A quickie in Austin

We flew to Austin for a few days with most of Adam's family. Adam's younger bro lives there and his wife recently had their first baby.
It was nice to get away - WITHOUT THE KIDS :) It has been awhile since I have been anywhere!
I think we spent equal time traveling as we did chillin' in Austin. We had a layover in Las Vegas. (Yes, that makes no sense. It is in the opposite direction.) I love Southwest airlines!
Austin is a great city. I am not a big fan of Texas, due to many annoying people from Texas thinking and vocalizing how Texas is far superior to any other place.  My brother in law is included in this list of annoying people :) But... Austin is really cool. "Keep Austin weird" - that's the motto. It's more liberal and less-"Texas" than some areas.

Longhorns reign supreme here. This is in front of the U of Texas bookstore. Most universities are pretty good at marketing their logo on a bunch of crap, but the longhorns have that down really well - toilet seat cover?

We explored downtown Austin and spent a bit of time at the Saturday market. This is called the trailer park - a several-block area full of food carts. Adam and I had some thai food.

The eating continues... we ate at Rudy's.

 This is a BBQ place where you buy meat by the pound. 2 pounds of beef brisket, 1 pound sausage, 2 pounds pork loin, creamed corn, a loaf of Texas toast, all put on a white sheet of wax paper for a plate. Good stuff. Of course the men were HUGE fans. Adam and Jim are brainstorming how to franchise this place elsewhere!

Sunday, baby Joshua was blessed. He's very cute - take my word - 'cause I didn't take any pictures!

St. Patrick's Day

This Saturday the kids woke up to find our family room messy and disheveled and this:

So the leprechaun left his shoes here and while the kids were distracted elsewhere with claims that I could hear the leprechaun in the bathroom, he came to pick up his shoes and left some candy in its place. 

I had put footprints in the boys' bathroom and put green food coloring in the toilet for Campbell to find. He was excited about the footprints but when he saw the toilet water was BLUE he said "leprechauns don't leave that color --it should be GREEN!" I don't know why it turned blue. I said maybe Lucky the Leprechaun was ill.

We had green shamrock pancakes for breakfast and "Irish" potato soup for dinner.

Sunday we ate corned beef and cabbage with Grandma and Grandpa Baird.

I love robots

My little Campbell has been loving robots lately.  He has been obsessed with Wall-E - which I love - but it's a "slower" less kiddie Pixar movie compared to others. His favorite thing is to watch Wall-E surrounded by his robots he has made.

He makes the robots out of blocks. This one is Eva, this one is Wall-E. This one is the robot who says "no splashing, no diving."
I don't quite know what is normal for a 4 year old - and I am certainly not saying my child is an amazing prodigy - but I am impressed that he will make several duplicates with the same block orientations. That's pretty good, right?!

Anyway, just a little something that brightens my day. By the way, his robot voice is pretty funny. His younger brother who BARELY talks even has his own version of a robotic voice :)

Back from the blog dead

Think of this blog as a cable TV show that ends its season at an odd time of year and may take months and months to return a la Mad Men. No I'm not that retro-cool.
Here's what all tens of you fans (OK, that's an exaggeration) might have missed since we've been gone:

I started working again part-time.

Adam took a new job in August in Salt Lake.

Campbell began his academic pursuits with preschool.

Halloween with a pirate and a dragon. Yes, a pirate and a parrot would have been darling. Nope, it didn't happen.

A nice Christmas. Wow, that's a flattering picture of my anorexic xmas tree.

Bro-yo's 2nd birthday alligator/dragon/lizard/snake

Here comes the lick...wait for it...wait....

Yep. There.

Plus looking for a house, and a new love-affair with Pinterest. Yep. That about sums it up!

Shoes and purses!

We had a fun Relief Society Meeting - I have to share. I went a little crazy with all the details on this one. I know blogs can be become "bragging" blogs quite easily. That's not my intention, I just want to share all these cute little things 'cause I think they are quite fun. Believe me, I know fully well that all of this could have been even cuter with someone with more crafty talent than me!

Posters

too lame to know how to re-orient my picture...sorry

The activity was a fleece-tying, quilt-tying service project, but I wanted to add some fun to it.

We had a purse game where you got one point for various items in your purse. Then we each shared a shoe that shows a talent, personality trait or whatever about us.

I found purse and high-heeled sugar cookie cutters at Sur la Table.

                                      I bought a shoe chocolate mold and made little shoes.

These were the paper shoe with goodies that people took home

                
                                                                             Fun fun!

4th of July ER visit

Our holiday weekend was mostly perfect and lovely. I went to Stadium of Fire on Saturday night. My niece was one of the cute dancers.  After seeing Brad Paisley I understand how country stars and music could be sexy.  Anyway.  We went to the cabin Sunday and spent the night there. It was a bit stressful trying to keep Bronson from the death-river, edge of the deck and getting him to sleep in the bathroom.

Monday night we were at the park - all ready for the fireworks. Bronson fell on the playground stairs and hit his eye and sliced a good chunk out right by his eyebrow. Adam brought him over to me and his face was covered in blood. Aaaahh! We rushed him to the Emergency Room, which luckily was quite close.
All the nurses were in love with him and his hair. He was such a good baby--laying down without crying while the doctor stitched him up.

A week later, today, we went to get the stitches removed.  We'll see if he has a wicked-awesome scar for all time. 

Look who's walking

Bronson at 16 months, almost 17 months finally decided to use the soles of his feet for walking, rather than his knees, like he has for months and months.

Adam is quick to point out that he is the one that broke the code. He dangled a piece of candy as bribe and Bronson walked across the room for it. Hmm. He could have been walking months ago if that's all it takes.

  I don't mind that he was a late walker. I know children that walk at 9 or 10 months, but by not walking, he stayed my little baby a bit longer!