Baby Doll Stroller

Avery received a doll stroller from her Grandma Sally Jo on Christmas, and she loves to push her baby dolls and stuffed animals around in it. Grandma Sally Jo also got her a doll highchair and Avery has a lot of fun feeding her babies and animals. I'll have to get a picture of her feeding her babies because it is so cute. She LOVES her baby dolls! Here is a picture of her new doll stroller and a few others of us playing outside:

Kitty Kitty and Shelf Sitter

Avery LOVES kitties and she was able to pet a very sweet one at our good friends, the Pettit's, house last night. The kitty let Avery squeeze her noise and pull her hair. I would tell Avery that she "needed to be gentle to the kitty" and then she would be, but the cat did not care one way or another. It just loved the attention.
The other pictures are of Avery in her new shelfs. She loves to sit in them and read and eat her snacks. In these pictures she has a new hat on that we got at the Co-Op. She loved wearing it so much that she did not want me to take it off to cut the tags.

Shelves

Our good friend John, who is an amazingly talented carpenter, is building us a book shelve for our living room. It is gorgeous! It adds a lot of dimension to the room with the vaulted ceiling. The room has so much wall space that it is a bit overwhelming. But now with the shelve unit, it adds so much warmth and depth to all the wall space. We are very happy with it. We can't wait until it is finished so we can finally have a place for all our books!
Here are some pictures of the shelves so far...

Avery's helping with the spackle.

I Finally Graduated!!!

Avery's signing "milk". She held out for the

3 hours it took for commencement to end.

She definitely let me know that she was ready

for some milk!

New Words

Just in the last few days, Avery has expanded her vocabulary. Her typical vocabulary has been, "mama", "papa", "baby", and "dog". Her new words include, "juice", "cheese", "shoe", and "uh-oh". It is so much fun to hear her talk. She is very proud of herself and says her new words whenever she can. We can't wait to hear what she says next!

SUPER Busy

I have been so busy with finals, projects, and essays that I have not had anytime to post new pictures. Graduation is this Saturday and we are having a big party. I'm sure I will have plenty of pictures to share with you then! In the meantime, I have to get back to schoolwork.

Cowgirl Kitty

Avery found her kitty hat and a Billy the Kid vest in her dress up box yesterday and wanted to put it on. I helped her and put a little apron on her as well. She looked so cute that we went downstairs to show papa. Avery has a way of stomping through the house and make an "aaaahhhh" noise as she walks, so you can always here her coming. Eric was in the kitchen and said, "I here a catfish" (that is his nickname for here) but when he turned around and saw her he said, "That's not a catfish, that's a cowgirl kitty." So that is where the cowgirl kitty came from.
After we played dress up, we decided to go outside to play in the snow. I helped Avery put her boots on that our friend Lindsey gave us. They are so cute but they are way too big for her and she has a little trouble getting around in them. Regardless, she had so much fun stomping in the snow!

Talking on the phone.

Laughing at papa.

Ski Helmet & Princess Crown

Avery tried on her snow goggles and her papa's GIANT ski helmet. She loved wearing it. She also found a princess crown in a box of toys in her closet and put it on and wore it most of the day...(once again, I could not get a very good shot because she moves too fast)

Baby Panda Sneeze

Halloween Kitty

We dressed Avery as a kitty because we already had a cat hat and a tail. My mom saved them from when my brothers and I were little. Avery loved to wear the costume. She kept the cat hat on most of the afternoon and carried the tail around in her hands. She meowed like a kitty and thought it was hysterical.
We went to a friends house and Avery had a wonderful time playing with her friends. Some of these pictures are of Avery in the process of getting into her costume and some are from the Halloween get-together. The group pictures did not turn out well because the lighting was bad, but in a way they turned out kind of cool.
Regardless of the pics, we had a great time...

Avery and her papa

I wanted to post this picture from Jesse and Shelly's wedding because I love it so much. It was taken by the wedding photographer and it captured a beautiful image of Avery and her papa.

Camping

About three weeks ago, we had to head out on a camping trip for my Wilderness Medicine and Evacuation course. We camped out Friday and Saturday night and left for home on Sunday.
It was pretty cold and rainy, but Avery still had a great time. The first night Avery slept very well in the back of Eric's truck, but the second night we slept in a tent and she did not sleep well at all. Despite little sleep Avery was very entertained. She got a lot of attention from everyone in the class and was able to run around as much as she wanted. She had a great time...(there are more on the next post)

More Camping Pics

Pumpkin Patch

Today our good friend Lydia called to see if we wanted to accompany her to the pumpkin patch outside of town. I was surprised to hear that there was a pumpkin patch in this area because I have never heard of one. I always loved going to the pumpkin patch when I was a kid and going on the hayride, picking out pumpkins, and drinking apple cyder. It was such a fond memory of mine that I wanted Avery to have the same experience, so I was elated that there was a pumpkin patch in our area.
The pumpkin patch was a ways out of town and when we pulled up to it, there were no other vehicles and at first we did not see any pumpkins. When we got closer to the owners house, we saw that there were some pumpkins and a beautiful field of flowers. It wasn't exactly the pumpkin patch that I grew up with, but it was still very charming.
A women met us and showed us where the pumpkins were and told us that we could also pick flowers for $5 a bunch. We looked at all the pumpkins and ran up and down the rows of flowers and finally picked our favorites. It was FREEZING outside so we went inside to warm up. We played some more inside and then we decided that it was time for Avery to go home for a nap.
It was a great afternoon and we had a lot of fun...

Playing in the backyard.

The weather has been pretty cool and rainy the last few weeks, but on Friday it was fairly mild and I thought it would be a great day to take Avery outside to get some photos of her playing in the leafs. Well, I could not get her to stay still enough to take a picture. She kept taking off down the sidewalk in our front yard. After four or five times of this I decided that we should just move to the backyard where there is a fence! I tried to get some shots of her, but she was on the move. They are not great but this is how they turned out...

Arboretum

It was so nice last weekend that we took Avery on a bike ride to the Arboretum. It was pretty crowded because of Homecoming weekend, so of course Avery wanted to say hello to everyone. She would play on the grass and every time someone came by she would walk up to them and smile and wave.
Avery was very happy to get out of the house because we spent most of the weekend painting the kitchen. After many coats of paint, we are finally finished!!

We decided to change our website because we no longer wanted to pay the $5/month that the easysite charges. We are excited about our new blogspot! We hope you enjoy!