Happy New Year!

Christmas 2007

We had a great Christmas this year. It was really fun to watch Austin open presents. He didn't start out wanting to do it but once he figured out that there were cool things inside the paper he got into it. We've posted pics from the different Christmas celebrations we've had that started as of Saturday on our Flickr site. Below we put up a few videos from this morning of Austin opening his stocking and a couple presents. We hope you and yours had a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Lights, Lights, Where are you?

Austin has been lots of fun so far this Christmas season. When we are in the car going to somewhere during the evening or night, he will start calling out for Christmas lights and when he finally sees some he'll cry out "LIGHTS!" He will even point at stoplights and car lights. It is so funny. I smile everytime. He has started calling out looking for either Tony or I and sometimes Annie (the dog). This is a favorite thing to do when he is in the bath. Whoever is giving him the bath, he will call out looking for the other one.

He is so funny we crack up all the time.

We had a tremendous problem getting our Christmas pictures taken but we finally got a great shot. Boy was that A LOT of work!! Austin was not having a good day that day. Look for it in the mail soon though!

Exploring the Tree

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Christmas in Georgia

Welcome to Georgia winter!

This is crazy it has been at least mid to upper 70's all week, I am praying for some cool weather for Christmas Day.
It is REALLY hard to listen to Christmas music, and get into the mood when we are wearing short sleeves and shorts!
Some boys across the street took matters ito their own hands and made the most of it!

New Look For The Blog

Jen and I have been wanting to change up the look of the blog for a little while now. We finally found a template that we both liked so we went ahead and used it. All the things that were on here before, like subscribing for updates to the blog, our links, and flickr pictures (in the sidebar) are all still here. We just wanted to update the look. Hopefully you all like it.

Giving Thanks

We have had such a great time with family and have enjoyed having John and Carol with us this long weekend. Austin took to them pretty quickly, seeing them Wed night after we got back from my dads house. We are so blessed to have such a great family here and afar. I of course took lots of pictures so please take a look at all the pictures on Flickr.


Give thanks to God for each day and all the things we are able to do!

My Cute Guys!

Beautiful Boy, I am very thankful for you!

Grandma Carol and Grandpa John

Austins favorite pastime- Reading as much as he can!

Mommies sunglasses

Atlanta Zoo

We had a bast at the Zoo last weekend. We all had a very busy weekend. Austin spent the weekend at Aunt Evelyn's and Aunt Fran and Uncle Dave's houses. I dropped Austin off Friday night, Tony and I went out, just the two of us. On Saturday we all met at the Atlanta Zoo and spent a great day visiting all the animals. Austin really is at a great age to start these outings. After the zoo, Austin returned with his Great Aunts' and Tony and I went home. I had a great night of scrapbooking and Tony a better night of peace and quiet (no one was home!). On Sunday we did some Christmas shopping and then picked up Austin, and STILL had time for church!!! A busy weekend! Enjoy all the pictures on Flickr. Here are my favorites.

Tree House Nest

Our Little Family

First time on a Carousel Train Ride

Halloween 2007

Austin had a great time 'Trick or Treating.' Really all he did was walk around with Emily and Levi. He went up to the door and said his version of Trick or Treat and then said Bye. He had soo much fun. We did have to carry him from house to house just to keep up.
Check out all the pics on Flickr.
Here are my favorites!

Getting Ready

Waddle, WaddleLove the Glow Stick!

Trick or Treat!

Happy Holloween!

Emily Levi and Austin setting out for Trick or Treating!

Austin did a dry run this year, he went up to the door with the kids and said "Hi! Trick or Treat," and "Bye!". He had more fun running after the kids! He did a great job! More pics to come.

Getting Ready For Halloween!

Yesterday, Austin's daycare hosted a Halloween/Fall Festival at his school. We went and Austin rode in a little train and seemed to really enjoy everything. He participated in a Halloween costume contest as well. The winner would win a free week of daycare. He came in second for his age group. We, of course, are biased but he should have won. Just this experience made me realize that I am so glad we don't participate in pagents, etc. Here are a couple pictures from that festival:

Riding the train

Austin in the costume contest

We even had the Pope show up!

Then today we visited the Washington Farms Pumpkin Patch. Austin had a really fun time. We got to see different farm animals, slide down a PVC pipe slide, go through a little hay maze, ride another little 'train', had a hayride, and of course picked out and played with pumpkins! Here are a few pics from that:

'I want THIS pumpkin!'

Sliding down the PVC slide

Getting ready, with mommy, for a hayride!

Riding the 'cow train' with daddy

Of course we put all of these pictures plus more of them up on our Flickr site.

