Family photos

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Father of two

With the arrival of Eli we were not sure how our lives would change. While it does not seems to different at the moment I know that in fact God is easing us into to slowly. Eli has been a great little man, he very well tempered and so handsome. Slowly he has become more and more fussy but it does not seem as bad because it has been a slow progression to its current noise level (I know its only getting worse). God has also given us our sweet little lady, Emma Grace. She has been a big helper with laundry, dipper disposal and other small errands. Today for the second day in a row she has slept on a mat at work, which is a way of God getting her ready to give up her crib to her brother in a few months. Thank you God for the amazing ways that you work!!
Sarah of course has the raw in of the deal since breast feeding is one of a very few things that make Eli happy. She spends a lot of time with him during the night feeding him, while I wake up periodically to groan and help with a dipper change (sometimes). Sarah is in fact my favorite super hero. What other super hero is as beautiful and sweet as Sarah, but also can make milk, and calm a grumpy man (or 2 men to be exact). I love you Sarah!

Eli James Parks

Welcome to the world little man!!




More Photos at Sarah's Picasa

Life in NOLA continues

We moved again (2nd time in NOLA) and no longer live on magazine street. Sad I know. We are now the night staff at the.Baptist friendship house. Sarah, Emma and I are loving it! We get to hang out with cool people and minister in our city. We are coming up on our 3rd year in NOLA, and praise GOD for providing us with good jobs and great friends. But we miss our family and friends on SC too. Our solution is for them all to move here, or buy a jet that comes from SC to NOLA every Friday, and leaves on Sunday,so we can always have our friends and family! Our little Eli (spell check suggested Elk) will be here in three short months. Scary but exciting. We will have as many kids as our parents. Woah are we getting old or what!

Santa

Sorry Emma, but everyone has to sit on Santa at least once :c).

Halloween Photos

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Update

Sooo…Its been a while!! Sarah and I decided that we have not been posting as much as we used to because we both feel like our lives are very mundane right now. So I thought that maybe we could let other people be the judge of whether or not our lives are to mundane to blog about.

Emma is becoming quite a little fussy lady. She loves to get her way, and loves to scream if she doesn’t. She is starting to catch on that her older friends, 18- 2yr’s, at “school” can get their way by pushing other kids out of the way, grabbing toys, and screaming. So she is starting to try these new strategies to the dismay of her Mom and Dad. We have adopted a word for these behaviors from our wonderful English office manager, Naughty. It seems to fit.

Sarah is doing well with her pregnancy, or so she says. I don’t think that throwing up most mornings, not being able to look at, or smell, foods my child is about to eat, and having “tummy” pains all the time constitutes doing well. Maybe I’m just a complainer and Sarah is just the sweetest, strongest pregnancy trooper I’ve met.

Me, well this week I have cut my self several times, burned myself twice, and gotten an electrical shock from working with wires twice. Normal week :c).

Sarah’s Mom and Aunt Kay came into town this weekend to visit Emma. We have hit up the Quarter, Café Maspero, Café du Monde, a pumpkin patch, Buds Broiler, drove to the west bank by ferry, and visited Oak Alley Plantation for an Arts and Crafts Show. And I hear that today Johnny’s Po Boys will provide lunch.

Overall Sarah, Emma, and I are loving our mundane life her in New Orleans, but missing our family and friends in South Carolina.

On a Sport note, we are Ultra Proud of our Saints for going 5-0, glad the Panthers have won 2 in row, proud of how well the Gamecocks are doing, and hoping the Tigers (of Clemson) keep on winning.

Calloway Gardens

This past weekend the girls and I spent the weekend with our Best friends Kelly, Paul, and Brogan in Pine Mountain, Ga. We stayed in the hotel across from the Gardens and had some fun adventures. We played with butterflies, learned about raptors, and dug around in weeds and trees looking for Geo-Cashes. It was the most fun I had had in the last 2 years. Here are some pictures:





Check out more on Sarah's Picassa.

