Monster Jam

Otherwise known as lots of fumes and loud noise!  Brandon and I along with Papaw, Scooter and Mikey made our first Monster Jam trip on Saturday. 

We started out making a stop by Kroger for me.  They were having a good sale and I wanted to get some things.  I'm still really irritated that we don't have a decent grocery store around here anymore and Wal-Mart is NOT my favorite place to shop :(  Nothing I can do about it though...moving on.  Papaw took us all out to eat at El Porton Mexican and it was really good, but wouldn't you know that Austin didn't want to eat he just wanted to play, but after a few forced attempts Brandon finally got him to eat a little something!  Next stop was Monster Jam...

We've watched it on TV several times and I must say that the TV version was better than what we saw.  Maybe it's because Verizon is a smaller arena compared to what we've seen on TV and they weren't running on dirt plus they just didn't have the room to do a whole lot of showing out!  The kids all had a good time, but if we go to another one I'd like to go to a bigger arena.  And earplugs are a MUST!!  Austin didn't want to wear anything on his ears (hard headed as usual) so ended up with his fingers stuck in his ears or just nothing at all for most of the night.

I had to take all of my pictures with my Blackberry because as usual my camera battery was dead.  I might have got 3 pictures from it.  I should have known to check the battery as they tend not to hold up very well, but at least I had my phone.  So here are the photos from the night!

Wearing his Monster Mutt hat that came with his cotton candy

Daddy feeding him his snow cone.  That ice was hard as a rock and it was getting everywhere.  For $10 you should at least be able to eat it!

El Toro Loco

Destroyer

Grave Digger

Finally able to eat his snowcone by himself

Sleet...and Then There Was Snow

We don't get a lot of snow here so when we do it's like we've won the lottery!  No school, no work...it completely paralyzes this part of the world because we are just not used to it.  It started Sunday morning with sleet and finally turned into snow.  Austin was soooo excited about it.  He probably looked out the window 1000 times on Sunday looking for snow!  Once it started and a little got on the ground good I suited him up and let him go play.

Making snow angels

Again

Catching snowflakes on his tongue.  He was super excited about this.

Building snowcastles with Scooter.

Time for a hot chocolate and fruit snack break.  It was so cold out.

Day #2.  We all got to stay home on Monday so we got out the kneeboard and pulled the kids behind the four wheeler.  Even I got a turn after being forced by Brandon with the promise of I won't go too fast, but he did take off before I was ready and I fell off before even getting started.  It was a lot of fun!

Here's Austin all strapped in and ready to go

And there he goes.

And if you look closely you can see his little self out in the pasture.  He was loving it and kept hollering go faster, go faster.  I guess he's a little speed demon.

Austin, Ayla and Scooter.  This was actually taken before we got started so everyone was still dry.  We all had a lot of fun, but a couple of days of this mess is enough for me.  I don't think I'd make it living where it snows all of the time.

Pudding Anyone?

I honestly think that I live with "King Mess Alot"!  This child can make more messes than anything I've ever seen.  On Friday afternoon he wanted to make chocolate pudding, no problem we can do that.  So I'm getting the milk poured up and he's holding the package of pudding trying to open it.  I tell him not to open it because it would make a mess.  Do you think he even remotely listened to me?  NOT AT ALL.  So below is the resulting mess that I had to clean up.  It was everywhere.

So I did what any good mother would do.  I broke out the vacuum cleaner and began sucking the powdery mess off of him.  You do whatever works sometimes and at that point it seemed liked the easiest thing to do.

You just never know what kind of mess we'll have next!!

Our Week

I have thoroughly enjoyed my week off of work staying at home with Austin.  So here is a little recap in pictures.

We did a little of this...

Santa Superhero

Playing in a blind with the dog

 Another day...another superhero

His Etch a Sketch version of Arkansas

We did a little of that...

