austin eight months old

austin is now eight months old. i know, some of you think (and even say) "how do you have time to do this?" well, truth it. i don't. my house is no longer spotless, the laundry is never all the way done and there are usually at least two dishes that need to be done. but you know what? i can do all that when our babies are grown up. right? so, we are completely enjoying austin every day. he is an amazing baby who we are still being asked "is he always this good". truth be told. yes. he is. he's laid back and hardly ever cries, though he is whining right now as i type this. go figure. this last month was fun. he got 2 more teeth and now we have four. he started scootching. and as the pictures show his new favorite thing is to...not sure how you would even spell it...stick his tongue out and spit. austin can also stand and hold himself up though no cruising yet. he has moved to a 4 hour eating schedule and gets one or two meals a day along with his nursing. i am proud to say he has yet to have store bought baby food. i'm not against it, i just have time and have set a personal goal to always make his food. so far, so good. he is our little sleeper who goes to bed at seven or seven thirty and wakes up around six. we are down to two naps a day and if we miss one he just wants to have attention. we really are blessed with this little one. or not so little one. eight months old and size twelve month clothes. we love him!

Mysterious Woody

Can you ever take a picture with Woody in the background and not think he just flopped down as you took the picture? me either.

easter pics - adorable kids in adorable outfits

alright. here are the pictures of the kids in the super cute outfits. well. the last few are. the first few austin is in jammies that are a bit too small and courtney is wearing panties. notice how austin doesn't care about his candy. why would he? he can't have any. as for the easter outfits. i made them. made courtney's dress out of a plain white tshirt that is too large for paul these days and austin's was at one point a plain white onsie. i'm totally into fabric dying and painting! paul even took a shot of me and the kids. how awesome is he for that??! sadly, i did not do the same thing. looks like only one of us can rock at a time. :-)

easter sunday...what it means to me

yesterday was easter sunday. of course i have crazy cute pictures of the kids in their "easter colors" which i will post but yesterday our pastor posed a question...a slight challenge. is your easter about that new outfit or the kid's adorably cute matching clothes or hiding eggs for your kids to find in their adorable matching clothes or maybe even a big lunch with family? (totally not quoting him but that was the jist) yesterday when i woke courtney up i video taped her as the easter bunny had come to our house and daddy was at work so i wanted him to see her searching. i asked her what day it was and she knew...easter sunday. i asked her what that meant and honestly, to my surprise, she didn't say that meant the easter bunny came...she said jesus died on the cross and came back to life to forgive our sins. oh, she was also excited to find eggs filled with skittles and a easter basket filled with tons of chocolate and candy she does not need but she knew what easter was really about...it's what came first to her. this is what easter means to her. my prayer for her? that it stays that way as she grows up. anyway, back to the question posed during church. as i sat there in my bright pink...yes, pink...shirt i watched 4 people get baptized in a 'tub' in the front of the most recent church we are attending that meets at a local bar/music venue (later post)...one of them a younger (than me) guy who i literally watched make the decision, right then and there...in his jeans. simply awesome! THIS is what easter means to me...christ rose after being dead and these people are representing the same thing...they were once dead in christ, no relationship with him...they came to him and let him into their life and now they are professing this among others...believers and non.. all from a love we did not earn and surely do not deserve at times. with tears in my eyes a feeling overwhelms me that i am so thankful for. a feeling of continuous love and eternal happiness from and with God in heaven.

what does easter mean to you?

side note:
as i'm putting courtney to bed last night i prayed for the people who got baptized at church earlier that day. after i finish courtney looks at me as asks "am i old enough to get baptized? can i get baptized tomorrow?" honestly, i'm not 100% sure she totally understands what it means and we didn't rush off today to baptize her, but it gave me and paul an opportunity to explain what it means and let her know that i pray for her to make that decision one day too. what better of a day than easter sunday to have your 4 year old ask questions like that!


2nd side note:
i received this email from my cousin this morning. simply, AWESOME!


Happy Easter to all!

Check the photo for a shot of me getting dunked today!  I made the decision at the end of today’s Easter service to be baptized.  It was a rather spontaneous decision, but I had been praying about it for some time.  I’m thankful that my Mom chose to have me baptized as an infant, but I also felt it important to make the conscious decision as an adult to commit my faith in the Lord through baptism.  I wanted to feel called to do so, not simply do so because it was expected of me.  That feeling came upon me today and 5 minutes later I was in the tank.  What a wonderful experience coming up out of the water on the day we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection!  Still soaking it in and considering all that it represents.

Love you all!

