Birthdays & Food

This past week has been awesome! If you know me, you know I love food ... like I am obsessed with food (yep, its a baaaad habit). Well, it was also my birthday on Tuesday so we thought we should celebrate! I also signed up for a lot restaurant eclubs online so I got about 30 free or bogo coupons to eat around Austin ... Perfect! So we made good use of the coupons and we enjoyed a lot of good food this past week.

This was at a place called "Mama Fu's Asian House." We have never been there before and we really enjoyed the food (so I guess their advertising by giving us a bogo coupon for my birthday paid off b/c we will probably go back). Just don't ask Ryan about when Jaxson spilled his entire glass of ice cold water on the table ... they are both still trying to recover from that.
On Thursday, some of the ladies from my ward did a "Ladies night out" (we do it once a month). This month we went to the cheesecake factore (one of my favs!) to celebrate mine and Heidi's birthday. It was a fun night of good food and girly chatting. This is the "caramel chicken" and it is suuuuper good (nope there isn't caramel in it, so I am not sure why its called that....)
The group

On Tuesday (my b-day) some of the girls and I went to Red Robin for lunch. We love the place b/c its really low key, good food, and kids eat free!

Jaxy and his birthday mommy

For dinner that night, we left Jaxson at a friends house (first time we had ever left him with someone who isn't family!) and we went to Benihana's (Japanese hibachi grill) .... YUM! I had the filet mignon, which is my favorite steak. The chef was entertaining and it was fun to watch him chop and cook everything at lightning speed. Ryan and I had a fun date, thanks hunny!

Jaxson loved the birthday balloon my friend gave to me. I am super impressed ... it has been 6 days and it is still floating on the ceiling!This is our little righteous boy. He is obsessed with Jesus and this D&C kids book. He will find it wherever we hid it, and he will open it and read it or bring it to us and then sit on our laps so we can read it to him.

Long Time Coming

I have been trying to post these pictures for 5 days now. I uploaded all the photos and wrote all the captions, then published my post ... all on Ryan's blog (which he didn't realize he had one, but it was an account he made when he was at BYU ... well I guess somehow i was signed into his account). So I tried re-doing everything to this blog, but the photos were taking soooo long to upload, so I stoped trying that day. I have tried every day since and the same thing. But today it worked (happy birthday to me! literally) These are just the photos I forgot to blog about the last month or so....

Jaxson had this cute "chart your growth" paper on his wall so we could see how tall he was getting. Yep, he ripped it to shreds, my little destructo-man.
Jaxson playing with the cute hand puppets G & G Harbor gave him when they came to visit.
Jaxson still LOVES balls. And he is sporting a Canadian onsie, awesome eh?!Jaxsons new favorite food ---french fries! But lets be honest, who doesn't like them?!

We went to a U of Texas basketball game with some friends. Hook em' Horns!

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Emily and Lindsey and I all went to the zoo with our kidlets. Jaxson loved the animals and had a great time. It was super fun and Jax loved the animals. He likes to point and go "Ahh!" when he sees all the animals. The kiddos. Jax and Addi like to hold hands, cute!

Jax and the giant pig. This was right after the lion almost attacked us. We were standing about 8 feet away (literally), but behind the fence of course. He roared, jumped at us and smashed his face in the fence. Well, we jumped and screamed and almost took off running. Seriously, SCARY!

I love petting zoos and I was trying to teach Jax how to feed the animals. He wasn't too impressed.

I stuck Jaxson's hand through the fence so I could snap a quick pic.

All the kiddies again. So sad we are all moving away in a matter of months :(

Training Advice Needed

So I am in my 6th week of training for a half marathon in April. This is the workout sheet I have been following

http://www.halhigdon.com/halfmarathon/novice.htm

I am looking for any advice about running and completing half marathons...

cramping in diaphram?
nerve pain in feet?
bathroom while running?
bordem?

these are just some of the issues I am having right now. But I am enjoying staying in shape and having a schedule I need to follow. Now I just gotta tone down my sweet tooth so all this running will actually be doing something!

Please give me any and all the advice you have about running so I can improve what I am doing. thanks!

Valentine's Day N' such

It's back! Yep, I really took away Jaxson's chair and gave it to him again on Valentine's Day. I don't think he noticed :) He was really happy when he walked out into the living room and found this! It is so much fun to do little suprises for Jaxson because he is always so happy about it - makes being a parent that much funner!
He is getting the hang out sitting in it too! He is watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse quite intently here...

