Parent and Tot Class

Steven's cousin works at Youngsters Inc., it's a gymnastics place for kids here in Yuba City. All the employees get to have one free child enrolled under their name and since his cousin is only 20 and has no kids she enrolled Ava under her name for us! There is only one class she is old enough to attend and that is the Parent and Tot class that Emma (his cousin) teaches on Monday evenings. The class age range is 18months - 3 years. Ava is just 20 months, so she barely makes the cut off, the next youngest in the class is 2 1/2. Needless to say I'm the only parent who really has to participate in the class and help Ava, the rest of the kids are old enough to follow what the teachers do and listen to the instructions on their own. But, Ava loves it, she really doesn't get that she is supposed to be doing certain things at certain times, but she is willing to try everything. Every time we do something she says "ooh" or "wee" or "hooray", it is pretty cute. So I try to keep her following the rest of the class the whole time, it wears me out, but it's fun and she'll eventually get it. Here are a few pictures Steven took of her last night. (please ignore how gross I look)

She does really well on the balance beam, I was surprised at how easily she does it at her age. I hardly have to hold on to her.
Getting ready to do a backwards somersault

Her favorite part, getting a stamp at the end of class

Trying to weasel her way into getting as many stamps as possible.

I just thought this was a cute picture of her. She is getting ready to get her shoes on to go home.

Yes, we're still here....

Hello long lost blogging friends!! I know I have been a terrible blogger the past few months. It all started out with a crazy but fun summer that I got way behind on trying to post pictures from, then I just got overwhelmed with it, then I just ignored it all together...which got me to where I am now....December with no pictures of what we have been up to since JUNE!! So I've decided to start from now instead of trying to go back and play catch-up, kinda.
Below is just a cute picture of Ava in front of our tree we took last Sunday before church.

So I know Halloween is long over, but I wanted to post a just a few pictures of our cute lady bug. We did a lot during Halloween I didn't want to let it go without posting a couple of pictures.
Our ladybug throwing a nice little fit in the middle of our church Halloween carnival because she didn't want to let someone else have their turn for the bean bag toss game.

Here she is looking cute before taking her out on Halloween to see family and friends.

She was very excited to carve pumpkins! She wasn't too excited about all the slime inside, but loved that I let her sit on the table. She is always climbing onto the table and I am constantly pulling her off, so she thought it was pretty cool that I was allowing her to sit on the table that night.

Okay...done with Halloween.

UPDATES:

Yes, I am pregnant! I'm sure this is old news to everyone, but since I have never made the official announcement on my blog I decided I better do it. I am 23 weeks I think? Or maybe 24? I have been so bad at keeping up on how many weeks I am this time. It looks like it's going to be another girl, I was secretly hoping for a boy. During the ultra sound she had her feet crossed, so we didn't get a super clear view. But, we are pretty sure it's a girl. Don't get me wrong I am very excited to have another girl, but it's just hard to imagine having another baby girl to melt our hearts like our baby girl has. I know though, that as soon as she is in my arms she will fill our hearts just as much as Ava has. Plus, it is so nice to have everything we'll need, I don't need to worry about getting a bunch of boy stuff. My due date is April 8th, four days after Ava's 2nd birthday! Crazy! I hope they will grow up to be close friends. As for a name, we have a few that we are thinking about, but nothing official yet.

Ava update: She is 20 months and busy as ever!! She keeps me on my toes!! Talking like crazy, she is starting to put two and three words together to make short sentences, she can count to 10, and knows most of her animal noises. She loves baby dolls and playing outside or working in the garage with her daddy. She is so funny, she would love, if I let her, to put on a dress and all her accessories and then go out in the garage or in the yard and work with Steven. He has a few tools that he lets her carry around and "help" him work on things. I think she will be a good mix of girly girl that's not afraid to get dirty. I don't think she really understands yet that she is going to be a big sister, but if you ask her where the baby is she'll point to my stomach. She is such a strong willed little girl, which can be very frustrating at times, but I love spending all day with her and watching her learn and grow.

We are all decorated and getting ready for Christmas! I love this time of year! We have so much going on this month, I plan on being better at blogging our happenings. I hope all of you are enjoying this Christmas season and hopefully we'll get to see some of you that we don't see often!

