ONE!

So I am sitting home with a sick little man today (hopefully just a cold) so I am finally going to get out the blog I promised 2 weeks ago! Hey, it’s better than the 6 month gap we had previously

So my sweet little Elijah Nicholas Oaks turned  ONE on October 22nd. It is literally still hard for me to believe a year has gone by. This time last year we were getting the hang of feeding, changing, sleeping, and all things baby. And now its chasing, disciplining, and still feeding. Ohh motherhood, the job where the requirements are constantly changing but it is truly the best job around. It is a blessing to be Eli’s Mommy and I want him to stay little forever but at the same time I am excited to see him grow.

So how did we celebrate this big birthday? Well, it all starts with a BIRTHDAY PARTY of course . . .

Eli’s 1st Birthday was celebrated Sock Monkey style on Saturday, October 20th at the Family Life Center at our church. There was food, presents, and lots of fun with friends and family. I think Eli had the most fun opening gifts and then playing afterwards. I would get him started on one gift then he would get it all out and opened and then I would have to try to get him to focus on the next. He loved taking stuff in and out of bags and handing stuff to me and his Daddy. He also seemed to enjoy the paper ripping.  Thank you so much for everyone who attended and made Eli’s big day special! I have tons of bday party pics but in order to keep this from being the longest post ever I am only going to give you a small sample:

The awesome cake and smash cake from The Cake Gallery. Thanks Hannah for a fabulous cake as always!

The sweet birthday boy enjoying some cake!

With the Birthday Boy! Happy Birthday Eli- love you!

So Eli’s actual birthday was on Monday, October 22nd and Nick and I both took the day off to be with our little man on his day. For the actual birthday fun we had birthday pancakes for breakfast, play time a home, and then an afternoon at the playground at Warrior’s with pizza for dinner. Ohh and we did take Eli to early vote with us that day We had originally intended to take Eli to a corn maize or pumpkin patch for his birthday but had 2nd thoughts on that and opted for the playground. I am so glad we did, he had a lot of fun at the playground. he loves other kids and spent a lot of time watching them, running around, and sliding with his Daddy.

Pancake Breakfast!

Playground Fun!!!

Birthday Boy after his Pizza Dinner

I spent most of Eli’s actually birthday day feeling like I might cry at any minute. I am so happy he is growing and learning but like I said earlier I just want to keep him little FOREVER.  And I do wish time would slow down just a little. This 1st year has been exciting and full of milestone rolling, crawling, and walking and I can not wait to see what the next year has in store for us. I pray that our Eli continues to stay happy and healthy no matter what.

I will leave you with 2 final pictures:

Eli at 2 weeks old. When he was born he weighed 6 lbs 4oz and was 19 inches long.

Eli at 1 year old- 31 inches tall and weighing 20.8 lbs

Photos courtesy of Affection Photography who did a great job of capturing Eli’s 1st year!

What a difference a year makes!!!

Eli & The Sock Monkey

WE ARE BAAACK! So this blog has been way neglected for almost the last year. Why did that happen you ask? Well, I think the star of this post had a little to do with it I do regret no blogging much or rather at all this year. It would have been a great way to have captured all of Eli’s first. Can not change that now but I can do a better job going forward.

So for the GRAND RE-OPENING of the blog I bring you my sweet Eli and The Sock Monkey he gets to hang out with at least once a month. Yes, I know it must be hard to imagine but my little man is turning ONE tomorrow! I am having a hard time fully blogging my feelings and all the details on that right now. So until then I bring you the Eli monthly photos. It is amazing how he has changed.

Newborn- 2 weeks old

1 Month Old

2 Months Old

3 Months Old

4 Months Old

5 months Old

6 Months Old

7 months Old

8 Months Old

 

9 Months Old

10 Months Old

11 Months Old

1 Year Old

So hard to believe he is a year old. Where did the time go?! We love you Eli!!!

Stay tuned for the full one year blog! Hopefully, I will be able to hold the tears back and do it tomorrow on little' Eli’s birthday!

