The Time Has Come.....

(I'll let the pictures do the talking)

I'm A Big Boy Now!!!

I Can Be Nice

Getting Austin to be nice to Mikayla has been a struggle right from the start. At first it was scratching. Then he moved to hitting and biting, and as she got older it went to pushing, smothering, and not sharing. One day I had the idea of making a sticker chart for Austin---he would get stickers when I caught him being nice to Mikayla and after a certain number of stickers, he would get to pick out a new toy. The idea was to focus on positive reinforcement. Craig thought it was a great idea and encouraged me to do it.

And it was a success!!! Austin was pretty excited about the stickers!! (and the new toys!)

At the beginning I said to Craig "I'm not sure if he is getting better all of the sudden or if I am just more focused on the times that he is nice to her." Everything wasn't perfect overnight but after a few weeks of positive reinforcement things started getting much easier at home and Austin learned how to be a nice big brother.

Lowe's Built It Workshop

As I mentioned in my previous posting, we have recently discovered this great building workshop at Lowe's and it's free!!!

Here is the first wood project Austin and his daddy made. I came home from running errands and found them working on it. Hammer and nails---Austin was in heaven.

In September, Austin and Craig showed up at Lowe's to make firetrucks and were pleasantly suprised.

In the parking lot there was a real firetruck and firemen!!

And an ambulance for them to explore!!

And a police car to ride in!!

They worked real hard building a firetruck!!

And it turned out great!!!

What a super day!!! Time to race!!!

Need A Laugh??

Happy Halloween

We did a lot of trick-or-treating this year....more than I thought we would but Austin was having a great time and the weather was so nice.

We stopped at Grandparents houses--it's so nice to have them in town

We stopped at Kelsey's new house

And we met up with Connor and Klayton and went trick-or-treating around their neighborhood. Most of the houses probably heard their doorbells ring a few times in row because they were so excited.

So excited that they were running from house to house which ended up with a little green dinosaur falling a few times. But no tears---there was more candy to get. We never got a posed picture because the boys were too excited running around and wouldn't sit still long enough to say cheese.

Except when they decided to take a break and snack on their "trick-or-treats" (as Austin calls them).

Trick-or-Treating at the Robert's house
We even ran into Jessica at a friends house handing out candy.
It was a great Halloween and we took home a pumpkin full of candy.

Carving Pumpkins

We followed through with our traditional pumpkin carving.

(Thanks to Kelsey to started this tradition with us in Stillwater and is also sure to remind us about it every year)

Austin still wasn't too interested this year but did take out a couple scoops of pumpkin guts with a spoon. After that he was done....but had a great time playing with his cousin Zack while the rest of us finished up the pumpkin carving.

Even though they didn't all show up in my camera, they all looked pretty spooky once they were lit up.

And Austin was pretty happy with his pumpkin once he saw that I carved it into a spider.

It was a fun night.