A beautiful weekend and thoughts from the kitchen table

Sunday, after church we stopped for a quick lunch and then headed home to make a quick change of clothes to have pictures with Adam's family. Saturday and Sunday were such beautiful days that neither Adam nor myself wanted to spend time indoors. After the pictures with Adam's family we headed to the beach.

It had been a while since Ava last visited the beach. The last time we went she was just starting to get into the whole "playing with sand" thing. This time, when I first put her down she was a little hesitant. I think it was the uneveness of the ground, but she quickly warmed up to it and absolutely loved playing in it.

Last year it was almost a hassel to take her to the beach because of everything she had to have. This year will be much easier and with the way she reacted to the beach I see many many many beach trips in our future.

It has been such an unusal winter and even though I am a huge fan of the cold weather I utterly adored these two days of sunshine and warmth. Saturday, Adam had to finish up installing some things at the store, so Ava and I played outside. She was a dirty little girl by the time we came in to get a bath and eat dinner. We also put up a birdfeeder outside so she can watch the birds.

There hasn't been much other exciting news on the homefront. We bought a new kitchen table and I love it! It is so comfortable and we love sitting at it (which is nice because now I can talk Adam into sitting at it and talking to me while I fix or clean up dinner- haha!) We have also been studying a series at church called Balanced and its all about money managment. One of the messages in the series was strictly about giving. During our small group that week we talked about becoming more giving families. Our family sponsors a child through Compassion and we plan on sponsoring another one when Ava turns 3 (thats the youngest they can be when you "adopt" them) so she and this little girl can grow up together, but another thing I had mentioned was how I would like to become more thoughtful to the random person (ie. paying for a family next to us when eating out). One of the couples said they had friends who budgeted a set amount each month and they would let their kids decide who and how to give that money each month. Ava is still young for that, but Adam and I both really liked that idea. We talked about (when she is able) to allow her to choose who to give the money to and unless it is for something we do not believe in, we will not question her judgement. What an impact this has the ability to make both in her life and in someone elses!