NINE! Months, that is.

January was a GREAT month for the Greiner fam!  We rang in the new year with a birthday party for my Sweetie, Gregor.  (His b-day is New Years Eve).  We had a bunch of friends over and a wonderful time and actually rang in 2012 by chillin with Austin on the couch.  My kind of party!  We've had a lot of adventures this past month...I'll include a few of them!

Austin (Hammer) has been making leaps and bounds in his growth and development!  He is now 20.1 lbs and 29 inches tall.  He knows how to suck out of a straw, stand on his own, open cabinets, climb the stairs, make faces, blow raspberries, clap his hands, feed himself (sort of), unfold all the laundry, and unroll the toilet paper!  He loves baths, any type of water, actually.  Running, dogs, stairs, food, cars, new places, girls (heaven forbid!), books and cartoons.  He "helps" me all the time by pulling everything out of drawers, pulling things off the table, and dumping his toys everywhere!  He is my joy and his Daddy's best friend!  We are having the time of our lives with this little kid, he's the best!

We've had a lot of adventures this past month.  Here are some pics of a few of them! Austin, Candice and I have a tradition we call "Wednesday/Funday!".  Since Dice doesn't have afternoon practices on Wednesdays, we plan something fun to do just about every week.  Kyle (sniff, I miss that guy!), used to take part in our Wednesday/Funday celebrations until he left on his mission.  One of our adventures last month was going to Thanksgiving Point to visit the shops and walk around the gardens in the main area.  Since we are poor about 90% of the time, we did mostly free activities there, like checking out the dinosaur museum gift shop, checking out the barn and livestock animals, walking around the gardens, and getting a cheap, but enormous, ice cream sundae from the deli.  Candice and I had a lot of fun entertaining Austin.  He especially loved the Arboretum because of the waterfall and little stream running through it.  That kid LOVES water and we couldn't tear him away for almost 45 minutes!

Millie the Cow, Austin couldn't figure her out...

Staring at Millie, very perplexed! 

At Bounce Around Town.  Austin barely let me hold him to take this picture, he wanted to go play!

My dear friend, Gena Lattin and I do a lot of fun activities together.  Our boys are about a year apart, but they're about the same size, so they play pretty well together.  This picture is from the Bean Museum.  We went to go look at dead animals...yep, it was a learning experience!  (I'd rather go to the zoo, but Utah winters call for more indoor activities!).  Hammer loved the play room, even though most of the toys were broken.  He LOVES cars and makes car sounds when he "drives" them around.  It's stinkin' cute!  A couple of other activities we've done include going to "Bounce Around Town", a fun, smaller version of Jump On It made for little kids.  Austin was very wary at first of the giant blow-up pillow/trampoline and the bouncy slide, but by the end, I couldn't get him to leave.  It was also very cool, because we got in for free.  They don't charge for the parent (which is dumb, because I think I had more fun than any kid in there), and they only charge a dollar per year of age and since Aus is only 9 months, he was free!  So awesome!

I think that I've mentioned that Uncle Karl (Gregor's lil' brudda) has moved up to go to school at UVU.  He's a stud and we love having him around.  Austin ADORES him.  Every time Uncle Karl comes over, Hammer is all smiles and jumps right into his arms.  This is a picture I took after Gregor and I went to a dance and Karl was watching Austin for us.  When we walked in they were both sacked out and just as I was taking the picture, Karl woke up.  Pretty funny!

I can not believe how big my boy is now!  He is huge!  It's been so fun having Austin become more and more active and more and more independent.  He's pretty much walking, he takes steps here and there, and I'm sure will soon be running through my house trying to destroy everything!  Gregor took this picture of him.  I love my boys!  They really are best friends.  I love to see Austin's reaction when his Daddy gets home from work.  He just dives into Gregor's arms and gives him a huge hug and kiss (more like a suck on the face).  It's priceless!

Austin's new talent is drinking out of a straw.  This was the very first time he did it!  We caught it on film!  He wasn't the biggest fan of the lemonade, but the fact that he could drink it was pretty appealing! 

