Sleepovers and All Nighters

After almost two and a half years, Ava had her first sleepover- well kind of. She has never slept in any other bed but her own, until now. She got to sleep over at her grandma's house. She camped out on the floor with her Aunt Laney. I guess she was so excited, she woke up at 5:00, sorry Grandma.
You may ask, "what was the special occasion?" Well, only the biggest shopping day of the year! The women of the family look forward to this day the whole year. Drum Roll Please. It is the one, the only, BLACK FRIDAY!!! After having our Thanksgiving dinner, we all sit down with our ads and make our plan of attack. We were all so excited, this year's mission would get started at 2200 sharp. For those of you who aren't familiar with military time, that's 10:00 pm. That's right, 10:00 at night. All of us girls pulled an all-nighter shopping. To make the trip even more memorable, Toby's girlfriend, Megan, joined us for her very first black Friday experience. I don't think she knew what to expect, but I think she had a pretty good time. Now that she got her feet wet, I hope she will have even more fun next year. I got some pretty good deals, and even got a good chunk of my Xmas shopping presents bought.
Of course I had to save some presents to buy on Monday. What's so special about Monday? My very good friend Julie and I are going shopping! You may remember when we took the kids on the train to Chicago. Well, we had so much fun, Julie and I decided to have a mom's only shopping trip. Can I tell you how excited I am? What could be better than a day filled with shopping, popcorn, hustle, and bustle with Christmas in the air? Well, enjoying it with one of my besties, of course!! Watch out Chicago, here we come.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know this post is a little early, but I didn't think I would get to it in time for turkey day! To incorporate Ava's love to paint and Thanksgiving coming up, this is what she made. Enjoy!



Ok, mom, all of those times you tell me not to paint on myself, now you tell me to paint on my hands?















































I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Monkey Girl!

If you know anything about Ava, you know she can climb! She started climbing before she could walk. This has caused me many gray hairs and many band aids. After constantly getting after her for climbing on things, I decided to give a new approach a try. I thought maybe if I let her fall and get hurt just once (I know, just call me mother of the year:) ) she wouldn't do it anymore. Well, that approach has done nothing for the cause. Now whenever she falls, she just giggles and tries it again. Huh, I keep hoping it is a stage and it will pass, but this is going to be a very long stage, I am afraid.
This is what she has recently learned how to do.
I was calling for her to come upstairs to get her pj's on. I heard her coming up the stairs, but she was taking a really long time- not good.
Me: "Ava what are you doing"
Ava: "I'm coming up the stairs"
And this is what I find.






































I like our cat in the background on this one. She's probably thinking, "finally, it's not me getting in trouble."







I can't wait until this stage ends. It is wearing me out. On the plus side, I won't have to dust in between the banister posts anymore:)

Ava's First Hair cut!!

After numerous requests by Ava to get her hair cut, we finally did it! I was a little nervous when I made the appointment. That whole day, all I wanted to do was cancel. I just wasn't ready to have the hair that she was born with to be cut quite yet. Anyway, I sucked it up and went through with it. Ava loved it!! She couldn't stop looking at herself in the mirror. I wasn't sure if she would sit still long enough for Kara (who I went to high school with and had numerous sleepovers with- so she made the big step extra special) to cut her hair evenly, so I brought along a portable DVD player and a Clifford movie. I didn't need to bring the extra entertainment along at all.


Here she is patiently waiting her turn in the chair!













It was like I wasn't even in the room. The two of them just talked like Ava was a regular client：）．











































Ｈｅｒｅ　ｉｓ　ｍｙ　ｂｉｇ　ｇｉｒｌ，　ｉｓｎ’ｔ　ｓｈｅ　ｂｅａｕｔｉｆｕｌ！！！

Chef Ava

Ava has found a new love.... cooking. She loves to pour, stir, taste, splatter, and repeat.





















"Watch out Dada, I can do that myself"

Operation Christmas Child

This year we decided to try something new. You fill a shoe box full of goodies, and the shoe boxes get distributed to kids around the world who probably have never received a present before. I was only going to do one shoe box this year, but it was so much fun, I couldn't stop myself.


It was so much fun gathering all sorts of presents for the boxes. Ava even helped pack the boxes. At first I thought she would have a hard time giving toys away, but she was eager to have other kids get their "birthday presents"- well, close enough.











I'm planning on making more boxes for next year. This time, I'll have the whole year to collect a lot of little treasures :).

Wordless Wednesday- Yikes!!

I think we need to work on her makeup technique.