It's almost Christmas!

I've been very neglectful of my blog lately.. in fact, I think pretty much this whole year I've not done a very good job keeping up my blog or checking friends' blogs, so forgive me! I've been quite distracted playing on FB and then I've been reading.. nothing important, just fun thriller type novels.. it's actually been a long while since I just read for the pleasure of reading.. so, when not on FB or watching something on TV, I've been reading!

Oktoberfest 2009 ended with Halloween-related activities with my job (after school director) and taking Stone trunk or treating at the church where I work. He loved it, but more importantly, he loved dressing up in his astronaut outfit his Gigi got him for his birthday. He still likes to wear it, still into space and still cracks me up. Some of my favorite quotes lately:

• "Happy Birthday Thanksgiving Dinner!" (obviously a combo of Happy Birthday, since we just got through with all our birthdays in October and Happy Thanksgiving, combined with eating Thanksgiving Dinner..)
• "Baby Jesus is Boring" instead of Baby Jesus is Born.. with his Auditory Processing Disorder, he will often mishear words and think you are saying something different, when you are clearly giving him the correct word.. case in point with this phrase. Of course, we have told him "Baby Jesus is BORN" but he still hears "boring" and thus, while it's cute, we do try to correct him.
  
• same thing with this phrase: "Santa Closet" instead of "Santa Claus" ... makes for some funny things we hear around here!
• "Mommy, turn off the sun!" he doesn't like the sun shining in his face and has told me this numerous times. I try to explain to him that I can't turn off the sun!
  

I'm sure there are more, and I need to record them so I don't forget, but that's all for now.

We are gearing up for this up coming week.. a short work week and then off to WV to visit my folks for Christmas. Stone has literally been praying for snow since after Thanksgiving and we got a good bit yesterday. However, late Friday night, we had sleet/rain mixed in, which turned our great snowfall into ice. Not much fun to play in! However, he was really praying for snow while in WV so he and his cousin Nate could build a snowman. We shall see how the weather holds out this week.

Over Thanksgiving, we traveled down to AL to visit K's youngest sister and meet her daughter Claire who was born in mid-August. We hadn't had an opportunity to meet her yet, so that was way cool that we got to love on her (and the rest of K's family) for a couple of days. Of course, Stone and Mercy had a blast, Wy tried to keep up, and he was actually jealous whenever I would hold Claire, since I guess he thought he has some claim on me! (Well, he does have a claim on me, but I still had to love on that beautiful baby girl!!) He was actually jealous whenever anyone else held her and didn't pay attention to him, but I like to think he reacted that way just when I did it! :)

That's it for now.. will post some updated pics soon.

A new woman!

I really should be better about setting aside a little money every month so I can get my hair done more often... the last time I even had scissors or fake color touch my hair was May 9th! So today, I went from this.......


....to this!!

I'm loving it and feel like a new woman! Thanks to my mom and my hubs for letting me get my hair styled! Happy 35th birthday to me (a few days late!)

Hallquist Oktoberfest 2009

I can't believe it's the middle of our annual Hallquist Oktoberfest already! Where has this year gone? We've already celebrated Stone's 4th birthday (yikes) and Kevin's birthday and mine is just a few days away. We've had fun with my family visiting and K's parents and a few friends who were able to make it to Stone's birthday party. We look forward to cousin M and W coming in about a week and a half, if we all stay healthy! We've already visited one pumpkin patch and plan to visit at least one more, plus do a couple of hayrides, trunk-n-treating and who knows what all else! And inbetween all this we still have work, school and the every day business of life. Happy October!

300th Post!

Wow.. can't believe I've actually had enough to say to post 300 times! Then again, those who know me might say otherwise!

Tomorrow starts the annual "Hallquist Oktoberfest 2009" traditions! Yeah! I'm thankful to celebrate another year with my little family and of course, all our extended family and friends. It's a busy month ahead, even without all the birthday celebrations. This coming weekend, I will be attending a 1.5 day conference in R*aleigh for my job. K and I are taking advantage of his parents who now live close to there to keep Stone so we can officially celebrate our 5th year anniversary! So, a partial weekend of work, and partial of fun with my hubs, sans child.

The next weekend, we'll celebrate Stone's birthday and we have family coming up on both sides! Too much fun! And in between all this, I hope to get some family pictures taken from my brother in law, celebrate mine and Kevin's birthdays, go to Fall Festivals where we can and do all the fun October things to do. Work will be a busy month too, but good.

I also need to finish recaping September, which flew by faster than a blink! Gee! Where did it go? And before we know it, Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here and then we'll be in 2010. So, I'll try to keep my blog updated a bit more!

Happy Fall Everyone!!! My favorite time of year!!

And 5 years later...

