Trou-ble!!!

On Monday, I walked out of the laundry room to find Austin standing in the middle of the kitchen table with the phone in his hand. When I asked him what he was doing, he threw the phone across the kitchen floor. I then walked over to the edge of the table, and asked him if he needed to go to time-out. He looked at me, with that adorable face of his, and chanted, "Trouble! Trouble!"

Now tell me, how do you get mad at THAT? It was about all I could do to not laugh at him!

SNOW

We had our first snow a couple weeks ago. When Austin woke up, I opened the blinds in his room to show him the snow. His eyes got huge and he said "Uh-oh! Uh-Oh!" Then after watching it for a second, he looked at me and said, "Bubbles?" After explaining that it was snow, he went to each window in the family room, saying, "Snow," "Snowy", and finally sticking with the word "Snows."

After our Halloween costume battle, I thought for sure Austin would fight the snow gear. To my surprise, he LOVED it...especially the mittens. He kept looking at his little hands and tapping his fingers and thumbs together.

When we got outside, he went right to playing in the white stuff. It was funny watching him try to keep his balance, then falling, and needing help back up.

He was very concerned that his little slide was covered in snow, and went right to work trying to clean it off.

What a blessing it is to be able to relive the magic of the seasons through the eyes of a child!

A Weekend Off????

A couple weeks ago, Justin actually got to turn ALL of his pagers off and be home with us the ENTIRE weekend. (Who I am kidding, we were out of the house pretty fast that Saturday.) I had been trying to get us to the zoo for a couple months...so I wasn't about to let this opportunity pass. We told Austin that we were going to see the animal. He got excited, saying "Am-os" and then started talking about cows, ducks, chickens, and all his other favorite animals from the farm.

Looking at the penguins

Standing underneath the elephant statue (more interesting than the real ones!)

He was not very interested in the animals at the zoo. Who would have known that we could have saved the money and the driving time, and just gone to Wheeler Farm. I think he would have been much happier with that!

Austin's favorite parts of the zoo:

Pushing the stroller

and climbing on the rocks!

It was a great weekend. It was so nice to be able to actually go do something as a family, without the worry of Justin getting called in to work!

Oops!

Here are Austin's 15 month pictures (yes, that would be from September!) I am a little behind in getting them up, but here they are!

The two new pictures on the side are also from the same day! Hope you enjoy!

Halloween

Carving the Pumpkins

We carved our pumpkins a few days before Halloween. We decided to stick to simple, traditional pumpkin faces this year.

Justin hard at work

This is how Austin participated!

Our festive little porch!

The Costume

I was so bummed when Austin's costume finally got to us. He HATED it! He would scream and cry anytime I even tried to put it on him. Luckily, it got here a month ahead of time, so we had a good amount of time to work up to wearing it for trick-or-treating! Most attempts to get him to wear his costume ended up like this:

When I could get it on him, it usually only lasted about 5minutes before the screaming started.

Halloween Night

I decided that I better get some "real" dinner in Austin before we headed out for trick-or treating (assuming that I would be able to get his costume on for at least a few houses). At the end of dinner, Austin kicked his chair over. I tried to catch him, but wasn't very successful. He landed smack on the tile floor.

After some damage control and recovery time, we were able to get him in his costume and head out the door for some trick-or-treating. We just went to a couple houses. Austin got the hang of it rather quickly. He even knocked on a few doors himself, and would say "Please!" as soon as they opened the door. Once he realized they were putting candy in his bag, he would take it out and say "More." It was pretty darn cute. So, here are the pictures you have all been waiting for...our little bear!