Movie Night!

One of our favorite things to do as a family is to have a movie night! I first started doing special "girls" nights after we moved to Muncie. Thad was gone almost every other weekend and I tried to think of something fun that I could do with Ashley. It started out as eating candy, painting nails, and watching a movie; but now it has evolved into a family movie night. We try to have a movie night once a month and watch a newly released movie. Tonight, we ate pizza, popcorn, candy, drank soda, and watched Kung Fu Panda 2 (talk about a junk food fest, but boy it was tasty!). This is one of Ashley's favorite activities and we love laying our blankets and enjoying our time together.

Zoo

We are just loving the weather down here! And, we are loving that Thad isn't having to work quite as much and can spend more time with us. Yesterday, we took advantage of everything and spent a couple hours at the Zoo.
After the our fun in the sun, we enjoyed some fabulous frozen yogurt at Orange Leaf!

Personality Plus!!

Anyone who spends time around Ashley knows that she is "Miss Personality Plus!" There is never a dull moment when Ashley is around. She loves to turn anything and everything into a game, it's a great quality that she has always had. She loves to tease, play, and laugh! We are finding that she loves to pretend to perform and everyone is her audience. I think her personality really shines through in these pictures.

My parents brought down an old karoke machine of mine and Ashley absolutely loves it. Her favorite thing is to sing and dance for Austin - who just smiles and laughs; he's such a great audience for her. However, she also tries to get Bubby involved as well! Although, most of the time he just tries to eat the microphone.

And, I can't leave without posting a cute pic of our handsome little man (please excuse the boxes in the background. This is our overflow/storage room)!

Ringin' in the New Year

The weather was beautiful on Saturday,sunny and 75; so we decided to do something fun for New Years. When Thad got home from work, we gathered up the kids and headed off to Six Flags. We are so lucky to have such a fabulous park so close to our house (just 20 min. away).
Ashley is just big enough to start riding some of the "good" rides. Here she is riding her first big roller coaster! She loved it and we went twice in a row (once with Thad and once with me). We had a great time walking around the park while she rode some of the other kiddie rides. Austin was such a good sport and was happy just hangin' out in the stroller.Thank you Sousa Family (Thad's partner) for the season passes! We are so excited to alot this year!
We were also lucky enough to receive passes to Sea World from the other dentist that Thad has been working with. We upgraded the passes to season passes and now can enjoy it all year long. We enjoyed riding the carousel, roller coaster, seeing Sesame Street characters, watching excerpts from Polar Express in 4-D (complete with vibrating seats, fans, and squirts of water), and we loved watching the Nutcracker Themed dolphin show. Here are some pictures from our visit:

6 Months

I just love this cute little face! I love Austin's chubby cheeks and his sweet little smile. It makes me giggle every time I see him! He is such a happy baby and just loves to smile and laugh. Austin turned 6 months old on Dec. 15th, but I just got him into the dr. for his well-baby visit this week. The dr. and nurses always laugh at his cute chubbiness!

Stats:

Length - 28"

Weight - 20 lbs. 8 0z.

90-95% in everything

A little about Austin:

Austin is sitting up on his own and loves to play with anything and everything within his reach. He loves to put everything in his mouth. His favorite toys are Dora Teething Keys, a round rattle, Pooh Keys, the exersaucer, and his new jump-a-roo. He loves to make noises and jabber. He has a cute little growl that he does and then switches to a high-pitch scream. He loves to play and stand on your lap. He is a great eater and I haven't found anything that he doesn't like! He loves to play with Ashley. She is really good at making him laugh when she sings and dances for him.

A New Start

I haven't updated our blog in about 2 years. I originally got into blogging as a way to update family and close friends, but with the craziness of life it quickly fell to the way-side. I found that I needed a bigger motivation for keeping it updated.

I have been watching my friends blog for the last 6 months or so. My friend is so good about updating her blog multiple times a week if not daily. What I noticed is that she keeps it as more of a journal about family. I am absolutely horrible about keeping a journal. I was never good when I was young and I'm not good at it now. I like to pride myself on my memory and for the most part I do a pretty good job of remembering events and details. However, as the years move on I am finding that I don't always remember the funny little things that Ashley says, or some of the silly little day-to-day things that we do.

So what I figured out is that I'm really good at talking about my kids and telling stories and I'm really good at sitting on my computer every evening (well, not quite every evening). I might as well start using our blog as a way for me to journal everything. I can't promise that I'll be as diligent as my friend, but hopefully I'll be better than before. :) After all, who wouldn't want to see pictures of these cute kiddos!

Happy Birthday Ashley!

Yesterday was Ashley's birthday. I can't believe that our little baby is already 3 years old. She is getting so big! Here's a look at her happy day:

We started off having her favorite breakfast consisting of Pancakes, Sausage, and Fruit.

Then it was off to Toys R Us, where she picked out a couple presents - A Pink Umbrella and V-Tech in Motion (kind of like a Wii for kids). Thank you Grandma and Grandpa!

Then she enjoyed her yummy cake - a Princess Cake, of course!

Ashley had alot of fun and got tons of energy out running around Escapades - they have slides, tubes, and other things that you crawl all over.

She had such a great day and got great gifts - so thank you to everyone!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASHLEY!!