New York-y

So, I have officially decided I wish I had more control over what pictures came up first and which ones were last. So know I know that if I want them in any sort of order I need to put up the last ones first and the first ones well, last! Yay for learning moments!

I thought I would finally give an update about us, and our awesome spontaneous trip to New York.

So early one Tuesday morning I was sitting on my couch and thinking that we are not taking a family vacation with just us this year, and I was feeling a little disheartened lol, what a great word huh, anyway, I wanted a TNT Thomas family vacation tradition to start and I wanted it started this year! Guess what! I planned it all by myself and Ty said yes! Wahoo! So we left on our trip about two hours later. Spontaneous or what? Do I still feel good about it, yes I do!

Now, I am going to narrate the pictures of this trip, an unfortunately for all of us, because you poor people are going to be confused, the pictures are telling us to start from the end. Just so you know, we first went to Niagara Falls, then a hotel for the night, third to the Sacred Grove, fourth to the Hill Cumorah pageant and lastly we drove home. So here is our vacation backwards style:

We got home at about 5 in the morning on Thursday, after a long slightly blurry and frustrating drive. About 15 minutes in on our trip home Ty was pulled over by a grumpy police officer, for going 18 over the speed limit. We didn't see a speed limit sign and our GPS was telling us that the mileage per hour was 45 we shouldn't have believed it people. So yes we were 18 over, Ty insisted that we find the speed limit sign so we turned around and guess what we did find it, behind a tree. Pooey, what a way to end a vacation huh folks.

But before that we went to the Hill Curmorah pageant! Which may I just say was awesome! And surprise of all surprises, some of my really good friends were in it! Yay for long time fake family members! So we tried to pick them out once we knew what their costumes were. It was really great. If you have not had the opportunity to see the pageant you should make it a priority! Especially if you are not a member of the Latter Day Saint church. This should be on every ones bucket lists. I also got to sit by my best friend Sister Lovell who is serving her mission there! And Jazz was as good as gold and slept through the whole shebang. Before the pageant we walked to the top of the Hill Cumorah and saw the awesome statue there. Here is a pic of the cutest little man and I by the statue.
We also got our picture taken at the visitor's center there by the Christus. I thought it was really cool that the background for this Christus is the Sacred Grove. (I have no idea how to spell Christus by the way)
Here am I with the beautiful Sister Lovell in the log house where Joseph Smith Jr. lived with his parents and family. We surprised her lol which was really fun. I had no idea I was so short by the way.
Here are Ty, Jazz, Sister Lovell and I. Yay! I love her so much! I look way to excited to be there in this picture.
We are not very good picture takers so here is a slightly blurry photo of all of us in the Sacred Grove. We went really early lol ok so like 7:30 in the morning, but we are sure glad we did because as soon as we were out of the grove several huge bus loads of people showed up! The missionaries said they expected 3,000 people to come through there that day!
Here is just a nice peaceful picture of how pretty the whole grove was. This is definitely a prayerful place.
Ty and Jazz as we entered the Grove.
Ok, so here is from the day before. We went to Niagara Falls, which was tons of fun. And we have never really slept with Jazz before in our bed and we found out why. He is an arm-flinging-roly-poly-pinching-kicking-scratching bed mate! Gosh! Worst nights sleep ever! But at least you were safe little dude between us. We actually made Jazz a bed on the floor with lots of blankets but he likes to climb now and we couldn't resist those cute little hands and little blue eyes that would huff and puff and twinkle at us when he made it to standing position. Man, we are push overs. But I am serious, if you had been there, you couldn't have resisted him either! Anyway back to the next picture. We went on the Maid of the Mist and we all wore the awesome ponchos they provided. Here is our family pic taken by a fellow passenger.
Here is my happy little boy and myself.
uhh, yeah, us twice in a row!
And this little boy is so darn cute that all these awesome Asian people would pose with Jazz and I and take pictures with him. lol. Who can resist a cute little blonde baby with big blue eyes? Especially one who smiles so much!?! Not even complete strangers people!
Here is Ty and Jazz overlooking the falls.
Me and the babe.. doing the same thing. We just love taking pictures with him, can you tell?
And what was supposed to be the first picture... The Maid of the Mist sign! Go upside down story!
So there you have it. Our awesome mini family vacation! Do we win or do we win? I hope your mini vacations are as good as ours, unfortunately for you, you won't have a sweet little munchkin head in all your pictures. Don't worry I feel your pain. Just come out to CT and we will let you borrow him for a picture or two, if we can have a copy as well!

