Valentines Party

We had our annual valentine's party with some friends on Friday. It was a fun little pajama party. We had a yummy crepe breakfast and then the kids exchanged Valentine's. This was actually the first year we bought Valentine's to give to friends. I kinda didn't know what I was doing but I figured it out and got them put together. I guess I forgot how the whole Valentines work with the candy and the seals. Next time I will get the ones that already have candy attached to them. :) It was fun hanging out with everyone and the kids had fun running around and playing hide and seek.

Happy 6 year Anniversary

February 12th was our 6th wedding anniversary! We didn't have any huge plans but since Valentines Day is so close we try and go out for our Anniversary and gets presents for Valentines Day. Our friends the West's watched the kids for us and we went to Cheesecake Factory. It's always a nice break to go out with out the kids! We had a great time.

Happy Anniversary babe, I love you the most!!


I hate asking other people to take our picture for some reason but I did it anyway. It took her three times trying to figure out how to work my camera and it's still blurry but it still works! At least we have a picture of us on our anniversary.

And just for fun this is a picture of us last year on our 5th anniversary. I don't know why I never posted it. It's fun to look back on! I miss my giant belly! :)

Ava

I can't believe my little Ava is almost 3! I just finished putting our first year blog book together and noticed I was much better at updating on actual important stuff that I want to remember. So I thought this would be the perfect time since Ava will be turning 3 on Tuesday!
Ava is definitely developing a strong little personality. I've always thought so but I've also had her speech lady, gymnastics teacher, and another lady we met tell me the same thing! I think one of them called her strong willed! :) Which isn't always a bad thing. And it's ok because I know she can be the sweetest little thing sometimes. She loves to play with toys, go to gymnastics, play with friends, draw and color(especially our family, candy canes, and circles), play at the park, build towers, and play princess's. She loves to do things as a family. If she is playing with one of us she always asks the other to come play too. She loves watching her shows, her favorites at the moment are Max and Ruby(in the song it says "Ruby and little brother Max" so I started saying "Ava and little brother Dresden" she thinks it's so funny and now she says it when it comes on, Olivia, Dinosaur Train, Sleeping Beauty, Barbie shows, and Word World.

She has become such a picky eater! If she could she would eat banana's, pop tarts, baby bel cheese, chicken nuggets, and turkey,crackers, and cheese every day! She loves juice too. She HATES water still and only drinks it at night because that's the only thing we give her after she brushes her teeth. And a few days ago she counted all the way to 13 with out missing any numbers! I was so proud of her.

She loves to play with and sometimes annoy Dresden. When we hear him wake up she has to be the first one up to get him. She says "don't worry Geggen(Dresden) At least it's not baby anymore, I'm coming. It's so sweet. She just plays in there with him til I come up. It's kinda nice! She loves to jump with him and give him snacks. She can be so sweet with out us even asking. She can also be mean though. She doesn't like him touching her princess's! She will throw him the most random toy/closest thing to her, when she doesn't want him to touch her stuff.

Lately she has been into surprising us. It's so funny, she holds something behind her back, and says "close you eyes mom, I surprise you". Then she waits a few seconds, pulls it out and says "surprise". She has started doing it with the most random things.
One of my favorite things about Ava is that she is so polite. I've always thought that but I really love when people watch her or work with her I get comments about how polite she is. She says, thank you, please, excuse me, and no thank you. Sometimes I'll ask her to pick something up and she'll say "no thank you"! I have to remind her that I wasn't asking I was telling! :)

Ava's speech has really improved! She can basically carry on a conversation and I can understand her. There are still those times where I have no idea what she is saying but if she keep talking I can figure it out. She had her big test to find out weather she quality's for speech through the school districts a few weeks ago. I had the meeting with the team on Wednesday and found out that she DOES qualify. Which is is good, I think it will be good for her and she will love going to preschool. I'm just sad that it's for those reasons. I was trying to hold back tears as they were telling me everything. It's just a hard for me to watch her go through it. I just don't ever want her to think she is different in a bad way. Of course she'll love going to a big girl school! They said she had to be lower in 2 of the 5 areas. Of course she was low in speech and the other was social. I tried really hard to push the social part. She plays well with other kids but I want her to be able to hold her own when other things happen. For those of you with girls you know they can be so mean sometimes! I want her to feel comforable keeping up with them. She is getting so good at saying "can I play with you". I've been so proud of her. The hard part is getting the other girls to say yes when there is more than one! :( I just think having friends is a very important thing! But I was excited to hear she was above her age range in motor skills(writing, drawing). And the other two she was right with-in her age range.
She will start classes on her birthday! She will go 4 days a week for 2 1/2 hours. Which seems like a lot of time. She also gets to ride the bus. I think that will be the hardest part! I think she will love that part but I guess we'll see.

Well that's alot about our little Ava! She is growing up so fast! We love you SO MUCH Ava!

She is so sweet to help me feed Dresden. Most the time I don't even ask, If I get up and there is food on the table she will scoot over and start talking to him and feeding him.
This is actually her bring nice, Dresden loves it too!

The ONE good thing about all the tile in our house...playing with cars!

Dancing with Daddy

Little buddies

I love watching these two together. They are starting to recognize each other and kinda play together. The other day we were at lunch at a friends and Madisyn was playing on this ride on toy. Dresden walked over and started pushing her. He even took a turn himself. It was pretty cute! Thanks for taking pictures Camille!

Blood Drive

Last weekend Painted Desert Golf was holding a blood drive and giving away a free round of golf if you donated blood. Eric and some of his friends went down so they could get some free golf. Unfortunately Eric didn't qualify because of an incident at school with someone else's blood. (gross)! They were nice enough to give him the free pass anyway! But we he got home he said they had talked about asking their wives to donate so they could get ANOTHER free round of golf. So Camille, Karrissa, and I headed down to do some good! I was pretty nervous to begin with but not as nervous as I was when another friend of ours passed out when she got out to the lobby, and I saw the size of the bag that needed to be filled! It looked so big! As I was giving my information I saw it and the lady could tell I was nervous so she said you don't have to if your not comfortable, and they will still give you a pass! What that sounded great so I turned around to consult with my friends through the glass! They took a sweet picture of me and then Camille talked me into it by telling me about all the good I was doing! :) Oh and not to be a wuss! So anyway we all went through with it and it turned out fine. The lade there was really nice and was taking pictures of us. We were there about 3 hours! It was actually really fun just hanging out and chatting with friends. We even got to go shopping after!

Ryan's 30th Birthday

Our friend Ryan Nelson celebrated his 30th birthday a few weeks ago and we were lucky enough to be invited! They really know how to throw a party! We started the night at Bucca de Beppo, where they treated us to a yummy dinner. We had never been there before, and it was such a fun place. After that we headed to their church to play some dirty thirty games. There was the paper bag game, basketball, word scramble, marshmallow toss, coco chug, and lemon squeeze and spit. By the end of the night my mouth was hurting from laughing so much! We had such a good time. I am proud to say I tied for first in the paper bag game! The coco powder chug was for sure funniest! The guys were coughing and spitting it out all over the place, except for Joe. Their eye's were red and watering for awhile after too. We ended with some delicious ice cream sandwich cookies. Thanks Becca and Ryan for such a great night.

Craig, Jackie, Becca, and Ryan

Eric, me, Kara, and Clay

John, Melanie, Joe, and Karrissa

Happy Boy

Dresden loves bath time! He always goes in the bathroom and tries to get in the tub. He was laughing at Eric and being so cute. He is getting so big I can't believe he is almost 1!! I seriously love these pictures!! Not many people get to see him when he is this happy!