House of Helton

January 2009

2009-02-16T07:56:00.000-08:00

Since I'm just trying to catch up, here are just a few highlights from January:

We went to Nanny's for Cooper's birthday party. Everyone had a great time!

Ethan decided to help himself to some chocolate.
This was all that remained, except the messy chocolate face.

Christmas 2008

2009-02-16T07:46:00.001-08:00

Christmas was so much fun this year! Here are just a few pictures...

Ethan didn't want to leave cookies for Santa. He said, "Cupcakes for Santa!" So we baked cupcakes and left them, after trying them out of course!

Aaron had just as much fun as Ethan did opening presents.

I couldn't get both boys to look at the camera!

What's this? Thomas, of course!

The Polar Express

2008-12-20T07:53:00.001-08:00

After Gatlinburg, we made a stop to board the Polar Express. In spite of everyone feeling sick (thanks to the bug that made its way through our cabin), we had an awesome time!

We boarded the train listening to the soundtrack from the movie. The conductor punched our tickets, and then hot chocolate and chocolate covered marshmallow Santas were served by our chefs. They read The Polar Express as we made our way to the North Pole. Once we got there, we saw Santa's house and none other than Santa himself! Santa boarded the train and handed out bells to all the boys and girls! Everyone sang Christmas carols as we made our way back to the train station. Ethan was so excited the entire ride!

Gatlinburg 2008

2008-12-20T07:20:00.000-08:00

We spent the first weekend in December in Gatlinburg with the Smith side of the family. We went to the Christmas parade in the 24 degrees weather! It was a lot of fun even if we exhausted Katie's supply of hand and body warmers!

Just hangin' around the cabin...or in Aaron's case, hangin' out!

We played a little miniature golf, too.

We even had presents!

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T18:23:00.001-08:00

Who says the turkey is the best part of Thanksgiving??? Ethan and Cole didn't do much eating, but they sure had fun playing in the leaves in the backyard.

Not to miss out on the fun, Aaron had his time in the leaves too!

Play

2008-11-27T18:09:00.000-08:00

Here are just a few pictures from our neighbor's birthday parties. Nick turned 5, and Savannah turned 7. The indoor play place, called Play, was a lot of fun!

Halloween

2008-11-21T15:41:00.000-08:00

For the 2nd year in a row, Ethan refused to wear his Thomas costume on Halloween. At least he wore it at school for the parade. Lucky for us, he had some pirate gear!

The cutest bat you've ever seen!!!

Getting ready to trick-or-treat

Getting Ready for Halloween

2008-11-21T15:36:00.000-08:00

Ethan's school had a Halloween parade and party. You'll see Ethan in his costume, none other than Thomas the Tank Engine!

He can't have candy, but Aaron sure is happy about Halloween!

Ethan's school studied pirates. Here he is in his pirate gear with his Thomas pajamas!

Ethan and Daddy carved pumpkins!

Yahoo Farms

2008-11-21T15:32:00.000-08:00

We spent an afternoon at Yahoo Farms in Jasper, GA. They had animals, pumpkins, and a corn maze. Aaron enjoyed riding on Daddy's back. You get a great view from there! Ethan loved the corn maze. We walked and walked and walked some more!

Fall Carnival Time

2008-11-21T15:24:00.000-08:00

Fall brings carnival time!
Ethan and Aaron enjoyed Mommy's school's Fall Festival with all the animals.

Ethan loved the cow the best!

Daddy and Aaron enjoying the animals.

Ethan and Daddy spent time at Ethan's school's carnival.

Ethan and Lindsey

Playing in the ball pit!

Hangin' Out at Nanny's House

2008-11-21T15:20:00.000-08:00

Just Playing Around the House

2008-09-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

The Train Museum

2008-09-14T10:50:00.001-07:00

We visited the Kennesaw Civil War and Train Museum recently.
Of course, Ethan had a wonderful time!

Aaron's Getting So Big!

