Birthday Eve

Good night my little 3 year old! Tomorrow, Avery Grace, you will be 4 years old. It is so hard to believe you have already been in my life for 4 years. 4 years ago tonight, I was going to bed not having a clue how much my life was about to change the next day...all for the better! Maybe more challenging, maybe more busy, definitely harder, but definitely better. You make me want to be a better person, Avery. For you and your sister and your daddy. I love you so much and can't wait to see what this fifth year of your life has in store for you. I am so proud of the little girl you are. So sweet, so diligent, so loving, so smart, so clever, so protective, so helpful. I love you!!
Love, Mommy

Avery's Interview

I copied this from my friend Christy's blog. I thought it was such a good idea, I had to see what Avery's answers would be! These are her actual words:

• What's your name? Avery
• When were you born? March 1st 21st [she's trying to say the year 2006 but said 21st instead. :) ]
• How old are you? Three
• Who is your mommy? Cheyenne's my mommy
• What does your mommy do? work around the house and play with me and Bailey
• Who is your daddy? Craig
• What does your daddy do? play with me and Bailey and work around the house and he watches TV
• What is your favorite color? yellow and blue
• What do you want to be when you grow up? Supergirl. She flies around in the sky then when she wants to come home, she comes home.
• What is your favorite food? watermelon
• What food do you not like? sour stuff and spicy stuff. Like sour red juice (she means carbonated) and spicy soup.
• What is your favorite animal? elephant because they have long trunks of their nose and they pick food up and they put it into their mouth with their nose.
• Where do you want to live when you grow up? in Nona's house when she moves into a new house
• What do mommy and daddy do when you go to bed? give me hugs and kisses and read me books and then work around the house
• What does daddy say? Shocker (we all say this a lot and she uses it in totally perfect context!)
• What does mommy say? tomorrow is church day, Avery
• What is your favorite song? Deep and Wide
• What is your favorite movie? Berenstein Bears
• What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? vanilla
• Where is your favorite place to eat? Tin Star and Luby's
• Who is your best friend? Chloe and my cousins
• What is your favorite book? Berenstein Bear books
• Who is your sister? Bailey Mae Alexander
• Where did Bailey come from? the hospital and your tummy, too
• What is your favorite thing to do? go swimming at Aunt Joyce's pool
• What does Avery say? sometimes I say "Mommy let's go to Tin Star"
• Where did Avery come from? your tummy

This will be fun to ask her again in a year or two! Hope you enjoy it...feel free to steal!

MOPS Valentine Day Party

Every month our MOPS group tries to have a playdate with our kids.  This month we had a Valentine party, and the kids decorated lunch sacks to collect their Valentine’s in, exchanged Valentine’s, and decorated a heart cookie to eat!  They had so much fun!  Avery was a Valentine princess and it was her idea to wear the tiara she got from Chloe’s party—it matched her perfectly for Valentine’s Day!

Wow, a rare picture of me with my girls!

Even Bailey got to color…well after coloring on her tray, she mostly just ate the crayon until I took it away. :)

Avery and Chloe decorate their bags.

Can you believe how old they’re getting?

  The best part—eating the frosting!  

 Of course Bailey had to eat a cookie, too!  You can’t ignore that request of “MO, MO, MO, MO” for long!

I’ll have to say that Avery didn’t savor it long—she shoved it all in because she was too upset about frosting being on her fingers.  She wanted to wash her hands!

Trying to smile with a full mouth!

Valentine Project

Avery has been pretty excited about Valentine’s Day this year.  She has been more into doing art projects also over the last few months. (yay!  I was beginning to lose hope!  When she was younger she never wanted to do art projects or color.  She would rather play outside and kick a ball around or run!)  Anyway since it was snowing and we couldn’t go outside, we decided to do a Valentine project.  She painted watered-down glue onto a red heart that she cut out and then glued tiny pieces of tissue paper all over the whole heart!  I was proud of her for sticking with it the whole time until the heart was covered.  Nothing too hard, but it kept her busy for a good while.

Now here’s the real reason for this post. :)  Craig and I have decided to homeschool our kids and people always wonder—what do you do with the little ones while the bigger ones are doing lessons or projects?  Well, here’s your answer…

Whatever they want! (Within reason of course!)

