Joy Ride?

I know I say this all the time, but Austen has absolutely no clue that he is in fact not a grown up. He does whatever we do and he sees nothing wrong with that. He saw Grandpa and Daddy working on the dishwasher, so he works on the dishwasher. Notice he even has his tools.....

Daddy shovels the snow, so he shovels the snow. Of course he has to use the same beanie daddy uses.

Most the time these things are perfectly fine......cute even, but yesterday he did something that only grownups are supposed to do.
We went outside to add a string of lights to a bush that was looking a little sparse. When we were finished I took the extra string of lights to the basement and I came back upstairs to find Austen missing. I checked the backyard....not there. That's when I noticed the door to the garage was open.
I step out into the garage to find this:

He was in the car pretending to drive. He had even found the key (which I never keep in the ignition) and turned the car on. Not running on, just on enough that the radio was playing.
He was steering and singing and having the best time ever!
In fact when I opened the door, he got very upset and kept telling me to close it.
Luckily he didn't get it into gear!!!
I am so screwed!

For those of you wondering how my 22 month old can open a car door, he can't. I left the back door open when I took him out earlier because he had fallen asleep.

Needless to say, I will be hiding the key from now on along with locking the door to the garage and NEVER leaving the car door open.

Random Cuteness

Austen is looking old lately and I'm not the only who has noticed either. It's like he's growing up so fast it literally happens before my eyes!!! It makes me so sad on one hand, but on the other it's so fun to see the amazing person he's becoming. He amazes me every single day. Just today I discovered he can count......and not just to three like I thought......to six!!! I have a witness for those that don't believe it. He also knows colors pretty well too. He gets red and orange confused, but other than that he can tell you what color most things are.
HE'S NOT EVEN TWO!!!

I have to remind myself of that daily.

He is still obsessed with Toy Story especially Woody. I even snuck him an early Christmas present (a small stuffed Woody doll) that he hasn't put down since. He will still do anything for a laugh and he loves saying hi and bye to anyone we encounter.
He LOVES sugar a lot!!!
So much so, that when I give him a bowl of lucky charms this is what he does:

And for someone not very dexterous that takes a lot of work.

He still loves to clean

And he still thinks his dad is the most
amazing/funny/wonderful
person on the planet.......and so do I!

'Tis The Season

Thanksgiving was awesome this year!!!
Austen had so much fun playing with all his cousins and drinking his fill of soda.


After we stuffed ourselves my sister and I bundled up to stand in line for Black Friday sales.
It was 8 degrees mind you, but I managed to stand out there for over two hours thanks to Brian's military issued arctic bib. Those were some warm pants (that's more than I can say about my boots!!!)
Minus a lady having a seizure two feet away from us, it wasn't too bad.......it's still too soon to say it was fun though.
We had a good game plan, so we got everything we wanted and were out of the store in 20 min which has got to be some sort of black friday record.

I got a head start this year and decorated before it got snowy and cold.
Here's some pics of us putting up our lights.

Trying to plug them in.

Have I mentioned Austen's a climber and NOT afraid of heights???

He's using Brian's homemade light hanger......very cute!

He had so much fun helping his daddy put up the lights and he loves to look at them every night when they're on!!!

Remember When It Was Still Warm???

Since we are supposed to be having a major blizzard later today, I thought I would post some pics of our last trip to the park. It was even warm enough that I had Austen in shorts, so maybe this will help conjure up nice warm thoughts while we're stuck inside freezing.

Austen loves his uncle Brett!!!
I think I hear "uncle Brett" about 5,000 times a day.

Here they are playing at the park.

Peeking over.....notice the tip toes???

This boy likes to climb!!!
Do I look worried or what?

SNOW!!!!!

We had a major snow storm last night and got dumped on! Austen immediately noticed the snow when he woke up and all he wanted to do was go outside. He didn't even want to eat his breakfast. I spent forever getting him all bundled up and then let him go. He wasn't quite sure what to do at first, but once he saw Sophie running through it, he was all about it.

Can you spot the dog?? She's got good snow camo.

At first he just stood there taking it all in.

Then he discovered he could eat it!

It was waist deep for him, so he had a hard time walking and kept telling me he was stuck.

I buried his legs.

We got him his own shovel so he can help daddy.

Austen didn't want the stupid little kid shovel, he wanted the one daddy had!

This picture is for Grammy Linda.......thought you'd think it was cute!

He was sooo happy!!! I think he had more fun shoveling the driveway than he did playing in the snow.

Taking Back The Basement

I've been M.I.A. for a little bit, not because I don't have anything to blog about, but because I have decided to take on the basement. I had a bunch of stuff stored elsewhere that I recently had to bring home and for some reason that was the straw that broke the camels back. Just adding those extras boxes made the basement feel totally full and unorganized and awful, so I decided to tackle it. It has been going better than expected and I've made really good progress down there. (Today is day 5 of us not leaving the house.) I've had to be fully committed to this or it would be too overwhelming. Maybe I'll even post some after pictures......I didn't take the befores, I don't want any evidence of how awful it was.

The accumulation and acquisition addiction will be hard to break, but I am seriously not bringing one more unnecessary thing into this house!!! (How many scented candles does one person really need??? And don't even get me started on the T-shirt king.....)

Wish us luck and have a happy Thursday!!!

The Baby With Magical Healing Powers

We get a lot of toys from my very generous sisters.
Sometimes we'll find some strange misfits in the bags and we'll usually send those to be donated.
(Don't have a heart attack Mrs. Jones!)
One of these said misfits happened to catch Austen's eye and it's been love ever since!!!
He calls it his baby and he has to have it all the time.
He sets it on his highchair tray so the "baby" can have lunch with him and he even pretends to feed it.
He wants it when he takes a nap.
Most importantly the baby can fix any bonk, scrape, or owie he gets.
He can be really hurt and as soon as you give him the baby, he's fine and he'll quit crying instantly.

It's actually quite funny considering what this stupid thing looks like.

I even put it next to my cell phone, so you could see how tiny it is.
Very easy to lose which is not good!!!
I don't know why he got so attached to this thing, but it's pretty dang hilarious if you ask me!