2008-09-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

Here is Aaron with his first taste of rice cereal.
He wanted to play with the spoon more than he wanted to actually eat!

Yes, he is sucking his thumb. Too cute!

He does love the bath!

Ethan's First Day of Preschool

2008-08-17T19:18:00.000-07:00

Yes, Ethan has started preschool! We enrolled him in the Monday/Wednesday/Friday 2 year old class. His friend, (and babysitter's daughter) Lauren, goes to the 4 year old class, so they get to go to school together.

We took the day off to be able to take him to school and pick him up. When we got to his classroom, what luck for us-there was a train on the table! I don't know that he even realized that we left even though we gave him kisses and told him to have a good day!

When we picked him up, his teachers said that he did great! He just didn't eat much lunch. And, for those of you that know Ethan, that's no shock to you.

Here are a few pictures from his first day:

This is Ethan and his friend Lauren:

Trains at preschool!

A minor bit of drama when the train track would not work properly.

This is the sticker Ethan got his first day. You can see it in his hair. His teacher said that is where he put it. He wore it there until bedtime!

This is the Cutest!

2008-07-10T19:19:00.000-07:00

I had to take a few pictures of our boys sleeping. Prior to the pictures I (Traci) had been between the 2 boys. I got out of bed and came back to find them like this:

How cute are they?!?!?

This...is...Serious

2008-07-06T12:52:00.000-07:00

One of Ethan's favorite shows is "Wonder Pets." His favorite character, Ming-Ming, has rubbed off on him. He now walks around saying, "This...is...serious!" He even knows how to use it correctly. A few nights ago as he was trying to go to sleep, he heard Aaron crying. The one-sided conversation went something like this:

"Aaron's crying."
"Daddy, Aaron's crying."
"This...is...serious!"

Ethan and Ming-Ming on his birthday.

Here are a few pictures of Ethan actually being serious, which is sometimes rare since he is quite silly normally.
Okay, this one isn't quite so serious!

Happy Fourth of July

2008-07-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

Today we hung out at home until dinner time where we had 2 parties to go to. We went next door to the Calins where they had some of Paul's favorite foods-brats and sausages. Ethan spent the time fishing in the make-believe fish pond-that is until he decided he was going in! He also loved going on top of their hill to their deck to golf with his friends, Nick and Savannah.
We had another neighborhood party to go to so we left there for the neighbor's house on the other side of us. We had a lot of fun at the Hawkins where we ate more food! Ethan loved playing inside and outside there with all the kids. We ended up watching the Woodstock fireworks from their porch. This was the first time that Ethan was actually awake for them. He was so excited! He kept saying, "Fireworks, fireworks!" Aaron even stayed awake for some of them. He couldn't hang in for all of them though, such is the life of a baby-able to sleep through anything.

Here are some pictures of the boys on Aaron's first Fourth of July:

We're still here!

2008-06-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I was last able to update our site, so here are some pictures for everyone.

Ethan has learned to love his baby brother after all!

At the zoo, Ethan was equally as thrilled with the bamboo as with the animals.

We're not sure if Ethan liked the animals or the train better!Aaron slept the whole time at the zoo so we'll have to get pictures of him next time.

We've decided that Aaron and Ethan do look a lot alike. The top picture is of Aaron and the bottom is of Ethan. They were both almost 2 months in the pictures.
What do you think?

All smiles!

Brothers are the best! Notice the "big brother/little brother" t-shirts, courtesy of Aunt Nikki. Too cute!

Ethan Puck

2008-05-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

Thankfully, Nanny was here for 3 weeks to help out when Aaron arrived. Had she not been here, we would have been starving and living in a filthy house! But best of all, Ethan had his Nanny here to play with and learn to cook. He's always cooking his eggs in his play kitchen, but with Nanny's help, he made real eggs for the pound cake and made sugar cookies. Since the only cookie cutters that I had available were pumpkins and hearts, we got to celebrate Halloween and Valentine's Day again!

