2009- In Rewind

I can't believe that 2009 is almost over! I still remember thinking how strange it was when it was about to be the year 2000...now it is almost 2010! This has been an amazing and memorable year for our family and one that we will never forget! Here are some of my favorite highlights!

We found out we were having a BOY on December 23! (I figure that was an important event and close enough to 2009 that I should include it!) Here is me in almost 2009 at 19 weeks pregnant! Its funny to think how huge I thought I was here....if I only knew what was coming!
In February, our precious nephew Liev was born! It is so neat that him and Mason are only 10 weeks apart in age. They already love to play together and I am sure they will continue to become closer as they get older!

In March and April we stayed busy getting last minute stuff done to prepare for Mason's arrival!

Here we are at an amazing dinner at Ziziki's for my 27th birthday with my parents. This just so happened to be exactly one month before Mason was born!

In May, our precious Mason was born! Our lives definitely have not been the same since!


Mason started smiling in June! It was the sweetest sight I have even seen!

In July, Mason took his first road trip to visit family in San Antonio!

Mason loved going swimming for the first time in August!

Mason went on his first plane ride in September to San Diego!

We had so much fun on Halloween with our little Dinosaur.

Mason loved his first Thanksgiving and had so much fun playing outside with his cousin Liev.


Mason's first Christmas was white one! It was a day we will definitely never forget!

I can't wait to experience all that 2010 has in store for us! I hope everyone has a wonderful new year!

Mason's white Christmas!

So for the first time in 83 years, Dallas had a white Christmas! It snowed ALL day Christmas Eve and stayed below freezing most of the day on Christmas so the ground was covered with snow all day! Here is a picture of what we woke up to on Christmas morning!


We hosted Christmas at our house and had a great time! It was so cute to watch Mason open his gifts, look at them for a second and then promptly try to eat the wrapping paper! I'm sure that by next Christmas the actual presents will be a lot more exciting to him!


We can't wait to celebrate many more Christmases with Mason and start holiday traditions of our own! I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Seven Months!

I can't believe that my little man is 7 months old! It is unbelievable how fast time is flying! Mason has been really busy this month and developing more and more each day. Here is what he is up to:



- He loves taking naps in his crib! I think it is time to officially retire our swing because he finally seems to be okay with naps in the crib.

- He loves eating and has tried lots of new foods! This month we started giving him three meals a day and he likes almost anything we give him. A few of his favorites are squash, peaches, avocado, and baby yogurt! He is not such a fan of green vegetables such as peas and green beans but we are working on that! He also started eating puffs and loves them!

-He is now mobile! He's not quite crawling yet but loves to roll from one place to another or army crawl to get where he wants to go.

-He is pulling himself up! I'm thinking he may skip crawling altogether since he seems to only be interested in pulling up and standing! He is starting to "cruise" and walk around his toys holding on with one hand.

- His eyes are still blue but are starting to look like they might change color. They seem to be getting a little hazel in the center...I am so curious to know what their final color will be!

- He still only has his two bottom teeth but I can now see the top ones poking through! I can't wait to see him with four cute little teeth!

- He is so curious and wants to get into everything! He seems to be able to find the doorstop, cords, or plugs in a room in a matter of seconds and scoot his way over to attack them.


Here is a video of Mason pulling up on his favorite toy.

Thankful

Dear Mason,

This Thanksgiving I am more thankful than ever!

I am thankful that you have such a cute personality and sense of humor that keeps your Daddy and me laughing all the time.

I am thankful for your curiosity of everything around you- plugs, cords, the cat, your feet, leaves on the ground. Its helps me to remember how important the small things in life are.

I am thankful that you are such a healthy baby.

I am thankful for your sweet smile......it melts my heart and brightens my day!

I am thankful for your cute little baby babbles- even if they are at 4 am!

I am thankful for your precious laugh- its my favorite sound in the entire world!

I am thankful that God has blessed our lives with you for the past 7 months!
You have given us the best Thanksgiving we could ever ask for.

Things are finally slowing down!

I haven't posted in a while because things have been a little hectic here! Since my last post, we closed on our new house, moved into our new house and closed our our old house! We had two weeks in between closing on the new and old house so it was nice to be able to move gradually. It also meant though, that we being the procrastinators that we are, waited until the night before closing to finally empty out the junk that had been occupying our attic. Wow, you don't realize how much stuff you can accumulate in only three years! Even if we were moving up until the very last second, we are finally DONE and all in one place! We are so happy to be settled in before the holidays so that Mason can enjoy his first Christmas in the new house!

Mason has been up to a lot of new things lately! He went for his six month appointment last week and is 18 lbs and 28.5 inches long! That puts him in the 55th percentile for weight and the 95th percentile for height! His doctor said that if he continues to grow at this rate, he will be 6'2!


He also had a new cousin born- Austin Chase Tye! Little Austin is the 4th grandson in the Tye family (no girls yet!) and the 3rd baby born in 2009! I can't wait to watch these little guys grow up together! Here's a picture of all four grandsons!

Mason has been loving the cooler weather! Every time we go outside he still looks a little shocked by the cool wind hitting his face! We took a walk on a beautiful fall day and took a few pictures.


Have a great weekend!