My Picassa is full :c(

Okay so my picassa account is full so we are uploading all new pictures to Sarah's account.
Soo March 2007 through August 27th, 2009 is on http://picasaweb.google.com/mattjparks

and

August 28th, 2009 through Present is on http://picasaweb.google.com/sarahmparks

Saints, Cousins, and Waffle House

Last Friday (Aust 14th), thanks to our wonderful boss, Sarah, Emma and I were able to go to the Saints first pre-season game (we also have tickets to their first real game). We all had a lot of fun and Emma lasted till Half-Time...Yeay Emma! And the Saint won!!
The next day my cousin Kristen, her husband Christopher, and their sweet little man Elias, had beignets with us at Cafe' Du Monde. They were in town from North Carolina for a short vacation and called us up. Yeay for family!! This was also Emma's first experience with beignets, because she had always been to young for them before. She enjoyed her piece, but we have found Emma does not LOVE doughnuts...she just enjoys them. So she did not beg for more she just kinda nibbled at her piece. I guess that is a good thing.
Yesterday we went to the new waffle house in the lower 9th ward of new Orleans (offically Arabi). Waffles houses here in New Orleans (I know hard to believe for fellow southerners) are sort of a rarity, but this one was even more special, because my brother designed the site plan and landscape for it, all the way from Greenville, SC. He is quite talented, though I don't think a Waffle House parking lot offers much of a canvas to work with.
And Some Emma sure is cute pictures. That cute dress is one of Sarah's dresses that she wore when she was Emma's age...So cute! Two beauties sharing the same dress. I guess this means Emma's already borrowing her mom's clothes :c).

Woooah Emma is 15 months

Today Emma turns 15 months old. Where have the months gone? We look at pictures of her when she was little (birth-12 months) and she looks so little.
Emma's new favorite word is "woooah" I believe she learned it from Daddy. He saw "finding nemo" the other day and loves the part when they swim with the surfer turtles. So daddy says "woah" a lot. This was heightened by daddy taking her to home depot and driving the cart "crazy" and saying "woah". Its quite cute when she trips or falls and looks around and says "woooah".
A few of the kids in Emma's nursery are potty training and she became very interested so we got her a cheap little potty and stick her on, in the morning, after naps, and when she says pee pee, or poo poo. So far she has gone pee pee a few times and 3 good poops. Of course she is preety oblevious to the fact stuff is coming out of her, we just catch her when normally does her "stuff" (right Brogan). Its good experince for her though when she does start "feeling it".

Shoes that attract dogs

I made a guest appearance on Sarah's blog to show a video of Emma and her squeak shoes.
Check it out

Spring Summer cleaning

So, my Mom came to visit us here in New Orleans for my birthday (July 27th). She brought with her a vacuum attachment to clean fans. Boy did we need that. Our fans were very dusty, and under the dust was a nice layer of greasy gunk. I was able to clean all three of our fans with the vacuum and a plastic knife (to scrap off the grease). I took some pictures of the last fan blade before I cleaned it. Please do not call DSS because the fans are now all clean and Emma is fine.

top of fan blade

Bottom of fan blade

All Clean!!

How did you spend your Bastille Day weekend?

So its not quite Bastille Day yet but this is the unofficial Bastille Day weekend. So as we say in southern Louisiana Happy Fête Nationale Y'all! We spent part of our day at the Louisiana Children's Museum Yet another reason why we love New Orleans is the Louisiana Children's Museum (LCM) . We have a year membership to the LCM and decided that it should be our every Saturday field trip. There is an awesome toddler room with every toy you could imagine for toddlers. Emma can just go explore and be a toddler with out us being to worried about safety and stuff. The rest of the LCM is a kind of discovery place/edventure sort of place with a New Orleans theme. You got the Port of New Orleans, a streetcar, a creole cottage and Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood (I know, I'm not sure how that fit in either, but its fun). Its also got the good ole' dicovery stuff (ramps, levers, etc.). Here are some pictures of our fun time.

growl! says the dinosaur

Look at all these toys!

Puzzle pieces or items to bang together..hmm depends on my mood.

I love puppet shows..Here let me try!

It's my Mom!

"Emma give Mommy kisses"

Enough sitting and loving lets ride!

Did I mention i just came from Itsy Bitsy Yoga. DOWNWARD DOG!

Here I am! I was in the cabinet!!!

I'm Driving a Freightship.

Hey Mom, Watch out!

oooo...Bubbles!

Hold on Dad, I want to see if I'm bigger than this Bubble. Maybe if I poke the bubble it will get shorter!

What a day.. Time to relax on Mr. Rodgers porch swing.

