Latest & Greatest News

Adios September!!

October 1, 2013 casademurphy

the days are long but the years are short. make the most of it. -author unknown

I saw this quote posted today & loved it. While I think our days sometimes seem to also fly by, we definitely aim to savor each & every second together.

Well, September has packed it’s bags, huh? Gotta say that I’m kinda excited about that. This means that fall is officially here & the holiday season is upon us. I LOVE IT!! The decorations, gatherings, outings, smells, food….all of it equals fabulous fun in my book! And, the fact that Liam can understand it way more this year & get into the festiveness is an added plus!

This past weekend Liam & I headed down to spend some time with Grammy & Papa Rock. It was Grammy’s birthday last week so Liam was excited to spend some special time with her & give her the card he signed himself 🙂 ….he had so much fun playing there that he couldn’t hang with me on the drive home.

On Saturday afternoon, though, I do have to mention that we did have a MONUMENTAL moment…….LIAM.ATE.CHOCOLATE

For anyone who is not familiar, Liam has refused anything with chocolate even in it since we started him on solids. We’ve kinda always jokingly wondered if he was really our kid because he’s had such a strong aversion to it. However, this weekend he asked for one of my M&M’s and I gave him one…fully expecting him to make a face & spit it out. NOPE…he ate it….happily AND asked for more…and more! A new day has dawned in Casa de Murphy, my friends….

When we got home on Saturday afternoon, Daddy surprised us with a kitchen re-do for Liam’s kitchen. This look below is now stage 2 for the Little Tikes Cook-N-Grow Kitchen. Little man had to immediately check things out. Daddy even got a cool new crate to house all his play food. So cool! I want to make a few more tweaks to this new set up, so stay tuned. I’m consulting my friend, Pinterest 😉 HA!

Sunday = cleaning + bringing out the Halloween decorations! Hooray! We found this awesome Mickey Mouse Halloween t-shirt for Liam at Target. He was in love with it. If you’re wondering….yes, we already have his Halloween costume and yes, it is A-MAZING!! Keeping it under wraps for now, but I will tell you that I got the MOST incredible deal for it & got the ONE costume I wanted but didn’t think I was gonna get….More about that later.

A loooong time ago….literally months….we bought this Little People’s Pumpkin Patch Farm on clearance & put it away. Almost forgot about it 🙂 ….Thank you, Daddy, for remembering it was up in the closet! While it’s hard to tell in the pic, all the farm animals have little Halloween masks on. Liam played with this while I was getting ready to put up the decorations.

Oh man, do I ever love hearing that little voice running around the house saying, “punkin”….so cute!! He is loving all that we’ve put up to celebrate what’s coming in October. We’re hoping to have some fun filled weekends ahead, as well. How about you?

Latest & Greatest News, September 2013

Latest & Greatest News — Playing Around

September 24, 2013 casademurphy

Sometimes actions speak louder than words…in our case, video 🙂

Liam has been full of energy these days. We definitely have a toddler with a boisterous & humorous personality! He makes our days full and fun. Here’s a clip of him playing ball with Daddy recently. He’s quite good at both catching & throwing…

We also took him on his 1st driving lesson in his power wheels. He did great! Although, he did like to drive in circles, a lot!! too funny!! check it out…

Lots of funs things coming up over the next few weeks so I hope to have some more pics to post then. Until then….bat boy signing off 😉

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August 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News — Another Weekend Gone By

August 28, 2013 casademurphy

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…

July 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News — Weekend Wrap Up

July 29, 2013 casademurphy

On Friday, we were happy to have my dad & step-mom [Liam’s, Papa-G and G-Ma] come for a visit. It was really great to spend some time with them, and they got to see how big our little man is getting. Liam was extra excited to get some extra birthday presents, too 🙂

Liam with Papa-G

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Papa-G & G-Ma brought their fur babies, so Liam got to make some new friends.

Here he is with “Uncle Vinny”

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Papa-G and Liam cooking up some deliciousness

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Liam enjoying his new birthday presents from Papa-G & G-Ma

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Liam, Papa-G, and G-Ma

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When I picked Liam up from school on Friday, I had to clean out his things from his toddler room, as he’s getting ready to fully move into the early preschool room this week. Below is the picture from his cubby in the toddler room…it was so cute!! I believe they took this back in January when he 1st started in that room. He was probably about 1 1/2 at that point. This is a picture of a picture [with tape over it] so sorry, it’s a little fuzzy.

