"He is a year old"

So...we finally made it back home to Colorado yesterday evening. What an AMAZING trip we had. Lots of fun time with family and friends. I have to say that the trip back had one major difference. Whenever any one asked me how old Archer was...it was a VERY odd feeling to say, "he is a year old." As anyone who has traveled with a baby, you know you get asked this ALL THE TIME. So, needless to say, I got used to it by the end of our trek from Atlanta to Colorado Springs. The trip out there was rough to say the least. Archer did not want any part of sitting still in the air plane or playing with toys...NOTHING. He stayed awake the entire time and moved around soooo much. It was a good thing that we had the row all to ourselves. Thank you Frontier ticketing agent for that. The trip home was a lot more successful. We were on the plane for about thirty minutes before Archer fell asleep. This was WONDERFUL to me, as we were not so lucky this time and had to sit in a full row. He slept until there was about 30 minutes left in our trip. Again, excellent. Then we had to RUN to the other side of the terminal in the Denver Airport to make our connecting flight to Colorado Springs. Archer was running out of patients, but luckily the trip from Denver to the Springs is all of 20 minutes. Nick was there to greet us and get us back home. It really was a nice trip, although the next morning we were greeted with snow on the ground. Talk about a shock to the system!!

Happy First Birthday!

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY LITTLE DUDE!! I cannot believe that we are already here! It has been a great year and we are so looking forward to what you will do next. I know it has only been a year, but it is hard to remember life before Archer. It seems like it has been WAY longer then a year. So...how did we celebrate? Well, the celebration started yesterday. As luck would have it, Gee-Ma and Aunt Sarah were able to take the day off from their hectic schedules and join us for a visit to the Georgia Aquarium. As many people know...I LOVE aquariums...of any type. We quickly found out that Archer also shares this fondness. To say he enjoyed himself was quite the understatement.

On Wednesday, Archer was greeted by his mommy and daddy with lots of "happy birthdays" and hugs and kisses. Aunt Sarah gave him his first birthday spanks (if you can call it that...they were very gentle.) and Gee-Ma had another hard time going to work. We spent most of the day hanging out and then we had to take Nick to the airport. He had to head back to CO earlier than planned to get back to work. After that, Archer got to have a play date with his good buddy Tripp.

To finish it all off, we skyped with the Great Grandparents in Kentucky so they could sing to him and watch him destroy another cake!

It was a wonderful day, minus the daddy man having to leave. Still having a hard time believing that we have a one year old...TODDLER?!?! WOW!!

Happy Birthday Party!

Well, to say that we had a WONDERFUL 1st birthday party for Archer would be and understatement. After a lot of time changes (gotta love military life!) we had quite a successful party. Lots of family and friends came to my Aunt Lynn's house to celebrate our little boy. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
Archer got SOOOOO many gifts. We are truly blessed with such wonderful family and friends. I can hardly wait to get them all home so that he can have some new things to play with at the house. It is hard he will be a whole year in just a few days. What a difference a year makes!

A boy and his puppies

I don't think that I have taken time to properly write about how pleased I am with our dogs. I was so worried about how they would act with the huge change of having Archer in the house. I was most worried about Buck, because he had never really been around children. BeauLeaux was raised around my niece and nephew, so I knew he tolerated kids. These fears quickly passed as I soon realized they didn't mind him much at all. For the first few weeks, they would pass by him with out much of a thought. Then, as he started to make more noise they did a lot more sniffing and many walk by licks. I then began to worry about how they would act when he started crawling. I knew that if they were in his path, he wouldn't navigate around them. I also worried that since Archer follows me everywhere, when it was feeding time there would be some kind of issue. Again...I was pleasantly surprised at their behavior and mannerisms. Archer has had his whole hand in their bowls and neither one of them seems to mind at all.

Now, to be perfectly honest...BeauLeaux is not the BEST with Archer. He gets very jealous and most of the time just stays away from him. He has never done anything to harm Archer though, which is good. He would just rather stay away from him...unless he is in his high chair with food. I thought I had a little bit longer before Arch would start sharing his food with the boys, but that started relatively quickly. Again, much to my surprise or giant dogs are SO gentle when taking food from Archer. I have never seen them open their mouths so slowly to anyone giving them food. I usually have to say, "easy" whenever I give them treats. Keep in mind we DO NOT feed the dogs table scraps. Before Archer it was a rare treat that they would get something from our plates. It also drives me CRAZY when Archer feeds them. I have to go get a wipe and wipe down his hands...throw away any food he may have touched after one of the dogs got a treat...it is a pain. Here lately we have been putting the dogs in their "room" (the laundry room has an area for them to sleep) and leave them until we are done with our meal. Much more sanitary that way. Anyway, here are a few pictures of Archer with his puppies:

Poor snotty man...

Ugh...Archer has been battling a cold / cough ever since we got home from our visit to Kentucky. This is his first major cold. He had a bit of congestion when we moved here to Colorado Springs, but NOTHING like this. I feel AWFUL for him. We went to the doctor a week and a half ago, and nothing seems to be changing. I know there is not much that we can do for him, but that doesn't make it any easier. I have also noticed that when he coughs, he cries. I am sure this means that he has a sore throat. But, we do have another doctors appointment tomorrow in the morning so hopefully the doctor will be able to tell me SOMETHING. We did invest in a humidifier to help Archer breathe. I will say that it helped him sleep TREMENDOUSLY better. It also seems that it loosened his cough a little. And, a new decoration in my house - BOXES of Kleenex. I have to have them EVERYWHERE because you never know when he is going to sneeze and if I don't have a Kleenex handy it is...well, lets just say nasty. So, here is hoping that we have a successful doctors appointment tomorrow morning. I really hope we can get him better by next Tuesday. That is when we go to Atlanta to visit family and friends! But most of all...Archer's first birthday and birthday party!! YAY!! Hopefully my next post will be a lot more cheery.

Jabber Jaws!

So, I have been talking about how vocal Archer has gotten recently. He usually starts talking from the moment he wakes up until he is either eating or sleeping. He seems to have a lot on his mind, and he is VERY emotional. I have been trying to catch this on video as I find his "rants" HILARIOUS. I finally was able to catch him really giving me a piece of his mind. Enjoy!

Beautiful Day!!

We have been having some AMAZING weather here in Colorado, so I took advantage of all of the sunshine and brought Archer to our backyard to do some exploring. I also of course took the opportunity to take some insanely cute pictures of the little dude. He enjoyed discovering what rocks are and the fact that he can throw them made things even better! He also threw the ball for Buck and Beauleax a few times. It was a wonderful afternoon and since the weather looks like it is going to stay beautiful, I hope to spend some more time outside today!
Here is a picture from the playground. I don't know if Archer really liked this toy or if he even really knew what to think of it.