Happy Birthday Sweet Baby Girl

Today Ava turns 4.  4 years ago today we became parents, 4 years ago today I cried when the nurse handed her to me, 4 years ago today I had no idea what I was in for.  What an amazing, crazy, silly, fabulous ride it has been everyday since.  We love you big girl.

We love what a great big sister you are

We love that you love to do anything in the kitchen

We love your silly personality

We love your drama

We love your sweetness

We love how you take care of others

We love your spunk (and your fashion sense)

We love how your personality always shines through

We love how you throw caution (and sand) to the wind.

New Tricks

We have some new tricks in our house.  You better sit down because they're gonna amaze you.  The first is that Charlotte can now (and frequently does) remove her own diaper!  Yay Charlotte!  Wanna know how we learned this? I put her dress on for church a few minutes before it was time to leave.  We got to church, the girls sat on the floor in front of our chairs and played for 5 minutes or so.  Charlotte asked to eat so I grabbed her hand and took her to the mothers room (our ward doesn't allow food in the chapel).  We were in the mothers room for about 15 minutes while she walked around eating her snacks and crawled after another baby in there.  As she crawled away my friend LE says to me "Um, I think I just saw butt cheek under C's dress."  Me: Huh?  I walked over and picked C up, lifted her dress, and sure enough the kid was going commando.  Um, how in the world did she not pee on something? I have no idea because as we did some further investigating, we discovered that she had taken her diaper off AT HOME before we even put her in the car.  Nice, kid. Nice.

Ava's new trick is also pretty amazing.  The girl can make her own peanut butter sandwich (which is a staple in her diet) "all by myself, with no help to even spread."  I know, I know I'm such a good mom for letting her be so independent and not worrying about the mess she might make.  Or I might have been on the computer trying to finish a very important email while she kept asking if I would make her a peanut butter sandwich.  Apparently she'd heard too many 'just a minutes' because she finally asked in exasperation "can I just make it myself?" And wah-lah! We've now created a 3 (almost 4) year old peanut butter sandwich making monster! What's that they say, necessity is the mother of invention?

Summer Schedule

It's summer! Have you noticed? We have as the heat has been high 90's and even over 100 degrees already.  It makes you want to go swimming all day everyday........or stay in the house and never leave the air conditioning.  I decided that we needed a schedule for the summer so that we did at least one fun thing a day and didn't get caught up in too much errand running and laundry folding etc.  So here is our schedule at work:

Monday: Make something monday. How about a golf ball painting?

Finished painting.  Pretty cool!

Wednesday: What's cooking Wednesday.  This Wednesday it was brownies "with M&M's on top mom? " Okay!

The rest of our schedule is Time to read Tuesday, Thoughtful Thursday (do something nice for someone else), & Go Somewhere Fun Friday.  So far it has been a big hit, let's hope it keeps up.  Some days we do more than one fun activity. We might do a craft and also go swimming with friends but the schedule insures that even on the crazy busy days we make sure to make time for something fun!

Memorial Day Weekend

Yeah yeah this post is almost a month overdue.  Oh well.  As I mentioned in a previous post, Ava had her ballet recital over memorial day weekend and Rob's parents came down to watch.  His sister Lauri and her husband and two kids also came down to join the party.  It was a fun weekend.  Ava had a ball with her cousins Lucy and Tag.  There was lots of playing outside, Kinect, and eating.  Larui and I even made two runs to the snow cone stand and two batches of my mom's fabulous apple pie bars. (The real kind Tara :) We are so lucky to have such good family so close.  It was a great weekend.

Outside fun!

Ava and Lucy were bosom buddies and Tag couldn't get enough of Charlie. So sweet.  The girls all took a turn tickling their MeeMaw.

Remember I mentioned the food? Charlotte tried chocolate pudding for the first time.  She loved it and says it does wonders for exfoliating!

Ballerina Baby

Ava has been taking ballet since January.  She absolutely loves it and tries to show/teach everyone everything she learns.  Memorial day weekend was her studio's yearly recital.  She did such a great job.  I can't imagine being on stage in front of a couple hundred people at that age but she remembered all the moves and even smiled. Her MeeMaw and Papa came down (we didn't get pictures of them...grrrrr) and our friends the Jones', the Yanelli's, and the Bauer's.  We have such great family and friends!

So excited to dance on stage!

Ava with the sweet girls in her class

Ava and her adoring fans

The one about the serpent

Some of you saw on my facebook status the other day that we had a visitor to our back porch.  Ava noticed a large snake on the back porch as she was opening the door to go outside.  As mentioned in the previous posts, she is a fan of things that creep and crawl so lucky for me she came to get me instead of opening the door and beckoning the snake to come inside.  Rob and I spent the next 30 minutes attempting to catch the snake so we could identify it and get it out of our yard.  

Cowboy boots, work gloves and a golf club.  The snake capturing kit

The snake only tried to bite twice.  I was out here too, mostly just annoying the snake and causing it to lunge at Rob.

Creepies and Crawlies

Ava loves to be outside and especially loves all the bugs, butterflies, and sometimes even the beetles.  She considers them all "friends" and would love to be able to make homes for all of them.

A stick bug Ava and Rob found in the front yard.

Ava had to bring it in to show me

And even more thrilled that it wanted to crawl on her hand. (A true sign of friendship apparently)

Ava was digging a hole in the mud and out jumped this little frog

We apparently scared it so much it peed itself. (You can see the puddles behind it)

Happy Fathers Day

To the best dad my girls could ask for.

Stuff we've made

A colorful crown and paper heart

Sometimes we make stuff.  Especially now that the summer has started and there is no more preschool to fill Ava's craft fix.  So here are some things we've made recently.

End of the year teachers gifts so they could kick off their summer in style.

Some "get well soon" flowers for Grandma Kathee after her knee surgery

Some 4th of July skirts for the girls

I spy a butterfly

A few weeks ago a friend and I took the kids to a butterfly exhibit at the mall.  It was very cool.  It looked like a big greenhouse and there were hundreds of butterflies.  The kids were given Q-tips with Gatorade on them to attract the butterflies and it worked.  The girls had a ball.

Look Mom

I wanna touch it

Charlotte was giddy about them at the beginning

Clueless to her visitor

Don't get too close to me with that thing

Just chillin

Ahhhhhhhh get it off me

I was there too.  No, I'm not flexing my wimpy muscles. See the tiny spot on my arm? Butterfly.

Giggling with delight

She's surrounded

G.G. might be angry

Have you seen Harry Potter? You know the 'Howlers' that parents send their kids at school - the letter that flies into the room, turns into a screaming face and scolds them for some naughty behavior?  One of those might be headed my way......from Grams.  She told me 'you better not put those on your blog.' But Grams, they are so cute number one and number two, they may be the only pics I have of you without your hand in front of your face, and three, this blog is my family record keeping.  Its my family journal so I have to document all family happenings - like having your picture taken with G.G.  Sorry.  Do you still love me?

Charlotte with Grandpa G.G.

C telling G.G. whats up.

Ava really had to go potty in this one and was begging for a break.  Fine, go to the bathroom!

The girls

Ava was not falling asleep here despite appearances