Shave and a Hair Cut!!

No one ever tells you how great it is to be a mom of a baby with a bed time. Why is this, this wonderful stage in life, never told to young mothers who need a ray of hope for better sleep and more productivity? Man! I love this part of life!! But I sure do love this little man more! He is so much fun! We have so many adventures. Can I just say that this little boys laugh is the best thing on the planet? I could listen to him laugh all day, fortunately for me he thinks lots of things are funny. Especially his dad. Ty can make Jazz laugh just by looking at him. Which cracks us up! The boy is so funny and so dang cute!

So I just cut his hair for the first time today! Go me! And I took about an inch maybe a little less off. Boy was it hard to cut! Babies are so wiggly! Jazz flings his head around without thought to his safety! Fortunately for us all I was able to predict this head swingings and no one was punctured or cut by the scissors! Go us! Ty wanted to save a lock of these precious baby curls (it curled beautifully after I chopped it off) but I didn't think of it. And where would we keep it anyway? So no I didn't keep any, but if you want a piece I am sure I could find some little hairs to mail to you lol. Anyway I took a few pictures to show off his "new do" and then I couldn't decide which one I liked better. lol. I know that every mom thinks her baby is the cutest one out there, but really, look at this child! Is he not the most edible boy on the planet!?! He is the cutest little boy I have ever seen! So it was too hard to pick which photos I liked the best and I put them all up. Isn't this first pic just soulful?

Here is a side view, I cut the hair around his ears so it wouldn't poke out on top and around them. And boy, those shoes must be amazingly tasty! He eats them all the time!

There is a cute little smile coming!

And for some reason he makes the cutest little scrunched up faces! He is a little doll!

And once again, CUTE!
This babies head is the perfect shape! Look at that chin! And those perfect little lips! gosh! what a cutie!

lol another one of his faces. He has the best faces. He cracks me up!

lol he wants the camera. But I wanted more pictures so no time for playing!

OK, so wasn't he just adorable! Did you even notice his hair cut? I did a good job huh! Yay for me and yay for still having a cute baby! I only had to take hair off the top front and the sides above his ears because that is where it was the longest. He does have hair all over his head, but it is growing in blonde for some reason. But he is still so cute! Man, I just love that boy!

Funny story for you, I went to Babies R Us to get some sandals for this baby because he has none and he likes to walk all over the place (with help from our fingers) so I felt that he should have some summer foot wear. (it also helps that I had a 60% off coupon). We went to the store and I pulled out some flip flops because they were dang cute! And to my surprise Jazz has odd shaped feet. Now I knew he was a little chubby, even for a baby, but does chubbiness generally reach all the way down to feet? I mean he has a roll of fat on the top of his foot! Look at this little foot!

I know you might be thinking, well his toes are pointing up, that makes the foot look fatter. Well I took another picture of his other foot with the toes pointing down and look!

Round chub! So this poor child doesn't fit into flip flops, nor many other shoes because they are too tight on the top. Sigh, poor shoe deprived boy. (This is very devastating for someone of my shoe reputation!) Fortunately clogs were invented! So this little boy will be living in clogs this summer until a) his feet lengthen and are then skinner or b) they invent sandals that are very wide for fat footed little boys!

Beyond Yuck!

Not every post needs to have cute little pictures of babies right? Good, since this is my blog I am glad I have a say in it!

I have officially found out what the grossest job in the house is. I know you are probably thinking, cleaning the bathroom or taking out the garbage or even cleaning out the garbage can.. right, that is what you are thinking isn't it? Well you are so totally close, but not quite there. In this house the grossest job out of them all is....... cleaning out the fridge.

I had no idea how bad we are at cleaning out our left overs. I told Tyler when we got married that I am a terrible left over eater if I am not reminded. Tyler always said that was ok because he would eat them. At at the beginning of our marriage that held true, but only for the very beginning. Like the first month or few. Well now-a-days I will make dinner. Then stick the left overs in tupper ware and then zap. I forget about them. And I think Tyler forgets about them too. I just went through because we were running out of room (not to mention running out of containers) and I pulled out 13 little containers of food. If the number 13 isn't bad enough, I could only identify what was in four of them. Eww-blegh! Doesn't that just give you the chills? I don't make enough left overs to feed more than one person for a small meal, sometimes no more than a snack, but gosh after weeks of hibernation (who knows how long some of them were in there!!) the small amount multiplied in it's little containers! And boy was it discolored! I was scared to open the lids!

