HP and BYU

Anyone else sad that there are no more Harry Potter movies to look forward to?  Matthew and I have loved the series both reading and watching and enjoyed a date night going to see the last movie recently. We thought it ended very well.


Another thing we both love is BYU and their comedy group Divine Comedy.  They are funny but sometime only in a dorky BYU kind of way.


So, If you appreciate and BYU and Harry Potter than this is worth watching. Click here.

And if that video didn't do it for you here are a couple others of my little dude that I think are way worth watching!

Austin's Birthday Party

On Friday we had a little birthday party with some of Austin's friends. He is really into saying his friends' names and loves playing with them. We had a very low-key party as it was a bunch of 2 year olds. We did a train theme. 

Austin helped me with the cupcakes by putting in a train flag  when I was done frosting each one. He loved helping.

  Here are the kids all decorating cupcakes.

Austin opening presents from his awesome and generous friends

We played Pin the Train onto the track. Each child got to put up one train and this is what we got! 

So very simple but so very fun. I think we all had a great time.

Austin Turns 2

This week my little boy turned 2! He has changed so much over the past few months and is really a full out toddler boy. He has really picked up talking.  He can put two and three words together.  Some of his most often phrases are "big truck" "cold water" "Austin's car" "snack!" "red truck" and many others.  He will sometimes just babble a whole story to me like its the most important thing for me to hear.  He will sometimes repeat back new words he hears or just make up his own version.  The worst one is milk.  Austin saying milk sounds very clearly like the F word.  It's horrible! I don't know how that transferred but I try to avoid that word in public as much as I can! He knows most of his alphabet but I think his favorite letters are B and W.  He always points them out when we see them.

Austin's favorite things right now are cars and trucks. He would play with them all day!  He is also very into fire trucks, ambulances, trains and buses.  He loves to line up all his cars and trucks to make trains. (I think he got that from his cousin Cade!)  He also love Mommy to play cars with him and wants us to crash and drive all over.  His favorite spot to play cars is on our couch.  He will sit on it or kneel next to it and drive cars all around the cushions and pillows.

He is also really into his teddy bear, puppy dog and baby doing things with him like sitting at the table to eat, reading books and things like that.  He loves to give hugs and kisses other babies and likes to identify when people are happy and sad or when different things are big or small.  Reading books is another of his favorite things and can he say some of the words to books we read often.

Austin is still very much a picky eater and is also very sensitive when it comes to textures. He just recently started to eat cut up strawberries and peaches but won't touch them with his hand, he has to use a fork.  He still hates most vegetables and it's a struggle to get any veggies into him.  On the flip side though Austin is a fantastic sleeper. He still takes one long nap in the middle of the day and then sleeps 10-11 hours at night. He has to have binkie and blanket while going to sleep but is the easiest toddler to put to bed. At two Austin is 30 lbs and 35 inches tall.

Here are a few pictures and things we have done lately.

 Playing at the children's museum on Austin's birthday. His favorite things to do are to play with the kitchen and in the marketplace.

 Austin and I enjoying some free bagel poppers at Einstein Bagels.  He loved sitting in a big boy chair and sharing a snack with mommy.

 Austin LOVES chocolate.  But  he usually eats it instead of playing with it. 

His favorite spot to play with cars.

One time we were running an errand close to nap time and I have given him some yogurt pretzels while driving home and when I turned around this is what I saw.

Just yesterday I went to get Austin after his nap and he told me that he was reading a book to his teddy bear, baby and puppy dog. So cute!

We love our little dude so much and love to see him grow and develop.  We had a great birthday and look forward to his party with his friends.

How Fun!

Too bad there isn't one close to me.  I would have been all over that! I guess I will settle for a free slurpie today at 7-11. (Since today is 7/11).

4th of July

We had Matthew's parents in town over the holiday weekend.  Austin loves his Nonna and Pa and really warmed up to them quickly.  We mostly had a low key weekend and just talked and enjoyed each other's company all the while taking turns playing cars with Austin :)

On the 4th, Matthew and his dad went golfing in the morning while Matthew's mom, Austin and I went shopping at the outlets.  Then we all came back and napped :)  In the afternoon we went swimming and grilled up some hamburgers.  We actually didn't see any fireworks since it was still over 100 degrees at 9pm and Austin isn't that fun when he misses his bedtime but we enjoys milkshakes at home and it still ended our day great!

 We sure had a great time with the Graffs. Thanks for coming!

Cars 2

We took Austin to the movie theater for the first time ever.  He loves the first Cars movie. Sometimes he will wake up and bring me the remote while saying "Cars, Cars."  It's very cute but more often than not I have to turn down that cute little request.  But his attention span doesn't last an entire movie so we were worried that he wouldn't stick through it. But we wanted to give it a try.  We explained to him where we were going and he was so excited. 

