Happy Birthday Little Girl

 

My sweet Ava Grace,

You certainly know how to light up a room. In two short years, you have let your spunky personality shine. You love fiercely and get upset fiercely. Perhaps it has something to do with the firey red hair of yours. I love how some mornings or after naps you need a few minutes of snuggle time with me in the rocker. You pull that thumb and Mia’s ear up to your mouth and all is well as I sing to you. Music is your calm and music is your excitement. Often you tiptoe in circles around a room to the beat of a song and you already have picked up on tunes and words when you sing. Those dancing feet remind me so of when you were a baby and would twirl your feet in your infant carrier to a song.

At two, you love to be chased and to chase. It usually illicit giggles and tickles. Just last night it was hard to keep a straight face when you decided to “tickle, tickle” mommy during nighttime prayers. When it’s your turn to pray, you consistently thank God for apples and pumpkins as you fold your sweet little hands together.

You certainly have a sense of humor and oh a sense of adventure and mischievousness. One morning I walked in to get you up, and you had stripped down to your diaper and greeted me with “naked baby.” I am just glad the diaper stayed on. Well, at least that time it did. You are certainly my little monkey and instead of asking me to pick you up, you just say, “Mama monkey.” I can’t resist that.

I know this next year is going to be such a year of growth as you develop into a little girl. I pray that you will continually “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). My hope is that you will receive grace and extend it as God has so graciously given you to us. 

Happy 2^nd birthday my sweet girl. I love you to the moon and back and more.

Mama

What's Going On

I am giving myself five minutes to blog because it's late and I should either be A) sleeping or B) working. But I figure if I could give myself five minutes I could get a few things written and appease my grandmother. Hi Nana!

We have been under the weather around here. Among the four of us we have had six trips to the urgent care/pediatrician, one visit may or may not have been the result of an iron catapulting through the air. This is my absolute favorite time of year, so I have been a little bummed to have had to cancel some fun fall outings. I keep reminding myself there is still time to get that pumpkin patch visit in.

Gavin is still loving school. He is student of the week this week and of all weeks he has had to miss two days. I have enjoyed snuggles on the couch with my little boy while watching Pete's Dragon. For some reason my husband is not a fun of that movie, but I grew up watching it.

Thankfully Boot Scoot, AKA Ava is well and as spirited as ever. Her language development amazes me. I have a list of words I wrote down that she could say three months ago and since then its grown into phrases she spouts off. My favorite words are "huggy" for hug and "buggy" for bug and she often says "here you go" and "more please." She constantly makes us laugh with her faces and smooth dance moves.

We are gearing up for the holidays. I can't believe we are already planning dates in December including a certain little girl's second birthday.

Well, that's all the time I have but I'll end with a couple of fairly recent pictures.

 

 

 

 

Go Texans!

We have been so busy around here, it has been hard to get a word, or blog post in. However, I thought I would share a few pictures I took Sunday of the kiddos sporting their Texans colors. To be fair, I didn't associate their red and blue wardrobe with the Texans until after we got home from church, but hey, it's nice when those things work out.

First Day of Kindergarten

 

The day came, a little too quickly if you ask me. To be fair it didn't creep up on me. In fact, I've been thinking about Gavin's first day of kindergarten for quite some time. Last year we did pre-school in a homeschool format, but for kindergarten we and I mean D and I, were not sure what we were going to do. Some days I would have knots in my stomach as I worried about this seemingly huge decision. Well that worry started melting away the more I gave the question over to prayer. A wise friend also told me that I just need to take it one year at a time. What may work for this year may not for next year.  So with that being said, we decided Gavin was going to attend public school for kindergarten.

 

We prayed that Gavin would get the teacher that was the best fit for him but I also added in that it would be nice if he got our church's worship leader's wife. That didn't happen but the teacher he did get seems so very sweet.

