as promised...

as promised, pictures and a few stories of what we did the week before luke was born...

here's what momma and i made on the felt board most recently...


and here's me helping daddy sweep and rake the leaves in the front yard (note that i stayed on the sidewalk and did not go out into the street). daddy works hard to take care of the house and yard, and as i'm getting a little older, i really like to help him out when i can. i'm using the fireplace broom - just my size!


and momma took me to a farm outside of austin to pick strawberries - yum! this was the same place that had the pumpkin patch last fall, if you remember. they have strawberries and blackberries in the early summer, so we couldn't resist. i loved pulling around the red wagon with our boxes...

and i especially loved playing in the dirt, while momma did the picking...

afterwards, we ate strawberry ice cream made right there at the farm - it was so good! i'm not sure what this face is about... then when we went home, we used some of our berries to make our own ice cream too, and it was delicious!! incidentally, we saw lance armstrong cycling on the side of the road on our drive home. totally cool! (sorry there are no pics of him. mom was tempted, but she was driving and decided against it.)

here i am in the car doing something i made up recently, which is a hand gesture for "crooked"... mom and dad have no idea what this is about or where i came up with this, but it's my own little secret and they think it's funny, so i'll just keeping doing it to be cute when i need to be...

and here's what i look like with a yellow shirt on my head...

that's all for this post - just wanted to get those pictures up here so you didn't miss out on any action before luke was born, although clearly we were ready for him to come since we were doing things like making hand gestures for "crooked" and wearing shirts on our head. we needed a little fresh excitement around here... :) more later...

more of luke...

although this is my blog, i'm trying to be a good big brother and share the spotlight with baby luke. i actually really love him a lot and am very sweet and gentle with him (although i've decided to act out in other ways, but we won't get into that)... here are a few more pictures of him and the two of us. things are pretty busy around here so i don't have time to write much yet, but hopefully i'll be able to post more pictures soon, including some of the things we did in the last week before he was born, and more updates on life as a big brother...

daddy is not actually asleep in this picture - momma just caught him with his eyes closed at that split second, but he wishes he was asleep in this picture (and lots of other times too, like say, in the middle of the night)...

here we are on monday, going to the park! i got to help momma push luke in the stroller. then yesterday we got a new double stroller, so i got to ride in it with him! that was cool. pics later...

sweet baby...

as you can see, he's pretty high maintenance, so i better go help mom and dad take care of him. and this picture is still more bad news for momma regarding daddy's big (and ugly!) chair - luke seems to like it too! sorry mom...

meet luke...

hi. i have a new brother!! his name is luke william matthys and he was born on friday morning, april 23, at 6:10am. he weighed 6 lbs 14 oz and was 19.5 inches long. here's what he looks like (sort of - he's cuter in real life) and you might notice he looks a little familiar - momma and daddy say he's a spitting image of me when i was first born!! momma and baby luke came home from the hospital today and are doing great and we'll be sure to post more pictures of him on here soon. i think this big brother stuff is going to be pretty cool...