August 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News — Another Weekend Gone By

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

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

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….


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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….

July 2013

Happy 2nd Birthday Liam — Magic Kingdom Trip

Happy 2nd Birthday, Liam Michael!! In lieu of a big party this year, his Daddy & I chose to make a very special trip ….his very 1st trip, in fact, …to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. It really was a magical day and one that we will remember always! I tried to take lots of pic since Liam probably will not remember this trip so one day he can look back on this day and smile …However, I think I am safe in saying he had a pretty fantastic time meeting his pals & taking in the sights 🙂

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When we 1st got to the park, we stopped by guest relations, to pick up these snazzy buttons that we attached to Liam’s stroller (aka, birthday chariot). It was really sweet that the girl who wrote his name did a little Mickey Mouse head for the dot on the “I” of his name! I got to give credit to Disney and the cast members because they do it up right….as we walked around the park, they ALL noticed Liam’s buttons and SO MANY people were saying, ‘Happy Birthday, Liam’….at one point, I looked at Stephen and said I could have teared up because it was so cute! Yes, that was my sappy mommy moment of the day. Liam’s classy shirt is custom & hand-made courtesy of Personalize It By Jackie, The Boutique Mommy …LOVED it!!

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Liam’s fav Disney characters right now are mickey & pals from the clubhouse. It was perfect timing that when we first arrived down Main Street, there was the Street Party Parade. We were just feet away from the float as his bestest pals went by. I wish you could have seen that sweet boy’s face as he waved and said hello….it was awesome!! I tried to catch a pic below.

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The first ride we tackled was Dumbo. I rode it with the Liam…super fun! This little guy wasn’t scared a bit. He was actually ticked off at the end of it because he wanted to play in the water that you see under the elephants…that’s our boy! 😉

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In the new Storybook Circus area…posing with Pluto, the Wonder Pup! Oh …by the way, if anyone is wondering (because I know you can see it in several pics) …Liam took a bad fall at school on Monday on the playground and had a huge bump right smack in the middle of his forehead…he’s perfectly ok, though.

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It’s a Small World ….classic!! So much to see…totally reminded me of Disney as a kid 🙂

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Here we are at the end of Small World….not the best pic, clearly but had to do it…shows how hot we were but loving every minute of it!!!

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Two of my favorite pics taken of the day. From the Philmar Magic Show, which is 3D, hence the glasses. This was the only ride/show that Liam kinda got scared in because there were small parts that went completely quiet and dark.

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It’s kind of funny that Disney does SO MUCH with all the princess stuff but nothing for the boys with prince things or anything like that. Anywhoo…This pic is from the carousal and I think that my Liam looks like a little prince on that big horse…very regal!! He loves horses and thoroughly enjoyed this ride!! He waved at everyone the entire time he was on this….it was adorable!

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This is from one of the shows in front of the castle. Liam spotted Mickey & Minnie up there before we did!

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At this point, Liam was tired of us and all the pics, so he left us and was cruising around the castle…KIDDING!! 🙂

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All in all, we had the most wonderful day ever! Even despite the incredible heat and crowds…which, neither, we amazingly seemed to mind. As I close this post out, I want to share a special video we took of our little guy on the way to the park.

The rest of our birthday celebrations with our special guy are coming soon in part 2…there was too much fun to fit in one post! Until then….

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July 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News — Weekend Wrap Up

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.

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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

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…..

June 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News

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

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.

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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 😉

That was pretty much our weekend! Hope you had a good one, too! Until next time, friends……