Sorry for the very random blog, but after not blogging for five months it's hard to know where to start and what to say. So heres to a fresh start of blogging for me!

Where are my pictures?!

Just letting everyone know we are still here. We have been doing lots of stuff this summer, and I do have pictures of it all, but there is a problem. All of our pictures are either on my camera which is lost, or my broken laptop! So frustrating! Steven says the hard drive is still good on our laptop and that he should be able to recover all of our stuff to put on our new computer, but he has been so busy lately he just hasn't had the chance to do it. As for my camera, I have no idea where it is?? I never lose things, so this is very frustrating. I'm hopeful it will turn up somewhere...thinking maybe Ava carried off and has put it in some random place around the house, I hope. In the mean time, I hate not having my camera!!
So, as soon as I either find my camera or we get everything off our old computer I will blog about our summer happenings. Hope everyone else is enjoying there summer!

Camping!!

This past weekend we went camping with our friends, the Wards. We camped at Scotts Flat Lake. Had a blast!! Thank you Sid for letting us borrow the boat!! We had so much fun on it, probably spent about half of our four days there on the boat!! Ava, loved camping, she was a filthy mess for most of the time, but that's what happens when you camp with a 14 month old. Here are a few of our pictures, I know there is a lot here, but I took tons of pictures, it was hard to narrow it down for the blog.

Ava loved being in the tent, when we first set it up we couldn't get her out of it.
My silly little boat girl. She LOVED being on the boat!!

Ava and Jacob. Ava was always stealing Jacobs binkie, which is funny because she never really took a binkie when she was a baby.

Steven & Ava and Brandon & Jacob. Daddy's and their dirty face babies.

This is the whole group.

Jacob hanging out on the boat

My little water baby

We did A LOT of fishing, but noooo catching

Hanging out at the campsite

The babies took quite a few naps on the boat

Maggie and I getting ready for tubing.

We hiked around the lake to the dam

Playing in the boat

cute little Jacob

The boys made a HUGE fire the last night we were there

Ava thought the water was a little too cold...

...she was much happier wrapped up with daddy.

Decided to try again...

...nope never mind.

We wished the weather was a little warmer while we were there, but luckily it's a warm lake, so we still did lots of swimming, tubing and stuff, it was just a little chilly when we got out of the water. It was a great trip, with great food and great company! We can't wait to go next year!

Also..

Here is a short little video of Ava walking around the front yard. I haven't posted a video of her walking yet...so here you go! Hope this works, I've never posted a video before.

The front yard and playing outside

Ava loves to play outside! So, I took a few pictures of her playing in the yard yesterday. I also took some of our flowers we planted this year. We, are trying to finish up our front yard, we still have a few things to do, but I like how it's turning out! We don't know very much about plants and flowers, so this is a learning experience for us. I just want color, I love color in yards!

Charlee loves to play outside too!

Our front planter, right underneath our front window as your walking up to our door. I know the flowers and things are very random...this is kind of a trial year for us. Next spring we will have a better idea of what grows well and what we like. So far, some things have grown really well and others have not. We are excited for the Japanese Maple in the back corner to grow though!

The planter in the bottom corner of the yard. We are happy with the Birch Trees. We are still trying to figure out what to plant around them.

One of my favorites, right up by our front door. Can't remember the name of it though, I'm really bad about that. I'm sure some of you reading this will probably know, I think it's a fairly common flower.

Another one I really like, I love the purple!

This is our house. I figured I better take a couple of pictures of it now. We are getting ready to change the siding and paint it. Hoping that it will help it look more updated. We hate the siding it has now, very 70's. And it can definitly use a new paint job!

We still have a few things to do in the front yard, a few weeds that keep coming back...argh! But, I really like how it's turning out, and I think when the new siding is up and it's all painted it will look really nice! Next is the backyard....that is going to be a BIG job!! Probably won't be finished until next spring, we need to save up a while. I'm going try to take pictures as we go, I didn't do that with the front yard, so I don't have any before pictures...it was pretty run down when we first moved in.

That's all for now, I haven't blogged in a while, so I figured I better get something up. Hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of their summers!

