New Design

OK, I put a new background design because we are heading to Panama City, FL for Eric to participate in IRONMAN FL!!

A year's worth of training and shedding blood, sweat, and tears comes to a head next weekend. He goes through stages with his nervousness. It is like this before every race, but this time is it maximized x 10. It is usually just a few days before the race that gets a little anxious, but this has been going on for a couple of weeks now. He has his periods of calmness, then it transforms into distraction, and to now where he is pretty much good for nothing because the only thing on his mind is getting down to FL and making sure that he has everything that he could possibly need. He has lists that list that he needs to make a list. He is too funny. He sent me an email last week with a link for two "different" bike helmets for the race. The reason why different is in quotes is because it was the EXACT same helmet only one was blue and the other was white. He wanted to know which one I liked better...

Seriously though, I am SO proud of my husband. He has worked so hard for this. He has trained for hours upon hours to prepare for this. He is has found a love for this sport and I am so amazed at his dedication. Eric has never been a quitter, but there have been many times in this journey where he could have quit and no one would have blamed him. He has always had bad knees and this sport is not exactly known for being easy on joints. He has gone through physical therapy and been shot up to combat this. He loves this though. There have been some missteps along the way where he has wrecked on his bike, but it hasn't stopped him.

He is going to be amazing Saturday. There are a lot of family and friends that will be there cheering him on along the way. We are wearing orange shirts that say WDE on the front in blue and on the back it says War Damn Eric. It is going to be a long week for him, and my job is to try to keep him as calm as possible.

Eric we are so proud of you and just think this time next week Lucas is going to be able to say, "My Daddy is an IRONMAN". That is if he could talk...

We love you!!

Once a Chi Omega...

Here is our pumpkin this year. I saw the owl design and just couldn't help myself.

Lucas is going to be a gorilla tonight. Unfortunately, our new camera that we bought does will not work with Macs. GRRRR!! So, I will have to post pics of him either from my camera phone or wait till Eric can take the camera to work.

Updates below

Head Over Teal

The Head Over Teal event was a HUGE success!! Over $40,000 was raised for ovarian cancer research and early detection!!! My dad is on the board and said that the expectation was for $10,000, but obviously that was blown away!!

Mom's team was Teal for Toni (teal is the awareness color for ovarian cancer). Dad came up with the name (he was quite proud of himself). Mom's team was huge!! There were people from church, friends, co-workers, and of course family. Our team also raise the most money! Mom was overwhelmed with the out pouring of love from family, friends, and strangers! What a great day!

I made Lucas a onsie that had Head Over Teal on the front and I (heart) GG on the back. Mom LOVED it!! Mom took a ton of pics so I will post those as soon as I get them from her. Thanks to everyone who participated/donated/prayed!

Mom is doing well. Her numbers are consistently coming down. She is going for treatment 1x/month and the weekly for blood work. She is tired, and sometimes doesn't feel the best, but like always she moves forward and keeps her spirits high. Praise God for that!

Par-tay!!

Lucas' birthday was so much fun! We had a Surfin' Safari themed birthday party with family. It was a ton of fun! Our camera died during the party so I do not have any pictures from my camera, but I will get some from my mother-in-law to post. We had a kiddie pool set up in the back for all the cousins to play. We had so many family members here to celebrate our little man. Here is the run down (this list is more for me for later so I can remember so feel free to skip this part):

Nana and Poppa (Eric's parents), G.G and Pop (my parents), Mamaw and Papaw (Eric's grandparents), Mimi George (my grandmother), Meme and Grandaddy (my grandparents), Melissa, Jackson (4), and Langdon (1.5) (Eric's sister and her family), Julie and Hannah (9) (Eric's sister and her daughter), John (my brother), Bob, Bobbie, and Briana (my uncle, aunt, and cousin), Berniece, Jim, Mandy, Kimberly and Liz (6) (my aunt, uncle, and cousins), Britney, CJ and Avery (3 mo) (Eric's cousin and her family), Brantley, Ali and Cam (1) (Eric's cousin and his family) Whew 29 people there to celebrate!!

We served BBQ, baked beans (thanks Mamaw!), Chinese slaw (thanks Meme!), potato salad (thanks Mimi!), and of course the cake. Let me tell you about this cake! A HUGE shout out to my mother-in-law, Cheryl (aka Nana) for this cake!! She is so talented and we tell her all the time that she needs to go into business for this! She made a 2 tier cake complete with "sand" and surf boards! I will HAVE to post pictures because it was incredible! I will dedicate a post to just Cheryl's cakes soon so you can see how talented she is!

Lucas did not disappoint with eating his cake. He was a little slow to start, but Mommy and Daddy helped out. Lucas and I helped "share" cake with Daddy and smashed it in Eric's face. Then, not to be outdone, Eric smashed cake in my face when I wasn't paying attention.

Lucas received SO MANY wonderful gifts! Everyone was so generous! He LOVES all of them. He played and played that night with all his treasures.

