Picture Day

I try to make sure that on picture day at school, I get a pretty headshot of the kids so that if the pictures are super bad, we at least have a good shot from my camera. Here's how the girls looked on Wednesday.  It will be interesting to see how different the school pictures are from these....

Football Season

Those that know me well are probably very surprised to see the title of this post. But fear not! I'm still who I was before typing that! But....we did stray from the we-don't-really-like-watching-sports persona this week to go watch, what is in my opinion, the best of the best. We got to watch a middle school B team play some football. It was really FUN! The weather was wonderful, the sun wasn't in my eyes, and the kids actually played really well. Plus, we got to cheer on both teams. My friend Valerie's middle school was playing the school that one of our youth groupers plays for. Our kids had a great time too. I'm pretty sure this is the first football game they've been to and the first Shawn and I have been to since he came down for ACU Homecoming in 1997! I was a little concerned when we got there because within about 7 minutes of settling onto the bleachers, both girls were bored and complaining, but things lightened up once they realized we really were going to stay and not leave just because they wanted to. Maybe we'll actually try to go to a few games in the future....

 

We have a shot just like this from 1997...but I don't have a scanner to scan it in....take my word for it....we've gotten better with age!

 

Ava and Joel

 

Uriah and Levi...a whole heap of trouble in a little package!

 

Look!!!  I really was at the game!

 

 And a great shot of Stephen, the boy in our youth group, giving a teammate the good ol' elbow to the throat!

A few randoms

Here's two random pictures from today that just made me happy!

First up, there just isn't much that is cuter than a little boy in boots and Elmo undies.

 And second, my friend Valerie and I showed up to church this morning wearing almost identical outfits....except she had on strappy open toed shoes and I had on boots (thought she said she almost wore her boots!) so being the nerd that I am, I told her to wear the same outfit tonight except with boots and we'd take a picture!  We like to think we're just practicing for twins day next year at camp.

6th Birthday Extravaganza

 My sweet Ava turned 6 years old today!  It seems that we've been anticipating this number for months!  I think it is because we've used this birthday milestone for the last year to explain how long it was going to be until she started Kindergarten!  And now...it's finally here, and it sure didn't disappoint!  Before I begin the story of how this day unfolded I must back up to this last week.  She has daily been telling me explicit instructions for how we are to do things for her birthday....like an hour by hour, extremely specific play-by-play of exactly how things will happen.  At one point last night she was telling us exactly how to bring her her breakfast, like what kind of tray to put the food on....that specific!  I was getting perturbed with her and her divaish attitude and I started to correct her and stopped mid-sentence....a light bulb went off...she.is.a.mini.me.  I love to have every single tiny detail of an event totally planned out.  So, I smiled and told her to go on...and on...and on...with every single detail she wanted us to know about and then simply said "You're birthday is going to be wonderful tomorrow...just enjoy it!"  :)  So let's get down to the details.  First, she did say that she wanted a peacock birthday so I used that throughout the day. We started by bringing her breakfast in bed...per her instructions.  We allowed her to open one gift early.  She got a cute peacock dress, leggings, and headband which she loved. 

 Later in the day, I took her class cupcakes to celebrate her big day.  It was fun because she was the first to have a birthday in her class and her teacher did a really cute thing with blowing out fake candles.  Here are the cupcakes I took the class.  I found edible peacock feathers online and HAD to have them for her cupcakes.  Her whole class was very impressed with the feathers! 

 Sorry Ava's teacher....caught you off guard!

 

After school, we headed home to open her presents which she was BEYOND excited to get into.  We got her quite a few ornaments for her peacock Christmas tree that she'll have as her very own tree this year :)

 

I also found some peacock fabric a few months ago and set about to make her some piece of clothing with the fabric.  I LOVED how this dress turned out and Ava did too! 

Then we loaded up the kids and met Ava's best friend Joel, at Pump It Up for some playtime.

 We wore those kids out!  They were asking to go home at one point!  Lots of fun and we pretty much had the place completely to ourselves :)

 After playing their hearts out, we headed back to our house for pizza and ice cream.  Ava specifically stated that she didn't want a cake....she wanted ice cream.  Yesterday I took her to HEB and let her pick out three flavors of ice cream so she picked Neapolitan, Cotton Candy, and Mocha Java Chip.  She wanted a scoop of each so that's what we did.

Happy 6th Birthday Sweet Ava!  I have decided that I think I'm okay with her growing physically up, as long as she keeps that joy for life that she just seems to exude.  She is one of those people that truly lightens up a room when she enters and I am so proud that she belongs to us!

Potty Trainer

All kinds of things are changing in our home lately!  We are swiftly leaving behind Babyville and becoming the parents of 3 children, not 2 kids and a baby, but three children. Step one was that we took down both baby gates guarding the stairs.  Levi was officially able to open and close the gate upstairs and we had left it open accidentally a few times and he nimbly climbed his little body right up and down those stairs without a second look...much to my horror (at least the first time.)  He's only tumbled down some of the stairs once and has been quite cautious since then.  It's been nice to have them taken down except that my office is no longer my escape....he just comes right up after me and makes himself at home going through every single drawer I have in there.  The other major change we are beginning is potty training!  It all started last Thursday the 6th, after Ladies Bible Class.  One of the little girls, who's mother comes, is potty trained and she's just about to turn 2.  I didn't find out till later that night, that when her mommy took her to the bathroom, Levi went with them and watched very closely.  That night, he sat on the potty before his bath and peed in the potty!  We were all super excited and all five of us stood in the bathroom, jumping up and down and screaming really loud.  It almost seemed to alarm Levi and I was worried for a second that we may have caused damage to the process but after a few minutes, he seemed pretty proud of himself.  His reward was a Reese's Pieces which he loves, and I figure he needs every extra calorie we can get in him.  Then, his best friend at church started potty training a few weeks ago and as soon as I found out, I started watching for when his dad would take him to the potty and I'd send Levi in there to watch.  That seems to have done the trick because his friend was over the other day for a little while and Levi watched him go through the whole process and that was all it took.  He ended up going pee pee in the potty every time he had to go yesterday and stayed dry the entire day.   We even had to run errands and he used the public bathroom twice!!!  So we headed to Target and Gymboree to pick out the tiniest undies known to man...they are itty bitty(and they are still a little big!)  He got a pack of Sesame Street ones and immediately wanted to wear Cookie Monster (of course!)  We also got some with helicopters, some with airplanes, and some with raccoons on them at Gymboree.  He is very excited to be such a big boy and we are very excited to see the light at the end of the $35-per-box-of-diapers tunnel!