Chicken Pox Update:

When I called Ava's Dr. to ask about the chicken pox she said she wanted me to bring her in so she could look at them. So, went to the Doctor, and guess what? She doesn't have chicken pox! She has a virus, it has a name, but I can't even begin to spell it. So anyway, it's nothing too serious, we just have to let it run it's course. It might continue to get worse over the next few days, but then it should start going away. She might feel kinda crummy, but nothing too major. I'm glad it's not chicken pox, bummer that she is sick, but glad she's not too sick. She is very contagious, but only to young kids, so, I'm just going to enjoy my few days off I get from the daycare kids.

Walking, Mothers Day & Chicken Pox...

Ava is walking!! She has been walking for a little over a week now, I'm just a little late getting to this post. She had been talking one or two steps here and there for about a week, and then Friday, May 1st. she just decided to start walking all over. Of course at first it was about 50% walking 50% crawling, she is doing mostly walking now. She is still loses her balance at times and is quite slow still, but she's a walking girl!! Here is a picture of her and Steven walking out to the car. I'll get a video posted soon.

My Mothers Day was great!! Steven made me a yummy egg omelet for breakfast and he and Ava gave me some beautiful earrings! We hung out at the house for most of the day and then went over to my parents for dinner. My dad made his famous BBQ shishcabobs(sp???)for dinner, they were really good! It was a great relaxing day...with only one problem. Ava woke up with chicken pox!! The poor girl is covered in them! I took her in for her year well-baby check up about 2 weeks ago and that is when she got her first chicken pox vaccination. Well, according to the little information sheet they give you about the vaccination, the chicken pox vaccination can cause "1 or less of every 20 children" who receive the shot to get the virus. This can happen for up to 30 days after receiving the shot. So, she was one of the lucky few. She is not too itchy yet, but from what I understand that will come...here are a few pictures, the chicken pox didn't really show up in them though. And she won't sit still for five seconds for me to take a picture.

These pictures really don't do it justice, she is pretty covered head to toe, mostly on her back and stomach. I'm going to try to get some better ones later, I think maybe different lighting will help the picture??

Also, her well-baby check-up update: She is 19.5lbs which is 25% for weight and 29 3/4" in height, 50%. So she is growing up to be a petite little girl compared to the big girl she used to be.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

I'm a little late getting to this blog. Last Tuesday the 21st was Steven's birthday! I wasn't able to get a post on here till today because our Internet has been doing weird stuff all week and I haven't been able to upload photos. But, I just wanted to write a little note for him. He is such a great husband and father!! He works so hard for our little family. He is in school full-time and working full-time. He also usually does side jobs on Saturdays to help bring in some extra income. He is very busy! I appreciate all he does for us! Among all his work and school he still finds time to spend with Ava and me. We love him so much!!
Here are a couple of pictures of him blowing out his birthday candles.

Happy 26th Birthday Steven!!

Happy Easter 2009!

For Easter this year we started our morning at home just hanging out and gave Ava her Easter basket. She didn't have any idea what it was for or why she was getting it, but she was excited to pull everything out of it. And she loved carrying her Easter basket around all day, she didn't want to put it down! We went to church with my parents, took some pictures in our Easter Sunday clothes in their backyard. After church we went home and changed then went over to Thomas and Cassandras new house for Easter dinner with Steven's family. We had tons of good food! I ate waaay too much! It was fun visiting with everyone and having Steven's Aunt Carole here from Texas! Here are a few pictures from the day.

Checking out her basket

Of course, she loved the grass at the bottom the best!

All ready for church in her new Easter dress

Too bad Steven's eyes are mostly closed, would have been a great family picture!

Ava with Grandma and Grandpa

Everyone having dinner at Thomas and Cassandras

Ava sharing daddy's plate with him

Nana, Pop-pop, Aunt Carole and Cassandra

Relaxing with daddy

Steven with his Nana and Ava

Hanging out with Pop-pop after dinner.

Steven and his brother Thomas

We had a great day spending time with our family! (I really wish I knew how to put a bunch of pictures into one picture so my posts are not so long. I don't know how to do that?? Feel free to give me some tips anyone :).)