Not What I Expected

That is, our first pumpkin-carving experience. I thought this was the first year he would truly appreciate this tradition. For weeks I've been oohing and aahing over my friends' adorable photos taken on family trips to the pumpkin patch.

The actual pumpking-picking-out event looked a little something like this in my head:

Unfortunately, life is busy. There are birthday parties and swimming lessons to attend, houses to clean, errands to run. So instead the pumpkin patch looked a little more like this:

Whatever, in the end, it's the gourd that counts.

He started off pretty excited about the idea of carving the pumpkin:



Then he got a look and a smell of what was inside the pumpkin:

Then guess who finished carving the pumpkin:

If no hookie-playing teenagers smash it today, I'll snap a picture of my creation this evening. Of course Amery takes credit for "his" jack-o-lantern.

Wordless Wednesday

Superman vs Spiderman vs A Different Kind of Robot

We've been asking Amery what he wanted to be for Halloween since about mid-September. He's in a superhero (he calls them "superzeros") phase right now, so naturally his internal debate has been between Superman and Spiderman. I was secretly hoping he'd choose the former, because then I could order this to match him. Superman was clearly the favorite, so I had high hopes. Finally, about two weeks ago, I asked him when he woke up if he wanted to be Superman or Spiderman. His answer was, "I want to be a robot." This was followed by his declaration to be a certain complicated Transformers-like robot he'd been carrying around for a few days. I told him I didn't think I could make that costume, so he would have to be a different kind of robot. Now if you ask him what he is for Halloween he will clearly tell you, "I'm a different kind of robot."

Armed with about 10 different homemade robot tutorials found on Pinterest, I settled on this version that uses a couple of aluminum roasting pans vs the traditional "cut a few holes in a cardboard box and hope your kid never needs to sit down or pee" version. I also knew he would never keep a helmet on his head for any length of time, so I cut apart a double-disco-ball headband from the costume store and made it into a single antenna headband using a regular old kid's headband from Target and some aluminum tape.

The small designs along the sides were some pre-colored printables from this site, but they have versions you can color yourself as well. I forgot to take a picture of the back side, but it's lined with reflectors I bought for about a dollar at Harbor Freight Tools. They function both as decorations for the costume and as safety items for trick-or-treating in the dark. I also plan to tape some glow sticks to the costume that night, but obviously they would lose their glow after a few hours, so I skipped that step thus far.

The final result, as recorded by my talented friend with her kick-butt camera skillz:


...an adorably sweet...


...different kind of robot.

He's Three!

We can't believe it either, buddy.

Family Photos!

We did a mini session with Jennifer of Luxe Photography a few weeks ago. Look at my gorgeous boys!

Three Little Birds

They tell me it's fall

But in Texas, there's really just nine months of summer and three months of cold* with no snow. I made a new header...see it up there? That means I need to start blogging again on a regular basis. No more of this every two months stuff. You might get a lot of Wordless [Insert Day] posts, but at least it'll be new.

*And by "cold" I mean it gets to, like, 30 once in a while.

We went to a birthday party at the Austin Zoo last weekend, and our friend Nina took some great pictures while we were there.


Me and little man hanging out on the zoo train.


Cupcakes!

The birthday boys' mama took a quick shot of the whole family.

We're doin' stuff.

I promise we are. We're just not writing about it. This summer has been crazy busy and even crazier hot. The high temperature for today, tomorrow, and the foreseeable decade is 105. Since I know at least Gretchen is paying attention to the blog, I better get a few pictures up here to prove we don't hole up in our A/C all day.



We made our first visit to Deep Eddy Pool.


We checked out some live music with some margaritas and milk.



We went to the bouncy place.


We hung out with friends.


We saw Dwight. See that floor right there? That's the stage. We could touch it.


We made s'mores around the pool after a long day and night of swimming with friends.

Did I mention it's summertime?

And did I mention we have a big boy who eats his own corn on the cob? We do.

