the FAIR!

Avery waits every year for this.  She LOVES the fair and would go every day that it’s in town if we were rolling in money!  This was Bailey’s first year to get to go and I’d have to say, she loved it, too!

Both girls loved riding the rides this year, eating the delicious food, and I think the best part for them is the Kiddie Building.  Everything in there is free and there are all kinds of things for them to play with, build, ride on, etc.  Here are some of the best pics.

I would venture to say that one of their most favorite parts was the Park and Ride part where we parked at the mall and a school bus took us to the fair so we could avoid the horrendous parking there.  It was their first time on a school bus and to say they were excited is a gross understatement!  They may have even liked this more than the fair!  I’m not kidding!  Both of them have been obsessed with busses since they were old enough to notice them.  Maybe it’s all little kids and big transportation vehicles, I don’t know.  But mine love them!  So here is Avery’s first bus ride.  Too bad I didn’t get a pic of Bailey behind me.

 

playing in the kids building…

right up Avery’s alley…  playing in sand filled with tiny seashells!  (or treasures as she would say!)

the one sweet food I can count on Craig never passing up…a funnel cake…and the girls love to join him!

Avery rode a camel…her first time.  The girl on the back was the next rider in line who was by herself.  I would’ve ridden with her, but we were down to our last 5 bucks!

  

Riding the rides…the Fun Slide is one of our favorites!  I don’t have a picture, but I rode it with Avery right before this.  It was so much fun!  I wish the tickets weren’t so expensive.  I would’ve ridden it ten more times!

 

Kiddie roller coaster

 

First, let me say that Bailey is obsessed with horses.  Well, namely, one horse.  Rocky, the paint horse that was born to my dad’s mare 2 1/2 years ago.  When we are at my parents, she says “Rocky, Rocky, Rocky” CONSTANTLY!  She wants to always see him and wants to know where he is in the pasture and what he is doing.  It is the first thing she says when she wakes up and he was even bumping Nona down from her number one place!  (Her previous obsession was Nona! my mom.)  Anyway, now she calls all horses Rocky and when she saw the carousel at the fair, she immediately gasped and yelled, “ROCKY!”  She had to get herself onto one of those horses!!  She was too little to ride a lot of the rides, but thankfully this was one that she could do with Daddy by her side!

 

Avery picked the Dalmatian. 

 

Here’s another one Bailey could do if an adult was with her…the swings.  Craig rode them with her once, then I did them with her later.  I had had enough by the time that was over!  Made me a little dizzy, but she really had fun.   You really had to keep a tight hold on her, though, because she just doesn’t sit very still!

 

Avery was a couple swings in front of Bailey and Craig.  She had a blast.  I know this is a yearly tradition that will definitely create a ton of family memories!

Family Bowling Night

Avery was invited to a bowling party last weekend, but it got cancelled due to the family getting sick.  Avery was SO excited about this party, so I knew she would be terribly disappointed when I told her it was cancelled.  Craig and I had talked about it before I told her, and we decided to just take the girls bowling, otherwise, I knew Avery would mope about it all night.  That’s the way you make family memories, right?  Ohh, do I ever have some of those now.  :)

I love these pictures!  Avery shot it two ways…backwards granny shot…

SO excited!  

or she would set the ramp up and go all the way back to the tables, then RUN as fast as she could up to where Craig was holding her ball at the top of the ramp, and PUSH it as hard as she could (with tongue hanging out apparently).   She was so funny and having such a good time, the people in the next lane were cheering for her and clapping.  One time she tried to run down the lane to push her ball farther and her feet slipped right out from under her.  You can guess what happened…smack right on the tushie!  She was embarrassed but thankfully didn’t cry.  She learned that lesson quick…no running down the lane!

Not sure why they are looking so forlorn below, but they really were having a great time!  Well, Bailey not so much.  It was past her bedtime and Craig or I held her a lot of the time.  She wanted down and really would’ve been happy if she could’ve run anywhere she wanted and picked up anyone’s balls that she wanted.  But of course, we had to restrain her.  She kept running to the ball return of the people next to us and getting in their way and trying to steal their bowling balls.  They were younger and didn’t mind at all, but bowling with a 21 month old is not ideal.  :) 

She did get to push the ball down the lane several times and had a little bit of fun.

But Avery had a blast!!  And that’s why we really went anyway.

Aquarium Visit with Lanie

If you live in our hometown, you can get a pass to the Aquarium for half off.  It is SO worth it!  The girls and I can go kill half an hour in there if we need to, or we can spent a long time if we have a boring lazy afternoon.  It’s great if it’s raining or too hot outside.  And pretty soon, it’ll be great when it’s freezing outside!

Last month, we went with our friends Mandy and Lanie!  Too bad Bart was busy and couldn’t come, but the girls had a great time!  Bailey LOVES Bart, Mandy, and Lanie.  She will say Man-ee, Wan-ee, and she used to call Bart “Bop” but now she says “Bark.”  She calls for them all the time throughout the week and thank goodness we are guaranteed to see them on Wednesdays at church, otherwise I’d have to take her over to their house at least once a week for a visit!

