Gus's 1st Birthday

We can't believe Gus will be 1 year old tomorrow, it has gone by so fast, but its amazing to watch him grow up and develop his own personality. He is a funny, social, and incredibly sweet and laid back little man and we feel so blessed to call him our son.

Since Gus's birthday is the day before Thanksgiving this year (and on Thanksgiving Day next year) we celebrated a little early with a sock monkey themed party for our little monkey on Saturday. We had a house full of family and friends who all came to celebrate Gus's 1st year. Here are just a few snapshots of the day.

Ready to Roll in his new car from Grammy & Papou

We would have been better off creating a mound of Goldfish crackers shaped like a monkey, but we found out the hard (and labor intensive way) that cake and icing are not on the list of Gus approved textures for pick up

In the midst of all his gifts the $3.00 Kmart ball still wins out

He loved reading his cards and playing with the tags on his toys more then the tissue paper or the wrapping paper - too funny

Its Party Time!

Classic Gus face and his adorable outfit from Aunt Carmen :)

Happy Birthday Gus - We love you so much!

Papa O'Dell

This weekend we also said a sad goodbye to BJ's grandfather, Papa O'Dell, he was 89 years old. He passed away on Thursday, October 28th and the funeral was held on Sunday. He was a sweet man who loved his family and always called it like he saw it. BJ has fond memories and stories about his Papa, and he shared many of them at the funeral.

Its hard to believe that when BJ and I got married 5 years ago that we had 7 of our 8 grandparents still with us, and now we are still blessed to have all 4 of our grandmothers, but sadly our Papa B, Papa O'Dell, and Grandaddy have since passed away. An interesting fact, is that our grandfather's birthdays were three days in a row, my Grandaddy's birthday was December 29th (he passed on his 96th birthday and would be 98 this year), Papa B's birthday was December 30th (he passed at age 88 and would be 90 this year) and Papa O'Dell's birthday was December 31st (he would have been 90 this year). I know this year they will be celebrating in heaven this year, maybe they will all get together and share a piece of cake :)

We will miss Papa O'Dell, but we are so grateful for the time we were able to spend with him and all of the fond memories we have of him. Here are the last two pictures we have of him, he was able to share most of Gus's first year with us, which is so special.

We love you Papa.

Happy Halloween

We were very excited to celebrate Gus's first Halloween, he was a monkey, which is his nickname (he almost responds more to monkey then Gus, scary!) We packed the car and headed to Greenville to trick or treat in the Botany Woods neighborhood with all of Gus's cousins. Gus loves his cousins so much, he lights up when they are around and it makes my heart melt everytime.

We had a chili dinner and then headed out into the neighborhood. Brent pulled us all in a flat bed trailer attached to his truck, and we would make periodic stops on good streets, and then load back into the trailer and head up to another street. With Gus's recent weigh in of 27.4 lbs, lugging him in and out of the stroller and trailer got to be a lot of work for us, so we finally just loaded him into the trailer all snug in his costume and strapped into the stroller - he laughed the whole time. He had a high brow first Halloween if I do say so myself. Here are the pics - enjoy!

You know your child is laid back when he is completely unphased by wearing a giant fleece monkey suit

Pre Trick-or-Treating photo op with a fairy, a cat, a sailor girl, teen wolf and the monkey

First stop of the night - the Varners house of Halloween fright - BJ is offering Gus to the clown :)


We love our little monkey so much - and he had so much fun trick-or-treating - we practiced waving hi and bye at every house, and by the end he would just wave as soon as we got there and just before we were about to leave - it was so cute to watch him practice his waving.