Ride Alongs, Socka Monkey, and Cool Dude

1. The hand truck played a pivotal role in our lives throughout the past few weeks, and Nopsi even used it to transport some precious cargo one afternoon.

Then Riley got another cool ride from his daddy when we dropped by to visit Kenny at work one day. He was fascinated at the way the forklift went up and down!

2.  After she read this post, Aunt E just had to include a little sock monkey in Riley-bean’s Easter basket. He loves it!

3. I finally found time to take Riley on his first wagon ride around our new neighborhood one uncharacteristically cool morning last week, and he was one cool dude with his shades on.

Easter Baskets, Egg Hunt, and Crawfish Boil

I finally got my mom act together this year and gave Riley his first Easter basket from his daddy and me. Trucks were of course involved, as well as a few duckies (both of the stuffed and rubber varieties), an egg-dyeing kit (which we never got around to doing), and a bag of York peppermint patties (which I will mostly eat myself and not be sorry about it).

  

Nola and Nopsi came over later in the morning to give Riley their Easter present. Again, trucks were involved. (I should really count how many trucks the child has. It’s got to be dozens.) Thanks, Nola and Nopsi!

Then Kenny’s family arrived at our house around noon, and Grandma organized an Easter egg hunt for Riley and Zac in our backyard. Both boys did really well: they found all eighteen eggs in record time. Zac even gave Riley a hand with finding his last egg, which was too cute.

After all of the eggs were found, we focused on the main event for Easter 2012: our first crawfish boil of the season! Much like last year, Riley wasn’t shy about picking up a mudbug or two, after Kenny removed the pincers.

  

This was also Riley-bean’s very first taste of crawfish, and it went a little something like this:

What’s the you got there, Mama? Never mind; just gimme it.

Hmmm….interesting. And salty. And chewy. And delicious!

Oooohhh, another bite! You must really love me, Mama.

Who needs pizza when there’s crawfish to eat!

Crawfish is yummy yummy yummy in my tummy tummy tummy. Thanks, Mama!

Our boils have gotten pretty colorful, thanks to the lemons, oranges, celery, and even brussel sprouts that we throw in with the standards of crawfish, corn, and potatoes, so I had some fun with Grandma’s camera once the spread was on the table. I even made everyone wait to eat until I was finished taking pictures…..sorry, y’all!

Thanks so much for organizing everything, Grandma and Grandpa. We had such a fun day, and we were so glad to have everyone over to our new house. We hope y’all enjoyed it as much as we did!

Oh, and by the way….in case you’re curious….Kenny still hasn’t shaved.

Coming Along, Moving In, and the Red-Bearded Man

Well, we did it. We are officially moved in! Kenny and I spent our first night in the new house last Friday, and we moved Riley-bean and his stuff in the next day. He seems to have handled the transition just fine. Aunt E (and Doodlebug) watched him all day at the new house while everyone else worked around them. Thanks for hanging out with the boy, E!

Riley did great with his first nap at the new house, as well as with his first night in his new room. He even slept until almost 8am the next morning.

Since we don’t have television service set up yet (but we do have our awesome new tv thanks to Uncle Dean), I decided to introduce Riley to the Cars movie on Sunday morning after his first breakfast in the new house. I do believe he liked seeing “Queen” and “Mater” animated on the big tv.

Once I finally stopped to take a minute to look around our new digs, it’s hard to believe the house went from this:

To this:

   

And then to this:

   

 

 

 

All in less than three weeks. Again, we had an awful lot of help. For which we will be eternally grateful. Thank you everyone.

I also must document something concerning my husband. Kenny decided on the day of our closing (March 15) that he wasn’t going to shave until we were completely moved in. And now that his beard has gotten long enough, he’s actually gotten used to it and kind of likes it. So I am now married to a red-bearded man. Super.

Don’t worry, LP. I will make him shave before your wedding!

One last {sad} thing to write about are the changes in our backyard. Our new neighbors wanted to cut down the gorgeous tree that straddled our property lines on account of it dumping too much debris into their pool. We decided not to fight them on it, even though we much preferred the tree remain. Our backyard went from pretty shady to not so much, but we did end up with a heck of a lot of firewood. So at least something good came out of losing the tree!

 

There are still plenty of things to do around here, but it’s very much starting to look and feel like a home to us. We do eventually want to undertake a few major renovation projects, but, for now, I feel really good at where we are with the house. I’m glad we made the decision to go with this one, and I think know we’ll be really happy here for many years to come.

So y’all come on by now and visit, ya hear?