Our Trip to Aggieland

Brad had a recuiting trip at A&M last week, so my friend Lauren and I decided to make a day of it with the kiddos. I asked Grayson that morning if he wanted to go to "Aggieland," and his face just lit up. I of course realized then that it kind of sounded like a theme park and that in his head he was probably imagining something a little bit more fun than College Station. After eating lunch at one of our favorite pizza places right off campus, Grayson asked me, "Go see Aggies?" I said "Yes, baby, these are the Aggies. Look everyone with a maroon shirt and this ring (pointing to my A&M ring) is an Aggie." He laughed and said, "No, Mommy." It made me wonder what in his mind an Aggie really was (since nobody really knows anyway :) Then, after I convinced him, he insisted on wearing my ring, which I was not willing to lose as we treked across campus, so I "made" him an Aggie "ring" out of a ponytail holder, which he wore proudly! Here are some photos from our day in Aggieland!

The kids were trying to steal the "good luck" pennies off the Sul Ross statue



Doesn't this one look like a "senior" portrait?

That's a "Gig Em" Aggies if you didn't catch the thumbs up

Yes, that's the Century Tree our kids are climbing on

I guess that means by "tradition" that Grayson is destined to marry either Hayley or Katelyn


We ended the trip with a stroll down memory lane. This is the "ghetto" duplex Brad and i lived in our first 6 months of marriage. If you're thinking the outside isn't that bad, I promise the inside was and our crazy (literally) neighbor made the experience unforgettable

Imperfect Parenting

I know many of you reading this probably think of Brad and me as being awesome parents (yeah right!) but I have to let you in on a little secret, we SO are not! And as our little sponge gets older and older and adds about 50 words to his vocab per day, it's becoming more and more evident. Let's just start with the fact that his new catch phrase is, "Oh, Gosh," which I can only assume he picked up from me since I frequent the expression, "Oh My Gosh." I guess it could be worse. I mean, with my TBS sitcoms, I should be thankful that he's not picking up on other phrases...at least not yet.

But the best was last weekend when I jokingly (sometimes I'm serious) punched Brad in the arm after he made one of his typical smart aleck comments. Grayson followed right behind me and gave Brad a second punch on the leg. Not that Brad didn't deserve it :) but I quickly said, "No, no baby, Mommy should not have hit Daddy. We don't hit." Then later that same evening in an attempt to take Grayson with us to the drive-in movie (Oh, how we love that our favorite films have become movies like Ramona and Beezus), Brad responded in frustration to Grayson's climbing all over us with a angry flick on the foot (Did I mention we're not perfect parents?) Later as Brad was putting Grayson to bed, he apologized for flicking him, "Daddy should not have done that buddy and I'm sorry." Grayson responded with...."Yeah, Daddy hit Grayson." And Brad of course apologized again and Grayson then responded with..."And Mommy hit Daddy." After apologizing a third time on behalf of both of us......we laughingly hit our knees and prayed that God would give us Grace not to screw up our children!

For any grandparents or aunts and uncles reading this, please don't file for custody. I guess I'm not too worried, I have video evidence of Brad's Dad beating him when he was little :)....again I'm sure it was well deserved even then.

Silly Stories....By Grayson

Yesterday as I was saying a prayer with Grayson before nap time, I asked him, "Grayson, who do we pray to?" and he said, "God"(Gaw). I said, "That's right. Now let's pray to God." But then as I started to pray at the top of his lungs, he starts going "Gaw, Gaw, Gaw, Gaw, Gaw, Gaw." I was caught off guard and I opened my eyes to see what was going on and he still had his closed and had the most intense, expressive look on his face. Although I thought it was completely precious and there could not possibly be a prayer more glorifying to our heavenly father than this, it sounded a little bit like a turkey and it was all I could do not to bust out laughing!

After being cooped up in the house for the last week and a half, our poor little two year old has been bouncing off the walls. So today we finally got to go on our weekly play date with friends. I took him to this place called Bouncin' Bears (best place ever!), which is a huge inflatable playground filled with moon walks and obstacle courses, so he could burn off some of that built up energy. I asked him this morning if he wanted to go to Bouncin' Bears....You should have seen his face! His eyes got huge and he asked, "Me, jump wid bears???" Then he decided if we were going to jump with bears, he needed to take his little stuffed animal A&M bear with us. And not only did the bear have to ride with us, but he needed to be buckled up in the back seat too! The three of us had a ball bouncing (thankfully, since it could have been disastrous seeing as our tummies are still somewhat rumbly)!

