Good Friends

There isn’t much I’m more thankful for in my life than good friends.

 

Especially those friends you can be real with, and laugh with.

And you know, I’m even thankful for the times they poke fun….

I’m thankful God allowed their paths to cross with ours, because there isn’t any other reason we should have ever known each other, we all know our lives would be a lot less interesting if we didn’t!

Dress-Up

Ava is truly a girlie-girl! She loves all things girl and when her Daddy played dress up with her, you couldn’t have made her day any better even if you had tried. It wasn’t long before she came out with this ensemble on and twirled around for me! It was definitely a mix and match kind of outfit. The bow and tutu were part of her 1st birthday outfit…I can’t believe that has been a year and a half ago! The wings were from her Gigi and the slippers were under the tree from Santa this past Christmas.

***I should put in a disclaimer, that even though she is a girlie-girl, she is also growing up around a hardware store, it’s nothing to see her using tools to “build” something :)

I have to admit I love this princess stage, I’m dreading the day she will outgrow it. I know more and more girls (young- ages 5/6- maybe even younger) are trading in their princess attire for a more grown-up-girl-with-an-attitude look and I am going to try my hardest to keep that from happening as long as possible. I could get on a soapbox about all the things the world will throw at her as she grows up, all the lies and deception it will try to get her to believe, so I secretly hope she remembers how she feels at this point when she believes she is a princess and remembers that feeling when the world tries to tell her she doesn’t matter or that she isn’t good enough. We all know that growing up is hard and call me crazy, but I’m all for protecting my child from it as long as possible. I know there are some mom’s who aren’t too keen on the whole princess thing, and far be it from me to tell them otherwise, but there is something wholesome and innocent about girls wanting to be a princess waiting for their prince charming and what’s even more notable is that in every princess movie (at least the ones we have in this house) the princesses’ attitudes are always cheerful and kind. Why shouldn’t we raise our little girls to have the same type of attitudes?

We have had more tea parties than I can count and have danced like Cinderella (and now her new favorite, Belle) and Bippiddi-Boppiddi-Boo’d it until we were bippiddi’d out. Secretly, I’m most excited about seeing what she makes her daddy do as she gets older. I remember doing my dad’s hair and clipping every hairclip and bow in his hair…and I don’t remember how ridiculous he looked, all I recall is how much fun I had doing it. Ahh, Adam’s life is changing by the second thanks to his little girl.

Wordless Wednesday

 

New Years

What do you get when you heat an oven with an aluminum pan in it? Nothing! However, you get a big mess when you accidentally leave it sitting in the plastic top!!

This was the mess we walked into at my grandmother’s house on New Years Day! Too many women in the kitchen if you ask me :) I’m still not sure if she was able to get it off. It wouldn’t break off nor could you wipe it off when it hot because you couldn’t get close enough. We might be back next year and she still have remnants of plastic in her oven!!

Ava hadn’t been feeling very well, so we bathed her and put her in her jammies and headed over to Grammy’s at the beach. Since it was just a few of us eating we figured she would be more comfortable in her pjs. Of course she had to have a bow in her hair, a bow always makes a girl feel better, right?! haha! Ava never acts like she feels bad, if she ever does, you KNOW something is terribly wrong! She played cards and read books and played with a puzzle. Of course, being the youngest one there by 22 years makes you the center of attention and she eats. it. up.

Aunt Ro-Ro fixed the traditional New Years Day food, I ate my black eyed peas and greens. Adam didn’t eat any greens so I told him if I come into an enormous amount of money in 2011 he can’t have any ;) Meggie baked a cake that we ended up putting candles on to let her blow out since her birthday was December 3rd. Nothing like having to make your own cake, huh?! We had a nice time and headed home before it got too late since Adam had to be at the church early the next morning. Ava and I ended up staying home from church since she was running a fever. We did watch church online and she kept looking for her daddy on stage since I had told her he was playing (the live feed is from Northpoint in Alpharetta- so he obviously wasn’t playing on that particular stage). It ended up being a relaxing weekend and a nice way to bring in the new year, I just wish Ava had been feeling better.

Zoo

 

We have annual passes to the zoo and it makes it so nice (and easy) to go whenever we feel like it. We decided to take Ava on New Year’s Eve, little did we know they had a HUGE party planned and they call it Noon Year’s Eve.

 

We had told Ava when we were on our way that there was a new baby giraffe, of course I didn’t give my child enough credit because I told Adam she probably won’t realize it is a baby since, you know, a baby giraffe doesn’t really look much smaller than an adult giraffe. She wanted to head to the giraffes as soon as we arrived and she spotted the “baby” immediately- I should have known better than to think she wouldn’t have figured it out- way to go mama!

