Happy Halloween!

We've had a busy day Halloween-ing around here. We started with pumpkin coloring and carving this morning and ended with a fairly successful trick-or-treating outing. This year was Ava's first time for trick-or-treating, but she did the dressing up thing last year.

First, Daddy carved while Ava colored our pumpkin.

Later, Ava prepared for the night's festivities by practicing her monster walk.

For trick-or-treating, Ava dressed up as Minnie Mouse.

We started with a visit to the Hoffmans and then went to several houses on our block to gather some treats. Ava wasn't real sure what was going on at the first house, but by the second bowl of candy, she was a pro.

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

White Family Camp-In

We had such a nice time visiting San Antonio to celebrate Poppie's 93rd birthday at the White Family Camp-in. The lodge was beautiful, the weather was gorgeous and the fun was flowing freely.

White Family Camping tradition...Jack Daniels + Fire.

We took about 300 pictures during our trip, so I'm going to let a few of them do the talking. :-)

Ava experienced her first hero-worship during camp-in.

Elizabeth was a great sport and spent a lot of time playing with Ava.

Barbara and Judy took charge of teaching Ava life-skills. "Eat dessert first!"

Quiet moments with Poppie & Mahgie.

After opening confetti poppers at the official birthday celebration.

After 5 years of work, Matt finally delivered the family's 8mm movie collection on DVD.

The world was Ava's oyster on this trip. She spent all day outside for two days.

Needless to say, she was exhausted at the end of it!

We found a chameleon in the grass on the second morning.

Ava let him crawl all over her and then, once we released him, spent most of the rest of the morning looking for him.

I love this photo. I took it.

I hope I have half the sense of humor and a quarter of the spunk Poppie does when I'm 93.

I'm grateful to be a part of his family.

Not to get too sappy, but isn't this just what it's all about?

Thanks for the fun, White Family! Happy Birthday, Poppie!!

Not Quite Two

So, here it is the end of October and Halloween is looming large this weekend. Of course, the other thing looming large, the thing we don't think of as often, is Ava's second birthday. Invitations are motoring their way across town and across the country, but it seems like we ought to take a pause and think about who our little girl is at not quite two. Conceivably, she'll be an entirely different person once we leap across that yawning chasm.

So, at 23 months....

~Ava is speaking in short sentences.

*"More yogurt please, Mommy."

* "No, no Janice school."

*"No, no diaper change."

* "Ok, Libby? Ok? Sorry, Libby, sorry." (By the way, Matt & I are sorry, too, Libby.)

~Our smart girl is going pee in the potty about once a day. Her reward is toilet paper to wipe with. Useful and economical!

~Ava has a constant wardrobe of yoga pants, t-shirt, sunglasses, and backward hat. Oh, and Mommy's heels.

~Ava's been sleeping in a big girl bed for three weeks. We sneaked in there tonight to get some pictures. Where's Ava?

~Ava's becoming a bit of a TV freak. Her favorite shows are Sesame Street, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Word World, and Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Chitty-Chitty, especially.

~The girlie loves her computers but she's also becoming quite the little parrot. No kidding, it's monkey see, monkey do around these parts. In this case, Daddy-monkey played some Lock-On, so Ava-monkey tried it too.

~We've been taking Ava to UNLV volleyball games on Saturday afternoons and she loves them. When we turn toward campus, she shouts "Go Rebels!"

~So, in the spirit of Halloween...Ava says "Boo!"

Just One

Because she's pretty and because it's been a while and because I have to go to sleep, here's just one shot of our lovely, not-quite-two girl.

Just a little something

I'm swamped here in paper writing land and haven't had time for blogging lately. But, we did have some very cute video from the day of Ava's surgery a couple weeks ago. So, here it is to tide you over until I can get back to more regular posting. :-)

Sounding pretty good right after surgery

Not so much with the letters and numbers yet, although we try

But at least she's got lots of words!

See you all again when I dig out from under my syllabi!