He walks!

Yup, it's official...Austin is walking!  He has been for a couple weeks now, but I haven't gotten around to posting it.  Anyway, here's a pic!

Letter to Elder Carlson

Aubrey asked if she could write a letter to her Uncle Brent who is on a mission in Sacramento.  She dictated to me what she wants to say, and I typed it word for word.  She definitely jumps from one topic to another, but her little letter was so cute!  I thought I would post it, just for a little laugh! Here it is:

"Dear Brent,

I like to eat popcorn a lot.  And I love my mommy and daddy and baby brother.  I like to hug my baby brother a lot.  Sometimes my Mommy makes mistakes, like today when she dropped my strawberry.  But that's okay, we can get a new one.  I learn so many things at preschool that are lovely!  I learn about fruits and vegetables.  I like to stamp with stamps and color a lot.  I like to knock over blocks.  Me and my Mommy always play games together when Austin is asleep.  

        I watch Berenstein Bears.  That's a show on Sprout, and you can go to sproutonline.com to check it out!  Brent, I like princesses!  Do you like princesses? 

        You know, Austin makes funny faces a lot.  And, Daddy used to be a missionary.  He's a plumber now.  Brent, are you going to be a plumber after your mission?  Will you be back in 5 days? I really want to see you.  My mom says I will be 5 when you come home, but I just want it to be when I'm four.  But, I had a fun Easter with lots of candy in my Easter basket!!!  I like to watch shows.  I have a little screwdriver that's my size.  Have fun on your mission! I wonder why I don't dream about Brent?  I think I want to dream about Brent on his mission.  Okay, that's all I have to say!"

Love, 

Aubrey

Austin is ONE!!!

Austin had his first birthday! What an AMAZING year it has been!  Austin has brought so much joy to our family, and I can't believe it's been a year already since he was born, but on the other hand, I couldn't imagine life without him.  We love our little buddy!  Okay, picture time!  Here's our little bouncing baby boy throughout the past year.  We love you Austin!

Remodel Update

Just thought I would post some before and after pics of what has been consuming all of our time for the past three months. :)  We're ALMOST finished with our remodel, and it will be SOOO nice to be done.  No more dust, no more mess, and I can finally let Austin crawl around freely!  It can be fun to have a project to be working on, but let me just say...I don't want to even THINK of remodeling anything else for a LONG time.  Mathis has had help with things, of course (thanks Wayne and Lincoln!), but the majority of it, he's done by himself after work and on weekends.  So, it will be nice to have my husband back along with an improved home!

Here's the mud room before we tore it apart (the door on the right is where the entrance to the garage used to be).

The old bathroom, and you can see a little bit of where the laundry room was.

There was a whole lot of demolition!

Here's the new entrance to the garage before Mathis ripped out that bearing wall, and put some MAJOR beams in to support it.

No more stairs up to the entry way.

Now the washer/dryer is where the stairs used to be.

The new bathroom.

The door on the right goes into the new bedroom.  Or as Aubrey calls it "Grandma Stiles' room," since that's where she'll stay when she visits.  If Aubrey got her way, Grandma Stiles would live there permanently, haha, but somehow, I don't think Grandpa Stiles would be too happy about that. :)

That's the new bedroom (pardon the construction mess and the dark photo).  We'll get carpet in there soon, and then we just have touch up and some finish work left to do!

So that's the status of the remodel.

Easter Fun!

We had a fun (and busy) Easter weekend!  Aubrey had fun coloring Easter eggs and doing multiple Easter egg hunts!

Here she is showing off her chocolate mold lollipops we made together.

...And gingerbread houses are such a hit around here at Christmas time, that we thought we better do an Easter Bunny house too!

On Saturday, she had fun playing "Conference Bingo." Mathis printed off Bingo cards with gospel topics, and she put a jellybean on the square everytime they talked about a topic.  It worked really well, and kept her interested!  Then in between sessions, we did a quick trip to Lagoon, since it was the first day it opened for the season.  Aubrey of course LOVES Lagoon, so we will be there every other week for the next several months. :)

There are the kids' Easter Baskets.

Easter egg hunts!

Then after Sunday session of conference, a bunch of my family came to dinner, since everyone was in town for conference.  It was fun to see everyone!