Two Toddlers

We had a mini photo shoot in our living room last week.  I wanted to get one year pics of Avery and I'm so tired of studio prices for low quality, so Joseph and I just did it ourselves.  We're no professionals, but they turned out okay for being free!

I dressed the girls in the little tutus that I made them and I think they had a lot of fun with them.  Sophie acted like a ballerina princess the entire night and asked if we could do it again the next day.  She can wear her tutu whenever she wants, but something about having her picture taken in them was pretty magical.

Avery didn't cooperate incredibly well, but we still managed to snag a couple of fun shots of her.

I love this of them both looking over at their daddy.  They sure love him.

Her smile lights up her blue eyes.  I love it.

Sophie and I practiced quite a while on doing a natural smile, but in the end it still looked canned.  I still think she's cute, though.

She's just not my baby anymore!  Almost over night it feels like she turned into a toddler! (sniff)

She can walk all on her own, but she still likes it best when I walk with her.

Walking

Avery is walking all the time now.  She is still in the I-can-get-there-much-faster-by-crawling stage so she usually resorts to that, but she does just take off and walk every once in a while, too.  She's pretty proud of herself every time she does it.

She does much better when she walks because she decides to.  If we try to catch her she usually gets so excited that she falls down over and over.  If there's no one at the finish line she can go quite far before falling.

These were taken on the 4th of July in her patriotic dress.

She went all the way across the big living room over and over again.

She still lunges to the "finish line" most of the time.  So fun.

We had Avery's year appointment this week and here are her stats:

Weight: 19 1/2 lbs.--28th percentile

Height: 30 inches--80th percentile

Head circumference: 46 1/4 in. --75th percentile

So apparently we still have a tall, skinny, big-headed child.  But it means we get to finally turn her car seat around!  She's going to love riding in the car now!

Craziness

I would've never anticipated that almost overnight my life would suddenly jump 50 notches on the crazy busy knob.  I'm sure it's still not nearly as insane as some of you (especially those with 4 or more children) but I feel busier right now than I've been in a long time, definitely since I quit work.  For one, Avery is into everything right now and I have to constantly watch her like a hawk.  Gone are the days when she would sit quietly and entertain herself.  Entertaining herself right now means getting into the fireplace and getting all black or into cupboards where she doesn't belong (yes, we finally got some safety locks on them tonight!) or eating any and all paper in sight, among other things.  She's way more adventurous and independent than Sophie ever was so I wasn't really anticipating this.

The next thing that's keeping me on my toes is that I recently was made the president of our local chapter of MOMS Club.  If you don't know what this is and are looking for a way to connect with other stay at home moms in your area (if, for example, your ward doesn't do play groups or other stuff like mine doesn't), it's a great club and I'd recommend it.  But becoming the president has added a lot to my plate and it hasn't all been enjoyable so far.  Let's just say I spend a lot of time online fielding questions and emails that come to me, bad and good, and it takes up way more time than I would like.  But the activities are fun and I'm meeting a lot of great moms in the area and the girls love playing with the other kids, so it's worth it.

Then the last thing I'm currently doing is tutoring.  I tutor two boys three times a week, an hour with each boy each time.  One is going into 6th and the other into 2nd.  We're mostly just doing language arts, handwriting, and math.  They're cute boys and we've had a good time, but I'm doing it while the girls nap each afternoon and so there went any personal time for me.  But it's only through the summer (so far) so I know it won't be much longer.

Add to that my calling and cake decorating requests and such and I've suddenly got a life that keeps me on my toes for sure!  I'm not complaining, I just think it's interesting how life goes.  You're always busy as a mom, but this is definitely a different level of busy-ness right now than I'm used to and I'm glad that it won't last forever.  Then I'll just get something else thrown at me I'm sure, and that's cool, too.  I'm sure lots of you out there can relate right now.  God is good and He blesses me so much each day, so at the end of the day I have it really good and I'm grateful for all I've been given.  The end.

Avery's First Birthday!

Avery turned one year old on the Fourth of July!  (How did my baby get so old?  That year honestly flew by.)  She had no idea what was going on, of course, but seemed to enjoy the fun anyway.