2013-01_Suite 200 Cubby Pic

Today (monday) was a big day…1st day going to school with his big boy backpack. I know what some of you may be thinking….what the heck does a 2 year old need with a backpack? Well, I’ll tell ya…..in all of his other rooms, he’s had a drawer to stow away his extra clothes for spills, blow-outs, etc. This new room doesn’t have that so they ask for a backpack to keep the extra items in. Neat idea & good practice for down the road. This one we chose is from skip hop, and I got ours on Target online. Great deal! ..and toddler size! LOVE IT

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Seriously…..CUTEST EVER!! 🙂

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This week is going to be a GREAT week because it’s Liam’s 2nd Birthday week!! We’ve been looking forward to this for awhile now, but a part of me still can’t believe my baby is going to be TWO YEARS OLD!! WOW!! I hope to find some time in the next few day to post some more. Stay tuned!!

July 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News — Weekend Randomness

July 23, 2013 casademurphy

Hello Everyone! Hope you had a fantastic week & weekend 🙂

The big news of the week is that Mr. Liam officially started transitioning into the Early Preschool Department! I am proud to report that he has been doing fantastic and seems to really enjoy the new room & his new teacher, Ms. Jenn. I think it helps that since he is one of the youngest of his little group of friends, he is then one of of the last to move to the “new room” as the kids transition. So, as he’s transitioning, he’s going into a familiar setting with his little friends he likes to play with. He has to have his very 1st backpack in his new room [yup…already ordered…and yes, it’s super cute]. I will be sure to share pics in the coming weeks.

He won’t be full-time in this new room for another 2 weeks. His new teacher, Ms. Jenn, has asked us to start working with him on drinking out of a regular cup to help with weaning off the sippy cup so we’re starting to work on that slowly at home. It’s honestly something we hadn’t even thought of yet until she mentioned it to me last week. We bought little bathroom dixie cups to practice with, at Ms. Jenn’s recommendation and so far, not too shabby in the spillage department 🙂

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The weekend got off to a bit of an early start, as we had to keep Liam home from school on Friday due to him not feeling well on Thursday. He felt good enough by late Friday afternoon that Daddy took him for a swim in Mimi & Papa D’s pool. He is LOVING his new puddle jumper float …definitely a WIN for us!

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Having Liam in a toddler bed is becoming a challenge when out & about on the weekends, here lately. In particular, going down to my mom’s house for the day, he used to nap in his pack-n-play. That’s not really an option any more. Not too sure what we’re going to do at this point, but here’s my make-shift option we utilized this past Saturday ….

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Napping in Grammy’s bed. Sooooo, cute, right?!?! ….yeap, sure. But, it only lasted 30 minutes :p ….not a successful nap.

This next picture is REALLY what our weekends are all about, people. Yes, we do try to do at least one fun thing with Liam every weekend, but let’s be honest…every working family knows ya still gotta clean & grocery shop…so, we try to do ours with a bit of entertainment in the mix! This is what I like to call race car shopping [thank you, Publix]

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Finally, on Sunday, we decided to check out the Tanja King Park in Avalon. It has a splash pad and a playground. It was a very fun time for our little guy. I don’t every remember going to splash pad’s when I was little….maybe it’s a new thing…or a Florida thing….either way, Liam’s making them his thing [or maybe just playing in water outside]. He is seriously SO CUTE sometimes [most times] that I can’t even stand it!! LOL …man, we love that kid SO SO MUCH!!

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Hope you have a great week!! Until next time…..

July 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Our Trip to Legoland

July 20, 2013 casademurphy

Last Saturday was a momentous occasion in Casa de Murphy, friends, as we took Mr. Liam Michael for his very 1st theme park adventure. The park of choice was Legoland, which was built on the old Cypress Gardens property in Winter Haven. You may be wondering why we chose this over Disney for the honor of the “1st” experience. Well, that was two reasons. One, my mom & her hubby, Rock scores us FREE passes from their neighbor….umm, hello….could NOT pass that up and THANK YOU, THANK FOR THAT!! Secondly, this was kind of our test run to see if Liam would even last in the mouse house right now.

2013-07-13_Legoland Family Pic

While yes, it was rather warm & a bit of a learn curve for us to tackle a theme park with an [active] toddler, Liam was a trooper and we all had a fantastic time! I was amazed by how much he wanted to walk around himself and just hold our hand. So cute! Surprisingly, he even lasted until about 2:00 without a nap….it clouded up about that time, so we had to put him in the stroller while the rain moved in briefly & he passed out at the point. It was perfect timing.