Happy Easter

As I prepared Eli’s first Easter basket I asked myself how can we make sure he gets the “true” meaning of Easter. Granted he is 5 months old and is not going to get the Easter Bunny either. I find when thinking about it that the Birth is so much easier to explain than the burial and the Resurrection, BUT without the burial and Resurrection where would I be. I pray that God gives me the wisdom and words to explain this to our little man. This year we got him the Bernstein Bears Easter Story which is great and I plan to read it to him.

Right now amidst the eggs, candy, baskets, and bunnies I just want to take a moment to celebrate the fact that JESUS arose on the 3rd day and sit at the right hand of the Father. AND because of this I am forgiven. HALLUJIAH!

 

Happy Easter! He is ALIVE!

4 Reason’s I LOVE Big Bang Theory

So while I was out on my Maternity Leave I discovered the most wonderful thing . . .an endless bond with my son? Well, yes I got that but I along with that I found Big Bang Theory and my life has literally never been the same. Okay, so that might be a little dramatic but I do truly love the show. I had a lot of friends tell me how great it was but had never actually watched it, and now I think it was kind of fate that keep me from tuning in. I discovered Big Bang Theory one night during a marathon nursing session with Eli, and thank goodness there was 3 hours of it on TBS that night!

So why do I love Big Bang Theory? Let us count the way . . . .

4. Soft Kitty

Thanks to Big Bang Theory we now have a sick song! I do honestly think think it helped Eli when his RSV was kind of tough. AND it always gets annoyingly stuck in your head. Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty . . .you know you are singing it. Now lets do it in rounds!!

4. Howard Wolfowitz bringing back the Dickey one color at a time.

Yes my blogging friends I bring to you Howard Wolfowitz and his ever changing dickey. Not only is Howard not a “Dr.” but he may have the most bizarre fashion sense of ANYONE I have ever seen. Yet we must ask ourselves if Howard dressed normally, if the dickey was gone would he be the same?! And the answer is NO! Who else could pull off a dickey underneath a t-shirt?

3. Dr. Sheldon Cooper

Wow, I do not even know where to begin. Ohh Sheldon from the Bazinga to the Will Wheaton rivalry the laughs never stop.

Here are just a few of my favorites . . .

Ball Pit BAZINGA

So ZAZZY!!!

Knock, Knock, Knock . . .

Where are my pants?

Sheldon vs. Will Wheaton

Okay so this could go on forever and know I am leaving out so many great ones. Feel free to share your favorite Sheldon moment.

1. They are OUR PEOPLE!

I told Nick the 1st time we watched the show that those were his people! Okay, truly they are our people.

They love Star Trek . . .

They love Lord of the Rings . . .

They have Halo Night . . .more for Nick than me

They online game . . . Incidentally this is the episode where I  learned what AFK means.

They have entirely to much tech stuff . . .

This could go on forever! So let me end by saying I am so glad it is okay to be nerdy again! Thank you Big Bang Theory for bringing endless laughter to my life!

BAZINGA!!!!

This time last year . . .

So February 13, 2011 was when we officially found out that we were having a little Acorn It is hard to believe that it has been a year. I went back and read my journal entry that I wrote that night, and it was so much reliving that moment. I was a bundle of excitement and fear and just truly felt like we had been blessed. AND we have been we have a beautiful, healthy baby boy that is truly a gift from God. AND the best and most memorable Valentine’s gift ever.

Although I may not get all the sleep I need anymore, and I wear spit up a lot but it is totally worth it!

And when I come home and see this little face nothing else matters anymore.

Here are my 2 favorite guys in the world! I love them both dearly and I am so blessed to have them!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

For the Love of Pinterest

Whoa . . .things are getting a little crazy this is my 2nd blog in a week! Whoo hoo! I would just like to be very upfront and tell you this blog will feature any Eli pictures or well any pictures at all. Rare I know, but that is just how this one is going to be.