A Music Video I Helped Make

At our church we have had a video production team that films short movies for use in Sunday services, etc. I've always been interested in working with them but don't have that much (read...ANY) experience in doing video production. Well, about a month or so ago a lady at church put me in contact with a new member of the staff who was forming a second video production team. Long story short, I'm now on that team and helping to create short videos/films. Below is a music video we shot about a week and a half ago and was shown in church last Sunday. Another video I helped work on will be shown this Sunday at church. Hopefully I can either get a copy of it or a link to put up and I'll share that one with you all as well.

Typical

Our Muscle Man

Austins new favorite thing to do to make us laugh!
He came up with this all by himself (we think).
One day I was angry with him and he looks at me and does this.
Then he looks at me to see how I am going to react.

Sugar Hill Fall Festival

This weekend we went to Sugar Hill Fall Festival, the school I work in is in Sugar Hill and our school had a 'float' and a Teacher of the Year car. It was a lot of fun. It was Austins first parade, and I think there were more people in the parade than watching it.After the parade we went over to the Festival and walked around. It was great weather and Austin had a great time, of course I forgot the camera in the car, so no pictures of Austin petting the animals at the petting zoo.

Our Teacher of the Year and her sons.

Our teachers and some students

A really neat tribute to our Soldiers (these are real boys/men!)
They stood still the entire time! They really did a great job!

My New Shoes For School!!

New Pictures Update

We've uploaded some new pictures to our Flickr site. With some of them I was playing around with a couple settings/features on our camera...you'll be able to tell which ones. ;-) Here are a few to get you started or you can click HERE to go on to all the pictures. FYI...if you are viewing this from work and your workplace blocks the Flickr site...you may not be able to see the pictures below. (edit...turns out that you may be able to see the pics after all. The school district where we work blocks Flickr and since I linked these pictures straight from our Flickr site I assumed I wouldn't be able to see them at work but I am here now (8:23am eastern, Sept 19) and they are showing up so that's cool!)

Austin loves trains and here is telling you the sound a train makes....Choo Choo!!!!

Here he is trying to ham it up for the camera.....CHEEEEEEEESE!!

He also LOVES planes and helicopters. We heard a plane and he was trying to find it.

Yes I try to get into EVERYTHING

Trying to fill Daddy's shoes already!

New Pictures

We've posted up new pictures of Austin as well as of trips to Stone Mountain, Jen's mom, Dorothy, and Steve's visit as well as my mom and dad's visit. Here is a small preview and you can see the rest of them HERE

Updates!

Ok, so I finally got around to setting up our old domain name to now point to this blog. So if you type in www.tjamimms.com you should get this webpage. Don't worry...if you have this site bookmarked with the old address (http://tjmimms.blogspot.com), you're bookmark will still bring you here.

Jen's mom and stepdad were in town a week ago and my mom and dad were here for the long weekend. We had fun with all the grandparents and will be getting pictures posted hopefully this evening. But for now.....it's BACK TO WORK!!

At the Flying Machine Restaurant watching the planes.

I'm Sore

Not sore as in mad at someone/something...sore as in physically sore. I know, you're probably saying, "Big deal!" In actuality it's probably not a big deal but I never knew you could get sore from vomiting. Now you're probably saying.."Yeah, thanks for that visual." heheh. Here's what happened. This past Thursday night, Austin woke up vomiting on two separate occasions. I stayed up with him after the second one and he finally went back to sleep. I stayed up and then stayed home with him on Friday. By the end of that day he was doing alot better and Saturday he was back to normal. Jennifer's mom and stepdad were in town and on Saturday evening we all went with Tom, Gretchen, Levi, and Emily to the Flying Machine for dinner and to watch planes take off and land from the Gwinnett Airport. Austin loves planes and helicopters so we thought it would be a blast. We all had a good time but....late Saturday night, early Sunday morning, it was my turn to be up vomiting. A good 20-30 minutes I was in the bathroom doing this. I wasn't really feeling better the rest of Sunday and only really feel about 100% as of today. Yesterday though I noticed that across about the middle to upper part of my back I was really sore if I took a deep breath. I could not figure out why I would be sore there. I told Jen about it and she said that it was probably from my episode on Saturday night. I guess I've never thrown up bad enough before that it's made my whole upper body sore because today the soreness now includes my chest and ribs. It would have made sense to me if my stomach muscles were sore...not my upper body. I guess you do learn something new everyday...although I would have rather not learned about this one first hand.

Chillin' in my rocker

Lucky tired after a long day

No we didn't get another dog, its Tom & Gretchen's puppy he is soo cute but a ball of energy!