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The pictures above are from Duplo Village. This is a specific play area for toddlers. LOVED IT!! They even have an AIR CONDITIONED facility for changing diapers, family restrooms, and private nursing rooms. Can we say amazing?!?! …top that off with the fact that when we brought Liam in there, we were the ONLY ones in there. I’m telling ya, insane!! Every theme park needs that building!

After Duplo Village, we headed over to enjoy a car ride with Mommy & a water ride with Daddy….they got soaked 🙂

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Since they were already drenched after this fun ride, we found a splash pad that Liam had crazy fun with. He was a hoot sticking his head in the water spraying up and then he would turn around and do his butt….silly, silly.

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After a quick change of clothes, we made our way over to the carousal…this was also Liam’s very 1st time on the Merry Go Round!

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After taking a break for lunch, we headed over to the other side of the park to explore the mini worlds built out of Legos. That was pretty cool. There really was so much to see!

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Overall, the day was great fun, and we were so happy that were able to give Liam this special day & make some awesome memories! Definitely recommend Legoland to any of you out there with smaller kiddos. We’ll bring him back in another year or so, as there were several rides he was still not tall enough to even ride with one of us, yet 🙂

I mentioned at the beginning of my post that this trip was kind of a practice run for Disney…I’d say that we are good to go now. ha! …We’re actually planning a special trip for his birthday, but more about that later!!

It’s been a busy few weeks here in Casa de Murphy and it’s been quiet here on the blog since the 4th so you’ll be hearing from me again soon! …until next time!!

July 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News — Star Spangled Ed.

July 7, 2013 casademurphy

Happy Birthday, America! 🙂 We had a blast celebrating the 237th birthday of this great nation over this holiday weekend & hope you did, too.

As we creep up on Liam’s 2nd birthday in a few short weeks, I thought it would be fun to take a look at last year’s 4th of July pic in comparison to this year’s ….

7.04.2012 ~ 1st 4th of July ~ Mommy's Little Firecracker! — 7.04.2012 ~ 1st 4th of July ~ Mommy’s Little Firecracker!

7.04.2013 ~ 2nd 4th of July ~ Patriotic Boy, All Smiles!

On the morning of the 4th, Liam was quite the little man with helping Daddy put the flags up in the yard. We did this over Memorial Day Weekend, as well, and I foresee it now becoming one of our new family traditions.

In the afternoon, we hung out poolside at Mimi’s house to soak in some rays and enjoy a yummy cookout. Liam was also excited to finally meet Aunt Heather (Daddy’s sister), who was in town for the weekend.

Swimming with Daddy ....Liam is quickly becoming our little fish! — Swimming with Daddy ….Liam is quickly becoming our little fish!

While Daddy was grilling, Liam wanted to "help" clean up...too cute not to share. — While Daddy was grilling, Liam wanted to “help” clean up…too cute not to share.

Later that evening, it was off to Lake Eola for “Fireworks at the Fountain”. This was Liam’s very 1st time seeing fireworks and we were SO so happy that the weather held up and it did not get rained out. While he got a tad bit frightened when they first began, once he saw that we were enjoying them, he did, too. While I have always loved fireworks, myself, it was truly magical watching them through his eyes!!

Lake Eola ~ Fireworks at the Fountain 2013

Captivated...Watching the "MAGIC" in the sky while safely sitting in Daddy's embrace :) — Captivated…Watching the “MAGIC” in the sky while safely sitting in Daddy’s embrace 🙂

Amazingly, Liam lasted the entire show (which was WAY past his bedtime) and the madhouse mingle back to the car and drive home. By the time we made it home, though (after 11), he was spent & over-tired. After sleeping in the next morning, he was up & at ’em, ready to take on the world…again! 🙂

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The rest of our holiday weekend was nice & relaxing! Hope yours was too!! Until next time friends….

June 2013, Latest & Greatest News

June 30, 2013 casademurphy

This was quite the busy week for Casa de Murphy! I spent a few days performing my civic duty in the courthouse downtown doing jury duty. That was the 1st time I have ever had to actually go and let me tell you, it was pretty intense.

Liam had water day at school on Thursday. This is a new treat that his daycare started for the summertime and he is LOVING it. Here are a few pics they took of him catching some rays post – water fun.

Saturday, we were supposed to go to Cocoa Beach for the day but opted to save it for another day. Instead, we had a little extra-ordinary pool fun at home in between rain showers. The giraffe pool we’ve been using got a hole in it so we brought out a backup we had in the garage. It was a tad bit dirty so we were going to wash it out before playing in it but then, Daddy thought it would be more fun to just do a gigantic bubble pool for Liam to play in. Little man has always loved bubbles in his regular baths so this was extra special. Thus, Mommy broke out the Mr. Bubbles and this is what we got….pure bliss & super fun!! Liam played until nearly all the bubbles had dissipated.

