Catch Up

Wow! It's been a while. Sorry. We've been busy just being busy. Rhett has 2 finals this week and he's done with his 1st semester back to school! It's gone fast....at least for me. Thanksgiving was great! we spent Thanksgiving day and most of the rest of the weekend with my family. My cousin Blake got married the Saturday after (congrats!), so it was a busy weekend. That Saturday afternoon we went out to Rhett's parents to visit with all of his family that was in town. EVERYONE was there! It was so great to see all of his cousins and their kids. We had never even met some of them yet. It's been a great month. I can't believe Christmas is almost here! Here's some random pics of stuff that's been going on lately....

Cuddling with Daddy

She LOVES to give kisses. Especially when sh'es teasing someone else by giving them!

Playing in her baby doll's crib. Sad that she actually fits in it!

Her new favorite thing is to put on my or Rhett's shoes and walk around in them...

Chillin with the Sippey. This is what she typically looks like.

ok...so I know you've seen her bounce in this before, but I just think it's hilarious. She now does it sitting on her butt instead of on her knees. Pretty funny...

Halloween!

This year for Halloween Ava was a lady bug. She was soooo cute! She had a great time trick-or-treating. She caught onto the idea really quick. The first house she had no clue what was going on, but by the 2nd one she was a seasoned pro. She went for a little while with her cousins Shaelynn and Rylee. They were so good to wait for Ava to get to the next house. She was kinda slow because she insisted on walking to the next house by her self. She also insisted on grabbing candy from the buckets by herself. But, she ALWAYS made sure to tell them thank you for her treats. She really had a great time. Here's some pics.

She didn't like standing in our giant pumpkin!

Helping Dad carve her own little pumpkin

She scored big time on the candy....or should I say....Mom and Dad scored big time on the candy.

18 Month Pics

I had my good friend Talia take 18 month pics of Ava. She does an AMAZING job! If you haven't seen her work, you really should! She has a blog (http://www.taliadraperphotography.blogspot.com/ ) and a website (http://www.taliadraperphotography.com/ ). Talia was definately a trooper as Ava would NOT cooperate. She mostly just screamed. However, because Talia just is that good, we ended up getting some great shots! She litereally had a window of about 2 minutes where Ava was actually some-what cooperating. Thanks Talia! Enjoy~

I had to add these last few just to show you what she was like the majority of the time. The first one depicts most of our day!

You want me to do what?!

Did you say we're done?! YES!!!!!!!!

Mischief....

Yesterday Rhett and I were doing a little fall cleanup in our front yard. We planted a bunch of tulips and daffodils. Anytime we are outside it is a nightmare keeping Ava in our yard. She ALWAYS goes over to the next door neighbor's and knocks on their door. I have no idea why she has this obsession, but I can NEVER keep her in our yard. After MULTIPLE times of chasing her down we decided to let her play in dad's car for a couple minutes while we finished our project. Since the car was literally right next to us and all the doors were open we thought all was great. She played in there for several minutes making car noises and "driving" the car. A couple minutes went by and things were just far too quiet. So I asked Rhett to go check on her cuz I couldn't see her head poking above the steering wheel anymore. Rhett goes over and I hear "Oh AVA! What do you think you're doing little lady?!" Then he calls for me to come look at this. And this is what I saw....In the exact order I saw it....

I looked in the car.... Ava smiling and laughing.....

I thought "what's wrong with this? I don't see any problems."

Then she picked up the pens and pencils.

Then I looked at the stereo......

Evidently in those few short moments of quiet she had been stuffing all sorts of treasures into Rhett's tape deck! We found about 4 pens, 1 extra pen cap, a key chain card and a couple other things! I was dying laughing..... Rhett didn't think it was quite as funny since he was the one cleaning all the stuff out.

I decided to post this pic because it cracks me up. We decided to go for a walk the other evening. It was a little chilly outside, so we dressed Ava nicea nd warm. The reason it cracks me up is because I don't think ONE article of clothing on her matches another article. She looks like she came straight from the 80's!

The newest trick....

A couple weeks ago Ava found her old baby bouncer in the basement and HAD to have it brought upstairs. Here's what she enjoys doing the most in it....

First Pumpkin

We picked the first pumpkin of the season from our garden today.... it's actually pretty big. Here's some pics.

Ava's soooo proud of her giant pumpkin!

Hitchin' a ride to the front yard.... that's a long way to walk for little legs.

All in place in the front yard. Don't worry.... that red on Ava's face is the strawberry she picked out the strawberry patch on the way to the front yard. It was a long journey and she had to stop for a snack. ;) Don't ask me why the top button on Rhett's shirt is done up.... I have no idea. LOL!!!!!

This Is The Place

On Labor Day Me & Rhett, my Mom & Dad took all the grandkids to This Is The Place Heritage Park. It was mighty hot, but the kids seemed to enjoy it. There was lots of activities for them to do. Here's some pics from the day's adventures.

Rhett, Ava, Rylee & Shaelynn riding on the mini train

I Love this pic....they look sooooo funny!

He's being such a good sport!
Ava riding the big train to the next activity.
At the petting zoo.....Ava didn't want ANYTHING to do with the animals!
Rylee & Shaelynn loved it!
Ava & Brayden riding "Lucky" the horse. Ava did like this part.
Shaelynn & Rylee riding "honey" the horse.
Grandpa & the girls in school... learning how to write I guess.
Evidently Ava enjoys school.....
Brayden getting a "shave".
Shaelynn & Brayden making candles
Grandpa teaching the girls how to stamp leather
Wait a minute.....I thought Davy Crockett died a long time ago???