Ryan (&Jaxson) were such sweethearts to me. "Jaxson" suprised me with this beautiful tear-drop shapped diamond neclace - it has a smaller heart on the bottom made up of a mommy holding her baby- so cute and thoughtful! Ryan then suprised me with a beautiful white gold/gold diamond bracelet. He is such a sweetheart!!

For our Valentine's Day breakfast, we ate red velvet pancakes with whip cream and berries. Along side that was fresh pinapple and turkey bacon. YUM! This is Jaxson telling me to get back in the kitchen and cook while...

he snarfs down his whip cream.

Other things Jaxson has been up to.... He has successfully learned how to tip over his basketball hoop and ride it.

He still loves eating and making big messes.

He has also learned how to pull his diaper down. Not sure where he learned that one, but he has got a cute plumber butt!

Grandma H suggested we clean out this cupboard for Jaxson (since he just threw the stuff all over the floor anyway. Well, he loves it. He crawls in there all the time!

and again

This is one of my new favorite things... a gate that is STRONG enough keeps Jaxson out of my kitchen (we had to try multiple ones) Love it!

the silly peek-a-boo kid himself!

Wish he would start feeling better. He has had a rough couple of days -- really snotty nose, coughing, not sleeping well (wakes up lots). He did sleep in this morning, but then he wouldn't eat breakfast and he threw up all over his new car seat and our new car. Sad! So Mommy & Jaxy bear are having a pajama and TV day today!

A visit from SC

We had a super fun weekend when Ryan's parents came in to see us from South Carolina. They were supposed to get in Friday afternoon, but ended up getting here late Friday night, due to the bad weather in Dallas. We actually had our first snow here in Austin late Thursday night, so that was exciting! Unfortunatley, it was all melted by Friday afternoon :( Oh well. Once we all got rested up (Ryan's parents were tired from spending 8+ hours at the Charlotte airport waiting for their new flight cuz their other one got cancelled) we drove to San Antonio for the day. Ryan's parents were great to watch Jaxson while we went to the temple. After that, we all went apartment shopping because we will be moving in a few short months when Ryan completes his masters degree and starts full-time work. After the temple and appt shopping, we were quite hungry and stopped at Ghengis grill -yum! This is just outside, we are sporting our newest addition to the family ... the car. We like it a lot :)

Showing off our delicious food inside the grill. You choose your meat, seasoning, veggies, and sauce and they cook it up for you. So good! I made mine a bit tooooooo spicy, I will have to tone it down next time!
Back at the apartment, Jaxson loved (I mean loved!) getting into Grandma's and Grandpa's suitcase. He would go lift up the top and hop right in.

When we got home from the temple, we iced Valentine's Day cookies while we watched the DVR'ed BYU vs.UNLV game. It was a good one, glad we won! And this is somewhat embarassing, but all the cookies are gone too (4 days ago till now) I probably ate 75% of them...

Ryan coaxed me into getting out Jaxson's Valentine's Day present early for the super bowl. He had fun sitting in it. That night, I hid it so I can give it to him again on V-day. He won't remember right? We enjoyed watching the super bowl, eating LOTS of yummy food, and playing games of Monopoly Deal, Rook, and Eukere.

Waking up Jax early from his nap so we could go out feed the ducks at the pond before the super bowl started.

Yes, that duck is about 0.25 seconds away from pecking my leg. It didn't hurt, but it scared me when it started following me.

Jaxson is really good at giving Grandma High 5's

Riding home from the Round Rock Outlets and a DELICIOUS lunch at Chuy's (ummmmm...creamy jalapeno sauce....)

We also stopped for some frozen custard at Freddy's... it was pretty good. My favorite still might be the Sub zero ice cream in the town center mall in Provo though (the cookie dough signature creation in the waffle bowl, for around 5$ is unbeatable!)

Loves him some ice cream

Jaxson entertained us all weekend. Just playing with Grandpa

Getting attacked by a wild monkey and lion. These are cute hand puppets Grandma and Grandpa brought for Jaxson.

Tag team operation: getting Jaxson dressed

Just a fun video so you can check out Jaxson's arm. He is suprisingly good at throwing the ball (and other things)