The Three Amigos

On Saturday morning I headed back to my parent's as I needed to make sure Brady was out of the house all day so Andy could do a home-improvement project (which I'll blog more about later)...my aunt and uncle were having some people over to watch the Iowa game and I thought this would be a great way for Brady to get to play with his cousin Cadence and Taryn (who is actually my cousin but only 2 months younger than Brady). So the 3 little ones got to play together all day and boy did they have fun! The are all 3-4 months apart and they had fun chasing each other, 'playing cards', playing outside and yelling as loud as they could. It was so much fun! Here are some fun pics of the three of them!


Cadence, Brady and Taryn

RIP DIRECTV...

As of Saturday, this Cathcart household will be DIRECTV FREE!!! I'm going to shout it from the rooftops--AMEN!!! From day one (one cold day in January of 2007) we have had nothing but problems and issues with DIRECTV. Initially we had to have 3 different guys come out to install it and to 'fix' the mistakes the installer before each of them had made...any time there was a slight breeze or a few raindrops--we had NO signal. At one time we went over 2 weeks without service before they would send someone out to service it. Now you may wonder why we went with them or why we were with them for so long. Well when we moved in to our house, the development was so new that there were no cable boxes outside for the community of homes. Well we now have those necessary cable lines in our area so we can switch. No one is more excited about this than Andy...I can't tell you how many times he has been on the phone with them. For the first 6+ months we had it, he had to call every month because they had our bill wrong. I'm sure that when the workers at DIRECTV pulled up our file, there was a nice long list on Andy...ha ha! And it probably won't be very positive! One word: HEADACHE


So, Goodbye DIRECTV, Good Riddance!


We got such an awesome deal from Mediacom and cannot wait to get HD free, DVR FREE, reduced internet, not paying extra for more than one receiver! Woo Hoo!



Now I know that there are many people who are more than happy with DIRECTV, just know that this is just our perspective and experience.

Me and My Friends

Here is Brady posing with his 5 Bestest Friends! :-)


Back Row: Bear & Monkey
Front Row: Coco, Whale and Puppy

These friends are with him all the time!!! His two favorite are Monkey and Bear which is so neat to us as they are both his 2 first stuffed animals. Monkey is from his Grandma and Grandpa Petersen and Bear is from Nana and Papa Cathcart. It's like he's carrying them along with him wherever he goes!

Brady Update

I thought that today I'd do a little update on our little monkey. He is one busy boy these days! He is super active and only has one speed--TURBO! Yesterday he mastered the ability to catch a football! He and I played catch for about 45 minutes straight. He LOVES it. And he can throw pretty well, most of his throws were straight to me and he just might throw a better spiral than I do (that's not saying much, I know).
He is SO attached to Monkey, Bear and Coco (his other monkey). He carries them with him everywhere and so it gets to be a challenge to pick him up when he's holding all 3. I have pictures to post tomorrow of his friends. He also has to have Whale and Puppy in bed with him. Don't you just love our original names for his friends? Ha ha! I'm just not very creative!
He is sleeping pretty well at night. He goes to bed at 8:00 p.m. and gets up around 6:30 a.m. Daddy puts him to bed every night and I get to get him up most mornings. He isn't much of a morning person at first. He really has to warm up to the day.
He is saying more words. A few of his new ones are Please (peas), Thank you (sounds more like dank-do, it's so cute), Sorry (sowwy), More, Night-Night (nigh-nigh). Yesterday as we were driving from daycare to run a coupld errands, we passed a field of cows and I hear 'mmmmmmm' coming from the back seat (that is his Mooo sound) so he is really comprehending the whole animal/sound thing. He can correctly give the sounds to his play animals. It is just so fun to see him learn and grow.
Last night we went to the first Grand View home Girls Basketball game. He was really shy at first but after a while he was cheering right along and clapping and dancing to the music. Although I think his favorite part was the popcorn. We had to leave at half time so we could get him home to bed. We ended up losing in double overtime...bummer! I'm so glad that we'll be able to go to a ton of games over the winter, we will need to get out of house as Brady will go stir-crazy!

Below is the picture that was taken at Bass Pro that they gave out...I promise it's the last Halloween pic!

More Trick-or-Treating Fun!

Saturday night was Beggar's Night in Ankeny. Unfortunately about an hour before it was time to head out, I had a serious allergy attack and couldn't stop sneezing, my eyes were itching uncontrollably, got a horrible headache and had a hard time breathing...not fun. So Andy took Brady out and about with the Waters and Fuhurman's. They came back with tons of candy! Andy said that Brady had no problem going up to the houses and getting the candy. He has a sweet tooth just like his mama!

Bass Pro Shop

On Friday night we headed out for more Trick-or-Treating fun by hitting up Bass Pro Shop. They had trick-or-treating in the store, places where they took your picture by a Charlie Brown cut out and a costume parade, which we were a part of but didn't really realize it. Brady had fun and his love for candy is getting stronger. When he picked up his first tootsie roll he didn't hesitate to shove it in his mouth, wrapper included...so we had to do candy control or he would be full of candy wrappers...what a little ham!





Yes, we are in front of a Christmas tree...they already have it up! Crazy!

Fun at the Orchard

On Sunday we headed to the Orchard in Fort Dodge. Brady got to see some animals, we got to browse through the awesome gift shop and Brady also got to have a little dessert. After the orchard we went to Taco Tico in FD for lunch. Then it was time to head back to Gowrie so Brady could nap. All in all it was a great day!