So I am sure that most you have heard or maybe even experienced the internet time wasting sensation that is  Pinterest. Well, if you haven't I am not sure if I can actually explain it to you it is truly something that you have to experience for yourself. BUT as I once told a friend I am not entirely certain what it is or the point of it but I am totally hooked!!! Okay, I do know what Pinterest is . . .it is a web-site where you can go out and “pin” different things to boards like recipes, photo ideas, quotes, craft ideas, etc. You can follow others and they can follow you. Basically, it is a good way to share things with everyone on the world wide web. I have been “pinning” since before Eli came. A good friend had told me about the web-site and I put in a request to get an invitation to join. One at about 5am during one of my pregnancy potty breaks/I am to uncomfortable to sleep I discovered I had got my invite and immediately started pinning for about an hour. I told you it was addictive and a MAJOR time killer!

So after all these months of pinning I have finally made one of the recipes I found on Pinterest. Last night I made Cake Batter Pudding Cookies, the actually recipe can be found at this awesome blog <----click here. They did turn out pretty good and were tasty. Nick said they did taste a bit like yellow cake, which I believe was the goal. Sadly, I do not have a picture of them and they were actually some of my better looking cookies. They actually all came out round and relatively the same size! Huge score for me. I owe stroke of cookie shaping to the Small Scoop I recently purchased from Pampered Chef! That thing literally scoops out the perfect size for cookies! I anticipate having pretty cookies from here forward because of it. Now if you want to see a nice picture of the cookies I encourage you to check out the other blog, she took a lovely picture of hers.

I am proud that I finally made something from Pinterest and now look forward to trying more of those recipes I have been frantically pinning. See all that time wasting wasn’t for nothing after all Happy Pinning my friends!

This Christmas . . . .

So as promised I am bringing you the Christmas blog, and it is not 2 months late. WHOO HOO! Almost 1 month late but hey who is counting. Much like everything else that has happened since we had Eli- I felt like Christmas snuck up and attacked like a rabid bear! I felt like I was literally down to the wire getting everything done. I have vowed to be more organized and put together next year. Despite my organizational  chaos we still had a fantastic 1st Christmas with our little man, and that is really all that matters!

Here he is in one of his Christmas outfits, complete with reindeer feet that you can not really see in the pic.

Every year since Nick and I have been married we have taken a family pic in front of our Christmas Tree and this year we were excited to have our newest family member in our pic. This is a tradition I hope to keep going for many years to come.

Ch

Christmas 2011

He wasn’t actually looking at the camera but he was there and that is all we really need!

So what did Oaks 3.0 do for Christmas well let me just tell you in as few words as possible . . .

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve with the extended Oaks Family where we go to Skype with the Oakses in Italy, have a nice dinner, and open gifts.

With Uncle John

Nicole ready to open her gift

Someone was a sleepy man . . .

We ended the evening back at home with the reading of the CHRISTmas story from a book my sister got Eli for Christmas. It was great and a tradition I plan to keep going next year.

Christmas Morning

Santa came! I am not sure if Eli knew or not but he will next year This year we put all his presents in one bag and I actually stored them in plan sight in his room.

Andy quite upset that this gift was going to be opened and he would not be able to lay on it.

1st Christmas Card- yes I read it to him!

The cutest gift!

Eli and his Iphone Apptivity case- Doesn’t he look excited!

A cute gift from Chris, Megan, Topher, Cannon, and Mela!

Thank you!

Christmas Day

Christmas Day itself was shocked full of activities. Starting with lunch and gifts with my family, visit with my Papaw, and visit with my Mamaw, and the last and final stop a visit to my Aunt Lu’s to see my cousin Amy and her family.

I see Mommy . . .

Visiting with my  Great Mamaw

In my cute overall outfit which I promptly peed through forcing Mommy and I both to change clothes.

Is that enough pictures for you?? Honestly I will have to say that is my one regret, not taking enough pictures during the holidays particularly with family. I have resolved to do better next year.  All in all, our 1st Christmas as a family was FABULOUS and very special. We were blessed to be able to spend so much time with family.

I know this is a little late but MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you! Really can’t we celebrate it all year long? It began with the birth . . .