We started the day with a few presents and then went to my Grandpa's for a big family party to celebrate America's birthday, and it was fun to celebrate Avery's birthday with everyone, too.

I figured that this would probably be the only year that I could get away with doing a Fourth of July theme for Avery's birthday since she has no say in it this year, so I made these cupcakes look like fireworks.

And I made her big "smash cake" 4th of July themed as well.  This thing was as big as a normal cake and I honestly didn't know how much Avery would get into it, but she definitely made it live up to its name.

She liked the fire on the candle but wouldn't help blow it out because she was more intrigued by the frosting that already got on her hand.

Our little family watching Avery dig into her birthday cake.

She had never tasted sugar before (other than the sugar that's naturally in fruits and such) so this was all very new to her.  She tried her first little bit and kept glancing at me to see if I was going to stop her from eating it.  I think she was shocked that I was encouraging her.

She ate some frosting but I think had more fun just smearing it around in her hands.

She was so generous and shared some with me and Joseph.

It didn't take long for her to really start getting down into it once she hit the actual cake.

She had a blast pulling it apart and spreading it everywhere.

This smash cake was aptly named.

Thanks for giving me a piece before it was completely demolished, Aves.

Sophie and her cousin Austin enjoyed eating cupcakes, swimming together, and playing together in the play room after all the fun.

We also let them do a few little fireworks for the 4th.  I figured they would probably be the only ones our family would see that day, and they were.  The big fireworks shows just start too late for these girls to stay up.  So we let them throw Pop-Its which they both loved.  Sophie is figuring out here that she can step on them to get them to pop as well.

We also did some sparklers, but they weren't that good and kept stopping half way through, so the kids thought they were cool for a little while but quickly got bored and were ready to go back to throwing Pop-Its.  We had a great 4th of July and a great birthday celebration of our Little Firecracker.  We love you so much, Avery Jane!  Happy Birthday!

Too Cool For Skool

Avery looooves to wear sunglasses.  She snuck Sophie's on here.

She also loves to make us put them on, then pull them right back off of us.  It makes her laugh really hard and she has the most infectious, adorable laugh ever.  It's really gravelly and hilarious.

She thinks she's the bee's knees, and she's probably right.

She has her daddy wrapped around her finger, that's for sure.  Poor Joseph, has to stretch himself far enough to be wrapped around 3 girls' fingers.  What a guy.

Avery loves her daddy so much and is a lucky girl to have him!

Happy Father's Day to the Greatest Daddy!

Dear Daddy,
We love you so much! There are so many reasons why you're the greatest daddy in the whole wide world. Thanks for playing chase and hide 'n seek and hot 'n cold with us, thanks for reading us stories and singing us songs, thanks for jumping in the cold pool with us even when you would rather stay in the hot tub, thanks for loving our mommy and loving us. We love you so much!

Your Girls,

Sophie and Avery

p.s. The end of this video I said Happy Father's Day and I love you, but it got cut off. -Sophie

Avery's first steps

Avery is trying to walk and is taking more and more steps every day right now. She started learning on her little walking toy that you'll see at the beginning of the video, but she's become very daring lately and is trying to walk all on her own. We caught this video of some of her very first steps, although she had done much better than this before the camera was rolling, of course. So it's not great, but it is what it is. I'm sure I'll have another video to post soon of her as a walking machine, because she's on a roll!

Dallas

Joseph and I just got back from a fabulous trip to Dallas, TX.  Joseph had to go for work and my mom volunteered to come down and stay with the girls for the week so that I could go with him.  It was heavenly!  I love our girls and I love being a mom, but sometimes a break is very nice, especially because it reminds you why you love your kids so much.  I was quite anxious to see them again once it was time to come home and I really missed them a lot, but we had a great time while we were there.

I have a few friends from my mission to Poland who live in the Dallas area, so a few weeks ago I called them up to get everyone together while we were there.  We met at TGI Fridays in commemoration of how we would often eat there in Poland (yes, they have them there).  They all brought their spouses and kids so it was fun to see these elders being daddies to such adorable boys.  Two were from my MTC district, Phillips and Ostreicher, and then I served again with Phillips in Gdansk when he was companions with Durkovich.  They are highly entertaining guys, especially together, and our district meetings weren't always the most productive because we laughed almost the entire time.  Great memories.