Mason and Presley

So it seems that at only 6 months old, Mason has his first girlfriend. He actually has three or four but we won't get into that! Here are Mason and Presley:



We became friends with her parents in our birthing classes at the hospital. The crazy thing is we had the same original due date and then ended both having them two weeks early a day apart! Its so much fun to get Mason and Presley together to play because they are developing at the same rate and doing all the same things at the same time! Here are some pictures of the young lovebirds!



Two months old!

Three months old!
Five months old!
Six months old! (clearly she is more into her jacket than him!)

My little dinosaur!

Last Saturday evening we finally had the beautiful October weather that I have been missing this year so Jared and I decided to head out on a family walk. We drove over to a really neat area near our house called Adriatica. It is a village that is being built to look like a town in Croatia! All of the buildings are amazing and have so much detail! When we arrived at Adriatica, they just so happened to be having a Fall Festival! Mason's Halloween costume was in the car (for some reason more and more of his stuff is in the car and less in his room) so I quickly changed him and off we went! It was so fun to see the kids in their costumes and we got some cute pictures of our own little dinosaur!


The beautiful buildings at Adriatica:
Daddy and the dinosaur
Mason and Mommy

Fun at the Pumpkin Patch!

Yesterday we took Mason to the Flower Mound pumpkin patch! It is the cutest place, has lots of great photo ops and is FREE! It's great! Mason loved exploring all of the sights and sounds that were so new to him. He wouldn't even look at the camera in many of the pictures because he was so amazed at where he was! Here are some pictures from our day.
Not quite sure what to think and wondering why we are sticking him in this strange pot.He loved the scarecrow and sat next to him laughing and playing with his straw!Mason and Mommy at the pumpkin patch.I love that him and Jared are making the same face here! He was too interested in the huge pumpkin to smile at the camera!


I love this picture!
They give you these wagons to carry your pumpkins around in!

We had so much fun and can't wait to go back next year! I am sure that then we will be chasing Mason through the pumpkins!

5 Months!

I can't believe that our little man is 5 months old! That is almost halfway to a year! It seems so crazy and he is growing up so fast! In his 5 month picture he looks so much older to me...more like a toddler and less like a baby. Here is what Mason is up to this month.
-He is about 17 pounds and 28 inches long! He is getting so tall!
- He has one bowl of rice cereal a day and is starting to like it! He is getting much better about using a spoon and less and less cereal is on his bib each time!
-He is laughing all the time! He's so much fun and especially likes it when his Daddy makes him laugh!
-He is rolling EVERYWHERE! I can't leave him anywhere because when I come back he will have rolled several times.
-He loves meeting new people and loves to entertain them.
-He is starting to sit up. He still needs support from his hands but is doing better every day!
-He taking more naps in his crib or pack and play and less in his swing! This is a huge milestone because the swing used to be the only way to get him to sleep!
-He is starting to wake up from naps happy and not crying!
-He loves pulling on hair, necklaces and anything else he can get his hands on! I am pulling my hair up more and more these days!
-He still does not have a tooth but I am hoping it will be any day now. He is teething like crazy!
-His favorite game is peek-a-boo, it makes him laugh every time!
-He has discovered how to scream/squeal when he is happy and does it all the time. I am sure it is annoying to others but its hilarious to us. The expression on his face after he does it is priceless, almost like he has no idea where the noise came from.

Happy 5 Month Birthday Mason!

For Sale!

So after months of going back and forth on what to do, we have finally decided to try and sell our house! We love our current home but know that we will outgrow it a few years. We figure that with rates being so low and home prices down, right now is a good time to attempt to make the move to a bigger house. The whole home selling process has been way more stressful that I would have expected! I am a huge fan of all HGTV real estate shows...they pretty much take up our entire dvr. I thought somehow that selling our home would be as exciting as one of these shows to me. Ummm okay I was completely wrong here. The process of getting a house sparkling clean and show ready, hiding all of Mason's million baby toys, leaving and driving around aimlessly for two hours while your house is being shown and then not even knowing if you will find a new house you like when your current one sells is stressful to say the least! I've made a list of the not so fun moments of selling your home below.

-When your house is being shown you are given a two hour window of when the buyers will come. Chances are they will only stay for ten minutes and might come right at the beginning of the window but you have no way of knowing that. Therefore you have to stay gone for the entire two hours! That is easier said than done with a 5 month old!

- Realtors are not always on time for showings and sometimes they come early! Last Sunday morning Jared and I were frantically cleaning and getting the house ready to show. We had mops and brooms everywhere, Mason was crying in his jumper and we were running around like crazy! 40 minutes before our scheduled "window" a realtor knocks on our door! Jared answers and the lady asks if we knew we had a showing. We politely tell her that the showing was supposed to begin in 40 minutes and that we are still in the process of cleaning. Without even apologizing the realtor looks at her watch gives us a mean look and leaves!

- Always double check the dates for showings! Last night, Jared and I thought we had a showing at 6:45. We got everything ready to go, ate an early dinner and even made cookies for the prospective buyers. We come back an hour later to find no cookies gone! We figured either the people for some strange reason did not like cookies or they just did not show. This morning we looked at our showing schedule again and noticed that the showing is for tonight not last night!

Hopefully our home will sell quickly and this will all be over soon! I am hoping we find a new house that we can stay in for many, many years so we don't have to go through this again!

Because I can't make a post without a picture of Mason, I am adding some new ones below. Jared plays guitar and piano and plans to teach Mason how to play both of them one day. Here are some shots of Mason getting an early lesson!