I can hardly believe that at this very moment 2 years ago and was putting the last few items in my hospital bag and getting ready to go to the IWK to meet my little man. And just a year ago I was squeezing every last moment of joy out of my last day of maternity leave. Gordon and I took Austin to the park and spent the day doing the things that the little man enjoyed most, sliding, running around, tossing him up in the air and then between naps we cuddled, read his favorite books, finger painted and took him out for a quite family dinner, just the three of us.

This year I am spending his birthday at work because we are just back from a weeklong vacation and I couldn't get away for the day. I know he will be having a great time at Kelly's with his firends today and we're having a birthday supper tonight, complete with Lightning McQueen birthday cake! Monkey's big day started when he climbed into bed with us at 5:30am. G and I held him close and sang him "Happy Birthday". He looked up and sleepily said "Again!" so of course we sang again. He had a birthday candle on his waffles and a birthday button on his jacket (yes I want the world to know that today is a special day!) He is growing so fast. I try to relive the moments of his life in my head so that I don't forget one single precious second of it!

I know a few of you are expecting a slide show like the one I did last year. To be honest I am in the process of doing one but I have over 5000 pictures to go through and I am also working on another very exciting project so I wasn't able to finish it for today. I slacked off and used my time in NL to relax instead of to work on a bunch of projects! Stay tuned for good things.....

A couple of weeks ago, my cousin Andrea (a budding photographer) came with us to an apple orchard in the Valley and took a few pictures. I will have more to share tomorrow as I capture tonight's moments but in the meantime enjoy!

Pumpkin bread, hockey helmets and puppies

There is something about the adventure of travelling with a toddler. I just love watching Austin's eye grow as he sees plains, trains and helicopters up close. He gets that "holy crap these things are REAL!" look going on and it is beyond cute.

After some careful planning for our trip we managed to navigate the airport fairly smoothly. I had put Austin in the backpack right out of the car so he was content to watch all the activity from the safety of the Beco. I had check us in and printed off our boarding passes the day before so that was one less line that we had to wait in. We bypassed the line at security (travelling with kids in like a golden ticket to the front of the line...it helps when the child is super cute, looks at the security guard and says"Nice to meet you police man"...now the guard was a woman but she thought it was beyond cute). Things got a little hairy then because we had to take him out of the Beco to go through the metal detector and he wasn't too happy about getting back in.

Once upstairs I was so excited. I had plans to get my coffee (one last Starbucks fix) before hitting the rock and then I had planned to take a bunch of pictures of my monkey watching the plans and observing the busy-ness of the airport. Well only have that plan happened. We got my coffee, got coffee for G and a cookie for Monkey. We walked down to the gate and as soon as we sat down and I reached for the camera, they called preboarding for people with children. We went through the gate and onto the plane. I regret not having taken my camera out anyway to capture the moment that he say the plane and when he got settled in his seat. He played so well during the flight and kept looking out the window and exclaiming "Wook Mama!". He was very entertaining and made the flight so enjoyable.

We spent most of yesterday afternoon sleeping (that's what we get for being up until 2:40am doing laundry and packing!) and then we were pretty low key last night. I baked pumpkin bread (only 2pts a slice!) and Austin chased Bailey (my sister's dog) around the house all the while wearing Mark's old hockey helmet and saying "Baiwee- what do you fink?" I love it!

I'm so excited that we have three more full days of enjoying my family and watching my family enjoy my boy. I can't believe that in a week he will be 2.... where did the time go?

Happy Thanksgiving

(And this is yet another reason why I love our friend Kelly!)