For some reason Bailey loves to get the pots and pans out, and yes…

  

…that is her eating the entire handle!

More Snow!

It seems like we have really had a lot of snow this winter!  Even when it hasn’t stayed around for long, it’s still nice to actually see it snowing…especially when the flakes are huge and beautiful!  This past Monday it snowed again and Avery had a little fun trying to catch the flakes on her tongue.  5 minutes of fun—then it was back inside to warm up!

 

Bailey and Lanie

Our home group had a Super Bowl party at our house.  There were tons of adults and kids and we had so much fun!  I only took a few pictures, but wanted to share this one of Bailey and her friend Lanie.  Lanie is almost 9 months old and gets around quite nicely!  They were really cute together “sharing” the toys.

Princess Avery

Last week, Avery had two princess parties to go to!  We called the princess expert, Avery's cousin Hayden, and borrowed a few ensembles from her.  Hayden has tons of princess stuff!  These are the two dresses that Avery chose to wear to the two parties.  She looked so pretty and grown up!!

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The yellow dress was her favorite (of course) so she saved it for her BFF’s party.  Chloe turned 4 and all the little girls were so cute as princesses!  I let Avery skip her nap that day and I didn’t realize how tired she was!  5 minutes into the drive, I had a princess who was dead to the world!

Look how big she looks!

Sleeping Beauties

We recently spent a few days down at my parents house while Craig stayed here.  Since it was just me and the girls, I slept with Avery in her bed so I’d be closer to them.  The first night we got back, Avery was really tearful that I wasn’t going to be sleeping with her again.  I was afraid this would happen, but I had to explain that I had to sleep with Daddy.  The only thing that finally perked her up was when I suggested getting a bunch of her stuffed animals to sleep with.  She immediately said, “Yes!” and ran to her room to pick them out.  She had about 10 in there and later after she was asleep I snapped a picture of her.  What is it about pictures of sleeping children that are so innocent?  Of course I had to snap one of Bailey, too.

One Sick Baby

A week and a half ago, Bailey was very sick.  Actually Avery, Bailey, and I were all sick, but Bailey got it the worst.  Craig ended up taking her to urgent care on a Sunday and after a chest X-ray and an examination, we were told that she had the beginnings of pneumonia and an ear infection.  Yuck.  She was so lethargic that day and slept on either Craig or I all day.  I hated that she was sick, but a small part of me loved having her sleep on me.  If you know Bailey, she is NOT a calm child.  She is not still for long and she would never fall asleep on me in a million years.  She is a better cuddler than Avery, but still, she wouldn’t cuddle for this long.  So we had to take a few pictures to remember.  I hope she never gets this sick again, but I did enjoy the sweetness of it just for one day.   :)

We stayed like this for a couple hours at least.

Seriously—she hasn’t done this since she was a newborn!

  

After she woke up, she lay in the floor with Avery for a while watching a cartoon.  I love how Avery is holding her leg.  They love each other so much!

Bailey’s Hair and A Comparison

I am so amazed at how much hair Bailey has in the back at this age.  Maybe I just don’t remember well but I don’t remember Avery’s being this long at 12 months.  I love how long it’s getting (it really looks long when it’s wet) and I love how it’s curling just a little bit on the ends.  Just wanted to document this.

Also, let’s do a comparison.  Here’s Avery at 12 months.

And here’s Bailey at 12 months.

They do look a lot alike I guess.  I never would have remembered that Avery’s face was a little chunkier.  Their noses look the same to me, too.  What do you think?

First New Appliance!

Our kitchen was a little outdated (to say the least) when we moved into our house a year and a half ago.  Much of it is now updated but there are still a few things left to do.  One of the things on my list are new appliances.  I realize that these are not priority and will most likely wait, but when the old dishwasher started putting a yucky film on all of our dishes, I was a little bit happy.  The old one was also very loud and sometimes you had to put your hip into it if the right side of the door wouldn’t close.  Craig completely agreed we needed a new one and voila! a new dishwasher was bought.  I thought it was very cute how Avery had to get her tools and help Daddy work while he put it in.  (Yes, he installed the whole thing himself!  Apparently there is no task too hard for this man.  If he doesn’t know how...he learns.)