Austin's First Christmas

Life is good when you're eight month old Austin Collins and it's Christmas. So many new toys! So much wrapping paper! So many ribbons! Such cute pajamas! And of course, so many pictures.

Gran and Pops watched Austin open their gift via Skype. He loves to spin the football, and has already figured out how to put the basketball in the hoop.

Unwrapping presents Austin-style actually took so long that we had to take a nap break. As Grandpa pointed out, this will be the last year Austin will let anything interrupt the gift-giving!

Our little elf playing with some of his new toys

Austin loves his ride-on bulldozer from Grandma and Grandpa. He started pushing himself backward and forward with his feet right away. I better watch out when he has the balance to ride around by himself! Check out the little Converse shoes...too cute, huh?

Getting to open so many gifts can really take it out of a guy. Austin fell asleep in Daddy's lap for awhile before lunch. It's been a while since that happened!

Traditions, New and Old

My parents (aka Grandma Susan and Grandpa Russ) have been visiting us since Saturday. We have had a wonderful time enjoying each other's company and, of course, playing with Austin. He just eats up the attention...he is one loved little boy.

Mom and I made cinnamon rolls yesterday, in keeping with longstanding family tradition. One little twist, though--we ate them for breakfast this morning while un-stuffing our stockings instead of as part of a Christmas brunch. Who wants to wait until 11AM? They were delicious as always and I'm looking forward to leftover cinnamon rolls tomorrow...or maybe tonight.

Zach and I decided to start a new family tradition, too. We made nativity scene cookies and decorated them, then used them to tell the Christmas story. Austin was not really an active participant this year but we hope in the future it will be a way to keep the true reason for Christmas at the forefront of his mind. I know, we're not going to win any awards for our decorating skills but they tasted good and we enjoyed sharing the Christmas story together.

Austin's Secret

Saturday morning I was trying to get a few things done and Austin was tired of playing by himself in his room, so I brought him into my room. I put him in the laundry basket and started looking around for things that might keep him occupied. Things that he hasn't seen before, maybe something colorful, something with some interesting textures, all that stuff that's good for babies. I found what I was looking for.

Yep, Austin is playing with some bras from the back of my drawer. The fun ones I used to wear before the ability to nurse while wearing became a fashion priority. I'm sure he'll just love pictures like this when he's older.

Christmas Tree

Zach, Austin, and I got our first Christmas tree this weekend! Zach and I have never bothered to put one up before because we have always traveled for the holidays. But now that we have a child, it seemed like a much higher priority. And as I sit here in the living room and gaze at the pretty tree across the room, I can't imagine why we didn't do this sooner.

Indiana County is the "Christmas Tree Capital of the World" (at least according to Indiana County residents) so there are tons of places to get trees. Saturday afternoon, on one of the coldest days of the year so far, we headed to a farm outside of town to get our tree. Austin was a real trooper--as the only true Pennsylvanian in the family, he doesn't seem to mind the cold. We looked at dozens of trees--they always look perfect from across the field--and finally found one that was just right.

It was fun to finally put up all the ornaments that we've been collecting for six years. I have already bought several more to give as gifts. (Don't tell Austin about the adorable Very Hungry Caterpillar one I found for him today.) Ahhh. A beautiful tree inside, snow on the ground outside...it definitely is feeling like the holidays around here.

Some before and after pictures. Sorry the second one is blurry; our camera doesn't like to focus on the tree and I couldn't be bothered to try and fix it.

How "Walkable" is Your Neighborhood?

I discovered a nifty site called Walkscore yesterday. It calculates the distance from your home to restaurants, schools, grocery stores, etc. and assigns your address a score from 1 to 100, with 1 meaning you're completely car-dependent and 100 meaning you live in a "walker's paradise." The site is very candid about the strengths and weaknesses of its algorithm. For example, it doesn't take into consideration whether or not there are any sidewalks around your neighborhood, or whether the businesses that seem to be close by are actually on the other side of a freeway. Still, it's kind of fun to see what score your home gets.

My current home gets a 71, which makes it "Very Walkable." I would agree, or perhaps even give it a higher score. After all, we lived without a car for nearly a month and found that we could get by walking almost everywhere we needed to go. Our duplex in Burbank was apparently even better--it scored an 83. Again, pretty accurate. We walked a lot of places on a regular basis in Burbank. The weaknesses of the system became apparent when I put in my parents' address, though. It got a 60, "Somewhat Walkable." But there are no sidewalks in that neighborhood, and nearly all of the businesses mentioned are located on a major street that also has no sidewalks. Growing up I hardly walked anywhere--it just wasn't safe or practical.

So here's a little discussion starter for my blog readers. What's your home's walkscore? Do you agree or disagree with it? Leave a comment--I'd love to hear what other people think of the site.

Pictures from our Trip to Texas

We are home now after spending a week in Texas. It was such a fun trip. Austin was predictably the center of attention, to everyone's delight. Our time there produced a plethora of cute pictures, mostly from my mother-in-law's camera. There's something about her flash that keeps a smile on Austin's face, whereas our camera tends to catch him with his eyes half-closed. Anyway, I had a hard time choosing which pics to include so this post might get kind of long!

During this trip we met Great-Aunt Debbie's fiance, Paddy. He will make a great Great-Uncle to Austin!

Austin quite appropriately tasted turkey for the first time on Thanksgiving Day. It was mixed with another seasonal classic, sweet potatoes, and he seemed to like it.


Chillin' with Uncle Heath

"Look, Mom, Pops did my hair!"

Gran quickly became one of Austin's favorite people.

Four generations of the Collins family

Cute clothes from Gran and Pops

Gran is trying to turn Austin into a fellow Mavericks fan!