My lovely kids...

A picture is worth a thousand words, I know.

I just have to say, I love these precious kids...

My first born and my baby girl standing together.

Cute dirty toesies from running on the paths.

Austin is growing into such a handsome young man!

This is a very common sight around our house, Cameron making Hailey laugh... actually Cameron makes all of us laugh!

I don't think two sisters have ever loved each other so much.

These girls are crazy about each other!

I'm so blessed to be the mommy of these beautiful kids!

Thanks to my friend Wendy for helping me preserve

some memories with the great pictures!

Yes, it was cccccold!

Cold? Nah, you wouldn't think as much, when it's warm outside. We were wearing sunblock. We're from Texas, where it has been BLAZING HOT... so we're not used to mountain lakes. We didn't realize that the water was somewhere around 40 degrees when John dared Austin to swim across.

When he hesitated, the bribery began. $5 . . . " But I don't have a swim suit". . . " go in your underwear" . . . "hmm, ok." . . .he sheepishly strips down, since there were a few other people at the lake. He gets down to his undies and in he steps. He's a confident swimmer, and swims longer lengths than this at swim practice. However, he wasn't quite prepared for the temperature. "It's CCCOLD!!!"

We couldn't have him stop at that point, so the bribe increased, $10 . . . $20. . . $25. and so it went as he hesitatingly made his way further and further into the chilly water.

The dare was one thing, it got him in the water.

But money?

Money drives that boy. He couldn't handle leaving it on the table.

It was much colder than he expected, and he really appreciated the encouraging accompaniment of Uncle Ryan, but in the end... HE DID IT!

Austin and Ryan swam across a 40 degree mountain lake at about 12,000 feet elevation. We were very proud of him for taking on the challenge and conquering it. He was pretty pleased with the accomplishment too. More importantly though, he was excited about earning $25!

He's a good kid that little Austin, and surprises us sometimes with his courage. He took that challenge and it was worth every penny of the money he earned to see him complete it.

It was a great accomplishment.

Way to go ACE & Ryan! We're proud of you!

My "sweet" son...

I made you some brownies Mom!

My sweet Austin is so thoughtful. He loves to do special little things for us. He can often be found in the kitchen on a weekend morning, whipping up some breakfast for the fam and bringing it to his sleepy parents in bed. He likes to cook! I knew that and have tried to encourage it.

I was still surprised by his sweet gesture last week though. I was in the other room, working on a project with Brooke and could hear Austin doing something in the kitchen. He came over and smiled at me, begging me not to go in the kitchen. I agreed and honestly thought he was doing the dishes for me until I started getting whiffs of yummy smelling brownies in the air.

Austin had baked up some brownies for his chocolate loving Mama and was quite pleased with himself. I was pleased too actually, they were delicious! I was so impressed that he not only knew exactly what my favorite treat would be, but he knew how to make them, bake them and clean up after himself! He insisted that I have the first one and then asked me to please have one more before we rushed off to Cub Scouts.

Those were some good brownies! I ate way more than I should have over the following couple of days, but the pride in my little man's eyes was worth every extra calorie, that's for sure!

I sure love this little guy. He's more and more like a young man every day. Stay little Austin!! I'm not ready for you to grow up. (Although, I do like your baking!)

Out with a Bang!

We had our last swim meet of the season this past weekend. It was a quad meet, which meant that we were one of 4 teams competing against one another, compared to our usual 2. There were lots of swimmers in each age group, since there were so many teams. Both kids did well and we were so proud of Brooke for completing her first season. She loved it and really had a fabulous time. Her strokes improved a lot and she gained a lot of confidence in the water. Her favorite is backstroke and she won her heat 3 meets in a row with her backstoke. She has loved every bit of being onswim team and I know she'll continue to improve and love it more each season.