Anyway, here are several cute pics of the girls at the aquarium.

You can tell, I still love these girls in piggie tails.

I actually love the way their silhouettes look against the water. 

They’re all getting SO big!  How do kids grow so fast?!

If I didn’t have a death grip on Bailey, she TOTALLY would’ve jumped into that water with those turtles!  She is fearless like her sister and Daddy.  :)

New Addition to the Family

We have a new addition to the family around here.  One we have been praying and waiting for for a long time!  Last year, we really decided that we wanted this new member, but it wasn’t in God’s plan until just about a month ago.

 

 

 

Who is it?

 

 

Are you curious?

 

 

Do you think I’m pregnant?

 

 

Sorry, it’s just our new MINIVAN!!!!

YIPPEE!!  We have seriously wanted a minivan ever since Bailey was born.  After putting two car seats into our Escape, it was fine just for us.  But if we went on a trip or anyone else ever needed to ride with us, forget it.  There was not enough space.  After looking around at vans and seeing how much space there was, we really wanted one!  And finally, after a promotion at work for Craig (whoo-hoo!), we finally had enough money to swing a bigger payment, so another minivan family was born!  I always said, like most people, that I would never drive a minivan, but after having two kids, with plans for more, practicality won out.  And we LOVE IT!

We love our Toyota Sienna.  By the way, this is our family’s theme song right now…

YOU CANNOT WATCH THIS WITHOUT CRACKING UP!  WE LOVE IT!!

Not There Yet :)

Bailey is not potty trained.  Not at all.  :)  But she LOVES to sit on the potty and she LOVES LOVES toilet paper!  And she REALLY LOVES to tear off as much toilet paper as she can get away with and put it into the potty before I stop her.  The problem is, she can’t just drop it in, she has to PLACE it into the water and her whole hand ends up in the toilet water.  Gross I know.  We have had many, many hand washing episodes around here because of that!  The other day I caught her in my bathroom where she had put what looked like half a roll of toilet paper into my toilet and there was water splashed all over.  I guess she had a high ole time playing before she got caught and got herself a spanking. :)

Hopefully all of this interest in potties will help her to be potty-trained right around two.  One can pray for that, right?!

First Day of School!!

Well, the day finally arrived.  After a summer of waiting (and almost dreading from me), we finally cracked out the books on August 31st and began our homeschooling.  I bought Avery some new school supplies to begin the year and even had a couple of new activities for Bailey.  Avery was SO excited to begin!  She had been asking me to start school literally every day since our curriculum arrived back in July!  I was excited in a way but also pretty nervous about all of the unknowns.  The girls were excited to show off some of their new supplies. 

 

Avery took to school like a fish to water.  She is such a sponge!  She soaks up everything I teach her and wants to know more!  She is especially great at math and reading.  She is adding numbers 0-20 like a champ and writing them really great, too.  She is writing words well and is reading small words.  In a couple of weeks, we are really jumping into reading and I have no doubt she is going to take off.  She has every step down except fluently reading a book, so I know she’ll fly through this.  We are now on week 7 of school and we really love it.  It only takes us about an hour and a half to do the whole day’s work.  Sometimes we break it up and do some during Bailey’s nap and sometimes we take longer and add other activities in, but it’s great to be able to finish all of the lessons for the day in under 2 hours. 

I found these great little blocks in the dollar section at Target (got 3 different shapes), and Bailey had fun trying to see how many she could fit into a bottle. 

Later she put them in a bowl and even stacked some…

…but eventually we always wind up back to this. :)  Dee-dee is never far away and never out of mind!  When we finish our schoolroom upstairs, Bailey will have more particular activities just for her set up and Avery and I will spend time playing just with her and helping her to do purposeful activities.

I really should be already doing this, but for now, it’s too hard with a whole house to roam through and be distracted by.  I wanted to get Avery really into her school before I focused on Bailey much anyway.  She is happy to bug us for a while, then run amuck in Avery’s room. :)

Anyway, all of these pictures are from the first day of school and I really should be taking more, but things are going GREAT and I feel way less overwhelmed than I did before we began this journey.  It will be so incredible to look back and see where we’ve come from and to enjoy the many memories we will make together spending so much time together and learning together.  I know I will never regret this extra time spent with my girls.  Some days I definitely want a break, but in the end, I know it’s the right choice for us and I am so glad God lead us here.

New (Old) Skates

A couple of months ago the girls and I went down to the Just Between Friends sale and we drug Aunt Staci along.  :)  She took the kids around the toy section while I shopped for clothes.  After I shopped for a while, I went to find them and there was Avery clomping around in these roller skates she found.  She begged me to get them and after some thought, I figured ten bucks is pretty cheap for some fun exercise for her, right?  She skated around the house for a week after we got them and Craig took her out skating on the street.  He’s awesome on his roller blades, so he was very proficient at skating backward and helping her along.  Also, the skates are about 2 sizes too big, so hopefully she can get a lot of wear out of them!  She LOVES these skates!