Eric and I feel so blessed to have this little boy entrusted to us. We are humbled to be his parents. We both feel that he is the best thing that has ever happened to us and has helped both of us grow so much. It is sometimes hard to be parents, of course, but we would not trade those hard moments for the world. He can brighten any day with just a smile, which he does all the time. We love you Lucas and can't wait to see what God has in store for you!

1 year check up

Lucas did not like his check up one bit!! He was fine and dandy until the sweet little nurse came in to prick his finger. You would have thought she slit him open with a knife the way he screamed! He was wary from then on and did not trust being lain on the table to be measured. Then with the doc came in Lucas was having nothing to do with the stethoscope. I mean really son, you are going to cry about the stethoscope?? We calmed him down just in time for another nurse (I guess the first one was too scared to come back) to come in with 3 shots for my poor little guy's legs. Once again SCREAMS ensued and we had to calm him down again.

He is 95th percentile for head circumference (gets that from his daddy), 90th percentile for height, and 30th percentile for weight. He moves so fast crawling and creeping that he has really shed that baby fat...*tear* The doctor says he couldn't be more pleased with Luke's development...Praise God!!

After the doctor I took Lucas to my grandmother's for the day (we are having daycare issues) for him to be loved on all day. He had a good time at her house. Just what the little guy needed!

I have misplaced - NOT lost - the cable for the camera to download pictures. I will do a post with just pics as soon as I locate said cable.

Busy Weekend!!

To say that the O'Neals had a busy weekend is an understatement. Like the last post said, Lucas turned 1 year old on Friday!! What a sweet day! I know it is so cliche, but it is true that time does fly! This has been the best year of our lives thus far and we know that the best is yet to come!

On Friday, we left around 1:00 to head down to Auburn to mark of the tailgate spot and buy Eric and Lucas new game day attire. We then left from Auburn to go to Columbus, GA to Eric's sister, Melissa's, house. We went to eat at a great Mexican restaurant where I enjoyed my first Margarita in FOREVER (it was delicious - on the rocks with salt) and then headed back to the house to celebrate our precious boy. Eric's mom, Cheryl, had bought cupcakes and balloons for us to celebrate. We stripped Lucas down to his diaper and let him have at the cake. He did not disappoint! He got cake and icing everywhere and loved playing in all the crumbs. It was a crowd at Aunt MO's: Cheryl, Eric's grandparents (Mamaw and Papaw), Aunt MO, Uncle Keith, and cousins Jackson and Langdon. Jackson and Langdon enjoyed the cakes too. Sweet Langdon (Langdy Bug as I like to call her) had purple icing all over her sweet smile too.

Note to self: Do not give Lucas a cupcake at 9:30 at night!! Makes for a long restless sleep for everyone in the room! We would do it all over again though to celebrate our little man though!

The next day Eric and Keith left early to set up the tailgate, while Melissa, Cheryl, and I got the kids ready at home. Langdon stayed at home with Mamaw and Papaw and was of course spoiled rotten and loved having two peoples' undivided attention and not having to share the spotlight with 2 crazy boys. Cheryl, Melissa, and I loaded up Jackson and Lucas to go to the Auburn game. We had a great time tailgating with great friends. There were 5 kids at the tailgate with ages 4, 2, 2, 1, and 10 months. My how the tailgate has changed!! It looked more like a daycare! It was fun though to catch up with everyone that it seems we only really get to see during football season. Lucas did great even though he only had 1 nap all day - Thanks Nana for taking care of him during nap time. We went to the game and had a really good time. We left at half time since Eric had a race the next day. Lucas was about done by that point too.

On Sunday, we left to go cheer Eric on at the Callaway Gardens Triathlon. He did great!! His goal was to finish in 2 hrs 20 min. He finished in 2 hrs 7 mins!!! Go Eric!! You can go to his blog for his rundown of the race.

Eric left from the race to go to Atlanta for the NASCAR race. Keith works for Aflac Racing (Carl Edwards' team) in marketing and Eric watched the race from the pits. He was excited and even made it on TV when they were interviewing the crew chief. Thank Keith! Eric had a great time.

On Sunday during dinner Lucas was cruising around holding on to the wall when his little bare feet came to the air grate. Well, he did not like this at all so Papaw went to him and held out his hands for Lucas and he took 2 steps!!! We all started screaming and clapping. Lucas had no idea when he had just done, but he loved the attention! We have tried to get him to do it since, but he hasn't. He is doing of great job of standing for longer periods of time though! We are getting closer. We are going to work on it this week in hopes that he will walk by his party this weekend. (Watch...he will walk 30 minutes after everyone leaves Saturday!).

On Monday we left to come back home after stopping by my parents' house to see them and let them get their Lucas fix. We were exhausted by the time we got home. It was a whirlwind of a weekend, but we had a blast! Thanks MO and Keith for having us. Thanks Cheryl, Mamaw, and Papaw for all the help! Thanks for loving Lucas and us so much!!

We go for Luke's 1yr check up tomorrow morning so I will post his stats then.