We were able to see the lion really well. He was up walking around and got pretty close to where we were standing. Usually they are laying around and not really moving a whole lot.

Ava loves the elephants as well. She thinks they are funny since we went one time and they were splashing themselves with the water. This time they were eating and it had started to get crowded due to the party so we didn’t stay long.

The nicest part about our annual passes is that we don’t feel like spending an hour or two at the zoo and leaving is wasting money so there isn’t any pressure to see everything and spend all day there. Another nice thing is the ability to skip the ticket line, which was extremely long on this particular day!

Growing up my favorite animals to see at the zoo were the flamingos, which Ava calls “mingos”, she seems to like them, but it might be because I told her they were my favorite. Now everytime she sees them she says, “mommy’s favorite”.

We had promised her a ride on the “round-round”, fortunately, unlike the fair, parents can accompany their child for free, because you know at the fair I’m certainly riding for myself, and if I didn’t have a child I would still ride it, right? ha!

We ended up stopping by the party briefly- very briefly. We were glad we did since we ran into some very dear friends, but since most things were too old for Ava and we had already been there for a little while, we knew Ava was getting close to naptime we headed out. She did score this party hat that she insisted on wearing on the ride home!

That evening we had a fire in our firepit and set off a few small fireworks, but Ava had started feeling bad and was super clingy so we ended up going in and putting her to bed. I think we were all in bed by 9:30- haha! So much for seeing the ball drop!

Park

 

One of the ways to speak my child’s love language is to spend time with her at a park- any park will do, just as long as it is a park. The weather had been so nice while we were off that we decided to take Ava and spend the afternoon with her there.

She loves the slides and had so much fun going up and down them. But more than the slides she loves to be around other kids. Since school was out for Christmas break, there were several kids running around, all of them older than her by a few years.

She would follow them back and forth between the playsets and try to do exactly what they did, which also made Adam and myself keep a close eye on her because they were much bigger than she was.

They have been doing a lot of work at the park and have added a few new things. We saw a trail that went through the woods so we decided to walk through it. Apparently they have some sort of low ropes course throughout the area and there was one particular part that had a low balance beam. We put Ava on it to see if she could walk across it. She was a little too nervous to take a step, she wouldn’t hardly stand on it without holding someone’s hand!

We spent about an hour to an hour and a half there, until Ava started to get sleepy and we headed home to let her take a nap.

 

I had taken Ava to the park a few times before and her grandparents have taken her, but Adam hasn’t ever been with us, I think she liked showing her daddy one of her favorite places to go!

A Week With No Agenda

 

Sunday, December 26th, history was made. The last Jaguar game of the season it snowed! and it wasn’t because the game was somewhere other than Florida, it was in Jacksonville and it snowed! We decided not to take Ava because we were afraid she would be too cold and it was a smart decision! Adam and I went and other than my ski pants I was dressed just like I would have been to go skiing! It was cold! I don’t have any pictures, I didn’t even take my camera, I didn’t want to have to worry about carrying it around.

Here’s another interesting fact: in the 2010 season, the Jaguars had both the hottest and coldest game (in Jacksonville, in team history). Two total opposite ends of the spectrum and they happened in the same season! Pretty cool, huh? We couldn’t tell Ava where we were going since we knew she would be upset she couldn’t go, especially since this was the last game of the season. She actually asked just the other day when we were going to a Jaguar game…poor thing has to wait a long time before we can go again. I’m sure her daddy will take her to some training camp practices- good thing she loves football ;)

Adam is off the week between Christmas and New Years, so I took off part of that week as well. We didn’t have any plans, which was so nice, especially after the craziness of Christmas! We did a lot of eating, and playing with new toys, and just simply hanging around.

Ava is in a sticker phase right now, she loves stickers! So we obviously spent a lot of time playing with stickers.

 

We also played dress up and had tea parties, Ava serves the best tea!

We did spend one afternoon taking all the Christmas down and putting it away and another morning was spent cleaning, but other than that we didn’t do much else. I love going places, doing things, and exploring, but it was nice to not have to leave the house at all!  Christmas and Football are very similar to me. I am always super excited for them to come, but ready to see it go when its over.

Another favorite activity of Ava’s is puzzles, she is getting to be really good at them. I think by the end of the week we had stayed in our pajamas 80% of time. Ava enjoyed having her mommy and daddy all the time.

Christmas Day

Like usual, our first stop on Christmas is my Nana’s for breakfast. Our family has grown and this year with all of us, there was 20 people. This is a smaller version of our Christmas Eve with Memaw. Each of Memaw’s daughters do this with their immediate family on Christmas morning.

