Happy Halloween!

Halloween is ever approaching and in accordance with my childhood traditions we decided to the pumpkin farm this year in hopes to make this part of our family tradition. Now keep in mind that it was 85 degrees that day and so out went my idea to have Braden in a cute fall outfit for his Halloween pictures in the pumpkin patch. And we never actually made it to the pumpkin patch b/c Braden spent so much time playing in the tee-pee, riding on the tractors and playing in the grain bins (who knew a shovel and some grain could be so entertaining). Here are some pictures from our day at the patch and from our days of preparing for fall.

"Car" and "T"

Braden has been talking quite a bit these days and "car" and "t" (his name for Tyson) are on the top of his list these days. The word car is spoken w/ a thick German accent...not sure where he picked that up, but Austin and I think it is hilarious. He also loves to imitate whatever sounds we make. Here is the boy talking away in the kitchen the other night as he was busy digging in the tupperware drawer:

Spaghetti Anyone?

Sweet Pictures

Braden is 14 months old now and as his little bottom reads in this last picture "life is good." Not much to say today, as I'm tired from a crazy weekend w/ lots of friends in town for a wedding. Just wanted to post these pictures and I'll post more from the wedding in a few days. For now, Braden is sleeping and I'm off to take a nap myself.

Braden's Cadillac

My parents just recently bought Braden one of those super nice wagons that have the seats and seat belts in them so that an active little toddler can't just fly out the side when he wants to get out and run. We seriously use that thing everyday and Braden thinks it's his new Cadillac. He LOVES to push, pull, flip the seats up and down and crawl in and out of that wagon. Anyway, here are some recent pictures of Braden playing with his new wheels. It also has two seats in there for #2 to sit in there with him. Right now, his teddy bears always travels along for the ride. Thanks mom and dad.

"Um, why are you going so slow?"
Chilled out - In other news, Braden has become quite the helper lately, he gets really excited whenever I open the dishwasher and he runs over and takes all the spoons out and walks them over to where I keep our utensils, opens the drawer up and puts (okay, throws) the spoons in there. Seriously, it's great! His new favorite thing is to use the broom and push it all over the house. He actually even knows where I keep it, so I often find him in that closet, digging out the broom. Here are some pictures of Braden looking "too sexy for this broom." Check out those thighs!

Sleep, oh sleep, where have you gone?

This is what my day looked like:
5:30am - hear my child happily talking to himself on the monitor, never to return back to sleep (after only 9 hours of sleep). Yep, 9 short hours. It seems like 9 hours is our new average...whew...I need more than 9 hours of sleep at night.

10:30am - my child falls asleep at nursery while I was attending a Mom's group. He slept for all of 30 minutes.

3:00pm - attempt to get my child to actually take a real nap
3:20pm- Braden is still happily talking in his crib, sleep being the farthest thing from his mind
3:25pm - things are starting to get a little awkward and the fussing starts
3:37pm - Braden finally falls asleep for 25 minutes

8:00pm - the boy finally passes out in my arms after I give him his bottle

Total sleep today: 9 hours and 55 minutes...awesome. Isn't that less than most of your kiddos sleep at night alone?

Oh yes and we have a molar coming in, so there were several bouts of fussing spells, followed by several mini tantrums. Not sure if the fussiness was due to the teeth, the lack of sleep or both. Who knows...a mom shall never know these things?

Time for an update...

Wow, I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to post, in fact I ask myself that same question "why does it take me so long to do anything (laundry, dishes, put make-up on, get myself or my son dressed, etc) these days." I guess it's because I spend my day chasing an ever moving toddler around all day and at the end of the day all I want to do is sit on the couch with my husband and relax. All that to say, this is long overdue and I won't bore you with the details, but this pretty much sums up our last few weeks:

In August, we went to Lake Michigan for Braden's first beach trip. As you can see, he loved wallowing in the sand and endlessly dumping it on himself -

The girls and the kiddos -
The boys, Max 2, Braden 13 months and Davis 4 months
Look how blond my baby is
Max and Braden life guarding the beach -
In other news, this is how I found Braden last week when I went to get him after his nap. Do you think he needs a haircut?
So we gave the boy a haircut. With a lot of snacks and a lot of distraction, here is the end result...a very grown up, not-so-baby looking little boy. This picture is a little fuzzy, but you get the idea -
On Saturday night we headed to the Tennessee State Fair with our friends for some good "people watching." Perhaps the best sight we saw were two little girls wearing matching air brushed tee-shirts that read "Free my Daddy"with a mugshot picture of their daddy. Actually it was really sad. Here are some of the pictures from the evening -
And finally, on Sunday, Austin and I celebrated 6 amazing years of marriage. We tried everything to get a babysitter for the weekend and had no luck so we decided to stay in, make a nice dinner and grill some steaks and reread our vows (something we do every year on our anniversary) with hopes to go out sometime soon to celebrate. We had a great menu planned, so after a trip to the park with Braden, we headed to the grocery to get the supplies. After we got home, fed Braden, bathed him and put him to bed, we started to make our dinner and quickly realized that we left a bag or two of grocery's at the store. Sooooo...we had margaritas and steaks and cherry pie. Yep, that's it...so much for a nice dinner. It was actually kinda funny, we felt a little like Napoleon Dynamite with our naked plate and a big fat steak. Here is a picture to remember...and yes we are wearing our work out gear b/c we had been at the park with Braden.