Anyway, I just wanted to say, no one died, we are all happily surviving, one STINKY garbage has left the house for the garbage can. And we suddenly have more room in the fridge. I can actually stick the milk in there without tipping something over! Hooray!

And ok ok, here is a picture of his highness as he sleeps. He cracks me up. If he is holding a blanket or anything, he always wraps it around his head. I have no idea how he got into this habit. I swear I do not wrap things around his head ever! So yeah, a little odd but none the less cute!

And I have to say, I LOVE having a boppy! I used to wonder what was so cool about these pillows for babies, but man, It is great! It has been a perfect place to perch him to do almost anything! He used to lay on it to play, and take naps and drink bottles while practicing to use his arms to hold it. These boppy's are amazing. It also helped him to learn to balance while sitting. A wonderful little safety net for any tipping. Even though now he is a great sitter, I still have it around and we still use it all the time. Go Boppy!

Sweet Baby Bliss!

Hello! I am not a pro at blogging, but hey, I am just happy to get up what I can! So here are some fun pics from the recent past that I should stick up here for you guys. I have some Easter pics too, they are pretty funny, but for some reason they didn't upload correctly to my computer, I will have to borrow Ty's to get it to work. But here are some juicy baby Jazz pics!

Jazz has four favorite times of day. In order they are waking up in the morning, eating breakfast, playing with dad when he comes home, and lastly eating dinner. He loves food so much that after each spoonful goes it he tries to slurp up any that might slide out by sticking his hands in there. I also think he sticks his hands in there so that he can suck on them later and still have some of that yummy mashed carrot flavor.

We have to strip him down when he eats because he manages to get food into the weirdest of places. Who knew that armpits and knees could be pockets for so much food? Jazz's least favorite food is peaches. He gags if you put any peaches into his mouth. He makes the best faces too. I will have to catch that on camera if we decide to try peaches again lol. It was hilarious.

Jazz loves to keep his hands busy. One of his favorite things to do is play with boxes. Right now he is in love with this box here. It is his toy box. I know, little box huh, we need to get this child more toys! But for the moment this box is big enough to hold all the fun things Jazz owns. But Jazz dumps the toys out and plays in the box!

He thought it was hilarious when we put him in the box. lol. He just sat there laughing. What a funny kid!

He played in that box for at least a half an hour, then we gave him this book which kept him occupied for another half hour. wow, whoever invented boxes should be rich, they made the perfect containers for things from paper clips to babies!

Anyway, We love this baby! Soon we are going to post our few Easter pics, and I don't think I ever posted his blessing pictures! Yikes, so I will have to do that too. Hope your spring is has started off great!

Food!

Yay! Solid food! The most exciting thing that has happened yet in this high chair! We were so excited yesterday to be able to break open the rice cereal and feed it to this cute chunk of babyness. Ok, I was so excited. Jazz could have cared less. But it was the most exciting thing for me, as you can probably tell by this picture lol. Here are a few more adorable pics of him eating his first soupy substances from a spoon.

Yes, we love food! I think Jazz loves to bite the spoon more than he loved trying to eat what was on the spoon but that is ok! Anyway, I have to run, but I thought this was super cute enough to post right now. I will post again soon! Love you humans out there!

Woah!

Hello again! Sorry that I am such a terrible blogger. But I guess this is just the way I am doing the blog. Huge gaps in between each post. Yeah, very professional I know. I just don't get to touch a computer very often because life just gets so enormously busy!

I thought I would start off with a picture of our bedroom. We did a ton of work trying to paint it up and get it all looking nice earlier this past year. And now our efforts are really paying off! For Christmas Tyler made me this vinyl decoration we put above our bed. I have always wanted something with our name and the date we got married, so here we have it! A cute wall decal for above our bed!