It’s funny because when we go into the living room to open presents, it’s like we have assigned seats, everyone sits in their same spots, year after year. Our family has obviously outgrown “our” couch, but we refuse to do anything different-haha!

Adam got a tool chest, can you believe this man has been married into an Ace Hardware family for going on 8 years and it wasn’t until this Christmas that he received an Ace tool chest?!

Ava received a music player with a microphone and has been singing away ever since. We loaded it with songs that she loves and she will dance and sing into the microphone, so cute! She also got some books and a movie and Tinkerbell get-well kit!

The one toy she asked for repeatedly since the first time she saw it was a Mickey Mouse Choo-Choo. She told Nana she wanted it and I have to say, she might have been more excited about this gift than anything else she got. We opened it right away and I believe it now has a permanent home in our living room, it is played with everyday.

I know you probably don’t know this, but we are HUGE Jaguar fans- haha Surprise right? Well, Ava’s first Christmas, my dear cousin bought Ava some Dallas Cowboys socks and it has been an ongoing joke between us. This year, after Brian came to a Jaguar game and said he didn’t have a Jaguar shirt, Ava KNEW what she wanted to get him for Christmas, so guess what this Dallas fan now owns? Yep! A Jaguar shirt :)

Ava and Raeleigh are best buds when they get together. They both had to check on each other’s gifts and make sure they were okay with what they got-haha! Ava wanted to show Raeleigh how to use her new toys, these 2 are such a mess! So, funny story...We are all sitting in the living room, most, if not all of the presents have been opened, and all of the sudden, Stacey asks where Raeleigh and Ava are....haha! No one had even realized they were gone!!! I was closest to the back rooms so I jumped up to look and didn't see them at first glance in the family room, so I happened to see a reflection out of the corner of my eye in Nana's dressing room...ya'll they were in her dressing room on the phone!!! Lol! I stepped in there and they both looked at me and knew they had been caught! haha! It was so cute and funny!

We tried again to get pictures of the girls with their reindeer, but after about a dozen pictures we gave up, there was just too much going on, too much to see and do!

After leaving Nana’s, we rode Ava around in the car for about 45 minutes to let her sleep, otherwise she wouldn’t have another chance until bedtime. Then we headed to Adam’s parents’ house to spend a couple hours with them. Ava opened a few more gifts and had a good time visiting with everyone.

This girl loves her sunglasses, such a little diva!

After we left Adam’s family, we headed back to our house, we decided to change the location of my Mom’s side of the family from her house to our house. Ava is the only little one, and being gone all day is hard, so we decided to have everyone over to our house so she could enjoy playing with her new toys.

Aunt RoRo and Meggie brought in this huge gift, they had to use 2 different kinds of wrapping paper- haha! They ran out of one while wrapping it and had to use another one- leave it to Meggie ;)

Ava was excited to unwrap it when it was finally time to open presents. We let her open this one first. Under the wrapping paper was the biggest baby bed you have ever seen.

Ava kept trying to crawl inside, I guess she just couldn’t believe a bed this big was for her baby dolls and not her! It’s great because it has wheels and she can move it around the house really easy.

Adam’s gift from Aunt Robin and Meghan came in a pink bag this year! Only because I had told her I wanted a gift card to VS and Adam was agreeing that was what I wanted ;0 so she decided to make a bigger joke out of it.

Inside the bag was another wrapped gift :)

Ava also received a cute tutu and headband, she wanted to put it on right away and twirl around for everyone, and she did just that, she always says she is dancing like Cinderella when she dances :)

I was pleasantly surprised again this year by Aunt Ann with another signed copy of a Nicholas Sparks book.

My Aunt out did herself this year and whenever she bought a gift card for anyone she would but them in a takeout bag or box- so funny watching to see what everyone got!

Ava is princess crazy and loves the part of Cinderella where she is transformed by the fairy godmother (which Ava affectionately calls- boppity-boo) so this gift was just perfect!

One tradition we do with my mom’s family is the money drop, well, last year Ava was too young to participate, but this year I was determined she could do it and I had fully planned to bow out and help her, but they insisted I continue this year because she wouldn’t fully understand, it would be more like practice for next year. She did amazingly well and picked up a little over $6, which was much better than I expected :)

After everyone left and I cleaned up we were exhausted and had a wonderful day, full of lots of laughs and gifts. We had one very tired little girl when it was all said and done. We didn’t have church the next morning, but we did have a Jaguar game that afternoon, so it was nice that we didn’t have to get up early and hit the ground running! Christmas is always a holiday I don’t feel like we enjoy the way I would like to enjoy it, because we are so busy! We are blessed to have so much family, but it’s very tiring.