8 months old

Tylor is 8 months old. 

He's getting cuter and cuter everyday and Jaydon is a great big brother. 

We love these matching big brother little brother outfits - only problem is little brother grows out of them way too quick :)  Tylor loves to play with toys and his favorite person in the world is still Jaydon. 

Jaydon's good friend Lina also had a birthday and they had a face painter there.  I didn't get any pictures of the party (must have forgot the camera). 

Jaydon got painted up as a tiger and for the next 2 months, every time we go to nursery he climbs up the stairs on all fours telling everyone that he's a tiger.  Mom had to join in on the fun too :) 

1st Hair Cut

Jaydon was getting a bit shaggy so I decided to take him to get a haircut. 

When I arrived I realized that the one who really needed a snip was actually Tylor. 

He kept rubbing his eyes from the hair tickling him, his ears were no where to be seen and (even though I dress him in boy clothes like camo) he regularly gets addressed as a little girl - but that's just because he's so cute. 

Jaydon went off to get his hair cut all by himself like a big boy and we settled Tylor down on my lap for his very first haircut. 

Fortunately our friends the Fenn's had the same plans that morning and showed up just in time to take some pictures of us before and during the snipping. 

Tylor was very curious about the whole ordeal and was very well behaved. 

Jaydon did a great job being on his own and after the hair cuts we joined the Fenns at the malls play area to jump on the trampolines and ride in the cars.

Emir Interview

This is fairly old news but in case you didn't see it when it first aired here's an interview with the Emir and Prime Minister of Qatar.  Very interesting...60 Minutes: Qatar

Happy Birthday Steve

For Steve's birthday I got tickets to the ExxonMobil Doha Open (so getting the tickets wasn't very tricky). 

Last year Steve and I went to several games over the week but missed the finals and were kind of disappointed about that.  This year, since I wasn't around when they were handing out the tickets, I only got 2 to the finals. 

We headed out for the evening after putting the boys to bed figuring we'd arrive 1 hour late in time to see things start to get good.  Well they hadn't even started yet when we arrived - delayed due to fog. 

They finally decided to start about 2 hours late only to be delayed again because  the players were slipping on the white paint on the court due to the moisture in the fog that was still rolling in.  We watched as guys with suits ran out on the court scrubbing the paint to make it less slippery. 

Finally, the guys in suits got relieved by the guys in track suits.  In it's own Doha way is was mildly entertaining.  They finally started the 2nd round and it was 10:00 and we were late for dinner reservations so we called it a night at the tennis and went to an Italian restaurant that had just opened at the new Renaissance hotel. 

The food was mediocre but service was nice and they did their best to make Steve's night memorable. 

Jaydon, of course, loves birthdays.  He sometime pretends play that it's someone (or things) birthday and sings them the song and cuts up playdoh cake so we had to be sure to do a celebration with the boys. 

We had some frozen strawberry cheesecake and Jaydon made sure that Steve got all his candle blown out. 

Happy Birthday Daddy. 

Home Sweet Home

We said good-bye to Steve's family and Mickey and his friends and loaded back on the plane for the flights back home.  The short flight from Florida to Texas was easy and by the time we got on the plane in Houston for our 16 hour trek back to Doha the boys were already getting tired.  They both slept most of the flight home. 

When we got home they had a surprise waiting for them - Santa had put up the Christmas tree and had delivered more presents. 

The boys thought it was great to come home and open up presents as a family (all except for Athena that is).  Jaydon was a champ about the jet lag, within about 3 days he was sleeping through the night with no problem. 

Tylor on the other hand was a different story.  After 2 weeks he was still waking up all night long.  We finally went into full sleep training mode which got him going to bed at a decent time and only waking up twice at night to eat. 

That Tylor is a stubborn one... like I tell him every day - it's a good thing he's so cute ;)

Merry Christmas

Christmas morning I attempted to make green and red french toast with eggs. 

The red ended up more pink but for Jaydon that was all the better since it's his favorite color. 

After breakfast we opened up more presents. 

Jaydon got lots of neat stuff like Thomas Train legos and a new tractor book. 

