Austin's 12th Birthday

Another year has so quickly flown by and our Austin has turned 12. I hope to make the next year drag by for as long as possible after hearing a description of teenagers a few days ago on the radio. It went something like this... God created teenagers to show parents what it's like to have someone created in your image who chooses to act like you don't exist and who chooses to do the opposite of what you say and who consistently rejects you. That being said, I'm in the market for a rather large box (he currently stands at just over 5 ft - so anything from 5 ft to 6.5 ft tall would be sufficient) that would hold him safely over the next several years.

But for today, I'll continue to enjoy that I am his favorite girl (although that appears to be quickly fading) and that under our roof is where he wants to be most of the time.

Here are a few pics from his birthday. We kind of skipped his birthday last year (does that make him only 11?) so we are making up for it with a little bigger birthday by taking him and a couple of his friends to see the Texas Rangers play the Astros in June. So, on his actual birthday we celebrated in small ways by taking him to lunch as is our tradition and then scarfed down his favorite dinner (Mexican Chicken) before heading out to his ballgame.

I made golf cupcakes to take to school and baseball cupcakes to take as the "after game" snack for his ballgame.

Somewhere between finishing the cupcakes and getting them to the school I lost my mind and thought I had time to piddle with my camera. The next two photos are on my favorite setting that highlights specific colors... green in this one.

....Red in this one.

I was astonished when I came out with my camera and this is what I saw... the last I saw of him he was in his nice looking Yankees uniform and this is what he chose to wear for the photo-ops... at this rate I don't have to worry about not being his favorite girl :)

Then the part he anticipated all day and even wanted to skip his game for...

This is a Raider Red golf club cover

(sorry golfers... there is probably a formal term this thingy - you're lucky I didn't call it a puppet)

And the golfing glove he's been eyeballing for a while.

Decisions, decisions...

It's hard to tell in this photo - but this is a pool golf set. It has 6 holes (pockets) and the multi-colored balls and you putt the white ball into the colored balls to get them into the holes. I thought it looked fun.

(Again, sorry pool players... I probably botched that up too).

I'm not even going to apologize for this one... this is from Bryce, it is a golf ball picker-upper. When Bryce was insistent on getting it for him I assumed it was because he was tired of being the picker-upper :).