Thank You Mortgage Crisis!

We received some great news from our salesman this morning. In response to the mortgage news as of late, KB homes has drastically lowered the prices of their new home builds. This will end up saving us quite a bit on our monthly payment and over the life of our loan. This makes us very happy as we are planning on doing IVF next summer, and extra money will come in very handy (when does it not?!).

We had our pre-drywall orientation yesterday and everything looks great. They are trying to get the house done before Thanksgiving, but we'll see about that.

Birthday Bash!

Happy birthday Aaron! Yesterday, my little boy turned 2! We miss everyone very much and wish we could have had you all here to celebrate with us.

We had a fun-filled day starting with a visit to the Dinoland exhibit at Zilker Park Botanical Gardens. They have a maze of trails through beautiful gardens and right now have an exhibit of life-size dinosaurs. We heard lots of "roars" from Aaron this day! Actually, right now he's pointing to the pictures saying, "roar!".

After the dinosaurs we went and had lunch at the park, fed the pigeons and played on the playground. Right now he's pointing the elephant on his shirt and making his trumpeting sound.

Lana Preshun came over to help celebrate and open gifts everyone sent. Sorry I didn't get a picture of you, Lana! But, she was kind enough to take this one :) And, kind enough to give us a very noisy toy that we'll be sure to bring to her house next time we visit!

I made him a "roar" cake and he couldn't wait to dive into it.

More progress

They are speeding along. The windows and exterior doors are in and most of siding is up. I can finally start imagining what it will look like. Looks like we could be in the week after Thanksgiving!

Dinosaur teeth

We must be doing something right when Aaron cares about the oral hygeine of his dinosaurs! We've been talking a lot about dinosaurs in preparation for our birthday trip to the Dinoland Exhibit that is here in Austin.

These dinosaurs came in handy today to calm Aaron down after he took quite a tumble getting out of the van. Even though I was holding his hand he still managed to twist around and wack the back of his head on the door. It didn't break the skin, but did leave quite a bump. After finally settling down from that incident, I (stupidly) said "Please, Aaron, no more big falls today!". And, of course, not two seconds later (we were in the mall) he trips on a chair and takes a header to a big planter cutting his lip with his tooth. Thankfully my little hard head recovered and was able to take a nice long nap.

Framing!!!

They started the framing on our house Tuesday, and this picture was taken on Wednesday! It should be ready for drywall in about 3 weeks. We'll go and take a tour before that happens to check out the placement of everything before it's set in...well, drywall.

Big Boy Bed

I knew it would happen eventually, I was just hoping to hold it off a few more months. But, Aaron had other plans when he climbed right out of his crib when I put him down for a nap Sunday afternoon. I think it was that Curious George episode he watched right before...gave him bad ideas. He knew enough to not come out of his room, but I heard him playing (very quietly) with his train table. When I put him back in the crib, of course, he climbed right back out. I did make him stay in his room for about an hour before he could come out. He seemed to be having a lot of fun playing in his dark quiet room. I, however, was not ready to engage in a power struggle of staying in bed, and definately was not ready to give up my...I mean his...afternoon nap time.

So, after giving up on the nap, Greg and I foraged through the storage unit looking for the toddler bed conversion stuff. I was dreading bed time that evening, which is probably why I put it off until an our past his usual time. Side note: how do kids have more energy when they've skipped a nap? But, bed time actually went okay. I think he was a little confused on what he was supposed to do. He got out of bed a couple of times and tried to play in his room, but scurried right back into bed when I told him to. He did finally fall asleep, but woke up screaming on the floor about 12:00 am. As you can see from the picture, the side rails are fairly useless when the child sleeps in the middle of the bed. I decided to give it another try, but I might have to invest in some more side rails. I really felt like a bad mom when nothing in the world could console him except his favorite TV show. What happened to my little baby who just needed some cuddles and soft singing? After a little Spider Patch, he did go back to sleep, but woke up early at 6:40. Fortunately, nap time went really well this afternoon, no falling out at all. So, I guess my little boy is making yet another transition into a big boy. 3 more weeks until his 2nd birthday!

Capitol Tour

After living in Austin for 3 months, we finally took a day to visit the capitol building and grounds. It's a very interesting place and a great way to spend the day with the family. The capitol grounds are in the heart of downtown, so it was a fun walk up the historic streets of Austin, as well. This is a picture of the rotunda. We saw portraits of important Texas battles and important Texas people, like Davy Crockett :)

Aaron and Greg in front of the capitol building. Aaron was more interested in the cars and trucks driving by.

After our tour of the capitol, we sat down for a relaxing picnic in the connected park.

As we walked back to our car, there was some sort of street fair going on on 6th Street. This is the party street of Austin and is often blocked off for fairs, etc. There were also lots of people in town for the UT game and still many people left from the hurricane.

After our visit downtown we couldn't resist making the drive down to Kyle to see the start on our home. It's somewhat encouraging to see houses in the area that were not there 2 weeks ago. We talked with our sales guy and we were "told" the end of November was still what they were shooting for. They would like to have a closing before the end of their fiscal year, which is the end of November. I would love to get in as soon as possible also, but I also want a house that's going to stay together! After checking this out, we found an awesome Mexcian place in town, which I'm sure we'll visit much more in the future.