I feel like I say this all the time these days, but Liam is growing incredibly fast. In fact, while we had kinda jumped the gun & bought him a power wheels jeep a few months ago, he was too scared to even try to drive it, then. But, we left it in the garage & would let him sit in it whenever he wanted. Well, Sunday he asked to DRIVE the jeep! This was huge news in Casa de Murphy….lol. Daddy cleared the driveway and off he went. We couldn’t believe our eyes. Stephen had to show him how to press the pedal and yes, he didn’t go too fast (yes, this made me happy…lol), but he did it. Most of all, he wasn’t scared a bit. He was laughing! It was really cute.

While shopping at Target, daddy picked out Liam’s 1st pair of underoos (batman). I didn’t even see them until we were walking out….very sneaky. I’d say they are pretty cute…even over a diaper.

Can’t forget about the furr kid…all the adventure this weekend left him pretty tuckered out. This is what we saw coming out into the living room after putting Liam to sleep Sunday night. Only one word to describe this: pathetic …well maybe cute, too.

As this month comes to a close, so does it mark our baby hitting 23 months. WOW….that means we’re only one short month away from two years old! Thinking back over the last few months, I can’t really pinpoint when it happened, but I feel like Liam is now starting to hold conversations with us. His vocabulary is astounding. He’ll repeat anything (that’s scary for my potty mouth but so far, I have not gotten in trouble..ha!). He really is becoming a little person, though, now. He doesn’t just say one word at a time, anymore, he can put several words together and make little baby sentences. He can follow simple instructions. For example, I was doing laundry tonight and I asked him to put his mattress pad on his bed (I was in the garage…his room is on the opposite side of the house). I was actually shocked that I found the pad on this bed when I was done with the dryer.

Like any other toddler on the verge of being 2, we also deal with our fair share of challenges from our mini Murphy man, as well. One small feat is that we’ve been trying to curb a spitting habit….spitting water/milk — basically, whatever’s in his sippy cup. I haven’t heard that he’s doing this at school but he’s been challenging us with this periodically at home. That’s been fun.

A funny story that happened at dinner on Sunday at Smokey Bones was that Liam was nearly shouting, daddy baby shower (one of his current fav things is having stephen give him a shower) and then, this was followed by an equally loud shout out of, wash your butt. Sorry to the peeps trying to eat in the booth behind us, but we couldn’t help but laugh 🙂

Some of his fav things right now:

1. books / reading — his fav bed time story is “Time for a Hug”

2. anything with Mickey Mouse & friends

3. playing outside & playing in/with water

For those of you who know the Teddy Bear Pics that I’ve been taking of him periodically to show him growing up, here’s another:

We’re excited for a short work week coming up & to celebrate our nation’s birthday!! Hoping the weather holds up so we can take Liam to see some fireworks, but more about that later. Until next time friends….

June 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News

June 26, 2013 casademurphy

Doesn’t feel like the weeks are flying by lately? I can’t believe we’re almost at the end of June. Last weekend, we had some fun with our little man. Both he & daddy went for haircuts. As usual, he was a trooper, although this time around, he wanted to sit on daddy’s lap….so we had to wait for daddy to get done with his haircut 1st.

After that, we went to one of our fav eating out places close to home — Beef O’ Brady’s. Liam is getting pretty good now with drinking out of the little kids cup with a straw. So damn cute!

Afterwards, on the spur of the moment, we decided to trek down to the Brevard Zoo for their Summer Saturday Nights. Highly recommend to any of our friends. I believe this is going on through the end of July. After 5pm, admission is only $6 and free to kiddos under 2. We really enjoyed it and this was the 1st time Liam’s ever seen animals up close & personal like this.

His favorite was the giraffe…..we have several “geoffrey’s” (as we have called them since he was a tiny guy) at home 🙂 ….we got to the giraffe area right as they were letting one back into the viewing area and he got to feed it a cracker. SO EXCITING!!

Sunday, we enjoyed a nice family breakfast. Daddy cooked us all up some yummy french toast. Liam is definitely getting to be quite the big boy now, as he likes to eat by himself almost all the time. Even if you ask him if needs help, he will tell you no. He’s getting pretty good at using a spoon & fork too.

After we finished cleaning up the house and grocery shopping, there was a little time for some fun in the pool — giraffe pool, that is! Somebody couldn’t even wait until it was filled up to get in it ….so he was helping 😉