These pictures are from a mini photoshoot we did on the couch.  Austin had just woken up from a nap and was being silly.  He loves posing for the camera and can also make the weirdest faces!  I love his little chubby cheeks and double chin.  Cracks me up!

So as you can see, we're all doing pretty well.  I'll have to get all the pictures and activities from February up soon.  Until then, Loves and Hugs from the Greiner's!

The Eight-Month Old Hammer

YEA!  I'm actually writing only three days late instead of three weeks like last time!  Austin is growing like a weed, I'm not even sure how big he is right now...about twenty pounds and getting close to about 2 ft. 6 in.!  What a GIANT!  This kid is my whole world right now, he keeps us on our toes and makes us laugh nonstop.  He's starting to get the standing on his own thing down, but isn't quite there yet.  He loves to walk with our help, loves to climb the stairs (with supervision, of course!), and is exploring all the cool sounds he can make.  His latest thing is sucking in while he's "talking".  He cracks himself up and us, too!  Austin has about 400 toys, and loves most of them, but when he can grab onto something he's not supposed to touch or is dangerous, he's all about it.
The month of December was a busy one for us.  I think it is for just about everybody!  My ward calling is the Enrichment Leader, so with it, I had to help plan the ward Christmas Party.  Ummm, never doing that again, let me just say.  There's a little too much of a perfect party expectation and not enough help.  Anyways, it went well and my sweet hubby helped a ton.  My good friend, Gena Lattin, was up to her eye-balls in stress planning it with me with her baby on the way, an active 1 year-old and serving as the 2nd counselor in the RS Presidency.  I still get kinda heated about it.  Oh, well.  It really went well and I'm so glad its over.
Gregor's parents came out to visit at the beginning of the month for Kathy's sister's wedding.  It was so amazing to see them.  I know Gregor really enjoys having is parents around.  His mom spoils us rotten and his dad is hilarious!  Thank you again, Papa and Mom for your kindness and generosity towards us, it is greatly appreciated!!!
Our Christmas was really special.  Gregor, Austin, and I wanted to start some of our own traditions since this was the first year we spent Christmas at our house and our first with our son.  Gregor's family makes a big deal of Christmas Eve, while in my family, it's more of Christmas day.  We kind of combined both.  Since I had cooked a big dinner the night before and wasn't really in the mood to cook another one, we opted out and picked up Cafe Rio for dinner.  Feliz Navidad!  I loved it!  Afterward, we opened presents as a family.  It was so fun to watch our sweet, baby boy rip and tear paper like nobody's business!  He loved it and I'm wishing that I would have just wadded up some paper for him to play with instead of spending all that money!  Oh, well.  I'd rather spoil my kid his first Christmas.  It's worth it!  Gregor got some cool stuff, but I think the topper was his GoPro camera.  He's really outdoorsy and wants to take cool video and pictures of his adventures and this water-proof, smash-resistant camera is perfect!  I got pretty spoiled myself with a SodaStream soda maker.  (Gregor's just feeding my Diet Coke addiction!)  I got some great clothes and snowboarding boots, along with a bunch of other great stuff.  But as much as I loved giving and getting, it was so meaningful to celebrate the birth of our Savior with a baby this year.  Seeing Austin and realizing that the Redeemer of the world came here in same infantile way just blows me away.  I am so grateful for my Savior, I love Him.
Christmas was also a little bitter-sweet this year.  My brother Kyle is on his mission in Ventura, CA so we really  missed him, but the sweet part is that my beautiful sister, Kate, came home from CHINA!  She's been over there for four months teaching english.  She had such a great time there, I think she's planning on becoming a world explorer.
Gregor had his 28th birthday on New Years Eve!  It was fun to plan a little party for him with a ton of fun little appetizers and his favorite, cheesecake!  We had a few friends and family over (his dad and brother included!)  I think he had fun, but my husband is not a group person, so when Austin was getting fussy and ready for bed, Gregor happily volunteered to hang out with him upstairs and read his book.  Pretty funny, but I am grateful that he let me throw him a party!  We rang in the New Year on our couch with a grumpy baby watching the ball drop on TV.  Pretty magical, I'd say!  I DID get my New Year's kiss though, which made me pretty happy!  I sure love my little family, I can't believe my life is where it is.  CRAZY!