This year has been a year of change for us as well. Well, mainly me, actually. It always surprises me how busy things can get! Currently I am doing my student teaching. I am in a first grade class in a school out here in Farmington, and it is so much fun! I have a wonderful cooperating teacher, and 17 of the brightest and cutest kids here in Connecticut. Of course I have a few funny stories so far. The first one was one of the first days when I was just observing the class. The teacher was talking about geography and how not ever state is the same size. Some states are huge! While others are really small. Her example was to show a picture of Connecticut and a picture of Alaska. She then asked the students which one was bigger. Half the class said Alaska while the other half said Connecticut. The teacher then said, half of you got it, the bigger one is Connecticut. I sat in awe for a second, what should I do? Just sit here and let her teach false geography or do I say something? It is my first day of course, so the teacher doesn't know me that well. Should I stop the class to correct her? Luckily for all of us, she realized her mistake and laughingly said "Did I say Connecticut was bigger? That is silly, Alaska is!" She restated the fact several other times throughout the lesson to let the children really know that Connecticut is in fact pretty small. It was really funny.

My other favorite teaching moment in class was during writing time. We are teaching the children about personal narratives. Just as a quick review, a personal narrative is a story about you, a story that actually happened. One thing that makes writing time really fun is spelling. We only worry about correct spelling on sight words and spelling words. All other words the students sound out and write them how they sound. One little girl (who is an absolute doll) had a particularly funny spelling experience. She let me read her story and for the first few pages I was bewildered by her story. Once I finally figured out what she was talking about I almost cried from holding in my laughter. Her story went something like this: (spelling has been kept the same just for your amusement)

"Yastrday my dad tuk my bruthr and me askding. My bruthr and me stupt in the ass. The ass was very slipy. My bruthr slipt and hert his hin. I am the bttr askder."

Do you understand her story? She was talking about ice skating! Somehow when she was sounding out the word 'ice' it ended up sounding like it started with an 'a'! Normally we don't correct the spelling in their books, but I decided that this time it would be ok if we talked about it.

Anyway, funny things happen all of the time in class. I love the first grade! They are the best! I have been slowly taking more and more time in the class. And the kids really are great. I am still working on getting all of their attention at the same time, but the children are really helpful to get the attention of others by talking about respecting the speaker. They are wonderful. With just a little more practice I am sure that things will go great with the upcoming weeks!

Other than school, I have been called as the primary chorister. I am really excited about this calling, I love working with kids, and this is going to be a lot of fun. Last week I also gave my first relief society lesson. Which I am pretty sure I bombed, so it is a good thing I am now in primary so that they can't expect me to give any more relief society lessons in the near future. Teaching older people compared to a bunch of six and seven year olds is very different. I must say I prefer the children.

Jazz has been a little angel of course. He is so much fun! I hate leaving him for 8 to 9 hours a day, so luckily Tyler's Grandma and Grandpa have come out to watch him for us. They have been so wonderful and (to Tyler's relief) they have been amazing house keepers! They are much better than I am, so I am sure Tyler will never want them to leave! I for one, don't understand how they can get so much done! Jazz, though great, doesn't let me put him down enough to get that much done. I can keep things generally really neat and tidy, but they go the extra mile. In my defense there are two of them so one can work while the other tends the baby, but I really don't know how they do it!

One of our favorite things Jazz does now is he smiles! And he does it whenever he sees me! It warms my heart. I am so glad that when I come home from teaching school that he screams and smiles to see me! Being his mom is probably the best thing in the whole entire world! When he wakes up at night I feed him and hold him much longer than I ever used to because I don't want to miss a moment of this fun age. He also wakes up every morning at about 5:30. Which makes me a little tired in school, but he is so cute and happy when he wakes up that I can't resist taking him out of his crib to play with him. He is amazing. I could go on and on about how much I love him, but I am sure you don't want to read it in every post. So instead I will flood you with pictures. This picture here is funny because he sucks on as much of his hands as he can put in his mouth. The more the better. Even when he has a pacifier in he tries to stuff his hands in there too. So instead of a thumb sucker we have a two-fist sucker. He is great. And he is smiling with his eyes too so he is extra cute!
Jazz and I spend a lot of evenings together while Ty is finishing up his studies or whatever he does. And we get way tired at the end of the day. This has unfortunately happened more than once. I will be feeding him and I will fall asleep. But he will be eating when he falls asleep so lucky for us no one has drowned yet. I am working on staying awake through each before bed feeding so I can better keep watch. Tyler thinks it is funny when he comes in and finds us both asleep with a bottle in hand or mouth. So for some reason Ty thinks it is a good picture opportunity.
And curse my luck! I am the worst picture taker in all the world! I have tried to capture his smiles on camera so often and they always turn out blurry! So here are a few of the least blurry ones. His smile though is so cute, I just don't have the best timing on all of them. But he is a little doll!