Being a former kindergarten teacher I tried to prepare Gavin as much as possible academically and what he should expect to do, but as a mama my priority was to prepare him spiritually with lots and lots of prayer as well as reminding him who he is (kind, sweet, honest, caring, helpful, loved by lots of people, and created by God). I also thought it would be helpful if he knew how to open his cheese sticks, button his shorts, and well we'll get to tying the shoes later.

We took a few, ok a lot, of pictures on Gavin's first day. Pinterest has to be thanked for most of these ideas.

 

 

 

 

 

Our neighbor was so sweet to take a family photo for us. 

It felt a little like Mayberry taking Gavin to school his first day. Parents were walking wit their kids to school from every corner of our neighborhood. There were strollers and bikes and scooters with crossing guards ready to protect these wee little ones. Our neighborhood even created a tunnel that goes under the very busy street which runs in front of the school.

Gavin was all smiles as he held mine and Dave's hands all the way to his classroom. He put his backpack up, took a picture for us with his teacher and made a beeline for the playdough. We took a few more pictures, I fought back tears and we said our goodbyes.

 

 

 

I was trying to not be that clingy parent I had so often assured I would take care of their kiddo. It was bittersweet. I was sad because I can't believe my sweet baby is old enough for school and I'm going to miss having him with me all day. See, this was just yesterday.


He was glad to see his sister after his first day and the feeling was mutual. However, I think she liked having a little mommy time too.

As much as we missed him, I have peace knowing that he is going to flourish this year. And after the first two days, he is still all smiles.

I'll Eat You Up, I Love You So!

 After I wrote part 1 we headed out for a little family vacation and since getting back we have gone nonstop. I will finish part 2 with a possible part 3 more than likely next week but for now I am going to post something I had already started writing.

Summer has zoomed past for us with lots of playtime, projects and fun, but one of my favorite times was celebrating Gavin's fifth birthday. He picked a Wild Things theme over a Super Hero party although I have a feeling there will be a Super Hero theme in the future.

At first I was not very inspired about a Wild Things theme. I kept getting lost in a forest. You'll understand if you have read the book. But once I perused Pinterest for an embarrassing amount of time, I started to pull it together. You can go here to see my Pinterest Wild Things board. I love being able to use the creativity of others and add in my own ideas. I might as well not recreate the wheel in the process.

Here's some pics of the birthday boy and his Wild Crew. I was so impressed that even the grown-up Wild Things participated.

 

 

 

I reused the banner from birthdays past and added the Wild Things cut outs. I am not ashamed of the fact that I took current pictures frames, and filled them with print outs of quotes from the book. I figure the print outs are only used for a few hours. There is no sense in buying frames just for that time frame. I bought one cheap table cloth for the Wild Thing making station but other than that I tried to use what we had on hand. It helped that Gavin's Me Me gave him three stuffed characters from the book in Christmas' past, we already owned two copies of the book (one for guests to sign), and my husband had the Wild Things figurines in the attic.

 

 

I keep being reminded that I don't need to feed everyone anything beside cake and something to wash it down with especially when the party is at  three in the afternoon, but I just can't help myself to serve something to nibble on particularly when the food can be part of the decor. We had Peanut Butter and Jelly crowns, red jello boats, and a dirt cake. My favorite part where the palm trees on the cake made with fruit slices and pirouette cookies. I also added fruit skewers and a new recipe for Reese's Peanut Butter fudge which was so stinkin' good.

 

For activities, the kids dressed up as Kings of the Wild Things, created their own paper Wild Things, and played pin the tail on Max.

 

 

 

 

I also read to them the story and on the second read gave each kid a Wild Thing Mask and whistle to let the Wild Rumpus start. The kids had fun roaring their terrible roars and gnashing their terrible teeth.

 

 

We sent each kid home with a Wild Things bag (scored these for 10 cents a while back) with Wild Things pencils and stickers (also on clearance) and a monster rubber ducky for the littlest Wild Things while the older ones received a pack of candy (I went easy on the sweets) and a Wild Things sticker scene.

Gavin had a pretty sweet wild birthday with some pretty sweet wild friends and family.