18 Months old!!

I will be posting some pics tomorrow!


Okay......so Ava is now a year and a half! Can you believe it?! Time goes by soooo fast! I just laugh at her everyday. She is sooo funny and always surprising me with new things she has learned to do. It's great! Here's some updated info on our girl......

-She is STILL 18lbs! Which puts her in the 2% for her weight. (still backward facing car seat. Poor thing's gunna be 3 before she can face forward!)

-She is 29.5inches. Which puts her in the 10% for her height! YES!!! She actually went up 7% since her last visit.

-She doesn't ever stop talking. She can say many more words than my last posting. Only now, she has added a few sentences. The doctor couldn't believe how much she was saying while we were at the appointment. He even asked me "does she ALWAYS talk this much, using that many sentences?" I didn't know whether to take that as a good or bad thing. jk.
She says:
No. This is mine!
I love you.
I want to get down.
What are you doing?
Where is Daddy?
Where's Grandpa?
What's that?

-She is extremely independent and wants to do EVERYTHING herself.

-She loves books. Her favorite is The Wheels on Barney's Bus. (I really wish she'd find a new favorite).

-She can do the dance to "If you're happy and you know it". And "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes'.

-She loves to play at the park and has NO FEAR when it comes to going down the big slides.

-She recently found out that she can run. Although, it's not exactly running. he he

-If you ask her to go to her room and get a diaper, book, or toy she will almost always immediately go and do it and come right back.

-Her sippy cup is her BEST friend. We aren't allowed to go ANYWHERE without the sippy.

-She HATES nursery.

First Sentence!

Sorry I don't have a picture to put along with this, but I had to post it simply for memory sake. So, Ava has always been very vocal. She's always jabbering....never stops. However, until recently we have had no idea what she has been saying. This was the case up until a couple of weeks ago when we understood perfectly what she was saying! It started when me, ava, my mom, and my dad took a little trip to Walmart. I decided I wanted to go look at what bikes, or little scooters they had for kids Ava's size. We got to the bikes and got down a really cool little scooter thing that had all kinds of buttons, noise makers, etc. Ava looked at it for a second and then promptly went over to the radio flyer trikes they had on the bottom shelf. She managed to pull one off the shelf and was trying to sit on it. Since she's about 1/2 the size she should be for her age ;) ;), naturally it was WAY to big for her. I put it back on the shelf and told her we were going to get the other one. And that's when it happened!! She uttered the first actual sentence I had heard come out of her mouth! Ok...so she didn't exactly utter it ... she YELLED it! and it was.... NO!!!!! THIS IS MINE!!!! as she ran back to the trike and tried to pull it down. My mom and I just looked at each other like..."did she just say what I think she said?" Sure enough... clear as clear could be. Such a proud, yet disturbing moment for a mom. Your child's first real sentence... and that's what it was. "No! This is mine!". We are going to have our hands full!

New Earrings!

So I decided that today would be the day that I would get Ava's ears pierced. So, my sister and I took her down and got it done. I must say, she looks adoreable! She did a lot better than I thought she would. She cried for about 3 seconds and then was done. Here's some pics of the outing....

She's not quite sure about the lady puting the marks on her ears!

We distracted her with some candy!
ALL DONE!!

Giving them their first cleaning!

Checking out her new bling in the mirror.

Party Times

At the beginning of August we had quite the birthday party for my friend Talia. We set up a giant air slide and bounce house that we had borrowed from another friend. Everyone had a great time! Here's some pics that were taken the next day when my family came over. I'm still looking for the pics I took at the party, but as soon as I find them, I will post them.

Rhett has officially finished his first week back to school. So far, things seem to be going pretty well. Thanks to our friend BJ (whom is a math teacher) rhett is feeling a lot more comfortable with his trig class. Thanks a million BJ!!!! His other classes consist of Intro to civil engineering, chemistry, and chemistry lab. He says that he doesn't think those ones are going to be too tough. Time will tell I suppose. There's a lot of the semester left still! I'm sure he'll do great!

The Reaction...

As some of you know, early Saturday morning Ava had an allergic reaction to an unknown cause. She is totally fine now, but it was really scary! Friday night she had a couple of hives (but, nothing real serious) and a low-grade fever. I gave her some motrin, and didn't really think much of it. Just figured the hives were because of the fever. We let her sleep with us... so of course we finally all got to sleep around 1:30am. At about 5:30 we wake up to her just freaking out! We couldn't get her to calm down and she was just thrashing all over the place. We figured she was probably constipated and decided to do a suppository (this used to be a common occurance). We turned on the light (really dim) and did the suppository. A couple minutes later she was still freaking out, so I decided to go get her a sippy. I got back to the room and flipped on the light all the way. I went to the bed, picked her up, and turned her around (her back was facing me) to give her the sippy and I noticed her lips were HUGE!!! We couldn't see this before because the light was so dim. At the same moment I noticed that she was COVERED in hives as well! I yelled to Rhett that we needed to get to the hospital immediately! We jumped in Rhett's company truck and away we went. When we got to the hospital they gave her some epinephrine, Benadryl, and Prednisone. Her hives went down a little bit later, but her lips stayed pretty big for most of the day. Here are some pics we took while at the hospital. Sorry they may be blurry... they were taken with Rhett's cell phone. Luckily she is way better now, but they are having us keep her on the Benadryl and Prednisone for the next few days. We have NO IDEA what caused the reaction. Hopefully we can figure it out, so we don't have to go through that again! She gave us quite a scare!

On a more exciting note..... Ava went pee on the potty for the first time today!!!! Can't wait until she's all the way potty trained!