7.31.2009

new car!

recently our faithful 1999 Ford Explorer, (given graciously by the Greene's to the Dukes who gave it to jesse for his graduation from tech) "Gandalf the Grey," has been in rapid decline. he has served us faithfully; we left from our wedding in it and brought judah home in it, among a long list of other adventures. but like a beloved old pet or senile grandparent, it has turned against us in its dotage; betraying us TWICE on our vacation.
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because of this, and having newer, more important life in our cars' hands than just our own, we had been looking for newER cars since the beach. newer, but used, of course, since we could never afford an actual NEW car...and we wouldnt think it worth it if the prices were comparable anyway. well, as we started looking these past 2 weeks, we heard about the cash for clunkers rebate program the gov't is doing to get environmentally unfriendly cars off the road and replaced with more fuel efficient ones. the newer car we really liked, a Saturn Vue, was an upgrade in MPG of 7 or 8 which means we would get the full $4500 discount towards a NEW car for trading in our "clunker" (which is such an offensive name to call what was previously our family's perfect happy metal cocoon). yikes, new cars are still usually more than $4500 more expensive than their slightly used counterparts, so we sitll didnt even think we would use that discount. then we found out saturn was offering an additional $3000 customer cash, making the 2009 Vue even less expensive than its 2006 counterparts with 40k miles on them that were on sale at Carmax. NICE!
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so we left judah with mom-o and big daddy and spent the day narrowing down the selection at our local dealers. unfortunately, during the buying process the dealer made the mistake of telling us in detail what they do with the "clunkers" in the "cash for clunkers" rebate program: they strip the car for parts, then inject saline through the engine to fatally kill it (as if theres another kind of killing), and then smash it at a junkyard. awesome. savage robbery followed by lethal injection euthanasia topped off by a post mortem demolishing of the remains of our treasured first family car. as excited as i was for our new car, i actually shed tears for our poor Gandalf, who would sacrifice his life for a newer, safer, more economical car for our entire family. however the dealer assured us that, despite his later betrayals, our car had been a good and faithful servant so he would be going to car heaven after they put him down.
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"i say a little prayer for you!" goodbye, my faithful friend
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one last hug



i salute your years of service, mon ami



presenting the wunderkind!
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yes, we are aware that the colors are straight up UGA, but we will be installing a prominent GT sticker ASAP so that people dont mistake us for lesser alumni. (or maybe we wont, and they will assume we are UGA grads/fans and of lesser intelligence; therefore giving us lots of room on the road...zing!)

7.23.2009

the bumbo and the dumbo

hahaha not really dumbo (in fact, he's the biggest smarty i know), but i was already planning on posting the pics of judah sitting up like a big boy in his bumbo chair as well as some hilarious pics of jesse's hair and so the title kind of wrote itself
so judah started holding his head up while sitting a little bit lately, not perfectly, but pretty steady, so i decided it was time to get out the bumbo to exercise those muscles even more. little did i know that seeing my baby in a chair--albeit a teal foam one with an elephant on it--would be so emotional...i mean, only big boys sit in chairs!
"hmmm, this orientation is new"
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"ok, i can do this"
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"hey, where'd you go?" (notice him completely ignoring the flashy, expensive toy right in front of him)
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hahaha on the bathroom floor in his tank top. so perfect
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smiley boy learning to love sitting in the bathroom...just like daddy!
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jesse wore a hat all day on sunday on the way home from the beach and this was what we got when he took it off. despite his funny faces, i still think he looks totally handsome, even with the new side part. doesnt it make you sick...even trying to take silly goofy pictures he still looks great (if a little goober-ish). we should all be so naturally beautiful!

so that's where judah gets that face


cant hold back the hilarity


sneaky pete

so myspace profile pic circa 2001

touchdown!

here is the live action version of judah's first ever footsteps on planet earth. lucky boy had his first footprints of life made on the sandy surf of cape san blas, fl. its really cool to think that these are the first two of thousands and thousands of happy footprints he will one day leave on this same beach in years to come building sandcastles with mommy, boogie boarding with daddy and playing volleyball with all of his harper "broncles." we cant wait for next year!

catching up: judah's squeaky nap

this is from when judah was 10 days old. he was humming like crazy in his sleep and when i went to record it it turned into a hilarious facial journey. he laughed, he cried, he squeaked like crazy. warning: prorbably very boring to all those not related to him. but pretty funny at the end to everyone...quite the spectrum of emotions.

