These are a few of my favorite things...!

One of Ava's birthday presents was a cute outdoor chair from Grandma Deb and Grandpa Whitey. However, it has been on back order for several months, and it finally showed up this week. It's got an attachable umbrella plus TWO storage pockets for all of the things a toddler on-the-go might need...and she loves it!


She also loves to play with the dogs' outdoor water bowl, as well as Spanky's tennis ball. I try to remember to dump the bowl out before she gets to it, but every once in a while, she ends up getting soaked!

Ava's also a big fan of books...here she's running around holding a book about a sleepy beagle (how appropriate.) I'm hoping that she'll enjoy reading as much as I do!

And when she tires of books, she likes to pick up my shoes and carry them around. Yesterday, she opened our closet door, took out my orange shoes, closed the door, and proceeded to run around with them. Ava might end up loving shoes...just like her Gramma Karen!

For some reason she likes to sit on the doggies' mat (where the indoor water bowl resides when Ava isn't running around)...and hold my Teva. And sometimes chew on it. We're trying to break that habit...yuck!

Scott and I bought her an indoor chair her birthday - she's been a climbing monkey the last few weeks, and she loves to stand on this chair, beat the window, and squeal. Here she's just kicking back, relaxing from a hard day at daycare!

Scott thought it would be cute to put her into one of his shirts and let her walk around. And actually, it was pretty funny! Luckily, she didn't trip over it...however, she did figure out how to get out of it pretty quickly!

Ava was riding her pony this morning and reading the paper at the same time. It's what every girl needs to know how to do by the time she's 1!

I've been off of work since July 31, and I had Ava at home for 2 of those days - we had so much fun hanging out and playing! The rest of the time, she was at daycare, and I caught up on a ton of projects at home. The biggest accomplishment was finishing Ava's first year scrapbook - yeah! One more thing I can check off of my 2009 resolution list!

The only bad thing that happened this week is that Ava took a nose-dive from her new outdoor chair, right into the concrete patio. She scraped up her nose, had a nice fat lip, and bled a bit. I know that this is all part of growing up, but it still made me feel bad. It also made me stock up our medicine cabinet a bit! Now we're ready for anything!