BOYS WILL BE BOYS!

Austin tooted right before I took the video. I had him laughing for a bit before I thought to turn the video camera on, so his laughs are already winding down, but it's still funny.

REGULAR COW TO MAD COW!

This is during Thanksgiving when my family was here. If you look closely Austin's face gets red every time he makes his noises, but it doesn't show as well on video as well as it was in real life.

DANCING BABY!

Austin LOVES to dance

Oops!

As I finished blogging my ginormous posts to catch up on what I did during Thanksgiving I forgot to post the BEST picture of all of when my family was here. Here's grandpa and Austin enjoying their fries at Whataburger.

FAMILY IS ON THE WAY!

Here is Austin helping me clean up his room so everything is perfect for when my family came for Thanksgiving. It was an awesome week and we had a lot of fun showing off Texas and enjoying entertainment from Austin. We had Thanksgiving the Monday before Thanksgiving and found out that my Grandpa Gilbert passed away unexpectedly. He was 92 so he had definitely lived a full and happy life and now gets to be re-joined with his wife. I ended up buying a last minute plane ticket to Washington and flew home with my family on Thanksgiving day, leaving poor Tyler behind! It was a great trip and I got to see lots of family.

Too bad I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures of the actual funeral. There were 41 of the 46 grandkids present and found out there are 108 great grandchildren and 4 great-great grandkids. All 10 of his kids were present as well. Austin's middle name is Glen which is my Grandpa Gilbert's name. I'm so glad I can always remember him this way. He always made me feel so special even though I know he had a ton of grandkids to give attention to.

And now on to what we did when my family was in Texas.

Botanical Gardens

The Botanical Gardens are a great way to enjoy nature and flowers for FREE!

Austin loved playing in the leaves

Austin loved the waterfall and the fish in the water

Austin and the girls

Oh how he loves his kisses!

Mom and Dad in front of the beautiful pond. Don't they look great?

Austin and his rock.

Here's the crew enjoying our yummy apples

Historic Downtown Fort Worth

I really wanted to take my family to the Stockyards while they were here and it turned out to be a fun day.

Here's me and Lori stuck in jail
Here's Austin having a great time!

Here we are at the famous cattle drive that happens twice a day. Austin was captured by this experience


Mom, Dad, Lori, and Kara. We were so excited they came!

Grandma with Austin. He sure did get a lot of attention.

My dad is a HUGE Walker Texas Ranger fan and this is the bar where they filmed some of the show.

This is my dad in front of the Casey Tibbs manhole. He was a famous rodeo Bronc rider. My dad was named after him and he just happened to look down and see it right in time as we were walking by it.

Christmas is here!

We FINALLY put up our christmas tree on Sunday. It's pretty simple but it has brought the Christmas Spirit for me! Since the weather has been warm it did NOT feel like Christmas especially since I just got back from Washington and Utah which had tons of snow. But I am feeling much better now since we put up the decorations! I'm very excited now!
While putting up decorations we found this short dowel that has turned into Austin's favorite toy

Here's my little drummer boy!

Here is just a fun picture of him upside down.

This is by far the CUTEST pictures I have taken of Austin yet. He really needs to be discovered!

Looks like a cat clawed his face huh? It was actually a sequence pumpkin I made for a Relief Society craft.

Blog, Blog, Blog

I have done a lot of blogging lately...So feel free to see the other new ones I've done before this. And now to catch up with Halloween, momentarily, and I am all up to speed! Austin has started eating real people foods now. He especially loves his bananas and cheerios. He eats 1 jar of gerber veggies and 1 jar of the fruit for lunch and for dinner...then he eats a little bit off of our plates as well. He is always willing and eager to try everything. He loves drinking out of a cup the way we do. He still has some work to do on the sippy cup though.

9 MONTH STATS: 28 inches (50%), 18 lbs (10%), His head is (90%)!

Oh what a goof he is! Austin does not crawl normal. He scoots on his bum, turns 360s on his belly and is now getting very good at his army crawl. At times we catch him pulling this stunt! Perhaps a gymnast in the making...

Halloween was a BLAST! We went to a party Friday night at a friend's house and then went to our ward trunk or treat on Saturday. I made Austin's carrot costume out of felt, yarn, pipe cleaners, and a single piece of elastic to go under his chin...I had no idea how well hot glue works on felt! This was my first THING I've ever made and it was so much fun, and cheap!

Here is a closer look at his hat. Oh how he loves posing for pictures! Makes my life so easy. AND he wore his hat the entire time.

Sportin' the carrot!

And here we are. My mom made this dress when I was a senior in high school for my senior prom (Theme: Roaring 20's). I have worn this for 3 or 4 Halloweens since! I love it. Tyler pulled off his costume very well with a borrowed Fedora Hat!

Tyler had this bright idea to carve sk-HAIR-y (scary) in our pumpkin. He's so clever! Tyler hates pulling out the insides of the pumpkin and that is my favorite part! So I pulled out most of the insides while he did the carving. Silly boy.

Tyler's 26th Birthday!

Last Friday was Tyler's birthday. He spent the morning golfing with an older gentlemen he's gone with a few times. So far, Tyler has not had to pay because this other guy covers for him with points he's built up since he golfs all the time. Wouldn't it be great to be retired? He has also acquired 4 free clubs form this guy, so I think I will let him continue this hobby until it gets too expensive. I had planned on making him Teryaki chicken for his birthday dinner, however, the older gentlemen invited us over to his house for dinner since his birthday was the day before. So we went over there instead and had dinner and cake with his 2 kids who are our age. We already knew the entire family since they go to church with us. It turned out to be a great night and we got to watch the Texas Rangers win the game to get them into the World Series!!! We hope they start playing better against the Giants.