It was Austin's 4th season on the summer swim team and he enjoys it more each year. He really blossomed this season and at this last meet he was at the top of his game. We were so very happy for his success. So, in a nut shell, there were about 50 7 &8 year old boys at this meet and Austin got first place in 3 of his 5 events!! He got a 2^nd and a 3^rd in his other two, which are fabulous as well. He had an awesome meet and we were so proud of him. He loves to swim and it's so fun to see him develop his skill while having a great time. He really ended the season with a bang! Now he's just trying to talk us into signing him up for the year round team. J

He swam 5 races and below are the results:

Event 2 Boys 8 Year Olds 100 Yard IM (individual medley =one length of the pool doing each stroke-backstroke, butterfly, breaststroke and freestyle)

Name Team Finals Time

Estrada, Austin- Lakeway Lakers- 2:00.41

Event 14 Boys 7-8 100 Yard Freestyle Relay

Team Finals Time

1 Lakeway Lakers- 1:23.19

1. Piercy, TJ 8 2) Sandlin, Gray 7 3) Estrada, Austin 8 4) Linn, Reilly 8
   

26 Boys 8 Year Olds 25 Yard Freestyle

Name Team Finals Time

1 Estrada, Austin Lakeway Lakers - 19.59 10

Event 50 Boys 8 Year Olds 25 Yard Breaststroke

Name Age Team Finals Time

1 Govind, Keshav 8 Waac Rec Swim Team 27.05

2 Lasseter, Luke 8 Waac Rec Swim Team 27.73

3 Estrada, Austin 8 Lakeway Lakers-ST 28.69

Event 72 Boys 7-8 100 Yard Medley Relay (4 boys each swim one of the strokes in a relay – Austin was breaststroke)

Team Relay Seed Time Finals Time Points

1 Lakeway Lakers- 1:39.50

1) Piercy, TJ 8 2) Sandlin, Gray 7 3) Linn, Reilly 8 4) Hansen, Jake 7

2 Lakeway Lakers- 2:01.65

1. Conway-Malott, Kyle 8 2) Estrada, Austin 8 3) Bernick, Ethan 8 4) Burr, Weston 8
   

And the winner is . . .

AUSTIN!

Today Austin's class had a Spelling Bee.

We've known it was coming for a couple of weeks and Austin was very excited about it. He loves reading and spelling, so it was right up his alley. There are lots of bright kids in his class and I knew there were plenty of them who were up to the challenge. Yesterday they had a trial run and Austin was the runner up. He said he got really nervous and missed a word that he knew. He got over his jitters today and was able to spell his way to the end. They went into their tie breaker list and

I-N-T-R-O-D-U-C-T-I-O-N

was the winning word.

It was fun to get his phone call in the middle of the day announcing the good news that he had won. Hooray!

Good job Austin!

As I was tucking him in to bed tonight, Austin told me that he wants to be a world class spelling bee champion so that he can win trillions of dollars. That would be great.

I hope he'll share his winnings.

ABC Project

Austin made this video at school. He looked up all the facts and pictures. Then he put them all together and did all the voice over narration. His Discovery class worked on this project for many weeks, as they learned the ins and outs of research. Here is his end result. He was very proud if it and we are very proud of him. Enjoy...

Definitely my son

I love Austin, he's a good boy. And he's definitely a boy. He likes to be loud & make obnoxious noises, (especially at the table.) He teases and taunts his sister and plays his share of electronic games. He does plenty of other standard boy stuff too, I'm definitely not worried about his masculinity.

He doesn't get those things from me though. Those are definitely boy genes. However, he gets a few other things from me and this week we had a little victory for the female compassion that I'm passing on!

As I've previously mentioned, my husband is a fisherman. Therefore, the kids are too, and they really like to do it. They don't kill the fish. Don't get me wrong, we eat fish. It's Austin's favorite food, but the kids have never been involved in that part of fishing. They always throw the fish back after they catch them and admire them.

Well, this weekend John took Austin fishing with another plan in mind. They wanted to catch crawfish and he intended to use the fish they caught for crawfish bait. This inevitably meant death for the fish. Well, Austin would have no part of that. I wasn't there, but I guess he raised quite a stink about not killing the fish. So, instead of using it for bait to catch crawfish, they let it go. Woo hoo! That's my boy.

