It's official - He's crawling

Blake finally figured it out! He is mobile now, God help us all! And, just in time for our camping trip! Yay!!! A baby, crawling all over the beach.... in the sand.... near water. Yup, it's gonna be a relaxing weekend.... :o)

Spoiled Girl

Avery had quite the day yesterday! Some friends of ours are moving to Nashville and have been in total purge mode. We have been the lucky recipients of their purging! We now have a trampoline in the back yard and Avery LOVES to jump! The picture is blurry, but really, how can you get a good one if she is bouncing all over the place!

Before Daddy set up the new trampoline, he took her for a ride on the new bike we got - again courtesy of the Swope family! She enjoyed it so much that when I heard screaming a little while later I assumed she had fallen off. No, she was mad that they had to stop riding and come in!

It is so great to have things for her to do outside. Our back yard is beautiful, but not very kid friendly, so outdoor activities are hard to come by... Now she has a pool (thank you grammie!) a swing (that is really meant for Blake) and a trampoline! Fun, Fun!

Blake is still trying very hard to crawl. He just can't quite figure out how to get past the rocking motion. He has given up on babyfood. He will just shake his head at you if you try to offer him anything that comes on a spoon. If it's on a fork, it's OK. If he can pick it up and feed himself, even better!

We have decided that Dada is his first word. He says it when he looks at Jeff, and didn't say it much when Jeff was gone. So, it's Daddy 2, Mommy 0 when it comes to first words. Maybe we will have to have more children afterall, just so one of them can say Momma first!

Summer Fun

We have been spending quite a bit of time at the pool lately. Avery had swimming lessons a few weeks ago, and has been enjoying the water much more! She stays in a "floatie" (aka; an innertube) but will swim all over the pool chasing her beloved rubber duckie family that her swim teacher gave her as a reward for blowing bubbles in the water. Avery has informed me that she will swim with her floatie until she is 4. When you are 4, you are old enough to swim without one. Ahhh the logic of a 3 year old - 4 seems so far away! She tried to swim without it on Monday, and sunk straight to the bottom. She didn't think that was very fun!

Blake LOVES the pool. He tries to swim, always wants to be horizontal in the water, and has no problem going under. He gets bored in his floatie and wants to be on his own so badly! He is a little dangerous!

This picture is today, right after both kids woke up from their naps. It is so hot, we have been letting them sleep in very little clothing!

Busy, Busy!

Things have been pretty nuts lately. It seems we are catching ourselves coming and going, and I fall into bed exhausted each night. More than once, I have fallen asleep with a book in my hand and my light on, never even realizing when Jeff comes to bed and takes my book away and turns off my light! This week was a challenge as I was parenting solo. Jeff was in Wisconsin for his annual fishing trip with the guys, so it was just me and the kiddos, hangin out! I must say, I have so much respect for single parents. It is a TON of work to do it all - get up, get the kids out the door and off to school, work all day, go to after school activities (this week was swimming lessons!), come home, do dinner, baths and bed. And I thought I was tired before!!!!! I have decided that I am taking a vacation to see my sister, and I will leave the kids behind with Jeff! I need a break! (of course I will only be gone 3 days, and it won't be until after Blake's first birthday... but still!)

The kids have been great. Blake got his first tooth (bottom left) at 7 months and his second one came in just a few weeks later. He had been biting everything, but took a break for a week or so, and now he is back at it. Don't hold him wearing a tank-top, or he will bite your shoulder! I don't think it will be long before the top 2 are in as well. He doesn't care for baby food anymore. He would prefer anything that he can feed himself, and if it must come from a spoon, then it needs to be something that has texture and needs to be chewed. He can tell you no. It is so cute! When he no longer wants the thing he is being fed, he will shake his head side to side and grin at you. When he smiles, he smiles with his whole face. I LOVE IT! I expect that he will be crawling at any moment. He gets up on all 4's and rocks back and forth. He is so close!