Then, last Sunday(7AM)-Tuesday(7PM) we babysat a family with 4 kids while their parents flew out for a job interview. Going from 1 kid to 5 under the age of 8 was quite the eye opening experience! I realized it is a VERY hard job being a mom, yet I enjoyed every minute of it. It helped that the kids were very independent and very well-behaved. On Sunday we celebrated Tyler's birthday with them.

Tyler and Austin ready to blow out the candles.
The kids helped us decorate the cake. The sprinkles of course got a little bit out of control.

And everyone blew out the candles.

And here is the cute little bunch! Their mom said the kids told her the best part of their weekend was Austin. They all adored him and gave him a lot of attention with hugs and kisses...way more than he is used to and he got a bit fussy at times. One of the little boys asked their mom the next day if I was coming over today. She said, "I think Rachel needs a little break from you!" I did need some recovery time, mostly from loss of sleep and being on my feet all day.

EXPERIENCES TO REMEMBER:

1. Got locked inside one of the bedrooms with the 2 youngest boys and Austin after the wind blew the door shut. The door does not open from the inside...only from the outside.

2. Got a flat tire on their van on the way to preschool.

3. Between getting the spare tire on and getting a new tire, it was then time to take the other boy to preschool who didn't have shoes and didn't have a lunch. Thank goodness for a friend who lived close by who let me pack a lunch at their house (It was the golfer guy's house)

4. I loved having all the kids come in to our room in the morning at 6 AM and hang out on our bed. Of course I was up anyways because Austin wakes up at 5:30 AM everyday.

My new dress! What do you think? I got it at Ross for $7.50. I may end up adding on a piece of material at the bottom cause it is slightly too short. I'm close to living on the edge with it. Please ignore the nasty hairdo. It was a long day!

Tyler felt like putting random things on Tyler's head this night.
He looked like a biker baby! I love that his ears are poking out.

Austin loved being pulled around by the blanket!

Here we are at the Botanical Gardens with some friends. I love October weather! (Lyette this is the outfit you got him that says 3 months on the tag - and yes he is now 8.5 months and can still wear it!)

Austin showing off his friends! He loves other kids.

State Fair of Texas

One of our friends gave us 2 FREE tickets to the Texas State Fair! Usually it's $15 a person. We also only paid $5 for parking when everyone told us to plan on $15. It was such a GREAT DAY!

Sorry I uploaded the pictures out of order but I am too lazy to fix it!

Here is Austin at the end of the day, 8:00 PM. He did so good and randomly hit the sack.
I wish we could have rode the Ferris Wheel but it was way too expensive! Plus I don't think Austin would have been too excited about it.
But it was IMPRESSIVE!

There was one building that they turned into a mini zoo and had all sorts of farm animals and zoo animals mixed in. Austin was a bit hesitant of this camel and didn't like getting real close.

We watched a free show of Dobermans doing tricks. It was great!

Tyler and Austin in their favorite vehicle. CAMARO!

Me with my favorite vehicle. JOHN DEER!

This was a pirate diving show. Mostly they dove off the diving boards you see coming out of the body of the ship, but the finale was diving off the very top! 80 FEET! And they didn't just dive straight down, they did all sorts of turns and somersaults.

You should read this post bottom to top because that really was the sequence of events. Enjoy!

Our First Visitors!

Brad, Jana, and Brooks came for a visit this weekend!!! We were so excited to have them come and to show them why we love Texas so much. Brad had some meetings in Dallas so they bought an extra ticket for Jana and Brooks came along for the ride.

Austin is being a good boy and learning to share his toys.
Or he may be slightly jealous!

Went all went to the Stockyards in the"Historic" downtown of Fort Worth. They have a "small" cattle drive down the main street twice a day with Longhorn cattle. It took us longer to get there then we expected since we've never been there and we missed the Longhorns by MINUTES! We were in the car as they rounded their last corner and saw a few between the crowds of people standing around. So sad! We blame it on the 2 babies. :)

We still had fun walking around and exploring the site. They had the CUTEST baby cowboy hats but I couldn't bring myself to spend $13 on a hat for Austin that he would never really wear except in pictures.

Wow my face looks VERY freckly!

Tyler and Brad on the GINORMOUS belt buckle.

On the sidewalks on both sides of the street there were these circular manholes? with names of famous cowboys and actors. We saw this one withe the last name "Austin" so we sat him on the first name. I think the picture turned out great!

We searched High and Low for the Walker Texas Ranger manhole? and finally asked the local White Elephant Saloon (which was where a good amount of film was shot for the tv show). They said Walker didn't have a manhole? SAD! We were hoping to find it since my dad is a HUGE fan

Our next adventure (in the same day) was to head to the Water Gardens downtown. Everyone kept asking us if Brooks and Austin were twins...HA! I don't think they look a thing alike but they had the same outfit and they are about the same size, even though Austin is 3 months older

Austin apparently loves Bald heads!

Jana had this BRILLIANT idea to jump off one of the tiers of the Garden Mountain. It turned out AWESOME!!!

So, of course, the Boys had to do it too! Tyler really is in mid air even though it looks like he's stepping off. It was a long day, especially for the babies, but we had fun!!! We then topped the day off with a "SWEET" burger at Kincaids. and of course ice cream at home for dessert!