Unloading...

..is what Austin does best lately! He really loves to unload anything. He will unload the dryer while I am loading, destroy the toilet paper I have stacked in the cabinet, take out all the clothes in our dresser drawers, pull out all the DVDs from the basket we keep them in. You name it, he has unloaded it. His new favorite thing is to take down our shoes from the shoe rack in the closet. Pretty sure I cleaned it up 3 times yesterday.
But it's so cute watching him. I got a couple of pictures of Austin unloading things.


And this kind of reminds me of a picture my mom got of Jenna and I when we were little doing the same thing! Don't you just love the complete guilt on our faces!

(yes, I am the one with the alien head)

First Day of School

Today is Matthew's first day of Podiatry school! He is pretty pumped about it. It took a little bit of coaxing to let me get a picture but doesn't he look so ready to start hitting the books! It is the first day of the next four years of our lives. This semester he is taking anatomy, histology, podiatry, biochemistry and healthcare. Good luck Matthew!

Projects

I seem to always have a few projects going on at once so it's exciting when one gets done! Here are a couple of things I have completed recently. First is a bean bag chair for Austin. I had a crafty friend help me with it. It was a very fun project and I picked out the fabric to match Austin's room. One thing I found is that bean bag stuffing is very pricey. So I improvised and stuffed it with some packing peanuts from the post office! It actually works quite well as long as Matthew or I don't try to cannon ball onto it. Austin loves his new chair!




Second I made a quilt! As Matthew and I were cleaning things out while getting ready to move we found we had a lot of BYU shirts. However, I couldn't bear to just get rid of them since they all have memories attached to them. So I decided to save them by making a T-shirt quilt. I have never quilted before and the task seemed very daunting at first. But from carefully studying some tutorials online and getting advice from the ladies at the fabric store I was able to put it together! It's not going on my bed or anything, it's more for going on a picnic or spreading out on the grass, but its so fun to look at all the shirts and remember our BYU days.

Family Visit

My family came to visit a couple weeks ago! It was nice to show them where we live now. We went swimming, shopping, went to an art museum and mostly just hung out and played with Austin. He loved all the extra attention. But it was great to see the fam again. All my little sisters are growing up! I'm so glad they made the trip out to AZ.

Birthday Boy

Austin turned one on Sunday! My baby boy is growing up! We celebrated his birthday by opening presents and then going to our cousin's house for cupcakes. Austin loves all his new toys. I couldn't even get a picture of his face because he was so into all his new stuff. At age one, here are the things we love about Austin:
-sleeps through the night
-weighs 24 pounds and is 30 inches tall
-has two teeth
-favorite foods are bananas and yogurt
-crawls all over the place
-loves to babble and talk
-stands up next to furniture
-loves bath time every night
-has long blonde curls on the back of his head
-loves songs, reading books, and peek-a-boo
-can dance, blink, snap(well tries to),wave and give hugs on command
-loves to play with rocks and sand
-says Mama
-just started to figure out how to feed himself





He wasn't so sure about the cupcake at first but he warmed up pretty fast. He like eating it but also loved crumbling it between his fingers!

Austin's New Favorite Thing

Standing! He loves to pull himself up to stand. He pulls himself up on everything. This is how I find him every morning and after naptime.
He especially loves to pull himself up next to the bathtub. He is also starting to get into everything that is within his reach. Sometimes when he is standing he will let go and be balancing all by himself before falling down! There's no walking yet but I bet it will come soon enough.

Quarter of a Century

That's how old I am now! My birthday was over the weekend and it was a great day! Matthew and I were able to go out on a real date to dinner and a movie. It was fabulous! And check out the adorable cake my visiting teacher made me!

Yesterday=Not so Great, Today= Much Better!

Yesterday:
-Austin wakes up before 6:00am
-Our AC in our apartment goes out
-Austin gets a sunburn and stung by a bee
-Oh yeah, we got a $200 utility bill

Today:
-AC is fixed
-Austin took 2 2-hour naps
-very productive day
-Went to the grocery store by myself
-However, it did reach 112 degrees today. (Thank goodness we had AC!)

Alyssa's Visit

My little sister came to visit! With Alyssa being the youngest in the family and me being the oldest I didn't get to grow up with her a lot before leaving for college. We are 12 years apart and I left home when she was 6! So I am so glad she was able to visit us here in Arizona. We had a great time and Austin loved having someone else to play with. She stayed for almost a week but the time flew by! We were able to do some shopping, went to the Science Museum, went swimming and to the Wildlife Zoo. It was so funny to see people trying to figure out our relationship. I got asked a couple times if I was her mom or her Aunt! Here are some pictures from the week.

