Weekend

Here's some pictures from the weekend and please excuse all of the naked pictures. Austin just doesn't like to keep his clothes on. I have more pics of him with no clothes than with clothes. Sorry.

Here he is with his butter knife cutting strawberries. He thinks he needs his own knife if you are cutting something. He and Brandon were making fruit salad.

Here he's just being silly. He likes to help his daddy work on things and presently we're remodeling our bathroom so he has to help too!! He's got his goggles on so that he doesn't get sawdust in his eyes!

I picked this little stick vac up at Wal-Mart to use in our camper, but apparently it was just Austin's size. He loves to vacuum so of course he had me plug it in and he was vacuuming away! It was too funny! When he would run out of cord and couldn't reach another spot I would have to unplug and move it somewhere else. If only he would continue liking to vacuum, but we know that's not gonna happen.

To end our weekend we made brownies last night. Austin likes to have his own spoon to help stir with and of course when we're done he has to lick the spoon and the bowl. That's the best part of making anything! As you can also tell he had been playing with his TaDoodles markers and he had rather color himself than to color on the paper. Hopefully we'll get out of that soon.

Look at that sweet chocolate face!

It's Time To Play Catch Up!!

It seems as if I'm way behind on my blogging, but we've been busy and I just haven't had a chance to sit down and get the pics off of my camera. We spent the 4th of July camping at Lake Ouachita with Brandon's sister and her family and we had a really good time. It was our first trip with our "new to us" camper and we really liked it and can't wait to take more trips. Austin is just getting bigger everyday. He's always got a lot to say and is always "working on something". I can't believe my baby is almost 2 1/2 years old. Where has the time gone to? It's amazing how smart he is and how much he knows for such a little guy. So here are a few pictures from the last month.

Austin likes to eat his ice cream cones with a fork! Not sure how he got started doing that.

On this particular day I had been busy doing other things and went to check on him and this is what I found. He had taken the hose and "washed mama's windows" along with everything else around him. Apparently he thought things needed some cleaning!! I like to have never got all of the water cleaned up.

Checkin' out the bait on the fishing pole. He's getting things ready I guess.

Here he is just being silly. Can you see the pattern of no clothes? He doesn't like to wear them and therefore spends most days at home without them!!

Another thing you can tell is that he likes to climb up on the kitchen counters. He pushes the barstool up and climbs right on up to check the cabinets for some food, candy or straws, or whatever other excuse he can find when I tell him to get down.

I bought him new markers and a doodle pad at Wal-Mart this past weekend and we left him in the living room drawing. When I went back to check on him he was sitting on the floor and taking each marker one at a time and coloring his stomach. I stood there and watched him for a few minutes before I let him know that I was there and when he realized I was there he was so excited that he had colored his belly!!!

And as if the belly wasn't enough while he and his Daddy were coloring he decided to color his face as well.

We began destruction of our bathroom this past weekend. It's getting totally gutted and redone. Anyway Austin, of course, had to go get his tools and help Daddy out with the sawing.

Branson

On Sunday afternoon we left the zoo and headed to Branson. That was the longest drive ever. We saw some pretty places along the way, but the 82 mile trip from West Plains, MO to Branson felt like 182 miles. It was nothing but hilly, curvy, twisty road and we were all sick of it!! We got to Branson about 7 p.m., got us a room and headed out for supper. That's pretty much all we had time to do so we ran by Wal-Mart(can you go anywhere without stopping at Wal-Mart?) for a few things and went back to the hotel to swim. On Monday morning we got up, went to breakfast and headed for Silver Dollar City. It was all good and fine, we got parked, hopped on the trolley to ride to the front gate and this is where it all went bad. I was holding Austin and getting down off the trolley when he decides to take a turn and when he does I slipped and sprained my ankle. I knew immediately that this was gonna be a long day. It hurt so bad, but I thought no way to quit now so I just kept on trucking. So there I was with a swollen ankle and all of that walking, but I made it and Brandon was a real trooper because he took care of Austin for the largest part of our time there. After SDC we left and headed to Ozark for supper at Lambert's and then on to Springfield for a visit to Bass Pro. No trip to Branson is complete without the extra 35 miles to Bass Pro!! After returning from there we checked out Branson Landing down on the lake. It has been built since we were there last so we wanted to see it. Our day finally ended about 10 pm and I was wore out. Our plans had been to get up Tuesday morning and do some shopping before heading home, but when I got up my ankle was so swollen and stiff that our shopping consisted of only the Carter's store and the John Deere store and then we headed home. Despite my little incident (leave it to me) the trip was good and Austin really seemed to enjoy himself. I may have been useless for much else, but I could still use a camera so here are a few pics from SDC.

Shooting at the ducks and rabbits...

Go ahead, make my day!!

This was Austin's favorite part...the water!!

He was looking down in the hole to see where the water went and he found it...right in the face!!

Eatin' Dippin' Dots Ice Cream...without a spoon. What a mess that was!

Showing off his deputy badge that the "Sherriff" gave him

This was during the train ride

And this is when the train ride was over...he was pooped

 

Memphis Zoo

We took a little 3 day trip Sunday thru Tuesday and went to Memphis to the zoo and then on to Branson for a visit to Silver Dollar City and some piddling. The weather was wonderful and we had a really good time. The zoo was awesome and we would definately like to go back when Austin gets a little bigger. All of the animals were out for us to see so I got several good pictures. So here are a few pictures to share. I'll do a separate post for the Branson trip.

The monkeys were putting on a show for us and Austin was loving it!

Austin waving at the monkeys

Watching the flamingos and the ducks

Picking the flowers

Mr. Cool!!!

They had the elephant chained and walking it back and forth on a cable. I guess this was for exercise.

Watching the sea lions

They had one polar bear that was out and it was really playful. It kept swimming to the glass and playing with all the kids. It done this for about 45 minutes. All the kids were loving it!!!

Mama riding the carosel with Austin

Apparently panda bears only eat bamboo, I did not know this. He was sure chowing down on it!!