the Ammon channel

Since my blogging has been quite minimal, thought we'd spice it up with the latest from the Ammon channel.

Elias singing while pottying...can you name that tune?


More potty activity... this time he is READING instead of singing!


And Ethan's funny way of saying "cookie monster:"

For really??!!

Elias says this to us when we ask him to do things sometimes...a combination of "for real" and "really?!" that is quite clever. And now I say it to myself..."For really?!" Has it really been since June that I updated this blog?

As usual, I have a million excuses. Summer has been busy and now we are officially a household with a school-aged child! Elias started Kindergarten at Sandy Ridge and so far, is doing well! We attended his Open House tonight and heard from Mr. Appleton (his teacher) how our little guy is learning words and language concepts. Hard to believe...

He lost his second tooth just before school and was followed shortly by his cousin Taylor Grace. We spent a super-fun Labor Day wknd with them and made them pose for this picture:

Aunt Katie captured another moment with the little cousins...

Could there be anything cuter??!!

I did update our shutterfly site with all the recent photos...there are a ton if you want to see all of them (see link in the right-hand column).

But here a couple of my favorites of the fam...both boys are growing so fast. Ethan will basically repeat anything you ask him to and says a quite a few words (and animal noises) on his own. I even taught him to answer the question (after going through several animal examples): "What does Ethan say?" with "Mama!" It's kindof my favorite thing he says.

Elias with Taylor Grace on their boat from our Labor Day trip...what fun! And Elias is looking at the camera AND smiling...a rare treat these days.

Ethan = mess


No promises to update more...my work is an insane as ever and I continually struggle to balance work/everything else! Christopher finished up the Eno River Association calendar as the editor and we eagerly await the finished product in print. I even helped some on late nights when I was working on my laptop and he on his! He also joined the PTA as VP of Advocacy and has enjoyed becoming more involved in Elias' new school. All the moms love him!

We are both on the Queens Alumni Board and will be gearing up for Reunion Committee (our ten year is in May 2012). TEN years since college. For really??!!

And speaking of college, this past weekend I spent an amazing, hysterical-laughter-filled weekend with my three besties from college.

Katie, Katie and Melissa joined me WITHOUT kids and husbands for 72 beautiful hours at one of our timeshare places in North Myrtle. It was beyond words! To have friends that knew you "when" but still love your "now"....there's just nothin' like it. Hopefully it will NOT be 18 months before we do that again and husbands beware...we have decided we need to add another day to the trip.

Once a roommate, ALWAYS a roommate! This applies even to girls weekends.

What's a girls weekend without skin care?

A little time away...

After a grueling first month in my new job...Yes, I am the new Nurse Manager of my floor...we were really ready for some time away. Thanks to Grandpa and Granny K, we got to spend some time in the Outer Banks. I was only able to spend the Saturday-Tuesday (due to my insatiable appetite for work-HA) and the boys stayed the entire week in a house in Avon.

I had never been to the OBX and thought it was just beautiful. The drive is looooooong, but gorgeous with sweeping views of countryside and lots of big bridges over bodies of water. We even made a stop for boiled peanuts (yep, raised in the South I was) on the way. While I was there, we took the big kids (the other Ammon fam minus Uncle B was there) and Ethan to the Hatteras lighthouse and climbed the 208 steps. So fun! Poor Aunt Katie was back at the beach house with a fever. Elias had actually had one himself on the way down and now Ethan has one. Yucky virus?! Who knows!

Ethan wasn't so sure about the beach...his feelings were pretty mixed, I'd say. We skipped his morning nap one day to go with the kids, but that was disastrous. You'll see from the pictures that he was wailing quite a bit. But when Christopher took him down by himself, he was fine, though not making any exuberant runs into the water.

Aunt Katie and I even got a few glorious minutes on the beach by ourselves (I got more...she had been resting from her fever at the house). What a great time that was-we never get to catch up anymore so that was REALLY nice!

On the day I left, we took the boys up the road and made a few tourist stops at the Bodie Island lighthouse, Jockey's Ridge State Park (with the ginormous sand dunes) and the Wright brothers' memorial. Then I headed back to enjoy a few days in the house by myself (no, not telling which part of the week was more fun). The boys continued to enjoy cousin and grandparent time, along with a ferry ride with Gigi (C's great-grandmother). They came home yesterday to a clean house...you can imagine how long that lasted!

