August 2013 – Casa de Murphy

Once upon a time, I remember telling Stephen that we would need to be sure to always plan fun things to do with Liam because I didn’t want to always sit around the house with him on the weekends. I guess a part of me was worried he would be bored or we would be bad parents or something crazy like that……well, I don’t even think we’ve had to TRY to be busy this summer. It’s just been happening on it’s own. NOT complaining, though… Just amazed at how fast time has gone by and how busy we really have been without really trying to be. Definitely not the norm for this Murphy clan prior to little Liam Michael entering the picture 🙂

On Saturday afternoon, I got to have some fun celebrating a good friend’s upcoming addition to her family. It was a surprise shower so that made it even more exciting…any of you who know me, know it was super hard for me to keep this a secret!

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Saturday night, Daddy & Liam had some fun in the living room & put together Liam’s 1st fort. He had a blast hanging out, watching some cartoons before bed, and enjoying some cookies & milk!

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We took a much anticipated trip to Grammy’s on Sunday for a belated birthday celebration for Liam. It was an invasion of the Little People!! We discovered that Fisher Price had the INSANE (in my humble opinion) idea to change the figures of the Little People …say bye bye to the fat, chunky people. You are now seeing skinny people with big heads in the new sets. I personally don’t like it and refuse to have two sets for Liam. So, since we’ve been huge fans of Little People for our little guy, we already put in an order with Santa and Grammy & Papa Rock went a tad crazy (in a good way)….LOL.

Liam loved it, though! We’ve had a hard time getting him a way from his new friends this week.

Thank you to Grammy & Papa Rock!

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Hope you all are having a great week! Until next time…..

August 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News — August Checking In

August 20, 2013 casademurphy

Can you believe we are more than half way through August already??? Crazy, right?!?! Didn’t the summer just start? That’s what it feels like, in a way, but Liam had his ‘End of the Summer’ party at school on Friday & all of the local area schools started back this week for the fall….so I guess it is THAT time again.

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The weekend before last, Liam & I helped to celebrate a little friend’s 2nd birthday. This little lady had quite the Minnie celebration. Of course, we enjoyed the party & decor, as well!!

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Party side note… Liam fell in LOVE with the birthday girl’s special chair (Pottery Barn Anywhere Chair). I just want to note that I did NOT put him in this chair. He found it and climbed in it all by himself. He was content to watch cartoons for a bit even during the party. I suspect we’ll be asking Santa for one of these babies this year… 🙂

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One of Liam’s fav things to do lately is put on my or Stephen’s things….e.g., shoes, shirt, sunglasses. He basically wants to be just like us. Here’s my little rock-star with my sunglasses on. He kept these on for quite a while. Hysterical!! He looked too cool for words just hanging out in the backseat like that! LOVED IT!

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This past weekend we went over to Mimi & Papa-D’s house for a visit & a dip in the pool. It was so much fun! Liam has really been loving swimming this summer. He was even starting to kick his little legs and move his arms all by himself. At one point while standing on the steps in the shallow end, he said, “mommy move” because he wanted to jump in the water and NOT have me catch him. Mr. Independent!

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Call us crazy….but at Casa de Murphy, we feed our squirrel friends. Liam looks forward to it. I’d say Timber does too but he’s quite comical with it…the squirrels aren’t even the least bit afraid of him. That dog will make a bee line run at them and literally keep going right past ’em…dumb AND funny! Back to the feeding …we just sprinkle raw peanuts in the ivy at the base of our oak tree out front & in the feeder up in the tree.

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And, finally….Since it’s the beginning of the Fall semester at UCF & the 1st week of school everywhere else in our little world this week…here’s a pic of little man Murphy as cute as cute can be with his backpack on after school the other day. Can’t get enough of that!! 🙂

Hope you all have a fantastic week! Until next time…

August 2013

Happy 2nd Birthday Liam [Part 2] — The Fun Continued

August 11, 2013 casademurphy

While we did not have one big party for our little man this year, we did have a fun-filled week last week!

I wanted to share some of our festivities with you….

The celebrations began the day before Liam’s birthday with an impromptu snack time party at school. I left work early that day & brought mini cupcakes & balloons in. It was really sweet of the daycare to let us do that…I think all the kiddos enjoyed the treat! Since Liam was set to fully transition to his new room the next week, we celebrated in his old room & this was also kind of a good-bye to his teacher & friends who are not moving over yet. It just happened that no other boys were there that day, so he was QUITE the ladies man at the table…LOL

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Liam & Ms. Johayri (‘Ms. Jo’)

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No 2 year old’s birthday is complete without cake, so of course, we still had that at the close of the weekend. I made vanilla cupcakes with a mickey theme in honor of our trip & Liam’s fav friends. Plus, believe it or not….we often lean toward the NOT…Liam despises ANYthing with chocolate in it. He doesn’t like candy & it’s touch & go with sprinkles…didn’t give me much to work with for the cupcakes but they still came out pretty cute 🙂

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So, last year I picked the baby mickey theme for his 1st birthday party because it was super cute. Who would have thought that this year, we would be doing another mickey?? 🙂

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The above two pics are the before & after of the candle blowing out…it was QUICK! He needed NO coaching! I got to admit, I did not see that coming. Apparently, since we have been showing him how to blow on his hot food to cool it down for months now, he automatically knew what to do when Daddy told him to blow out the candle. It was hysterical!! Then, he wanted to do it again!! So, I filmed it….

Every kid likes to open presents, right?!?! I couldn’t help but keep comparing last year’s 1st birthday to this one…as far as what Liam could do. For instance, he was not really interested in opening presents last year. Honestly, he just didn’t get it. Even at Christmas it was a stretch. Well, that’s all changed now. We got him a few small things and he tore them open! I almost can’t wait now for Santa this year…Ha!!

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One of the fun things we did after we recovered from our trip to Disney was go to Cocoa Beach. By chance, we found a great little spot that was phenomenal…definitely someplace we’ll make “our spot” from now on. We loaded Liam up in the wagon & wheeled him right on the beach 🙂

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Aww, so sweet! Daddy & Liam are waving ….wrong! Daddy’s holding up the car keys because he forgot to take them out of his pocket….OOPS! Liam loved the ocean water & all three of us got pummeled by waves a few times but it didn’t keep us down!

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Serious sandcastle building ….he did not want help.

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On Sunday, we finally made a trip down to Lake Eola to feed the ducks & swans. Been meaning to do this for awhile. It’s nice to do on Sunday’s because they also have the Farmer’s Market going on. When I drive Liam to school each morning, we drive by the ponds in our development & we always yell out good morning to the duckies so this was special for him to get to feed them.

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The swans were a tad aggressive & nearly taller than Liam …we brought 2 bags of lettuce but that almost didn’t seem like enough. geez!

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Stephen’s friend from Vero & his wife were in town on Sunday, so we went back out on Sunday after Liam’s nap to meet up with them. This met a trip to Downtown Disney. This ended up also being quite a fitting way to close out his birthday celebratory weekend…we started out with some mickey & closed it out with some mickey! He had some fun posing with a few friends….

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Stephen & I had a fantastic week celebrating Liam’s 2nd birthday!! He has grown & changed SO MUCH in this last year, it’s really incredible. I need to maybe do a post about that sometime soon. Until next time….