Chores and Duties

Ava was assigned her first chore around the house! She absolutely loves checking the mail. Everyday when Chris gets home she's ready to go. She will run to the front door and wait for him to come hold her hand so she can walk out to the mail box. She is so excited when there is mail in there and will bring them all straight back to me. I let her have the junk mail and flyers to read through, but she loves the journey more than anything.

Halloween Big Style

As promised in our last blog here are the pictures of the adult costumes. Enjoy!

Spider Sprout

Well October has come and gone with the wind. Texas Tech played some lousy football and we had a fantastic Halloween party! Hayden and Chris came down with Jackson to celebrate the fun weekend and he was possibly the cutest dinosaur ever in the whole wide world! I mean he was definitely the show stopper! Hayden and Chris dressed up as tourists with their matching attire from Hawaii, which I heard Chris insisted on buying. Mimi and Papa Keith were Little Red Riding Hood and The Big Bad Wolf. Owen came as the cutest pumpkin in the patch! Aubrey was a sweet bumble bee, Tyler was a mighty firefighter, and we can't forget Baby Trenton was an adorable little tiger. The kids won the contest by far but you have to admit Chris and I were pretty creative. Chris was a "stick in the mud" and I was a "babysitter." Pictures of the kids are below and pictures of the adults will soon follow.

Also, the 2nd photographer posted her preview of the wedding! Check them out! http://kandicerayphotography.blogspot.com/2009/11/chris-and-becky-autumn-wedding.html

Pumpkin Munchkin

We took Ava to the pumpkin patch in preparation for Halloween next week. They were so nice they gave her a little baby pumpkin to take home with her and she carried it around the whole time we were there. We had already bought pumpkins to carve but we spotted another golden egg in the bunch and couldn't resist. It is a monster of a pumpkin weighing in at more than 30 pounds! I can't wait to carve a giant Double-T in it so all our Texas neighbors can see. Ava will of course get another Ava pumpkin, but there is one more I'm not quite sure what to do with. Guess it will have to be a surprise. I also went out and bought candy to give away to all the Trick-or-Treaters and let's just say I hope we have lots of them because I went a little overboard.

Also awhile back we took Ava to the Brownwood Reunion and for those of you who don't know it's much like a fair. Fair food, fair rides, concerts, games and lots of vendor booths. One thing in particular they have, which I have personally never heard of, is the corn boxes. Very much like a sand box but with lots of dried corn instead. Ava was not a fan this year, but next year I think she will be swimming in it!

October already?!

The time has flown by and so many things have happened since our last blog! After getting Aunt Hayden and Uncle Chris moved down to Texas we were in a hurry to put Hayden to work on the wedding. There was shopping and creative madness for the last 2 weeks before the wedding and then it came. The wedding of the year! It was perfect and everything turned out better than imagined. It will take Chris awhile to get used to his new bling, but he hasn't taken it off since the day I put it on him. AVA however has not been allowed to have hers since then! Her wedding locket will be stored safely in my jewelry drawer until she is old enough to appreciate it and understand its meaning a little better. She did get to taste test it and said it was pretty good silver.

After the wedding when we came home there were boxes of presents and wedding decor everywhere! You better believe Ava was the first to jump at unpacking them and putting things together. You might be surprised that most everything she found in the boxes was a toy of some sort. (At least she thought so) One of them actually was for Sprouty, it came from Chris's boss and his wife (Scott and Terry). She even got to help her daddy put it together and that was probably more fun than trying to ride it. It's a John Deer Tractor tricycle which for now she just pushes around and walks behind, but sooner or later I can see her chasing her daddy through the yard fast as lightening!


Then just for fun here are some random riding in the car pictures since we have been doing plenty of that these past few weeks. I will also add pictures from the wedding as soon as I get them, but for now get a preview from the photographers at http://www.jacquelinereitzphotography.com/weddings/.

Utensil User

Ava is growing by the mile these days! Walking on Monday and eating with her fork on Wednesday! If anyone had told me she would be a baby one day and a toddler the next I wouldn't have believed it. Now seeing her go from my little swaddled screamer to my walking mess in just a week I'm amazed. I wish we could keep these days forever.

Time Flys and Summers Gone

So many things have happened since our last post. We went to the Gillespie Country Fair in Fredricksburg, visited Aunt Ludy in Santa Anna, helped Aunt Hayde and Uncle Chris move back to Texas and started walking! Well with her walker anyway, but that's walking!

So at the Gillespie County Fair Ava got to see roosters, pot belly pigs, sheep, goats, baby cows, and the biggest bull ever! She loved the animals but the merry-go-round was her favorite part so she rode it 3 times. There were also horse races which would have been more fun but it was very hot that day so we only saw one run. They went by so fast Ava hardly saw what they were but since the fair she knows exactly what a horsey says.

Sprouty also got to visit Aunt Ludy Jane in Santa Anna where she met her pet goat, Martha. Did we mention she loves animals?! Aunt Hayden of course brought Lucy and Moto the cats so Ava had a ball chasing them around the new house in Roundrock. Lucy actually gave in at one point and let Ava pet her! The cats weren't the only interesting thing in the house. Sprouty loves her little cousin Jack! She was very sweet and wanted to share her book with him. She also tried sharing her juice, her pacifier, toys and anything she could find on the floor. You can see she is Jackson's favorite cousin.

Then there was this walking business! One day she just up and took off! You can see in her video she is already moving at the speed of turtle so we all know what's next. RABBIT! Good thing Chris and I need some exercise because were going to be running for the next few years.