Got Yogurt?

Busy Week!

As the title says, last week was a busy week. A week ago Thursday, Jen calls me at work to say that there is water dripping from the door to the attic. I leave work early and come home and it turns out that the drip pan for the air conditioner was overflowing and running down and through the attic doorway. Also turns out the water was gathering in one of our return ducts as well. I get all/most of the water dried up and we think we're good. We had arranged for a babysitter for Austin so we could go out and see the new Harry Potter movie and the get some dinner. Well, while we are in the movie, the babysitter calls and says that water is starting to drip from the attic door again. We had left a trash can below that door in the ceiling, so we stayed and finished the movie but then came right home. Water had soaked through the return ducting and was running from that out the attic door. Luckily we have a friend from small group who installs a/c units. I had called him before the movie and he said he could come over on Friday. So Friday afternoon he came over and we were up in the attic for about three hours. Turns out a piece of insulation ductboard (sp?) had fallen and clogged the drain pipe for the a/c so the water was running down and filling up the drain pan, getting into one of the return ducts and running out the attic door. So we got the pipe unclogged and things returned to normal. We still need to replace the piece of ducting that was soaked by the water but our friend will be helping us with that this evening.

This last week was the first week back for all teachers, so for Jen and I it has meant a very busy work week. Jen had a situation at work were out of nowhere she was being told by teachers and some employees from a different school that the principal at this other school had told the staff there that Jen would be at there school part time as well as working at her current school. Well, the next day, Jen had a meeting with her principal and told her what she had heard. Her principal was very upset that Jen had found out this way. She explained that there had been talks about that but nothing had been finalized. Later, we guess her principal contacted the principal at the other school because Jen found out that the other principal sent out a retraction to what she had told her staff. The final outcome is that Jen will not be working part time at both schools. She will be 'full time' at her school for this year. Next year is possibly a different story but Jen is going to be looking for a position with a school closer to home.

I started working at my new school in July. It's been going well so far. Kids start back tomorrow. I wasn't able to get everything completed that I wanted to before school started but overall, I think I did a pretty good job considering having to learn a new network, new people...basically quite a bit of new stuff. I think I can get the rest done within the first 2 weeks. That makes it sound like there is still alot left to do. That's not really the case but once kids start school it's very difficult to get as much done during the day.

Austin started back to daycare as well this week. We think he is starting to get readjusted to that. So far, every day when Jen has dropped him off he has flipped out and cried but it's getting better. His cough has started up again along with a runny nose. Not sure if it is due to being back around all the kids at school or not. The cough is a pain because it is waking him up at night and not letting him get a real good night's sleep. We are starting to try a low dose of kids benadryl to see if that will help. If nothing else, it may knock him out enough to let him sleep well. ;-)

Well, that's all for now. See you all later!

Austins new-to-him car.

Trash to Treasure

Hey Grandpa, I'm riding a Deer

Having fun at Kroger!

Trip to Helen, GA

We went to Helen, GA today and had a lot of fun. It was extremely hot. (on our way home one of the bank signs said it was 109 degrees!) Some pictures are posted on our flicker account http://www.flickr.com/photos/tjamimms/. There is a lot to do when Austin get a little older too. The whole place is set up like an alpine village even the Wendy's restaurant was looking very Scandinavian! It was fun and we all came home tired. I have to go to work on Monday! :(


**edit** I found a way to create a slide show of Flickr pictures and embed it on a website or blog so I'm testing it here with our pictures from the Helen trip. (Tony)


Created with flickrSLiDR.

I Love Taking Pictures of Austin!

OK, So I went a little over kill on the photos of Austin today. Austin is so much fun to take photos of! He will now say cheese but usually it is delayed or to early, its pretty funny!

I was messing with the settings on my camera and taking pictures of Austin and his blanket. Apparently Austin was done and brought the lens cap (where he got it from I have no clue!) and decided to try to put it on the camera, hence the picture above. It was so funny I took the lens cap from him and put it on the floor he picks it up and tries again. I guess we are done :)

My "motherly" instinct is unfortunately still over riding my "get the camera that is funny!" instinct, several weeks ago Tony and I were in the kitchen when we heard some splashing we turn around and Austin is standing with both feet in the dogs water bowl and today I thought I heard the dogs eating their food but when I turn to look at the dog bowls Austin had his dump truck 4wheeling though the dog food. (Which seems to be the most logical place to play with a dump truck, smart kid!). Of course both times I had gotten him to stop before I thought of getting my camera!

Austin the Builder

Austin wearing daddy's new hat!