Summer

Arizona sure knows how to heat up the summer. It has been in the 100's. The highest being 110 last week. I know I have a lot of catch up to do so I will start with Memorial Day. Matthew has cousins that live in the area so Jordan and Natalie and their three cute kids came over to swim and have a BBQ. It's so nice to have family in the area and they are really fun to get together with. Austin loves playing with other kids in the water.



Last weekend we took a road trip to Vegas. Kind of a funny story, we were suppose to meet up with Matthew's good friend and his family. They haven't seen each other in years and Vegas was a good half way point. When we got there, Matthew called his friend to see where they were and it turned out that we had actually planned this trip for the following week. Thats right, we came on the wrong weekend! Fortunately we had some good friends from Utah who were willing to take a spontaneous trip to Vegas. They have a little girl Austin's age and they love to play together. They were our neighbors in Utah and we would get together a lot. So it was still a fun trip but kinda too bad that we messed up the date and didn't get to see Matthew's friend. We didn't get any pictures of the adults but of course we did of the kids!

On the way home we drove past the Hoover Dam and saw the new bridge they are building. It was really impressive and quite the site! They have really built up the area and are making it really touristy. Last time I visited there was nothing but the Dam. We had to wait in construction traffic for an hour or so but I am really glad we were able to see it.

Oh the Cuteness

These are just some cute videos we have taken recently of Austin. I just can't help but think that he is the most adorable little boy and couldn't decide which video to post so I just posted them all. He really has been doing a lot of new things lately and we have caught some of them on tape. Make sure you pay attention to the second video around 40 seconds in, you will be glad you did!

Poor Austin

This is how Austin has been lately...

Poor guy, he has been so sick lately. He has been miserable and just screams if I put him down. He is getting better but it's so sad to see him so sick. (But I have to admit that I laughed a lot when I saw this picture!)

Today...

is our wedding anniversary! We have been married for 4 wonderful years!

Baby Aaron

We have a new nephew!! Matthew's sister, Aubrey, had a baby boy a week ago today! He is so cute! He was 8 lbs 13 oz when he was born. I am so sad that we left Utah just a couple weeks too early to have been able to meet him. Aubrey and Aaron are doing great and we hope to see them soon.

My Little Indian Boy

Kansas Visit

Austin and I went to go visit Jenna, Cole and Cade a few weeks ago. It's taken me awhile to post about it with the move and everything but I unpacked my last two boxes yesterday so now I feel like I can move on to other things like blog posting! It was so fun going out to Kansas. Cade is getting so big! (and so is Jenna's tummy!) We did a lot of hanging out, playing with little boys and getting ready for our booth. We had a vendor spot at a local event where we sold our aprons. It went very well and we had so much fun doing it. Highlights of the trip:
-Making homemade cinnamon rolls
-Watching Cade and Austin "play" together. (This means watching Cade trying to teach Ausin something like throw a ball, drive a toy car, or walk and then watching Austin stare and laugh at Cade!)
-Saying every night that we were going to go to bed early and then staying up really late talking every night.
-Having root beer floats every night while talking
-Austin pooping in the bathtub and Cade freaking out
-going to the Zoo
-Playing vendor and having our booth be a success!
-Jenna ordering a shrimp salad and then asking for the chicken to be fried. (It was so funny, you had to be there! I am literally laughing as I write this)

It's not fun living so far apart, so I am so glad we were able to get together. Here are some pictures of our stay.

We Made It

We now live in Arizona. That will still take some getting used to! But so far we are loving it. Matthew's brother Ben drove down with us and helped do a lot of unloading. It helped out so much. Austin didn't do very well with the drive. I went through a lot of banana peels! Now, I am still just unpacking, and unpacking and I have found Walmart and Costco. Our place is a little smaller than we thought but we love the apartment complex and the area. Matthew's cousin lives really close to us and have already helped us out so much as well. Throughout the move Austin has developed some new talents. He can point now (it's soo cute!), he has cut through his first tooth, he understands and loves peek-a-boo and is so close to crawling. He will get up on all fours and rock but hasn't figured out how to go forward but is quite good at going backwards. These are some recent pictures of Austin.

Warm and Sunny

That's what the weather has been lately and it feels great! A couple weekends ago we went to the park for the first time this season with Aubrey & Jon and Jeannie & Jared. It was so nice to be outside. I caught a video of Austin going down a slide for the first time!

A Happy Omen

We bought some ice-cream last night and this is what we found on the top of the lid when we opened it.


Matthew did make some really good milkshakes with that ice-cream.