We celebrated Father's Day with a few gifts for Daddy- including a signed book about Durham and a cool pictoral/historial Bible textbook thing. We ended the day today with a kickball-themed youth group picnic at Whipoorwill Park. Daddy even made a couple of plays with Ethan giggling in his arms. What a guy!

On that note, here a few of my favorites from the set of beach pictures...be sure to visit our Shutterfly site to see more. Click HERE.

What I live for...

WAY overdue

I can't believe it's been two months since I have posted on this blog. And yet, I can. Life here with the Ammon fam has been insane. With my new interim Nurse Manager position (started March 1) on top of our usual two-boy and highly-community-active-stay-at-home-Daddy household, the days have flown by. I work something like 10 hours a day and pulled in about 16hrs of overtime in two weeks (VERY nice paycheck). I am applying for the permanent position (three pages worth of interviews start next week) but am nervous about this next step in my career and what it means for our lives! Good thing Christopher keeps us all grounded and ensures that I acheive a little work-life balance. My previous boss left a little unexpectedly, so the things I jumped into were (and are) a little messy. Here's hoping things calm down a little at work and that I have even more time to spend with these two guys:

365 days old

This post is a little late (we've been busy!), but still wanted to celebrate officially on our blog our littlest man turning ONE effective February 19!

Oh, how we adore Ethan....his smiles, his curly hair and his sweet sounds of "ma-ma-ma-ma!" Pulls up to stand and will stand briefly on his own, but no desire to walk. He crawls so fast, why would he? Not a fan of any phrase involving "no" and has been known to pitch some minature fits. We just laugh and kiss his chubby cheeks and all is well again in Ethan's world. We have discovered his love and quite frankly SKILL for ball playing. He will throw anything, but with any sort of ball, is quite accurate in his aim. He loves to throw his sparkly ball back and forth and lifts the ball high overhead to achieve more distance. It is quite a hoot...will try and upload some video soon.

Here he is doing one of his favorite things....taking books off his shelf! Part of his nightly routine.


He is always into something...especially if it involves FOOD.

the days are long...

but the years are short!

Happy Birthday (one day later) to our FIVE YEAR OLD!



We celebrated with a myriad of festivities...however, Elias' fever and respiratory symptoms were not part of the original plan! Poor thing had fever into the evening on Sunday!
Somehow, he still found the energy to help put his bike together, go out to lunch as a family with Grandma and eat cupcakes for snack. By the time the Super Bowl came on, he was pretty wiped and was in bed by 8pm.


Our Super Bowl XLV themed cupcakes!

If you get me goin', I will shed tears over my little baby boy being five! Kindergarten is 6 months away!!!!! We turned in our application last week to get into a new magnet school called Sandy Ridge. We should know whether or not he got in by early March.

I finished a Shutterfly photo book for Elias' birthday and just couldn't believe all the memories. It was like pulling teeth to get them all in one 40 page book! I am trying to work on Ethan's now, so that I can be a little more ahead of the game. If only I could get someone to upload all those pictures for me...sounds like a job for a personal assistant. Send me some resumes!
I will close this posting with another pic of Elias' birthday... I chose this one so you can see how much he looks like his Daddy...

Take a ride...

....on the PICTURE TRAIN! I finally uploaded pictures and am sharing some of my favorites here from the last month or so. Click HERE to see our updated Shutterfly site.

This was at my Mimi's house and honestly the best picture we got of Elias the entire Christmas season. And it's super cute of Nana!



At the Christmas Eve Lovefeast service at our church: THREE generations here with Grandma's mom in town...Grandma Brutscher!

New Year's Eve 2010...I love this picture for two reasons.

1. It shows that we survived the worst GI bug ever (thanks to Grandma, who then got it a few days later).

2. It was the 10 year anniversary of our engagement! Or maybe 11? Clearly, I am not very good at math. We got engaged as the new millenium began...1999 to 2000...you figure out the math!

This past weekend we celebrated the infamous Riley man turning ONE! What a milestone and as my sister-in-law said...so grateful that his birth mom chose life one year ago and gave them the gift of R-I-L-E-Y!

When we got home from Winston-Salem, we got out in the lovely 50 degree warm snap and enjoyed some wagon time. I used one of my favorite features on our new camera...it's called "minature effect" and makes one part of the picture in focus while blurring out another.

Hope you all are enjoying your 2011 so far! We are staying busy...making decisions about Elias' school in the Fall (can you believe it is time????!!!) and planning for our boys' birthday trip in February. We are headed to the mountains and will be putting Elias on skis for the first time.