Time off!!

I can honestly say I have never looked forward to Christmas vacation as much as I was THIS year. That last week of school was ROUGH. It's great to be off, but I'm not sure if I'd really describe it as "off." We have been SOOOO busy EVERY day! Wrapping Christmas presents was a BIG job. Here's what the living room looked like DURING! What a mess! Andrew and I have made a lot of trips back and forth to Odessa to see his side of the family. We love singing Christmas songs on the way!

Austin enjoying playing in the boxes...

Ahhhh....I enjoyed writing this name tag:)...

Austin had his 9 month check up last week. He was officially 18.3 lbs and 27 3/4 inches long. We've moved up in all percentages. If I remember correctly, He is the 12th percentile for weight, the 24th for height, and his head was the 37th. Considering he started at less than the 5th percentile in EVERYTHING, this a significant growth! Dr. Murillo wanted to do some bloodwork on him just do double check a few things and it WAS awful! The first time they stuck him they couldn't get blood and so they had to do the other arm. It was very traumatic for BOTH of us! All of his bloodwork came back GREAT! Here he is before all of the drama occurred...

We think Austin is probably teething. We've had a few grumpy days recently. Here's one of those...

Bath time...this kid LOVES bath time! Strike a pose! HI!!!

While in Odessa we had some girl time. We all went for manis! Here's Karen...

And Emily getting her nails beautified...

Here's my nails...I decided to try something different...

Joyce went too, but she got hers done at the same time as me so I couldn't get a pic of hers (couldn't mess up my nails!) Here's Austin and a gift from Santa. Apparently, he was a good boy this year!

Every year we take Emily, Ashlyn, and Pete to Mr. Gatties for pizza and games. This year the whole family joined us. Andrew, Kent, and Tiki had a basketball challenge. Tiki won! Check out Brooklyn in the bottom left hand quarter of this pic. She beat me in air hockey;)!!

After Christmas when we got home from Odessa we discovered a gift we had forgot to have Austin unwrap. This was actually perfect! Unwrapping 1 right in front of him wasn't so overwhelming and I think he had the most fun with this gift! He kept crawling on it to tear the paper. Tiki and Mona gave him this couch that fold out to a bed. Austin loves crawling all over it!

Daddy duties!!! And so it begins...

This past week has been FANTASTIC. Now we are looking forward to Kent, Karen, Ashlyn, Emily, and Pete all coming to stay with us tomorrow night. I'm sure it will be fun. I think there will be a Bezzerwizzer showdown coming!

White Christmas

Andrew's brother, Kent, and his family got here last Thursday. We have been driving back and forth to Odessa to see them. When we came home Christmas Eve Eve this is what we came home to... We had a neat thing here at our event center. The did an ice skating rink, gigantic slide, and snow globe that we all got to go and enjoy! Little did we know the REAL snow was sooooooon to come!

Christmas Eve we stayed home and played in the snow! You know the song goes I'm dreaming of a White Christmas...well, we didn't have to dream! It snowed all Christmas Eve Eve night and all day on Christmas Eve. We had a PLETHORA of snow. I had to go to Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve to get a couple of things to cook for dinner. I couldn't get my SUV out of the driveway!
I had to take Andrew's truck! THEN, when I came home I couldn't get his truck back in the driveway! It took BOTH of us. Ihad to shovel snow out of the way and then he would give it a shot to get it up the drive! Crazy! We had a LOT of snow! We still have a lot even now out in the yard!

Yep, I did it. I threw the baby in the snow! (I won't mention how many layers of clothes he had on...

Our Watts Snowman Family. If you look closely Daddy Snowman has on a UT hat, Mommy Snowman has on a Texas Tech hate, and Baby Snowman has on a Santa hat.

Austin and Mommy....

Kamden and Kason got an XBox!

Austin got the coolest car! He loves it...and so does Daddy!

It was the BEST Christmas ever:)!!

Santa Baby

We've had lots of fun with this cute Santa Baby. While posinf for pictures he just wanted to pull Kason's hair! Cute!

My Santa Baby...

Fun!

Love this one...

So much to get into!

Now what, Mom???

The best gift ever...

While shopping at Kohls Santa got a little grumpy, so I gave him the gift we were buying for Charlotte to try out. Her gift was Austin approved!

We ran into Santa while shopping! Santa x 2!!!!

9 Months!

Last Monday we woke to a very nice treat. SNOW!! The very first snow for him! It had started the night before after Austin went to sleep. Here he is on Monday morning checking out the snowflakes... There were great big snowflakes falling when he got up. He was fascinated by them. We sat in the front door and watched for a LONG time. We got to do this because I got a snow DELAY on Monday AND Tuesday!!!

I missed an entire week of blogging due to very good reasons. We got new carpet and tile last week in the kitchen, our bedroom, and our bathroom. It was a HECK of a week, but it's done now. Thank goodness...we LOVE it!!! I need to take another pic, this is before it was grouted.

Last Thursday Kamden and I were bell ringers at Wal-Mart. It was a bit chilly, but not tooooo bad. The newspaper even came and took our picture. We were in the paper on Saturday!

On Saturday we took Santa, I mean Austin, for his 9 month pictures! How cute is this Santa!?!

I sure do loooooove this Santa Baby!

Austin is VERY mobile these days! I was cooking dinner and trying to keep him contained the other night. I put him in his Bumbo seat and let him "help" me! He may or may not have helped me clean the brownie batter bowl;)...

Yep, he can pull up now! Big boy!

Tonight he sat in the shopping cart for the first time. It's been quite awhile since I've taken him to the store with me. We had a bad experience awhile back of him spazzing out, me holding him, feeding him, trying to push the cart, check out, and have everyone staring at me like I was beating the kid. Tonight was much more pleasant, he's kicking back in the cart!

He also likes to sit UNDER the jumperoo...

And the 9 month pics...WOW! This was no easy task...

Yes, that's Andrew's iPhone. The only way I could get him to stay on his back was to give him the phone!

Yeah, soooo cooperative...

At least you can see the 9 in this one!

This kid is something else! This is definitely the month that I have seen the most changes. He crawled right before he turned 8 months, but this past month he has REALLY taken off. He sat up right after he turned 8 months. He has been pulling up now for a little over a week. Austin waves and says Bye Bye, Mama, Dada, and Hi. Soooo many milestones so close together. We now have the living room enclosed with baby fences. I know, ha ha. He's really good about just playing in the floor by himself. He usually goes to bed around 8:30. Lately he has been getting up 1 time during the night, and then later gets up around 7:30ish. He'll take a short morning nap and (when he's at home) take a LONG afternoon nap. He does the neatest thing that shocks me like you wouldn't believe. In the afternoon when I KNOW he's tired and ready for a nap, I just go lay him down in his bed. He rolls over (bootie MUST be in the air) and goes to sleep on his own!!!! Doesn't even cry!!! Now that's magical! Sometimes he sings himself to sleep, it's so sweet...

Last night our bath time changed drastically. Before last night we had our routine of laying on the sponge and I washed him, talked, and sang to him. We had a few toys I'd give him and he'd splash them a little. He didn't try to roll over or anything in the tub. Last night he did! He tested it a little with rolling to his side, I told him a firm, "NO." He looked at me and smiled and went the other direction on his side. He quickly was rolled over and crawling in the tub. It was a lot easier before, but this is more fun. He played around so much tonight he even dunked his head on accident! Tonight I put him in the tub on the sponge. He laid there and let me wash him. He kicked back and put his arms behind his head (like stetching out in a Lazy Boy), looked up at me, smiled, and said, "Mama." It was the sweetest thing ever:).