"I'm cooking eggs!"

Yummy cookies!

Even More Pictures

2008-05-08T12:15:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more pictures of Aaron. Ethan hasn't been too cooperative with the camera when it comes to getting pictures of him with Aaron, but here is what we have.

More Aaron pictures

2008-04-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

For those who think I need to "get busy" on posting pictures - here! (Trust me, I AM busy... just not with pictures.)

I'll post more as time allows.

Welcome Aaron Joseph Helton

2008-04-24T09:02:00.000-07:00

Aaron was born last night (4/23/08) at 11:14PM. He weighed 7lbs 8oz and measured 18.5in.

We arrived at the hospital around 10:30AM to be induced. Every time they put Traci on pitocin, Aaron's heart rate would become erratic. They tried to let her labor progress without pitocin, but it was just too slow. They tried to alternate pitocin and natural, but that didn't work either.

About 10:30 - right in the middle of the Law and Order episode Traci really wanted to watch - they decided to do a C-Section. 45 minutes later, Aaron was here!

Ethan's 2nd Birthday

2008-04-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe, but Ethan is 2 now! Of course, we had nothing else, but a Thomas the Train Party. Is there any other kind for a 2 year old boy??? Not for our Thomas obsessed son! We were decked out in trains all over even having a train bouncy house.

Hayden and Tanner enjoying their pizza.

Ethan was interested in his toys-his Thomas toys, that is.

We had a great party despite the rain. The kids didn't care that their clothes were soaked from the bouncy house, the slide, and the swings! Hopefully, their parents didn't either!

A bouncy house pile up!

Even Maddie likes Thomas!

What could be better than ice cream AND cake???

Ridin' the Rails

Ethan's Easter Egg Hunt

2008-04-08T10:05:00.000-07:00

Ethan met his friend David for their first real Easter Egg Hunt! No one could have been more excited than Ethan...eggs, eggs, more eggs! He couldn't get enough, but he still managed to share, giving eggs to anybody that was around. What luck we had-when we got home one of the eggs contained 100 Thomas stickers! Easter couldn't have been better in Ethan's eyes!

Look at all the eggs!!!

My pen!

2008-03-18T18:32:00.000-07:00

I picked up some clothes from the cleaners today.

As I was signing the credit card slip, I noticed that the pen the cleaner handed me felt familiar. I turned it over and around and looked at it carefully. Turned out that it was one of my pens. Apparently, I must've left it in the pocket of one of my shirts when I dropped them off.

So, I told the cleaner "Hey...that's my pen." She quickly grabbed the pen and the credit card slip and said "Bye-bye. Thank you Misser Helpon."

I wanted my pen so I added a bit more emphatically "No. That's my pen!"

"Hokay. Thank you Misser Helpon."

"No. My pen. I want my pen back!"

"Hokay. Bye Misser Helpon!"

"Pen! My pen!

"Hokay. Bye."

"@#&*$!!!!"

... And that's how I lost my pen.

-Paul

We're here (and there was much rejoycing.)

2008-03-14T19:40:00.001-07:00

OK... we broke down and finally started our own blog. We thought we really didn't need one, but we had an incident today that we wanted to share. Given that we'll probably have more like this, a blog seemed the best way to communicate these "happenings."

Mooooooooooooooo!

We had gone out shopping to get a few things for Aaron's room (mattress, changing pad, etc...). We stopped at Zaxby's for dinner because Ethan wanted his favorite dinner - "grrrriiiillllllll cheese!"

As we're eating, Ethan sees a woman sitting at a table. She was wearing a white sweater with black spots. He looks at her for a second, smiles and says (quite loudly) - "Cow!" Of course, we thought it was cute... until he kept going (even louder):

"Hey cow! Hey cow! Mooooo cow, moooooooo!"

I just about choked on my drink trying not to spit it all over the table.

Ethan... you gotta love the boy.