Who doesn't love a long weekend?!?

We really couldn't have been happier to have a long weekend.  I was unable to access my office on Friday, so I worked from the courthouse for a bit and was relatively unproductive.  I left early, picked Jayden up a little early and got home a little early to let Jasmine out.  Then we all met at a local restaurant to have dinner with Carmen's friend Alex.  The whole way home Jayden was talking about "Daddy's fwend" and "awex" but as soon as Alex showed up, Jayden clammed up.  He opened up a little later on, but still barely said a word around him.  He was really excited to see "daddy's fwends caw" (Daddy's friend's car).

It has been ridiculously gorgeous around here, to the point where I'm really tired of it.  I really appreciate my rain and gray skies and it should not be 80 degrees in January.  But we do get some beautiful sunsets.

I promise I was not driving when I took this picture.  I was stopped at a red light.  It probably was still illegal, but it was not dangerous.  :)

Saturday we had swim lessons.  I didn't get in the pool and had planned to take all kinds of pictures but the few I took were terrible and then another mom started talking to me and suddenly the lesson was over and I'd practically missed the whole thing.  It was nice to talk to another mom, and hopefully we'll see her at the pool again in the future.  Her daughter is only a year or so older than Jayden and they live near us.  So maybe they'll be friends some day.  :)

We spent the rest of the day running errands and relaxing.  We watched the Duke game (a win, luckily) and broke out the paints and the easel.  The most important thing to note about the pictures is that the "smock" that Jayden is wearing is actually one of my t-shirts turned inside out, and that t-shirt happens to be a North Carolina shirt that I had in high school.  Carmen would have rather had the shirt right side out, which I will be sure to do next time.

Oh, and the other important thing to note is that Jayden had so much fun painting.  It was awesome.

"No mommy, I no smile."

Concentration.

Serious concentration.

Checking out the chalkboard side too.  We drew orange grass.

A beautiful masterpiece.

Taking off his "smock" all by himself.  He did actually get the thing off on his own.  But it was a longer process than it needed to be.  And rather funny.

Today we did errands again in the morning and then came home and spent the afternoon all football, all the time.  Luckily both of our teams won (Carmen was rooting for Denver, I was clearly rooting for the Hawks, except for Richard Sherman).

Getting a helmet at Target so he can safely ride his bike.  He is wearing a helmet that is supposed to fit ages three and older.  As Carmen said, "welcome to the big head family."

Chillaxin on the couch with some strawberries and purple drank.

"Look Mommy, I purposely covered my arms in dry erase marker while you weren't looking for 2.5 minutes!"  Best invention ever?  WASHABLE markers.  Seriously.  Everyone should buy stock in any company that makes washable markers.  As long as I have kids I will be buying washable markers.
Oh, and this was version of a "smile" today.

Jayden is clearly still funny.  Yesterday in the car Carmen said something, I forget what, and Jayden started laughing and said "Daddy is crazy!!"  I promise backwards and forwards that I did not teach him to say that.  It was hilarious.  And all the time he says "Daddy funnnnnnyyyyy."  He loves making funny faces, which involves squinting his eyes and showing his teeth.

He also has an imagination that is developing more and more.  He makes his cars and other toys say things.  This afternoon he was playing with his cars on his train track and was saying "okay, I'm leaving now," "okay, see you tomorrow," etc.  It was awesome . I couldn't get to my camera fast enough to catch that one, but I did catch this later on:

And in other good news, I can once again upload videos to the blog!  If anyone had trouble accessing the three I posted earlier, please let me know so I can post them officially in the blog.  I'm just glad to know it wasn't me making some kind of mistake.

I'm so excited to have tomorrow off, it's just so wonderful.  I am really looking forward to a relaxing day with my baby.  Maybe we'll go to the park for a bit, maybe we'll run around in the backyard, maybe we'll break out the bike now that we have a helmet!  Whatever we do, it'll be fun and we'll definitely be laughing.  :)