Yup, that is our cute little baby! Someday I will capture that cute open mouth gummy smile we see so often! He is such a great little boy and I love him to pieces!

Up through Thanksgiving

Whew! I have a lot of catching up to do! So where to begin? Because I love looking at photos on other peoples blogs I will put on more photos than you wanted to see on mine! whoo-hoo!

Jazz is amazingly cute, and becoming more and more photogenic every day! Go little baby! But that is not the point of the very cute photo below. This little boy waves around all of his limbs all of the time. Not unlike most babies of his age. So I like to aggravate him by attaching helium balloons on his sleeves or footies so when he flails around the balloons go crazy! He is so fun to watch. This is his bored look because I attached the balloons to the middle of his pj's and not his arms or legs. So this is bored Jazz.

Here he is staring at the unmoving balloons lol.
Oh! And this picture is of the leaf picker uppers. I had no idea, but because of the amazing amount of trees Connecticut and the even more amazing amount of leaves the trees drop, the city here picks up your leaves if you rake them to the side of the road! Tyler spent many long hours of several days raking his heart out to get the leaves over there, and yup, the city didn't lie! Here they are with a giant vacuum on wheels sucking up all of our leaves.
Jazz is our king at the table. His throne takes up half of the table and just recently we have had to be careful about how close we put things to his feet lol, he will kick out and hit things if we aren't careful!
And I just thought this hat was amazingly cute.
We carved a pumpkin! Go Jazz's first Halloween!
Jazz of course slept all the way through it lol What a good baby.
Tyler dared me to eat some pumpkin lol, little did he know that I have eaten it before. I won a whole dollar! Yay! What can you do with a dollar? I don't know but I was still proud of myself.
Humm, wow I picked a lot of pictures from this pumpkin party. Oh well, what can you do?
So, my mom came out to help me figure out life with a baby, and I had been craving Outback Steak House foods several months prior to having little Jazz. So my dad said my mom should take me, and yay! She did! Here we are happily sitting at our table.
So now, more up to date. We just celebrated Thanksgiving with Tyler's family in Maine. It was great because Tyler had the chance to get up with Jazz a few times each night! Whoo-hoo! That was probably my favorite part of the vacation. Hearing Jazz fuss and then elbowing Tyler and making him get up to get him! Man, those good days. One funny instance happened though. After the first night of being so good and getting up each time I nudged him, Tyler was so tired. That next night he never actually came fully to consciousness and his subconscious was not willing to get up with Jazz. Here is that nights conversation:

Me: Ty, Jazz is up. Will you get him?

Ty: No, it isn't my turn. You want him to stop crying, you get him.

Me: Ummm.... Kay

Two hours later...

Me: Jazz is up again, will you get him now?

Ty: Only if you bring him to me

Me: Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of giving me a break?

Ty: Yup so you might as well get him.

Yeah, I like my husbands conscious self better too. When I told him about it he was so embarrassed lol. Because I also told his mother and she got after him. Which isn't entirely fair because I mean, who has full control of their subconscious? Not me, probably, I actually don't know. Maybe I do. I might be just amazing like that. But I thought it was hilarious. Now every night he asks me if he did anything stupid in his sleep lol. Which he normally doesn't. I just need to remember to not let him get too sleep deprived.

Jazz has been an absolute dream baby! He is getting so chubby and cute! He is actually out growing his newborn clothes now! I tried to put him in my favorite sleeper, and the neck is around his shoulders because his legs are so long! *Cry!* But that is ok, I hope that means that he will be tall like his dad, and not short like his mom.

One of our favorite things to do with Jazz is to take him places involving the car. He goes right to sleep and stays that way for a good chunk of time. Which is awesome! After I drop Tyler off at school (it has been way crazy rainy for a while here) Jazz is fast asleep so I can either catch up on some missed sleep myself, or I can get things done. Depending on how I feel. Anyway it has been amazing. He is fabulous at stores and restaurants as well. And when he does wake up he is fascinated by all the lights and new corners (he stares at corners like he is watching T.V.) Anyway, he is great, and I just love him to pieces!

Yay for Jazz, Yay for Tyler and Yay for the Holidays!