I actually never heard the end of this story until the day after it happened. You see when they got home, I was so busy complaining about them being late that I didn't get to hear all about their fishing trip. Had I known it was so noteworthy, I would have stopped and listened long enough to get the details of how my compassionate little boy saved a fish!

Silly, I know, but I'm glad some of my sensitivity is wearing off on him. I'm glad he has a soft heart. I wouldn't have wanted to kill the fish either. :-)

Music to my ears

I love music. I always have. But something that I love even more is seeing my kids love music. Austin loves music & really likes to play around on the piano playing things by ear. So, at the end of his lessons, his teacher, (whom we adore) has a little "jam session" with him. They play whatever they want and improvise as they go. (He likes it a lot, since that's his favorite kind of playing.) This week, he's stuck on this old familiar song that everyone loves to play. It's fun to see him enjoy it so much and any music that my kids make is music to my ears. :-)

By the way, the video is really short, because I just grabbed my cell phone and got a few seconds of it...

Boys & Trees

In our case, they just go together, boys and trees. Austin loves to climb trees. He's always got his eyes open for trees that are climbable. He'll try his luck with a tree just about anywhere. It's not uncommon to see him making his way up trees just about everywhere we go.

He thought he'd hit the jackpot with this one. John came across this tree while running an errand in town last week and took us back so Austin could climb it.

Austin really enjoyed that. He wanted to keep going higher and certainly could have, but his Mama wanted him to stay close.

I'm so glad he loves trees. It's one of the many things I love about him.

Bubble Mania!!

Just about anyone with a jetted bath tub or hot tub has experienced the joy that comes when you add bubble bath to the water and turn on the jets.

For those who have not, it's a fun thing to do some time. The end result is shown in the below pictures . . .

However, I would not suggest trying this if you are an 8 year old boy that your mom left in her bath tub to finish rinsing, while she helped your sister with a school project, made dinner and got your baby brother ready for bed.

That's not really a good idea... she might get mad.

The other kids will probably think it's awesome.

Actually, Dad probably will too! I bet he'll even pull out the video camera while you play "Pop goes the Austin" out of the bubbles. SO CUTE!

Mom might not like it though, even if you're cute. Because somehow she knows that it will end kind of like this...

Grrr.

My firstborn . . .

As I looked at my blog today, I noticed that the last several posts have been all about Brooke and then several about Cameron. So, I wanted to create a post dedicated to Austin and how much I love him. :-)

10 things I love about Austin:

1. He loves music and sings beautifully. I particularly like it when he wants me to sing with him and we blend so well. It brings a smile to his face every time.

2. He's smart as a whip, a great speller, great reader, great imagination, all around great student.

3. He loves to snuggle with his mama, and will stroke my hair as I lay by him. It's precious and makes me smile every time.

4. If there is a tree to be climbed, he wants to climb it. First, he likes to get prepared though. He has certain shoes and a certain jacket that he wears when he climbs the trees. The shoes are better climbers and the jacket protects his arms. They are his "tree climbing clothes". :-)

5. Austin is a great brother. He loves to play with Cameron and talk about how cute he is and how much he loves him. He gets him up from naps all the time and brings him downstairs to me. Austin's also a great friend to Brooke and has fun playing and making things with her. He's not too cool to play games with her. He'll even play Barbie with her on her DS.

6. I love the way he collects rocks outside, smashes them open and gives the "crystals" from the inside to me, as gifts of treasure. They are very valuable you know. Crystal.

7. I love seeing how his eyes light up when he sits down to the piano and picks out the tune of a song he's heard somewhere before. I love even more that he calls me over to listen and wants to share it with me.

8. I love that he's a self proclaimed "vegetarian" to certain things, like ground beef, chicken and certain vegetables, like lima beans. :-) Although he does eat these things sometimes.

9. Austin is very, very compassionate. He genuinely cares when others are hurting and wants to help. He's particularly protective of me. He gets worried if he senses that anything is wrong with me or that I'm hurt in some way. He'd give me the shirt off his back if I needed it.

10. He loves to be outdoors, and in nature. He saves bugs and leaves and sticks, because he sees something special in all of them.


The list could go on and on.

There are so many special things that I love about Austin.

Now you know a few of them.