Well armed Garbage truck

So Sarah and I were driving to work on Claiborne, and turned down Alvar to cut down to St. Claude (road our office is on). As we turned I discovered there was a garbage truck in front of us. So I prepared for the worst, A/C on recirculate, foot on the break to prepare for sudden stops. Well the garbage truck picked up 1 can on the whole street, weird! We get to a red light and one of the Garbage men (boy really) jumped off and ran to the front of the garbage truck. Well Sarah and I are admiring how proud we were that the remaing Garbage worker was working hard as a trash man and not off in some gang or robbing people. About the time those words left my mouth the Garbage boy reaches over to the side of the truck and grabs something off then runs to the front of the truck. "Was that a gun!?!?" Sarah and I ask at the same time. Sure enough he comes back around to the back of the truck holding a hand gun and stands there playing with it like it was no big deal. Oh my! People are so desinsitized that playing with a gun at work, in the middle of the street, with a car behind you, is no big deal.

Nola is never boring

Today was Saturday (I suppose it still is). Daddy and Emma did not have there normal 3 mile walk of the uptown, but thats okay cuz they both got a different kind of exercise. Swimming! This was Emma second time in a swimming pool, but her first Official "I'm in a pool, look at me". We got her one of those blowup/Pop up floating devices and they rock. Emma's friends were even hanging on it and it didnt even sink but a tiny bit. I supose I should go fill out one of those chessey I love this product reviews. But anyway We had SOOO much fun at the pool and got to hang out with some of Emma's "school" friends. Emma loved it and everyone in the Family got sunburned (even with 50 spf sunscreen) Daddy the worst, Mommy Next, then Emma a tiny bit on her arm (do not worry grandparents we will keep a watch on it to be sure it doesnt get worse). But you can tell the hierarchy of how the sunscreen was applied. Mom and Dad both worked on Emma. Daddy helped Mom, and Daddy was on his own.
On another note I became obsessed with another item and Sarah told me we could get it for Fathers day (I think I will add birthday as well, Christmas not so fast still got to get me something for that). Its a Netbook! If you have not heard of them, picture a laptop the size and weight of a portable dvd player with a 10.1 inch screen. I'm so excited because this replaces the old Toshiba that died, and I no longer must bring my work laptop home. Its a Asus 1000HE and while you can't play HUGE GRAPHICS shooting games on it (not that I would I'm a Father now) it works for internet and word processing with the occasional movie or video. YEAY! I'll post more when it comes to the house.

Life

Can I just say how fast babies grow up. I was holding a 3 month old (not sure if that is the right age, Sarah will correct me if not). He could not do anything without help, I was trying to remember when Emma was that small, it was hard to do. She is such a big girl now, walking, playing, eating with a spoon. Before I know it I will be calling her to see how her baby is doing (Sarah had Emma when she was only 24).

My Life in Jobs

Some of these were only a few times but still count.

• Door to door salesman (selling chocolates in Elementary school, I was quite good at it. Come to find out its cuz the people in my neighborhood were all high and had the munches)
  
• Landscaper (made retaining wall once and mowed and raked someones yard several times)
• Childcare provider (church nursery)
• Camp Councilor (For a few, week long camps)
• Childcare provider (after school program)
• Landscaper (mowed and raked peoples yards to raise money for Campus Crusade)
• Ride Operator at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk in CA (two summers)
• Warehouse Manager (5 semesters)
  
• Student Teacher k-4 class for Semester
• Student Teacher 2nd Grade class for Semester
• 1 year old's teacher for 8 months
• 1st grade Teacher for a school year
• Kindergarten Teacher for a school year
• Live in Staff at a Children's Home for 9 months
• Secretary to a Lawyer (1 day)
• Painter (painted part of the outside of our pastors house)
• Tiler (fixed some tile in our bathroom)
  
• Shoe Salesman (3 weeks)
• 1st grade teacher (1 day)
  
• Factory worker (3 days)
• 2 year old teacher (1 day)
• Office Worker (13 months and counting)
  
• Delivery Driver (3 months)
  
• Fast food worker (3 months)
• Husband (4 year to Forever)
  
• Father (12 months to forever)
  

Emma's 1st year in pictures

My baby is 1

So today is Emma's first birthday. Happy Birthday Emma! We had a combined party for Emma (birthday) and Karla (going away party) at the office. Someone made awesome vegan cupcakes in all sorts of flavors (smore, mint, peanut butter, praline, etc.). Emma had a vanilla with chocolate cupcake. The only help she received was Mama breaking the cupcake in half..the mess was ALL Emma.
You sing for me!!!