Merry Christmas

Austin successfully made it through his first Christmas like a champ. With all the running around and late nights, Austin, for the most part, adjusted well. To start off our holiday season John and I decided to redo our downstairs. With tons of help from my dad, we painted the whole downstairs and upstairs hallway, re-tiled the fireplace and replaced our carpet with wood floors. We also got a new front door as a present from my parents. It was a lot of hard work, more for John and my dad (but having your house torn apart for 3 weeks with a 5 month old is not easy either!). We got through it and the house looks wonderful. Austin was a little upset through the process because it was loud and he couldn't spend time playing on the floor and had to spend a lot of time upstairs but he was good.

Every year John's family meets at Target to do his Grandpa's Christmas shopping. Everyone goes and picks out their gift and John's Grandpa stands at the register and pays for everything. Afterwards, we all go out to dinner. Austin was very excited to pick out his own present this year.

To start our Christmas festivities we had our annual progressive dinner with John's brothers, sister, and parents. It began at noon and ended around 9pm. I didn't know how well it would go with Austin being packed up every hour into his coat and car seat (which he hates), and not having a nap but he was good and by the third house he crashed and slept the whole time. He never even made it out of his car seat and had to open his present the next day.

Austin also debuted his new talent. He is actually very good at this.

(This isn't the full video - for some reason it won't load right. Also, I don't know how to turn the video sideways - sorry!)

On Christmas Eve, Austin went to Grammy and Papa's house. He got to spend lots of time with his cousins, who are very entertaining to Austin. Austin likes to sit and watch all the action as they all run around the house.

On Christmas morning, Austin gave us a present and slept into around 7:00am. Once he was up, he was more concerned with his breakfast than presents. Santa must have known Austin was a very good boy because he left him a lot of presents. To our surprise, Austin actually understood the concept of opening the presents. He may have just wanted to eat the paper, but he enjoyed it.

On Christmas night Austin went to his Great Uncle Bill's house for dinner. Austin loves spending time with John's family and so does mommy and daddy because there are enough people there to hold Austin so we can actually eat dinner together.

Random Pictures:

(practicing his crawling)

(who's addicted to the tv??)

(We started a new tradition this year. On Thanksgiving you get a new pair of Christmas pajamas and a Christmas movie.)

(Austin trying on hats at Meijer. He sits in the front of the cart now which makes shopping much easier!)