Home bittersweet home

I was telling Laura the other day that it's nice to be home but bittersweet. I feel as though we take Indiana and it's population for granted while we're there and then miss them when we leave. It's tough being so far away from family and life long friends.

Here's some pictures from our travels.



No need to get up Austin, I can go right over you.

This is my favorite cereal. :-)

Big mouth in the walker.

MaryGrace eating like such a big girl, one little morsel at a time.

Daddy's Girl

This is Austin and Joe's new favorite game. Joe hides under her and she stretchers her little goose neck to find him. Too cute, thought I would share my smiles for the day. :-)

Thanksgiving Toy Drive

The stack of toys from out first ever Toy Drive.

Austin and Grandma hanging out at the party.

We had our annual Thanksgiving dinner this weekend with a new twist of the toy drive for the Safe House Christmas. Our friends and family came through magnificently and donated 40 toys. Everything from board games to sleeping bags and shoes. It is truly a remarkable pile and I know how much it will mean to the moms and the kids at the safe house.

Oh yeah and we still didn't decorate for Christmas this year, we just figured that Austin wouldn't really notice and we could use the money for our trip instead. So we CAN'T wait to get to Indiana where everything will look like Christmas and smell like the holidays. :-) We leave Saturday morning, I am sure by now Austin thinks we live part time in the car. I haven't even put up our suitcases because we have been using them so much here lately. D'Oh!

Ham Bone the Bouncer

Joe and Austin hanging out on the floor.

Little ham bone in her bouncer.

She was busy playing with her bouncer until she saw the indicator light from my camera, instantly she has to stop and smile for the camera. :-)


We made it back from South Dakota just fine, even though the storm had just hit. Apparently Colorado is turning in to Antarctica because it is about -12 out right now. Now that's cold.

Austin had her first meal of meat paste last night...OMG this stuff is horrible. No salt, BB-Q sauce..nothing. But she ate it , now that's an eater...makes me proud.

We have our Thanksgiving this weekend and this year we are sponsoring the Christmas tree at the Safe House. I was talking with the kid's manager down there about how the kids without money get toys on Christmas while at the Safe House and she said well they don't. Well now I can't have that. So I have tasked all of our friends to bring toys in exchange for a Thanksgiving meal. Hopefully they come through and make it as nice of a Christmas as possible for the kids at the Safe House.

Pictures from Mexico!

The whole family in the lobby of the hotel.

Austin and I at Thanksgiving dinner. (Forgive the shirt it was much cuter and fit better before I had "moobs" ** Mom boobs)

Murph and Carole and Thanksgiving dinner.

Tadd and Mom at Thanksgiving dinner.

Joe and Austin at Thanksgiving dinner (you can tell how hot it was by the redness in Joe's face)

Joe being goofy and Austin loving it.

Dane and the first ever picture where he doesn't look retarded...good job Dane-o!

Murph and Carole at dinner in the "fancy" restaurant.

Austin at dinner just before she got sick, her and I got to change clothes a couple of times that night. D'oh!

The grandparents outside by the pool.

Austin listening intently to whatever I seem to be saying, I am sure that I am sharing life secrets with her.

Some new pics of Austin

Here's some new pictures of Austin.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Our weekend of Snowboarding.

My Mom is in San Diego for meetings this weekend, so we didn't have a babysitter. But instead of skipping snowboarding we decided that the boys would go up on Saturday and J and I would go on Sunday. I worked on riding switch (which means if you normally ride with your right foot pointing down the mountain that you "switch" and ride with your left foot forward) and J worked on "staying alive" in her words. We are both sore and pretty bruised up but laughed all day.

While we were in Breckenridge Joe and Nate packed snow on Joe's newly built snowboard park in our backyard. Here's two videos of Joe working on his skills.

Eating.

Here's her eating some and wearing most. :-)

Sleeping and smiles.

I was talking to Laura the other night on the phone and I mentioned that Austin was no longer sleeping swaddled and she reminded me that I hadn't updated everyone about that. :-) Yes poor little Austin rolled over completely swaddled on to her face, when I found her (luckily only ten minutes into this whole ordeal) she was laying in a puddle of her own spit screaming. When I picked her up she was so panicked, poor thing. So we got rid of the swaddle. That night both Austin and I got literally minutes of sleep. But I did notice that every time that I picked her up her little hands were cold so I mentioned that to Joe and he went out and got her a space heater for her room. Now keep in mind that I just read that babies aren't suppose to sleep in temperatures any higher than 68 degrees. Well to those people writing that book I would like to disagree, I don't exactly how warm Austin's room is but I know it is in the low 70's and she sleeps like...well a baby. :-) She has even slept through the night twice this week. Of course according to our friends that also have babies theirs started sleeping through the night and then started teething only to see the sleeping through the night go by the way side and the babies being up every two hours again. So we will have to see how she does when teeth do start coming in.