7.22.2009

beach trip!

we were pretty nervous about taking a road trip to our annual beach vacation with a 7 week old along for the ride, but decided to be tough and go for it. apparently, god thinks we are so capable that a 7 hour car ride with baby wasn't challenging enough. so we also got 2 breakdowns of our car thrown in for good measure: first, when we were within sight of the highway on-ramp to start the trip and on the way home right outside the GA border, 100 miles from home- both on sundays. thank god jesse had his parents triple-A card on him or else we would have had a $700 towing bill for the second fiasco and would have never found an awesome repair shop open on sundays to fix us and get us on our way on the first episode (during which they tried to warn us about our bearings, which was what went wrong on the way home...oops, should have listened). despite the inconvenience and the money we had to spend, we are so so so thankful that these issues happened when and where they did considering there are many stretches of our drive that have no cell phone service and are in the middle of nowhere.

the harpers, our adopted family who we have taken this trip with for the past 5 years, saved our sanity on the way home since we were caravanning (we had actually just said our goodbyes to split off for the last leg) and beth and the lil'est harper, grayson, were able to pull a rapidly deteriorating me and a surprisingly calm judah out of the situation (barely in the shoulder of the highway, 95 degree weather, car and AC off, jesse standing perilously close to the road=STRESS level max for me which helps no one) and take us home in their car while jesse and the big harper boys stayed with our car and then enjoyed a lovely 100 mile towtruck ride in what must be the world's only towtruck with a back seat that could accommodate jesse + all 3 big harpers and the driver. what a miracle.

despite the bookend car dramas the time in between was a dream, full of volleyball, seafood, beach, swimming, naps, reading and FUN and we had such a blast. here are a few highlights plus all the photos can be found HERE

not a great start: thats our trusty car in the window. jesse and garrett swear they didnt plan their outfits
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ready for his first trip to the pool and beach
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not just the first time on the sand, but also judah's first ever time touching down on planet earth
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love this outfit from my mom
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the harpers!

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beach fam

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if you think this outfit's cute...

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...then you'll think its double the cute on daddy AND judah! the first of many twinsies, i promise!

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what would the beach be without his signature pose?

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the harper boys: judah's "broncles", part brothers, part uncles.

catching up: judah's hidden talent

Judah shows off his skill of tooting on command. I had discovered this talent several times before when i was alone with him, but could never reproduce it for jesse, so i tried to catch it on tape while jesse was out of town and got it on the first try! this will be a wonderful party trick for him when he gets older plus its VERY useful right now for when he has gas and cant push it out himself. This was on 6-20 just before his 4 week birthday. once again, please forgive my baby voice...i am mortified by myself but cant resist posting them even still because he's so cute!

7.21.2009

catching up: judah's second bath

this is Judah doing his hilarious water-emersion routine of panting in terror during his second ever bath back on 6/9 at 2 weeks old. Dont worry, he loves baths (even this one), he just always gets worked up when he goes in at first. This episode was so convincing that i thought we had scalded him even though we checked the water temperature 9 times!


7.20.2009

smiley town

judah has been smiling for a few weeks now, but is just getting to the point where we can get him to do one on purpose. we have lots of luck in the mornings right when we wakes up. i guess the rest of the times he is just tired of having seen us all day. this video has several awesome smiles captured and then a few funny faces in between. its a little scrunched because we had to rotate the video after taking it...and please forgive my horrible geeky mommy talk voice.

*this was taped today on judah's 8 week birthday.*