Playing cowboy/cowgirl with Anna

Watching a little TV

Took a couple of Elmo blue baths

Had a little tractor time

 a little swingset time

his mustache from one of the junk machines at the grocery store...yeah he thought he was cool

Showing off the ducks that daddy killed

And then of course we did a whole lot of this....

that would be sitting in the recliner and watching TV and boy was it great!  Please excuse the ugly purple fuzzy socks, but it was chilly most of the week.

 

I am thankful to have a job to return to, but I can definately say that I'm not looking forward to going back.  Maybe just another week or two off would be great!  A girl can dream can't she?

Christmas 2010

We feel so very blessed that Austin has had such a wonderful Christmas!  He is definately a loved little boy by many and we wouldn't have it any other way.  We did Christmas at 5 different places (includes friends and family) so I've got pictures from all of them.  Thanks to everyone who made this such a wonderful Christmas for Austin because he was certainly excited about this year.

The 1st stop was at Mamaw & Papaw's on Thursday night.  He and Scooter were dying to open gifts, but they had to wait a while so when the opening commenced it was a little wild to say the least.

 He was tearing into presents like there was no tomorrow.

 And it was the Batman Cave that he's been asking for the last 3 months.

A remote control spider for our little "Spiderman".

 At this point he was just overwhelmed.

 And here's the pile he got from Mamaw, Papaw, Scooter, Ayla & Mikey.

 And a group shot of Mamaw & Papaw with 3 of the 4 grandkids.

Scooter, Ayla, Austin, Papaw & Mamaw.

 Then on to Friday when Karla came over with his gift.  He got a BBQ grill set with food.

 And a barrel of monkeys.  He has really enjoyed dumping the monkeys out and seeing how many he can pick up.  Thanks Karla & Keebey.

 Friday night we had Brandon's family over for supper.  To go along with his Batman Cave he got the Joker's Fun House and now his favorite saying is "the jokes on you Batman!"

 Some Iron Man toys.

 And more Imaginext stuff too!

 Here are our cookies and milk that we left for Santa.  Austin didn't want to go to bed and it was 10:30 before we finally got him to sleep.

 I guess the anticipation was just too much because at 3:15  on Saturday morning he was awake and trying to find every excuse in the book to get out of bed.  First we went to the bathroom and then he was hungry.  I was trying to hold him off as long as I could so we could get some more sleep, but he was having NO part of it.  Finally at a few minutes til 4 AM his feet hit the floor and he was headed to the tree.  He was so excited to see that Santa had left him toys and immediately ran to his daddy and said "look daddy Santa brought me presents, I told you I wasn't on the naughty list".  Apparantly he was worried that he might be on that list!

Checking out everything that Santa brought.

 Pulling everything out of the stocking.

He finally got the Jessie doll from Toy Story.  He's been wanting this one for a while.

 You can see that he's one happy little guy.  He tells us that he got everything that he "needed" for Christmas.

 Gotta get a closer look.

 This is the Dragon Castle.  He's been asking for this as long as he's been asking for the Bat Cave.  So glad Santa was able to bring him one because otherwise we would have never heard the end of it.

 Our next stop was at Aunt Sherrell and Uncle Keith's for lunch.  As always we had some good food and my favorite hashbrown casserole.  Austin got a dinosaur and a Sonicare toothbrush.  Here he is with Uncle Keith.

And of course here he is with his only living great grandparent, Mamaw Margie.  Austin just loves Mamaw Margie and in her words she thinks "he's the stuff"!  Like I said earlier he is a very much loved little boy and we are so thankful for that.

Our last stop of the day was at Kim and Chris's for Austin and Abby to exchange gifts.  Austin was conked out when we got there so we ended up laying him down on the bed and letting him get a little sleep.  We went ahead and let Abby open her gifts and just let Austin open his when he woke up.  I didn't get pictures because I had left the camera in the truck since he was asleep.

Christmas 2010 was wonderful and we are so thankful and feel so blessed to have so many people that love our little man.  He is definately a special little guy and we love him so very much.