....we still love each other! Tomorrow (the 25th) marks our 5 year anniversary. We can barely believe that 5 years has come and gone just like that, in a blink of an eye. Happy Anniversary Kevin! We've been through the amazing birth of our son, 4 moves, 2 lay-offs, and many jobs between the two of us later! We scarcely know what it means to live a normal life, and so this past August, when it came to be that we have lived in the same apartment in the same city for a complete year and got to sign our lease for another year, we were quite perplexed! We are thankful, though, no complaints! We both have jobs, we have a place to live, we are close to both sets of parents and some siblings, and we even got to take a vacation this year! (Will post on that soon.) So, 5 years of a lot of learning, but a lot of fun and love along the way. Love you Kevin! :)

New Niece

Some of the biggest news that came this month was the birth of Kevin's new little niece, Claire! She came a little earlier than expected, but we are glad to welcome her. Don't know when we'll get to go down and see her in person, so all my pics will be from family members of course.. I stole this one right off of my SIL's blog!! :) But she is a cutie and we're thankful to welcome her into our crazy family!! Click here to go to my SIL's blog to see more pics... some great close ups and family pics too.

August Recap

BLINK! And summer is about over! I can't believe I let all this time go by since blogging last. I guess it's mostly because I've been working full time all summer and haven't been much in the blogging mood. So, now I'm trying to catch up.... keep reading below for July and June's recaps as well.

For whatever reason, Stone loves to be upside down. So, whenever Kevin and I get tired of holding him upside down, he finds a way to do it himself....

A big purchase we made at the end of July...a new used car.. our other one was not long from dying, so we shopped around and ended up with a H*onda C*ivic... we love it.. I love to drive it, but it's mainly for Kevin, since it was his car that was about to die and he drives 45 minutes to work every day, so he lets me enjoy it on the weekends (it's a manual, which I miss driving!!)

This is a picture of all the things Stone made in the art camp that he just finished this week.. the theme was "things that go vroom" so they made a firetruck, boat, rocket ship (his fav) and a car.

July Recap

July 4th weekend was spent with my parents in WV. We had a great time hanging with my family and then left Stone there for an entire week for "camp grandma's" with his cousin Nate. They had a blast, even though he was a bit homesick at night, specifically wanting me, but during the day, he did great. I think I did worse than he did, being away for him for so long!! But, we both made it and I am glad for the time they got to spend together.


Sitting on the front porch swing with Ma-Ma and Pa-Pa and then me...


We spent the actual July 4th at my uncle's house about an hour from my parent's house... here's stone and Pa-Pa matching....

Riding a trike for a first time, with a little help from dad...
Cousin Hailey.....
and cousin Nate

Random pics from the month... stone has really gotten into "building construction" things as he calls is.. here they are in their safety glasses... k's been taking him to l*owes for those "build and grow" sessions they have for kids... stone loves it.. particularly getting to paint whatever he builds.
Very cool astronaut helmet Aunt Gini found for Stone... he loves it!

Stone in his "phone booth" ha ha ha.. it took us a while to figure out how he even know what a real phone booth was, since hello, you hardly ever see those anymore. We finally discovered that he had seen one on a video of "richard scary" which are fun cartoons... one of the characters goes into a phone booth to call someone, so stone, being creative as he is, turned an empty CD shelf holder into his own personal phone booth!!
Towards the end of July, my good friend Jen (whom I grew up with) came for a short visit.. a stop-over on their way to the beach. They spent the night with us (the picture directly below shows them in their p.js.)... he looks so happy because he's sitting between 2 sweet, beautiful girls!
The next day, it so happened that at my work, we had gotten inflatable water slides for our camp kids. So, Jen and her girls got to enjoy that with us. This first picture is of Stone sliding down with one of our older campers.. I couldn't get him to go down by himself at first, so Paige helped!




July ended with a bit of a scare though... it turned out that my dad needed to have by-pass surgery.. this was the 2nd time for him to have this done (the first being done 15 years ago) so the risks were high. So, we were thankful and felt blessed that he came through with flying colors and is recooperating quite well.

June Recap

June flew by, and right after Father's Day, Stone had a week of "art camp" through an organization that runs art camp all summer long and so happened to have one for 3-5 year olds. It was a half-day camp and this week's theme was "pirates." Here's a couple of pictures of all the piraty things he made. The following week, he went again, but had cousin M to join him for a "Backyardigan's" camp. They had a blast getting to go to camp together! During that week of shared camp, we celebrated cousin W's 1st birthday and M's 4th birthday.. so much fun! I made the "dog" cake below (although it looked a little more like a bear than a dog) and they had fun opening presents. We were thankful to have fun with our cousins this week!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to my sweet hubby! And to my awesome dad and awesome father-in-law. My hubs is an awesome hubs and dad.. we are so blessed! Funny start to the day... he got up and made me coffee and breakfast! It's supposed to be the other way around! Again, so thankful for this man! Here are some pics from our day...