Riding in the car with Grandma Kathy

Greiner's and Elder Smith

Love the hair!

Daddy and Austin

Mommy and Hammer

First snow of the season

@ Christina's Bachelorette party!  Such a fun night at Koi!

I'll include a few pictures, along with Austin's eight-month photo-shoot with my friend, Christina.  She is AWESOME and only now breaking into the baby biz.  I told her that Austin will happily be her muse, so hopefully we'll have a ton of professional pictures to share of our little guy!

Austin @ Christmas

Christmas Day at the Smith's

Crawlin'

Blue Eyes!

I think this is my favorite one!

Crazy kid!

Can you see his teeth??

BLUE-EYED BOY!!!

MERRRRRRRRYYYYY CHRISTMAS!

Love, the Greiner Fam!

7 Months and counting...

This is a little late, he's closer to eight months now than seven, but our boy is getting so big!  The month of November was filled with a lot of fun activities, advancements, and happy times!  November 2 was Austin's 7-month birthday and we celebrated by hanging out with family and friends.  Austin is now "ghetto" crawling by being on one knee and one foot, he's actually very efficient with this method and is racing around our place on a daily basis!  He is also walking along ALL the furniture, but his favorite are the fish tank stand and the TV table.  He's a little unstable on his feet which has caused him a lot of crashes, most of which involved bumping his head on something, but our little trooper just shakes it off and moves onto the next thing.  I'm so worried about having a girl in the future...sheesh, no crush/kill/destroy attitude? What will I do with myself?  :)
We had a big month as a family.  We got to spend time exploring outside, going for runs, swimming, playing, and learning.  Gregor is doing great at work, he's now the retention manager at Bluehost and kicks butt at his job.  I'm staying busy teaching violin and elementary strings along with trying to keep up with a VERY adventurous Hammer-baby.  We spent November helping out my brother, Kyle, to get out on his mission to Ventura, California by taking him around shopping, helping him pack, going through the temple and psyching him up for the next two years.  I know he's going to be a GREAT missionary and I couldn't be prouder of my lil' brudder.
Thanksgiving was wonderful and spent with my mom's family.  We had a huge dinner at John and Shammah's with tons of food and FOOTBALL.  Everyone took naps after dinner and on Friday we hit the stores!  I'm not a big Black Friday person, so we skipped the crazy morning crap and went in the afternoon.  Still able to catch some sweet deals, I took care of a lot of Christmas presents in one day.  Pretty sweet!

Austin and Daddy chill-axin!

SO TRUE!

Candice and I doing an earring ad for my friend, Alicia.  She rocks, no?

Large and in charge!

Let's just say we laugh A LOT in our house

Bath time with my little water-baby!

Ahh, I wanna cry with this one!  Austin and Ky have a special bond.
They're two peas in a pod, I know they miss each other!

Cute!

Crazy kid!

Modeling his new Santa hat

My boys.  Best friends.  Love them!

I re-arranged the living room.  It was driving me crazy!  Ignore the nasty carpet, please.

Austin just LOVED Santa, can't you tell?

Well, even as I am writing, the boy just woke up and needs his mom...Joys of parenthood, huh?  Life is great, we're happy, healthy, and looking forward to a wonderful Christmas!

Frank Fox and Mrs. Feathermaster's Pies

My Dad, Mark Smith, has written a childrens book entitled, Frank Fox and Mrs. Feathermaster's Pies.  It's the story of Frank Fox, an inhabitant of Fromby Forest who loves mischeif and most of all PIE!  Its a great children's story book that has been created from the childhood stories my dad would tell us when we were kids.  After many years of all of his kids telling him to publish, he finally has!  The book is beautiful and will be for sale on Amazon this coming January, but if you would like to get a copy through me earlier, let me know!!!  The book is selling for $16.95 and I can get you as many copies as you want!  It would make a great Christmas present and would also help us to get the book out to the public!

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