-Reuben

Austin is 7 months old

7 months ago our sweet baby boy was born. wow. seriously, last month flew by. my sister-in-law is having a baby in a month and a half or so and i messaged her this morning and told her to enjoy every moment because it flies by. and i wasn't joking. i think with the 2nd one it goes by even faster. austin is amazing. we get compliment after compliment on his amazing temperament and "go with the flow" attitude. we adore this little one for sure! his two bottom teeth have come in even more (i'm pretty sure the top two will pop through anytime). he sits unassisted all the time now. he rolls to get what he wants and has begun the scootching (is that a real word?) movement and brings his knees up which means crawling is in the near future. he says dada, mama, baba, and had figured out he has a tongue in his mouth...moms out threw will get that. he loves to suck on his toes and shoes. he is still going strong nursing and eats regular food a couple times a week is all. i'm kind of doing half baby led weaning and half home made baby food. i'm different, i know. he is wearing nine months clothes still - whew! he usually takes two two hour naps and is in bed by 7:30, wakes at 5 to eat and up for the day between 6:30 and 8:30. and he's the cutest little boy IN THE WORLD!

pinterest fail

i made this today (not a picture of mine, stolen picture from site i got the recipe from). i got the wonderful idea off pinterest. if you are not familiar with this website, brace yourself, set aside a few hours, log on and be inspired. I have made many things off pinterest; from food to crafts to sewing items and even decorating ideas. they were very successful and i was so proud and excited. though with the whole pinterest "thing" it is not as eventful to share these neat things as people are pretty sure you just got the idea from pinterest. now even when i don't get the idea from pinterest i'm sure people think i did. oh well. so. i've made things, many successful things but this was a complete and total fail. it was disgusting. gross. nasty. ewe. paul will say "i told you so". and so will ethan. it looked good. it sounded, well, different. and it tasted awful. i do not recommend even trying to make it. sadly enough because i was so ready for it to be good. ready for what it is? it's chocolate avocado pudding. ok ok. i know. but i wanted it to be good so bad. so very badly. have you made it? do you have a recipe that is actually edible? i must say i would be willing to try again. is that bad?

because i blink...i blog

ok. one more time. because i blink...i blog

believe it or not, i struggle with creativity. what? annie? no way! i am creative in every way but a stinking blog name. i have been blogging for years now and i have had two oh so very creative names for these blogs. C.A.P.E - Courtney, Annie, Paul, Ethan and A.C.E - Austin, Courtney, Ethan with the birth of our baby boy. dropping myself and paul for no reason other than i could not come up with an acronym using all of our initials. seriously, how lame is that? i read blogs of people who seem so creative with their names. granted, some have rockin' names to use like "slaughter". but, i do not. i have a last name that i have to spell for everyone. which i love because it is my husband's. but it was not a blogging name that was just awesome by itself. justice. a new friend's last name is justice. that is a good blogging last name. so many options. or what about my sister in law. who today i ask her to come up with a blog name and she calls me a mere, oh, ten minutes later with a super cute idea with an even super cuter "sub-blog page". really? ten minutes? oh well. off that soap box. i love my last name. my husband doesn't want it on our blog anyway for all those people who stalk us. which he doesn't know that i'm usually the only one reading our blog anyway. and i'm ok that it took me only three years and ten minutes to come up with a good blog name. again, oh well.

so i was sitting in my 'pumping chair' - which, mind you i calculated today that i have sat in for way over one hundred hours since my sweet baby boy was born five months ago - thinking. that's what you do when you pump breast milk, right? think. and i thought "the other day someone told me not to blink" i'm sure i was talking about how fat i mean fast austin has grown and it hit me! why do i blog? because i blink! i blink and so do we all. God says this life is just a blink of an eye. blinking and blogging are my things. i blog for my kids. a digital memory book that i print each year (for the day the internet is obsolete too, books will always be around) so. even though i blink and my little girl is 4 and my baby boy is five months old, i blog to keep track of all the things that happen with my eyes wide open. as much as i would like to say i will remember all these things when i'm old and grey. no grey yet. i will not. and i will mix up what really happened. which will be totally fine and even quite comical at times. if you have a grandma over the age of, oh, 75, you know what i'm talking about. but i want to be able to hand this over to my kids one day and them to theirs and so on until the bindings are so worn out that the book is put away by someone who couldn't stand see it get ruined. one of my offspring are bound to inherit this trait from my as i inherited it from my grandmother who keeps everything and i am so thankful she does. 

so that's it. we have a new blog name and that was a very long story to why. though we are done having kids and i would not have the horrible dilemma of once again having to shuffle around our initials for the perfect yet still completely lame acronym, i am happy to announce our new blog name and also know it is here to stay. heck, maybe it will make me write better since i won't stare at A.C.E. or C.A.P.E. for five minutes every time i want to blog and completely lose all creative energy within the frustration of a horrible blog name. maybe.