Avery is in a very fun phase. For the most part, she really wants to please you. When you praise her for good behavior, she will run up and hug you so tight. But, every few days, she has a horrible day!!! But I love the days when she just wants to please and is happy all day long! She has her first "best friend" at school, Ava. Fortunately, Ava's parents went to school at OU, and her dad was on the gymnastics team. So we are thrilled! Actually, Steve and Whitney are great people and we are very happy that the girls have found one another. It is fun to watch them together and see how kind they are to eachother. They always hug hello and goodbye, and I always get a hug and a kiss from Ava when I pick Avery up from school. Whitney and I were brave enough to take the girls out to dinner one night after gymnastics class, and, as you can see by the blurriness of the picture, there was not a lot of sitting still! But, it was fun!

For the most part, we have just been busy with the usual stuff. Here are a few pictures from our weekends:

Honkin' Bird

Avery tonight in the bathtub singing:

"Hush little baby don't say a word. Momma's gonna buy you a honkin' bird. If that honkin' bird don't..... Momma's gonna buy you a hilly goat."

Gotta love the songs of a 3 year old!

Grammy and Pa Pa

We just had a wonderful visit with Jeff's parents (A month ago!) and I have been working on this post forever! They were able to spend 3 weeks with us and we are so grateful for that time. It's hard to believe that it had been over a year since we last saw them. We need to make sure we don't go that long between visits again!

The first 2 weeks they stayed at the fairgrounds in their RV and would come spend time with us each day. Grammy had the kids and I over for dinner a couple of time and one night and she fixed orange jello with manderines in it. Avery thought that was sooooo cool!

PaPa was able to babysit Blake a couple of times while Jeff and his mom went fishing. Thankfully he is an easy baby, so he had no problems! Blake, of course, loved the visits with Grammy and PaPa. Anyone that showers him with attention is alright in his book! He is such a happy baby lately! He has not hit the shy phase yet at all.

Avery, always slow to warm up, enjoyed her time with her grandparents. She embarassed me a couple of times in the way that all 3 year olds do. The tantrums are something I could live without. Once she gets her mind on something, that is all she focuses on. Jan and I went to Kmart one day and I let Avery come along since I needed to get her some new shoes for school. What a mistake. What was supposed to be a leisurley trip was soon filled with the whines of a 3 year old that HAD to have a new baby. (because she doesn't have enough already...) So, for the last half of our visit, all you could hear was Avery crying, "I want a new baby" over and over and OVER again. I tried to ignore it and continue browsing, but she wouldn't give up. Jan tried to distract her, but it didn't work at all. Not so fun! (The Dora shoes we bought that day did not get to be worn until the next afternoon because her behavior was so bad...)

The last week together we all went to Yosemite and stayed in a cabin about 100 yards from Grammy and PaPa's RV. Each day we went into the Yosemite Valley and did different hikes. Avery's spontaneous "Wow!" 's were my favorite part of the trip. She really liked the waterfalls! She thought the tunnels were pretty neat too, and would ask each day if we were going to drive through them. She would ride in Grammy's yellow bug car most days, and she is convinced that we need to get a yellow bug car for ourselves.

The first full day there (Sunday) it rained most of the day, and we went to Hetch Hetchy Dam. We walked over the Dam and found some Salimanders on the trail. There were at least 6 or 7 that we found, and they were so cute! Even with the weather, it was a beautiful place. I can only imagine how pretty it is on a sunny day!

Monday we went to the Yosemite Visitors Center, walked through the Ansel Adams Gallery, watched a great film on the history of Yosemite, and "hiked" to the Lower Yosemite Fall. A word to the wise - take a rain coat in the spring. You can't get within a 100 yards of any of the falls without getting wet! The force of the water is amazing! Avery was a trooper walking on the trails with us! She enjoyed all of the birds, but not the water so much!

