Happy 3rd Birthday Jackson!!

Happy 3rd Birthday Jackson! Where has the time gone? It seems like yesterday we were bringing Jackson home from the hospital and now he is a 3 year old little boy!! He is such a wonderful little boy with so much personality. He is so smart and remembers everything!! He loves to make people laugh and is very good at it! Words cannot express how much we love him and how blessed we feel everyday to be his mommy and daddy. This year Jackson wanted a Cars themed party, so that is what he got. We had his birthday at Champion Kids, which is where he has had all his parties and it was a huge success!!
The morning of his birthday started with pancakes and a muffin with 3 candles. Jackson loved blowing them out! Then he got to open up his present from us and his Aunt Sarah. Since Jaackson loved the monorail at Disney so much, we got him his very own! Aunt Sarah sent him a toy that encompassed two of his favorite things....cranes and toy story. He loved it!

Jackson with his monorail. He was so excited when he saw what it was!!

Of course, Baby Beckett had to watch Jackson open his presents. As you can see from this photo, he was very excited for him!

Jackson loves to open the doors and let the people on and off.

Birthday party at Champion Kids. Jackson loves when they do the parachute game!

Riding the zipline! This year Jackson was old enough to ride the zipline. They hold onto him until he reaches the foam pit and he lets go!

Landing in the foam pit!

The King with his court! Jackson is so blessed to have so many wonderful friends!!







A picture of his Lightning McQueen cake. Jackson couldn't wait to get Lighting and Mater off the cake and start playing with them.








Blowing out his candles like a pro!

Delicious! The icing is by far his favorite part!!

After the party, we brought all of his presents home and Jackson had a blast opening them!







Daddy helping him open his MANY presents! Happy birthday sweet Jackson! We love you so much and can't to see what the next year has in store for us!!

Welcome Beckett Gregory!

Welcome Beckett Gregory! We got an early Christmas present this year with the arrival of Beckett Gregory. Beckett Gregory was born on 12/11/11 at 7:03 AM. Despite being 7 weeks early and a meager 4 pounds 5 ounces, 16.5 inches long, he came into this world kicking and screaming! He is absolutely our perfect little miracle. He had apgars of 9 at 1 minute and 9 at 5 minutes and only stayed in the NICU for 3 hours for monitoring. We are so blessed that he didn't require any intervention and was able to come home with us 48 hours later. Unfortunately, since we weren't prepared for his arrival, we had to take his first few photos on my phone and I haven't transferred them over yet. As far as Beckett's birth story, we were at Stone Mountain park that day playing on Snow Mountain. I must admit that at one point we contemplated having me go sledding with Jackson, but decided not to! Thank goodness or I really would have thought I did something wrong to bring Beckett so early. When we got home, my water broke and Greg and I were off to the hospital. We dropped Jackson off at our dear friend Anna's house and prayed for the best. Once it was confirmed that water had indeed broke, Brad and Kiera took over Jackson duty and took him to their house for the night. The initial plan was to try to keep labor off until Beckett reached 34 weeks, but at 2 AM, Beckett had different plans, and I went into labor. They tried Magnesium for 2 hours, but once I dilated to 3 cm, the doctor decided he was coming today!! Greg and I were very worried about little Beckett's health and when he let out his first scream, relief swept over both of us. We are so thankful that our sweet boy came into this world healthy!! Jackson is very excited to be a big brother! When daddy told him Beckett was here he said "Beckett isn't in mommy's belly anymore?" and "Beckett is supposed to come after Christmas" He is very loving and working on being gentle. He really wants to be a helpful brother by feeding him and changing his diaper, but doesn't quite understand that he is just too little right now. Here are some of the first shots of our little angel.

Meeting his big brother for the first time. Jackson loves to hold his hand and see his little feet!! We read him a book called "What baby needs" and at the end it says "Soon your baby will hold your hand, smile at you, sit up and play" Everytime he holds his hand, he says this.

Our first family photo of 4!

Our sweet angel.

Getting ready to head home!







Doing what he does best....sleep! At this point I have to wake him up to feed which I am sure won't last too much longer!!

First car ride home. I just can't get over how small he is in that seat! Since he was so premature, he actually had to do a monitored test in the NICU of him sitting in the carseat for 1 hour. He did great and passed with flying colors!







More pics to come!

Gobble Gobble!!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We have so much to be thankful for this year! We are so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends but most of all, we are so thankful to have a smart, healthy, spunky, funny, adorable little boy and a brother for him on the way! We stayed home this Thanksgiving and the festivities began with the gobble jog. The entire family participated this year with daddy running the 10K, mommy walking the 5k and Jackson running the tot trot. Jackson was so excited the morning of the race and couldn't wait to run!! Here he is trying to wait patiently for Granddaddy to arrive so we could head to the race!

Jackson running in his race! He did great and ran the entire way!! Once he finished, he asked if he could do it again!!

Jackson posing with his ribbon! After the race, we went to Uncle Brad and Aunt Kiera's house for brunch and to start cooking the big meal! We all pitched in and had a delicious feast! We had a wonderful time and are so thankful that we were able to spend it together!

The following day, it was tree picking time! We headed to Home Depot and picked out our 3 trees. We let Jackson pick them all out and he did a fantastic job!! We also had a new arrival to our house this Holiday season. Thanks to Aunt Glo, our family has started the Elf on the Shelf tradition. Our elf, who soon was named Finn (after Finn McMissile from Cars 2), made his appearance!! Jackson has had so much fun finding him every morning and reading the book every night. Thanks Glo!!

After we loaded up our trees, Noni, Granddaddy, Mary and James came over to help us decorate. Here is Mary and Jackson concentrating really hard on how to get that little hook to stick on that big branch!

We also got a train this year to circle around our Christmas tree downstairs. It was a big hit with the kids!!






Checking out his work proudly!








After the downstairs tree, it was time to head upstairs to start decorating our upstairs trees. Jackson loved looking at all of the ornaments and picking which one he would hang up. He always wanted to try to place them on the tallest branches!!

Finally, since Fynn is reporting back to Santa each night, Jackson made his Christmas list. We went through all the magazines and he picked his 6 favorite things. We will have to wait until Christmas to see if Jackson made the "nice list!"