Thanks for letting me share cute little two-year old stories. Afterall, this is my life! :)

Summer Fun Photos

As we wrap up summer, August was by far the busiest month for our family. Grayson and I traveled to Dallas and all three of us spent almost a week in San Antonio, where I had the wonderful privledge of helping throw my good friend Courtney Roberts a baby shower. Unfortunately, we ended the trip by contracting E.Coli at one of our favorite restraunts in San Antonio and have consequently been quarantined here in Houston going on almost two weeks now. Before we got home, we kept saying that we couldn't wait to get home and just be home. Now we're saying, I can't wait to see the outside of our house! Overall, minus the last week and a half, it was a good summer! And here are some photos to remember the fun we had!

Create your own slideshow

Another Year Older

Tomorrow (July 27) is my sweet husband's birthday! So, if you're reading this and are his friend and not just a blog stalker :), don't forget to text/email/call him to wish him a Happy One!

We were discussing our birthdays this weekend (since we turn 27 within 2 days of one another)and how we can tell we're getting old because....

-We are actually starting to take it as a compliment when people think we're a couple years younger than we actually are. But, not too old that we don't still get offended when people think we're 19/20/21 :)
-We can actually now be classified as "late 20s" instead of "mid 20s"...scary
-11pm actually qualifies as a "late" night for us
-Redbox is an exciting date night for us (or maybe that just classifes us as cheap, I'm not sure)
-It takes a second to remember how old we are when someone asks

Historically Brad's birthday is not a really big deal to him (unlike me) and rarely does he actually want something. But thankfully today Brad got on a shopping kick (which happens maybe once a year) and actually went out and purchased himself a new fishing pole and pair of chacos (from me of course) for his birthday! I think maybe I've been a bad influence on him in teaching him how to be selfish and milk his birthday for all it's worth! :)

Anyway, Happy Birthday my Love! I hope you have a Wonderful Day!

Galveston

The word "beach" is loosely defined when it comes to Galveston and if it's possible these photos actually make it look dirtier thant it really was. But when you're two, if there's waves and sand (or mud), it still counts! Grayson had his first trip to the beach last weekend, and LOVED it! Technically, it was his second time at the beach because we tried to take him back in March, but we were there for about five minutes and then it started raining on us so we turned around and came home. So the trip worked out a little better this time around.

Hayley Austin & Gray being buried in the sand

What are we teaching our children?



Gray and Katelyn riding on the "sand turtle" Brad & Hayden built (the Dads were a little more into building it than the kids)

Happy 4th!

Yes, I realize I am a little late on a 4th of July post, but our computer was attacked by a hard core virus this week which has kept us from doing most things online, which kind of makes you realize how completely dependent you are on the internet for everything! In the end, a brilliant kid from our church was able to help us out, although I think it was me laying hands on the computer and praying over it :) that finally did the trick. Moral of the story: Don't download movies from websites, especially shady ones that your brother-in-law recommends (Thanks Blake!).

We had a fantastic July 4th with our good friends Ryan and Melissa and their family at the lake. I can say Grayson had a stronger appreciation for the holiday this year in comparison to last year. There were no breakdowns about wearing a life jacket and he thought the fire works were the best thing ever. The entire weekend, we heard, "Peeeease more Pop Pops...Peeease more Pop Pops." We ended the weekend by watching fire works out in the middle of the lake on the boat, which we had never done before, and it was a blast. We then shot off our own fireworks, which Gray was not as big a fan of, he did not like being that close to the sparks or noise, and was highly concerned for his Daddy's safety. He didn't even want to come near the sparklers.

We joked about how we would continue splitting Christmas and Thanksgiving between our families, but we wanted to spend every 4th with the Shearers/Norths!

"Driving" the boat with Ryan

We didn't even need the boat as long as we brought the tube inside, he was happy!


Family Pics!


You think we wore him out?