Tylor refined is present opening technique. 

He takes his job very seriously and stayed entertained for hours among all the wrapping paper. 

He even helped with the clean-up by trying to eat as much of the paper as he could sneak into his mouth when no one was watching. 

After presents and breakfast we spent the morning packing up to get ready to leave the next day. 

Steve made us another wonderful meal - he ended up being the cook for most of the big family meals during the trip so one of his presents was a much needed Mickey Apron. 

After naps we headed back out to Magic Kingdom to spend the day with Mickey and his friends.  Interestingly I don't have anymore pictures of the day nor does anyone else. 

(except for this one shot of Tylor and I dressed for the occasion) Either all of our batteries went dead at the same time or perhaps we had reached the end of the trip and were fully Disney World saturated...   

Christmas Eve - Epcot

Christmas Eve was the last day for Melissa, Dwayne, Karlee and Trevor so we woke up that morning and opened up Christmas gifts. 

The kids had a great time, the babies (Tylor and James) figured out how to unwrap gifts

and then everyone decorated the $8 Christmas Tree i got a Target (love target!). 

We let the kids have an easy day, enjoy their news toys and take an early nap because we decided to try out Disney World a different way - at night. 

We loaded into the car around 3pm after everyone with flights was delivered to the airport and arrived to Epcot (the only park we had left to do) just as people were piling into their cars with cranky and already asleep kids.

We had dinner reservations at Little Mexico but first took the tour. 

On the way out we found Donald which was one of the few characters we hadn't said hi to yet. 

Tylor loved him and the professional photographer got a great shot of him thrilled to be hanging out with the life size stuffed animal. 

After dinner we went to the Nemo ride which everyone loved because it ended up having a mini aquarium even with Dolphins swimming around. 

The plan was to stay long enough to finally see one of the nightly firework shows, Epcot is the earliest which started at 9:30.  Tanner found and sleighed a troll, then we headed off to find a spot for the show. 

Tylor fell asleep just before the show started, slept the full 20 minutes while the firecrackers went off then at the end, when everyone around us was cheering he woke up and looked at me like - what's all the commotion about?  It's ok - he was super cute in his antlers (when he actually kept them on). 

And not to be forgotten, Tylor is 8 months old...

Disneyworld - Magic Kingdom

Finally, we decided it was the day for Magic Kingdom.  By this time we had figured out how to get everyone out of the house efficiently and even with our house being a short drive from the entrance of Disneyworld it took over 2 hours to actually get in the park.  Fortunately, Jaydon thought the tram ride from the car to the ferry and the ferry ride to entrance were just as much fun as an actual ride.  But by the time we got inside Jaydon was already complaining about being tired. 

We got stuck in the middle of the street party with everyone dancing – usually Jaydon would love to participate but he had no interest. 

We found a carousel ride which he enjoyed then sent him over to the Dumbo ride. 

I was sure the sign said a 5 minute wait, well 50 minutes later – well past lunch time, Steve and Jaydon get back from Dumbo.  We headed over to an Italian restaurant  to get Jaydon’s favorite food, pasta and as we were sitting down to eat Jaydon had a complete fit ending with a total balling meltdown (looking back at these pictures I can see how swollen his poor tired eyes were).  Steve and I took one look at the situation and each other and decided that we had had it for the day.  We made sure all the various family members had a way home then trekked back out to the car for a long nap at home in our own beds.  Jaydon slept for almost 4 hours that afternoon – he was exhausted from all the late nights with his cousins, early mornings because when the sun is up so is he and the long days with on the go naps.  We had to wake him up so that we could go meet the rest of the family at Outback for our 1 dinner out together.  

Well almost together – the gluten free, no pork, lactose free part of the family was banished to a different table. 

Tylor had been a drooling machine but we rediscovered what was likely the first ever kind of teething toys for babies – bones! 

And not just any kind of bone – a baby back rib pork bone.  He loved it and was completely content for the rest of the dinner. 

We could hear people behind us snickering at seeing Tylor gnaw away like we were in a Flintstones or something.  And it worked!  The next morning we had our first little tooth sighting - Tylor's first Christmas gift :)