Tuesday we went to see Bridal Veil Fall, the Awahnee Hotel and hiked to Mirror Lake. It was another beautiful hike. I wonder how many times I will say the word beautiful??? It just was! You look at the Valley, and all of the rock formations and just wonder what God was thinking when he put this all together. To have this many amazing rock formations all in one place is overwhelming. Anyhow - Mirror lake isn't what it used to be. Every year it gets smaller due to the sediment being carried down by the run off into the lake. But the view of Half Dome was spectacular (or was it beautiful??? :o) and we enjoyed sitting by the lake for a while. Another tourist was kind enough to take this photo for us:

Wednesday we hiked to Vernal Falls. It was a pretty good hill up to the falls and Avery decided that she didn't care to walk. Blake was in the Jogger sleeping and I carried Avery on my back. It was a bit of a workout! Half way up, Avery decided that she needed to go potty, so she and I turned around and headed back down the hill in search of one. I knew it was about a 1/2 mile away, so I hoped she would make it! We sang the "Wheels on the Bus" song to help distract her, but half way there she said, "Mommy I can't hold it any more!" So, I waited until there were no people walking by and I helped her water the ground. I felt a little bad about doing that in a National Park, but depserate times call for desperate measures... She felt much better after that and we waited at the bottom of the trail for everyone to come back down.

Thursday found us at the Mariposa Grove looking at the giant sequoias. It was amazing. The tram wasn't running yet, and we weren't up for the 2.5 mile hike to the visitor center, but we did part of the trail and got to see quite a few nice trees. My favorite is the Bachelor and the 3 Graces. There are few other giant sequoias behind the 3 Graces and I decided that one of them was the mother-in-law keeping a distant watch over her son (The Bachelor) and the other was the father-in-law keeping watch over the mother-in-law. Thankfully MY mother-in-law thought that was funny! I have a wonderful in-law family!

Friday we drove out to Glacier Point to see this spectacular view:

I think the picture speaks for itself.

We were in the Valley for 5 days, but it still wasn't enough time to see it all. We can't wait to go back! We are so grateful for the time we had with Jeff's parent's. Such wonderful memories were made and I love listening to Avery talk about the trip at random time throughout the day. We may not get much time with that side of the family, but this was definately QUALITY time.

My Goodness!

What a month it has been! So, we spent Easter weekend with my sister and her family. My brother drove with us and did a lot of the driving (thank you Brendon!) and we had a great time. The kids had fun hunting for Easter eggs in the back yard. We hid eggs, and little Elmo, Disney Princess and Batman containers all over the yard. Avery was a crack up about it. If she spotted a Batman container, she would purposely bypass it even though it had the same candy in it as the other ones! Such a girl! She was the same way at the "egg hunt" we went to on Saturday. It was a huge field that was broken into different sections for different age groups. At exactly 10am all of the kids ran into the appropriate area and picked up as many goodies as they could fit into their baskets. Each section had treats laying all over the ground in plain sight. I was worried that Avery wouldn't participate - she can be so shy, she wouldn't even sit on the Easter Bunny's lap that day, even though she was the one who asked if she could go see him! Tristan and Allie loved all over him! So when the time came for them to all go "hunting" I worried that she would freak out with the 100+ other kids around her since we couldn't go in and help her. Nope! She had a ball searching for all of the goodies. The girl was on a mission and would bypass 10 things to get to one specific thing. It was so funny.

At one point she was about 50 yards away and looked up to show us what she had found. I thought, "Here we go, she's gonna freak out". But no, she just smiled and waved what she had and kept on going! The whole hunt lasted about 5 minutes. Once all of the goodies had been snatched up, that was it! But it was so fun! And of course, as soon as it was over, they wanted a treat out of their baskets!

Once we got home from our visit with Auntie Sis and Uncle Mark, Jeff's parents came in to town. We had a wonderful time with them during the 3 weeks we had together, and Avery is still talking about them. A lot of good memories were made.