor like he knew what he was doing. He seriously sat with all of the other kids for 20 minutes until it was his turn to see Santa. In the picture below, he is in the back row with the white checked shirt on. Joe and I kept laughing because we couldn't believe that he was so attentive. It made us think that maybe we would get a picture of Joey on Santa's lap! Well, that didn't happen. Joey cried until Mrs Claus said that she had a gift for him. He stopped, took the gift, and then went back to crying.

And finally, here is a picture of Joe and Joey outside of the building that we were in.

Joey Was Here

Joey loooooves stickers. I started buying them for him when we went to Pittsburgh a few months ago. I wanted to get him something that he could do on the plane. Now, we take stickers with us everywhere. He loves to peel and stick them. The funny thing is that he likes to peel them and stick them in a pile...one on top of the other. Yesterday, we were home and he went into my purse and took out some stickers. I let him go to play with them. When he was finished with the first page of stickers, he said "All done." I walked in to see this:

Later on in the day, I noticed that a picture from from the end table was on the ground. I picked it up and realized why it was on the ground! Someone got a hold of a page of stickers and "made his mark" by putting them in a pile on the back of the frame.

Atleast it wasn't crayon all over the walls, right?

Our Weekend

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Joe was off for four days and we enjoyed some family time. For Thanksgiving, we went to our friends Rav and Nancy's house. Nancy's family was in town. We had a great feast of food and Joey was such a good boy. He likes to say "good boy-e" when we say that he has been a good boy. He has been talking so much lately and repeating things that we say. The other day, he started saying "cool". I love his little voice and it has been well worth the wait!

On Friday, I braved the shopping crowds with a friend and went to Target, Toys R Us and the mall. The stores were crowded, not nearly as bad as I figured. Well, I thought that until we went to the mall and into Old Navy. I had some jeans that I needed to exchange for Joey and the line went around the store and out the opposite door. I decided to wait on the exchange:) After Joey woke up from his nap, we put our Christmas tree up.

Apparently he did not want to get his picture taken infront of the tree:) He really enjoyed putting the ornaments on the tree, especially the candy canes. He has done really good with not touching the tree but when we mention Santa, he goes up to the Santa ornament and says "ho ho ho" (actually, it sounds more like "o o o").
On Sunday, Joe and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. We had a great day of just hanging out and watching football. We did go up to the BX on base to look around. Santa was there and Joey was not happy. Joe was looking in the electronics and I was pushing Joey around in the cart. When we got within a few feet of Santa, Joey started yelling in a panic "Daddy!!! Daddy!!!" So, unfortunately, we might not get a picture of Joey and Santa this year...or atleast of Joey smiling with Santa!