Friends

It is so fun to watch Aubrey interact with other kids. Here are Aubrey and Anna Grace holding hands and running around at church. Anna Grace just turned 2 and is a very sweet, affectionate friend to Aubrey. She always gives Aubrey hugs and shares her toys with her when we play at their house. When we're at home, Aubrey likes to look at a picture of Anna Grace and her sister and say their names, "Anna"(she can't say Grace yet) & "Laura".

Water Baby

We made our third trip to the neighborhood pool this afternoon. Aubrey loves watching the older kids jump in the pool and splash around. She spends most of her time wading in the baby pool, but sometimes likes to go in the big pool with Daddy. It has been fun to meet some neighbors and other kids around Aubrey's age. We might check out the neighborhood play group on Monday to get to know some more playmates. We are liking our new house and feeling much more settled. We jumped into painting our living room this afternoon -- we hope to finish up while Aubrey is asleep. We have several rooms to paint, so that should keep us busy for the next couple weeks. Robert has also been playing Tennis a couple times a week with the Round Rock Tennis League. He has enjoyed getting out of his cubicle and into the fresh air! That's about all that is new with us. Here are some pictures from the pool...

Happy Easter

We had a fun and busy Easter today! Robert's parent, Pam & Isaac drove in this morning from Bastrop and went to church with us. Then, we came home and Aubrey took a nap which she greatly needed after having a mini-meltdown at church. When she woke up, we went to the Dodd's house (a family from church) for an Easter egg hunt. Aubrey liked opening her eggs to see the candy inside. Thankfully, she doesn't know what it tastes like yet -- she just likes to see the pretty, shiny paper. The kids also saw a little wild bunny in the backyard when they were looking for eggs! After that, we went to the Imken's house for Easter dinner (another family from church). We had a nice dinner and Aubrey enjoyed running around their house, saying hi to everyone about 20 times and climbing on furniture. She found a little red rocking chair just her size that she carried around and sat in all evening. She also got to see the Imken's two pet hamsters and their next door neighbor's horse! After all that excitement, we came home and put Aubrey right to bed. I'm pretty tired from chasing her around all day, so I think I'm off to bed, too! Here's a pic from the Imken's tonight... By the way, Happy 24th Birthday to my brother, Tim!

Cutie Pie

A couple recent pictures...

A visit to Aubrey's great-grandparent's house in Dallas.
Aubrey's temporary room while we were in between houses.

Family Photo

My mom requested a family photo and here is the most recent one, its 3 months old!

15 months already!

Aubrey is 15 months old as of a few days ago! Thankfully, she is handling the transition of moving really well -- sleeping pretty well and really enjoying playing with Keith and Lauren's chocolate lab, Sydney. She squeals or screams every time she sees Sydney, claps and says, "happy"! She likes to point out Sydney's eyes, ears and paws. Aubrey has added a few more words into her vocabulary lately: "Elmo", "Barney" and "Baby Bop". She used to hardly ever watch TV, but over the past few weeks as I was packing and get ready to move, I resorted to using the TV as a babysitter. Now, she wakes up asking for Elmo! Aubrey's other new tricks at 15 months are... pointing at the moon, marching, singing "la,la,la", turning light switches on and off, and she's starting to use a fork or spoon to feed herself. I will capture some of these new accomplishments on camera and get back to posting pictures regularly once we set up our computer next week. We can't believe we are this close to being in our house. We are really excited about getting settled and hope this is where God will have us for a long time!

Moving Day

Tomorrow is the big day to get all of our furniture loaded up and put in storage for a couple weeks until we close on our new house! We'll have a couple more days to clean everything, touch up paint and get the carpet steamed cleaned before we're out of here for good. We'll be starting out our time in-between-houses staying with some good friends, the Ellistons. We'll probably unhook and pack our computer tonight, so I probably won't post anything new until we are in our new house and have internet service established there, which will be sometime after March 30. We'd love your prayers -- that everything would go smoothly and that we would all (especially Aubrey) handle all the transitions well.

Pig tails

Aubrey's hair has been long for a while now, but she would never let me touch it. Today, she finally sat still long enough for me to get her hair in two cute little pig tails. Now, she really looks big!

Story time

Aubrey's preferred pastime is reading books (she calls them "ga-books" for some reason). She will bring me or Daddy book after book and say, "lap", sit in one of our laps and read 10+ books in a row. She loves to point at everything and identify all the objects she knows. Lately, her favorite books are Dr. Seuss's ABC, Good Night Baby!, & Ten Little Eggs.

Urban to suburban

In two short weeks, we are moving
out of our first little house in north
central Austin and making a move to the suburbs in Round Rock, Texas! It was a bitter-sweet decision, but we are more and more ready to move as the day approaches. What we'll miss: the charm & character of our 56 year old house, wood floors, big trees, 5 minute drive to Central Market, eclectic neighborhood and neighbors... What we're looking forward to: everything being new/ little to no maintenance, lots more room & closet space, lot of families and kids around, park & pool in neighborhood, Round Rock ranked
8th safest city in U.S., 7 minute drive to Dell for Robert, & Rudy's BBQ and Chuy's down the street!

A little girl

With long hair, twelve teeth and lots of words, I'm starting to look at Aubrey as a little girl and not a baby anymore. I feel like she was just a little newborn and now I have a child who is running around, communicating and sharing her opinions! Her new favorite activity is climbing. She lifts her leg up next to any piece of furniture and tries to climb on top of it. When she is successful, she claps and says, "yay"! Here, Aubrey just climbed onto our bench on the back porch.

"I la-woo"

Aubrey is talking more and more everyday. She can basically repeat everything we say now! I'll tell her what something is once and she amazes me how she remembers it. In the last couple of days, she has learned, "lamp", "watch", "owl", and my favorite, "I love you" or as she says it, " I la-woo". She has a really sweet voice and I love listening to her learn to talk. She is also very talkative in public. Today at the post office she got a lot of attention in line by pointing at every person with a hat and saying, "hat". She loves to smile, wave and say "hi" to people out and about. She's a lot of fun and I am so thankful to spend every day with her!

Let's see if I can figure this out...

Hi everyone! I thought I'd jump on the band wagon and start a blog... Mainly, I just want to post pictures of Aubrey for friends and family and it is easier to do it once than sending lots of emails. Well see if I stick with it. Now I just need to figure out how it works. Hopefully, I'll have some new pictures up soon!