Go, Go, Goers!

We've had a fun week!  After Mommy had her night out to see New Moon on Monday, and a happy hour with co-workers on Tuesday, it was all family, all the time!  My parents drove up from KC to share in the Thanksgiving dinner with Scott's family (mom's side.)  As an added bonus, we were also able to spend part of Thanksgiving evening with the Goers' family (Scott's dad's side), too.  Needless to say, we were all full and wiped out by bedtime.  It's such a blessing to be able to spend both Thanksgiving and Christmas with my parents this year...that hasn't happened in a really long time - 15 years maybe?? We also managed to take our family picture for the Christmas card - of course it was FREEZING when we took it, so we weren't able to spend too long to get that "perfect" shot...but we're happy with the final results. Here are a few pictures from the past few days: Scott and I just finished putting up the tree...the lights, c...

I've been taking a lot of pictures this week, but not many of Ava...mostly they've been pictures of the dogs. I'm trying to capture an image of the three of them to use in our Christmas cards. Talk about difficult! I think I finally got one after three days of trying! One of Ava's favorite things to do is run into our bathroom, open one of the vanity drawers, and pull out my headbands. She managed to break my favorite black one, so I decided it was time for her to get her own collection. I found a set of five fabric covered bands that are perfect! Within the first five minutes of playing with them, the pink one was broken (of course it's the one that would match most of her clothes...sigh.) When we pick up the house at night, we've managed to find the headbands getting taken for a walk in the dolly stroller, hitching a ride in the pony's basket, and sometimes taking a drink from the dog's water bowl. That was the best $3 I've spent on her yet! ...

I finally have overcome my tech issues, and have downloaded my photos from Saturday afternoon's playdate with Dylan and Lisa (and a few new friends...)  Enjoy! The other little girl (Leah) that was there was immediately taken with Ava.  She did a great job keeping Ava entertained!  As soon as we got inside, Ava picked up a bear from lost & found and carried it around with her for a while. Dylan, Leah, Ava, the bear, and Leah's brother (I didn't catch his name) on the fire truck. Here's Ava's future prom date, Dylan, at the cash register in the grocery store - all the kids loved playing with the fake money!  Notice Ava carrying around the fabric softener bottle...is it too early to teach her how to do laundry?? This school bus was so cool - lots of neat gadgets to keep the kids busy. We almost had an interactive moment here between Dylan and Ava.  Almost. So close, yet...not quite playing together... Chalk + ...

So, craptacular week #1 continued into week #2.  There was a power outage on Monday that blew the power supply to my PC, making it completely unusable.  No power = no PC.  Scott's been letting me use his PC, but I miss having my stuff readily available.  I'm learning to be flexible...deep breath in, deep breath out.  The irony is that I'm getting a new laptop in a few weeks, but I still need to be able to power up the PC to get all of my pics, Quicken, etc. to move to the new laptop.  But, it's fine - I have the power supply part, and now just need to corral Scott when he gets home from hunting so he can install it for me. But, onto happy Ava news...she's biting again.  This time it was ME.  She bit my wrist and top of my hand yesterday when I picked her up to get her ready to leave.  It didn't draw blood, but I was really hoping she was moving past that stage...but I guess she's not!  Maybe she's part vampire.  There ha...

It's been a crappy week.  There was another round of layoffs at BI, and one of my favorite people to work with was let go.  So, now the office won't be nearly as fun - but I'm thankful to still have a job. It's hunting opener up north, so Scott has been gone all weekend, but he did get a deer yesterday!  He got one a few weeks ago down south with his bow, as well.  I'm not really sure where we're going to put all of this venison!  With our wood floors, Ava's been slipping and sliding around a lot in her socks, so I decided she need a pair of slippers.  The bottoms are pretty fluffy, so it's going to take some time to mold them to her feet.  In the meantime, Scooter the Cat loves wearing them!    Ava was having fun piling up Scooter, Dollie, and Elmo into the rocking chair.  I wonder if she's too young to play with my Cabbage Patch Dolls??  I know Scott's hoping for a tomboy, but she might like playing with dolls, t...

Last year Ava was a cute lil' chick for Halloween, but she never really had the chance to show it off, since she was only 4 months old at the time.  This year; however, she was out and about, begging for candy like you wouldn't believe!  I picked up a super cute butterfly costume for her at Old Navy...plus it was a warm, fleecy costume, so she could actually spend some time outdoors in it. Here's her cute daytime Halloween outfit, courtesy of cousin Izzy! We first stopped at Grandma Deb and Grandpa Whitey's house last night for a quick visit. And then we stopped over at Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Sandy's house...they had picked up a kissing Elmo for her.  She's been kissing us and the dogs a lot lately, so this is perfect for her!  Elmo makes exactly the same sound that Ava does to kiss...a big loud "MAH!" Then we went onto cousin Greg and Dawn's house for some yummy potato soup...and a glimpse of the future when Ava is older. ...

After seeing how Ava did in Isabel's booster seat last weekend, we made the decision to have her join us at the table for meals.  I had NO idea there were so many different kinds of booster seats out there...I did quite of bit of online research to see what our options were.  I was happy that we found one that matched our kitchen decor so well! Ava made the transition with ease...she seems so happy to be sitting right at the table with us.  I also bought her a couple of cute Mickey and Minnie Mouse plates, which have separate areas, made just for dipping.  Ava is getting very good at dipping her food/spoon into ketchup/syrup/ .  She finally understands that food goes on the end of the fork/spoon, and THEN you put it into the mouth.  It's been a really big mealtime week for us! This also means that mealtimes have become a little messy...here she is dipping, and still in her highchair. We've made the move to the booster seat!  I was so hap...