She also started eating cereal the other day. We decided to start her earlier than we had thought because she is SOOOO interested in what we are eating and visibly angry when we don't share. I have been reading up on some standards in Canada and the UK where babies are fed meat as their first food. Some of the research is pretty astounding just as far as what babies will be missing from breast milk and what meat can provide them. So Joe and I had been putting off feeding her anything until after Mexico (after all I don't even trust the food down there for us much less her and it's too hard to pack). But we decided to start cereal now and introduce meat after Mexico. She absolutely loves the cereal so far and will eat as much as I give her, hopefully she will enjoy meat as much.

Here are some pictures of her sleeping for her first nap of the day, just because sleeping babies always make me smile. :-)

And just because it's too cute!

I just thought this was the cutest picture of Austin and my Mom at Amanda's baby shower!

It's snowboarding season!

It's officially snowboarding season we went up our first trip yesterday. J is coming up with us this year so her first day of learning took a toll on her body, but she did magnificently and will just keep on doing better with time.

Joe and Nate had a blast zipping in and out stopping by to say hi to us girls. And of course my Mom had fun with Austin. Here are some pictures from the weekend first of Amanda's baby shower and second of Austin hanging out with Grandma! :-) Apparently she was helping Gram make breakfast...she is just the best little helper.

Hot Tub Baby!

Look at our newest little hot tub goer! She loved it licking and kicking around.

Yep she's my girl!

Yep she's my girl, they didn't accidentally switch her at birth or anything. Look who loves pickles. :-)

Halloween!

This weekend we had a couple of Halloween parties and our annual chili cook-off. I made a turkey burger low sodium red chili and still came in tied for 4th place out of 12 entries so I was quite proud. Not as good as winning last year, but then again I am actually able to eat this chili on my diet.

Here are some pictures of our costumes. Joe went as Scarface, I was a gangster (I'd like to think Al Capone) and Austin was a pea pod (or sweet pea as we like to call her). And two of my brothers went as Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street...too funny!

It's snowing

It's snowing again, this time we are supposed to get 12-14 inches. But because the weather man is always wrong we will probably end up with a dusting and disappointment. I managed to find a couple of pictures of the snowy Independence Pass online, unfortunately pictures can't do it justice either in beauty or the respect that comes from a 12,000 foot pass. Ski resorts have already started opening which means it's time to get the boards waxed and tuned...yeaaaa I can't wait. :-)

Sitting on a conference call

I read a quote once that said if you want to waste an afternoon schedule a conference call. Well here I am wasting away an afternoon. It's scary to think I have gotten so good at drowning out a voice in my ear.

We still have snow on the ground, now covered in dirty dog foot prints. And it's cloudy and chilly today. Although it is making me super excited about snowboarding season.

I have been tired today, maybe it's the weather or maybe the lack of sleep for the last 5 months but either way something is catching up. I think I'll just go ahead and drop myself into a coma by going to the gym.

Austin can now rollover from her back to her stomach and after she did it once she must have realized how easy it was because now she just flops back and forth. And she loves petting the dogs and cats and so far even does it nicely. We'll have to see how long that lasts.

Weekend of driving...

We drove over to Aspen this weekend and while we had planned on staying longer we got to Independence Pass and mother nature had decided to snow. While Joe and I aren't nervous drivers a one lane pass with 2000 foot drop offs and no guard rails that is now covered in snow kept us pretty quiet. Of course Austin had no problems sleeping through the whole ordeal while we muttered things under our breath about a snow plow being too much to ask for. It made at least 20 miles of the 4 hour trip each way quiet.

It was great to see Aunt Deb and Uncle Craig and let them meet Austin. Here's a picture I stole from Deb.

On Sunday we watched football and ate ribs with the old roommates, I love cooking for people so anytime I can find someone that likes to eat I am a happy girl.

Other than that not much else going on, or at least nothing I can think of at the moment. :-)

Water please!

First off, Happy Anniversary Murph and Carole...we'll give you hugs and kisses on a Mexican beach here soon. :-)

I have made several loaves of bread in my new breadmaker (thank you Laura, Dan, Anne and Peter). They haven't come out awesome but I am dealing with high altitude baking so I am being patient, I'll get it. Here are some pictures of the first thing that Joe and I made with it, which was this amazing pizza...we even managed to make it low calorie and good for us. :-)



This morning while Joe and Austin were having their bonding time I guess she really wanted a drink of his water so here's a cute video of him sharing his water with her. Yeppers, she is just about ready to start eating big girl food. Don't worry for those of you wondering, "well geee whiz can she have water already?"...she puked it up all over Mom. :-) Ahhh, Dad gets fun play time, Mom gets puke.

Go Broncos...

I can't believe the Broncos are 5-0, in fact I am pretty sure the Broncos can't believe they are undefeated.

We had an absolute blast at the game on Sunday, even though it was freezing cold out. Austin had fun with Grandma and Grandpa (pictures for proof). It was crazy cold all weekend here and the roads were a mess. We had a 50 car pile up and a 60 car pile up all in the one day. Luckily we and our vehicles weren't involved in anything. Our friend from South Dakota was in town so he and Joe and the boys went out on Saturday night which led to some funny stories on Sunday morning followed by headaches all around. And here's a cute picture of Joe and Austin at one of our family dinners.