Summer Stuff

Amery got a water table from Grandma and Grandpa for Easter (yeah, I'm a little behind), and so far it's the hit of the summer. Here's a quick video of him seeing it and playing with it for the first time. It's a little dark at first becaust I put it together in the house while he was asleep and then hid it in the garage until we got home from school/work the next day:





And a few more pics for Grandma:






The 30+ toys that came with it weren't enough. He had to add some rocks from the yard.

Of course

I have this collection of panoramic sugar eggs from when I was a kid. Here is half the collection...



This year, I allowed Amery to carefully handle each egg and look inside. We talked about what he saw. One had a duck inside, another had a bunny, and so on. When we got to this one, which is probably about 20 years old...



I asked him what was inside. He answered very matter-of-factly...



"That's Batman."

Rocky Mountain Hiiiiiiigh, Colorado

Warning: This is going to be the laziest post ever. Seriously. I really wanted to write this awesome play-by-play post about all the fun stuff we did in Colorado since it's the first vacation we've taken in forever, but time has gotten away from me. We saw some beautiful snow, we swam in an outdoor heated pool in the snow, we ate some great food with some great friends, checked out the Denver Zoo, hosted a baby shower for Amery's godparents, and had some eventful flights around the country in the mean time.

Here's a link to all of our trip photos (Walgreens, you might need to log in)

And just in case you are as lazy as me, here are a few faves:


Amery and his godparents.


Hanging at Wash Park.


The crew at Valdoro (minus the children who were finally in bed).


Baby shower decor.


Party favors.

Trip to "the jumpy place"

Amery and I had some fun at a local indoor inflatable playground yesterday. I would post the name, but no doubt they would then find my blog and post an annoying ad in the comments. Here's a link if you wanna check it out. We really don't make the rounds at the bouncy places around town unless we're attending a birthday party, but I happened to get a pass for 3 visits for free. This place is nice, really nice, and it's great for the toddler crowd. Lots of times these places have tweens mixed with 3-year-olds and it's just a recipe for disaster of the concussion variety. A few cell phone quality pics for you:


Jumpy area just for kids 3 and under...


...with a ball pit.


Bliss. {let's all pretend there are not germs from seventy bazillion other kids on those balls, mkay?}


Climbing up the "big lide" by himself.


Piece of cake.

In addition to the bouncy areas, they have 5 or 6 different play rooms/houses filled with toys, costumes, props, etc.


A service station/garage.


A grocery store.


A dress-up room with a stage.


A diner.


An animal hospital.

That little band around his ankle matched one I had around my wrist. No one is allowed to leave until the adult's band is matched up to the child's band. Smart. If you go, bring some healthy snacks. All they had available was ice cream treats, chips/Goldfish, and sodas/juice.

We've been working on being polite the past few months. Amery now says please and thank you without prompting, and he's starting to get you're welcome as well. We also get a lot of spontaneous I Love Yous and we always get I Love You Toos in return if we say it first...all of which is awesome of course. Tonight at bedtime:

Me: Night night, baby.
Amery: Big hugs, mama?
Me: (gives big hug)
Amery: You're welcome, mama.

Limes

A whole lotta nothin' goin' on right now. I did make some beer margaritas the other night which was pretty exciting for me, not so much for Amery. He begged me to give him one of the limes and I obliged.



He loves sour stuff, spicy stuff, sweet stuff, pretty much all stuff.

Snakes and Snow!

A few fun happenings from this past weekend. Austin got snow last Friday! It was probably about an inch, but combined with the underlying ice it was enough to shut the city down for a day.


Notice the massive amount of snow in the grass.


We were able to scrape up enough to build a snowman using parts from Mr. Potato Head and Amery's play kitchen.

The snow was short-lived as it got up to 70ish degrees over the weekend. On Sunday we took a trip to the Snake Farm in New Braunfels, TX. It was cool. A little old and smelly, but Amery was in heaven. It was tough to take a lot of photos with the animals since they're all, well, deadly.


Ready to see some snakes!


Huge pythons.

Mean little goats at the petting zoo who stole the food bag right out of our hands.

Friendly llama.