Posing at church... couldn't get a good smile from Stone though!

After church, we ate lunch at chili's and then went to a local park on a lake and flew the thomas kite i had gotten stone for like $3.50 at walmart. Good deal!! It was a perfect day for flying a kite... lots of wind and cloudy skies, which made it a bit cooler to be out and about.





Tried again for a good pic of the 2 of them, but Stone was in kind of a mood!! :)
Looking over the edge at the fish... we didn't bring anything to feed them, but another little boy and his dad showed up and they had tons of old bread.. so they shared with us and we went to town feeding the scads of fish around the dock.. so much fun and stone loved it!


After our trip to the park and a nice rest/nap time, we headed over to pop and gigi's house for dinner and hang-time. Finally, a GREAT pic of Stone with his dad and pop!!!
This is what Pop's are for!!! :)

Of course, wish we could have seen my parents too on Father's day (and Mother's day) but we will get to see them over the 4th. Love them and wish we had more weekends free to visit each other!!

Full Circle

It's been almost 1 year since we moved to NC! Hard to believe that this time has literally flown by. Kevin started his new job on July 1, 2008 and Stone and I soon followed him up here. We stayed in a hotel for the first month until our apartment was ready to move in on August 1. So, July 1 marks our 1 year anniversary here!

It also marks the beginning of some new friendships... not long after moving up here, we made friends with a fellow co-worker of Kevin and his family. We headed out to a local park one morning so our kids could play and met 2 other moms with their kids that day. I and one of the moms hit it off and have stayed friends ever since! So, last Friday, we met again at the same park so our kids could have a play date and so we could chat and catch up. Full circle, so to speak! I wish our schedules allowed for more time to get together, especially since Matthew and Stone are such good buddies! We will have to work on that, especially since they bought a house not far from our home! Anyway, here's a few pictures.. Rachel, Matthew and Stone enjoying some play time together.

Really?

Has it been since Mother's Day since I posted last? What's up with that? Busy life I guess! So, here are a few highlights of the past few weeks.

We wrapped up the year at the preschool where I taught.. how sad!! Here's a pic of my 4 students in their caps and gowns! I can't believe a year has just flown by! I also can't believe how much they've grown and learned this past year.. I miss them so much already!!

During our graduation ceremony, we also had a little spring sing... look at my boy up there on stage being a HAM! He so wouldn't have done this 6 months ago.. I'm so proud of him and how much he's grown and matured in the past 6 months. Love my Stoney!!




Then we went right into a Birthday celebration/family reunion on Memorial Day weekend. K's mom's side of the family wanted us all to try and get together to celebrate Ma-maw's 80th birthday! How blessed we are to be able to celebrate both of K's grandmother's 80th birthdays within 6 months of each other. (We celebrated his dad's mom's 80th birthday back at the end of December.) But what was also super sweet was that this was Ma-maw's first time EVER seeing Stone in person! Due to one reason or the other (mostly with us moving so much!), we hadn't been able to visit Ma-maw and show off our little guy. So, we were determined that no matter what, we'd make this trip. And what a haul it was! 12 hours down and 12 back! (we drove to Jackson, MS). Thankfully, we shared the driving with K's parents and all rode down together in their van.

It was so neat to see most of all that side of the family together in one spot.. K's Aunt Kathy tried to count everyone (what a task!!) and came up with about 57 people who were there over the weekend. What's also cool is that there are so many cousins the same age (or very close) to Stone and Mercy so they had a blast!! If we all lived closer to each other, we'd have our own play dates available just between all the cousins!


Here's a picture of the 4 generations...

Friday night when we got there... poor Stone had been in the car all day, so he was more than ready to run with his cousins whom he'd just met! This was taken in the back yard at Ma-maw's house..

We rented a couple of RV's and stayed at a campground. Stone and Mercy LOVED the bunk beds! Stone didn't ever want to leave... as you can see, he has his milk, crayons and coloring book, blankets, and even a lantern (supplied by Gigi!)




Cousin Abby

Mercy pretending to be a mosquito. She even "died" when she was squished by either Aunt Kathy or Aunt Dee-dee! Hilarious!
Playing in a puddle after a crazy down-pour on Sunday's festivities...playing with Abby and Camden

Sitting with a bunch of the cousins.. not even going to attempt to name them all!!

With Pop in front of our RV...
Pop, Aunt Minnah and Uncle Geoff (and baby Claire)...
Handsome boy!! "Baby Quiet," as Stone likes to call him... Mr. Wyatt himself, just about crawling all over the place!!

And inbetween all this, just me getting ready for my summer camps through my 2nd job (now my only job since preschool ended). I've got Stone lined up for a few cool camps, not to mention having fun with Cousin Mercy comes to visit and possibly a trip to WV over the 4th weekend. So, we got a busy few months ahead of us!!