It's Great To Be EIGHT!

We celebrated Austin's birthday last week while camping at Lake Roosevelt. It was the perfect party for him - low key and at one of his favorite places. A few weeks ago, I mentioned to Austin and Anne Elyse that Austin's birthday was coming up, and Anne Elyse got so excited and said to Austin, "Who are you going to invite to your party?!!" Austin just looked at her like, "Whatever." He's not a party guy and I asked him what he wanted for cake, and he basically said, "I don't care." Anne Elyse on the other hand is quite the birthday snob. Kinda funny how they are totally different when it comes to birthdays. The only thing he wanted was a BB gun and his very own case of rootbeer. :) He got both, and he LOVES the gun.

Now that he's 8, he gets to be a cub scout, and he's been looking forward to this for a long time. He got to attend scout camp a couple weeks ago, and he was in his glory shooting BB guns and bows and arrows, and they even had the search and rescue helicopter fly in and land for the boys.

A few things we'd like to remember about Austin at this age:

Favorite food: anything that doesn't have meat. He proclaims to be a "vegetarian." If I make anything that has meat in it, he'll say, "Mom, you know I'm a vegetarian."

Favorite TV show: Still the Military Channel. He is obsessed with it. When we were in Utah, Unlce Donavon (who is in the army), took Austin to his office, and he got all kinds of army paraphernalia - bracelet, pen, pencil, brochures. It was the highlight of the trip for him.

decked out in his "digi-camo" - the real-deal that they wear in Iraq.

Favorite sport: Motocross. He is getting pretty good on his dirtbike!

Austin has a "super-sniffer." We have a front loading washing machine, and if you have one, you know the certain smell they can sometimes get, and he says to me just this morning, "Mom, why does the washing machine smell like rotten salad?"

Austin has an adventurous spirit. Last week, Keith and I were going to bed around 11 p.m., and as Keith is going around locking all the doors, he looks outside and sees this person standing in our backyard. He said it startled him and then he looked closer and it was a "little person." Well, that little person turned out to be Austin with his fleece pajamas on underneath his army get-up (the camo along with the bike helmet, goggles, "bullet-proof vest" which is an old life jacket, and armed with his nerf gun). Keith yells at him, "What are you doing?!" He says, "Well, I'm going to sleep outside with the horses." Yowsers. I'm glad we caught him. He then tried to sneak out AGAIN, and we had to get stern with him about why it wasn't safe, etc. He bawled himself to sleep about us not letting him sleep out under the stars.

Austin is still not an "easy" child, and can argue with you until the cows come home, but he is very wise for his age and extremely "street smart" as I guess you could call it. We hope he'll put this wisdom to good use this year as he'll be baptized over Labor Day weekend!