He loved sitting in his own big chair and I think he was mesmerized by the huge screen. He got so excited when it started and kept shouting "Cars, Cars!"   With snacks and drinks, he lasted through it but towards the end it was nearing nap time so I did sneak in binkie and blanket to help him finish the movie.

Overall I did like the movie but I didn't appreciate the guns, shooting, violence, and characters shouting "Kill him, kill him."  I think I rated it with a little paranoia since this is my child watching it and so I want it to be clean. Also the story line was way complex and complicated.   However, it was a very pretty movie, meaning all the graphics were done really well and I liked all the cultural things they put in since the characters are traveling around the world.  But I love the first movie (and can almost quote it by heart) and I think we will stick with that one.

It was a great experience and we wanted to take advantage of the under-two-years-old are free deal. (However, the ticket lady didn't believe he was under two!) It's so fun to have Austin be really into something and then to take him to this and to see how excited he got.  I think he felt like such a big kid and it made for a fun Saturday morning.

26 on the 26th

Today I turned 26!

  Check out the awesome cake Matthew made me! I can assure you that I did not turn 92 like the cake implies. I promise it really says 26.

I had such a great day. Matthew made me breakfast and dinner and changed all the diapers today :)  What more could you ask for!

Also a big happy happy birthday to my twin sister Jenna. Her blog is private but she did a really cute post about how we have shared all of our birthdays so if you are invited to read hers go do it!

California Part 2

After our time with the Graff Family we headed down to San Diego with our good friends from AZ the Gunnells.  We shared a condo and mostly just enjoyed time away from home.  The husbands enjoyed golfing one day, each of us took a date night, and the kids played great together. The Gunnells have twins that are a couple months younger than Austin.  The first day we went to Seaport Village and walked around and did some window shopping in their cute shops.

 Sitting on the Ben and Jerry's cow.

 Austin kept pointing out to us the boats and the bridge

Austin was mesmerized by a kite shop that we walked past that had tons of spinning kites out front. Of course the truck and the airplane were his favorites.

Another day we went to the beach! It was a little chilly and windy but totally worth it.  This was Austin's first reaction to the beach:

Austin was intrigued by the water at first but then once it hit his feet he wanted nothing to do with it.

But I was definitely ok with that. The kids had so much playing in the endless amount of sand.

 Austin didn't mind being buried until he realized he couldn't get out by himself! 

Austin really wanted to help Daddy play Frisbee.

Needless to say, there was sand everywhere!  And it was completely impossible to change a diaper on the beach and not have sand involved.  It took lots of scrubbing at bathtime to finally get all the sand out of Austin's hair.

So much fun. Gotta love the beach.

The last day in San Diego we went to Sea World. We had a blast. We spent the morning in the kiddie area riding rides, and letting Austin run and play.

Then we went back to the condo and took naps! In the afternoon we tried to hit as many shows as we could.  I think Austin liked the sea lion show the best. He sat there the whole time, staring at the sea lions, eating popcorn, and laughing when everyone else around him laughed.

 This is Austin at the dolphin show.

Overall, San Diego was a fabulous and much needed trip and we were so glad the Gunnells could join us.

California Part 1

So I am way behind in updates!  Matthew has finished his first year of Podiatry School! Woo Hoo!  I am very proud of the hard work he has done and it is so great to have a year under our belts now.  We have lived here in AZ now for over a year and we really love it here.  We have met some awesome friends and love all the support we have out here. We had a two week break, which was so fabulous, and then he started summer term this week. No summer break for us so we really crammed so much into the 2 weeks that we had. It will take a few posts to get everything in.

First off, the Graff family gathered in California to spend some good quality time together. We stayed in a really fun resort and Austin loved seeing everyone.  We spent most of our time at the pool, and playing together.

 Floating down the lazy river

 Playing in the kiddie pool with cousin Aaron

 Enjoying time together!

 I think this picture is funny because it looks like Austin in naked! But he is really is wearing his speedo!

 Austin couldn't get enough of being thrown back and forth between daddy and Pa.  He was laughing so hard!

Aubrey and Aaron!  Austin loved time with his cousin.

Austin has really been talking a lot lately and is learning new words every day. We taught him all the Graff family names and he did so good trying to say everyone's names. It was really cute!   

Phoenix Zoo

A couple weeks ago we went to the Phoenix Zoo with some friends.  It was nice to go when it wasn't so miserably hot yet.  It was our first time there and we had such a good time. I think Austin's favorite animals were the flamingos, pelicans and snakes.This was Austin's reaction to the elephants:

 I think they were a lot bigger than pictures of elephants he has seen in books!

While we were there, I ran into my friend Megan!  We were in the same major at BYU and had several classes together.  We live just far enough away that we hadn't gotten together since I moved to AZ so it was so fun to see her.  We both have boys named Austin!

The two other boys that came with us also had blond hair making them look like triplets! These little boys were so cute together.  They would hold hands, copy each other and laugh together.

So yes, I realize I actually have no pictures of the animals we saw, but we really did go to the Zoo!