Not much Polish was spoken since it's been a while since we've all been home and we're all out of practice (well, I am at least) but it was just fun to get together and reminisce about good times in the Poland Warsaw Mission.  Thanks for coming to see us, guys! (L to R: Scott and Connie Phillips, Matt and Emily Durkovich, and me).

Joseph and I took an afternoon while we were there and went to the Dallas Temple.  It was quite the adventure getting there using public transportation because we ended up having to walk quite a bit.  I eventually walked most of the way there with no shoes since my blisters on my feet were already too huge to believe, so I felt a little bit like those who have to sacrifice a lot to make it to a temple, and I think it made the session a little different than usual which was nice.

We were both so sweaty by the time we made it that I'm surprised they still let us go in, but they took pity on us thank goodness.  It was just nice to be there together.

I was able to spend a lot of time on this trip working on projects that I've been waiting for a time such as this to complete, but I still ventured out a little bit to sightsee.  One place I had to go was the 6th Floor Book Depository Building where they have an exhibit about the shooting of JFK.  The window it supposedly took place at is the top one on the right in the picture above.  Nobody knows whether Lee Harvey Oswald really did it or not and he was killed before he had to testify so we'll probably never know, but being the history lover that I am, it was very interesting and I loved my visit.  I think I was there over 4 hours and it's just one little floor, but it was fascinating stuff.

I had just begun the tour when the fire alarm went off in the building and we had to all evacuate down the 6 flights of rickety stairs until the fire dept. came and checked it out.  It was a false alarm and I quickly continued my tour.

The white "X" on the road at the center bottom of the picture is the spot where JFK was shot the last time, which is the shot that killed him.  

This is the grassy knoll where conspiracy theorists, like the gentleman above, say the real killer of JFK shot from.  That's the same fence that was there in '63 and just may have been where the killing really took place.  We'll never really know I think.

Silly Sophie

We went to a birthday party yesterday and this is how Sophie looked while listening to the story.  She and the other girls were playing a little dress-up before the party started.  I think she's attempting to make bracelets above the elbows the newest fashion trend.  And the glasses?  Priceless.

"Up"

Sophie loves movies.  She begs daily to watch a Disney movie and it takes all my creative power to come up with other ways to distract her.  But when Joseph and I talked about going to see the new Pixar film "Up" we decided that it would be fun to take Sophie with us.

We weren't able to get very great pictures of our trip because my old camera kept dying so I had to just shoot and hope it turned out.  So here we are before going into the theatre and inside before the movie began.  Just Sophie and I went so that Joseph could stay home with Avery.  Sophie liked the flick a lot, though her little body was too small to hold the big chair down and it kept flipping up on her.  I had to put up the hand rest and put my legs on the front of the chair to keep it down for her.  I'm not sure she totally knew when the previews and hilarious short at the beginning were actually over and the real movie began so there was a little confusion, but she eventually figured it out and had a good time.  We won't be taking her to the theatre again anytime soon, but it was a fun Mommy/Daughter date just this once.  By the way, I loved the movie (and Joseph saw it later and loved it, too) and would highly recommend it.  Very clever as always, very sweet (made me cry a couple times), and a good message, too.  We both gave it A's which is saying a lot for us.  Thanks for the fun date, Sophie Girl!  I love you!

Fashion Show

We were asked to participate in a mommy/daughter fashion show for our ward's Enrichment meeting last week.  They said you could model anything you wanted, so we chose to be BYU Cougar fans since we have a plethora of that kind of stuff to model.  Well, I was a fan, Sophie and Avery were more cheerleaders.

I helped Sophie with her little cheer: "BYU Touchdown!  Rah rah rah rah rah, Gooooo, Cougars!"

The elders helped her down the stairs so we could walk the runway.

We also did our favorite joke:

"What does a Cougar say?"

"Touchdown!" 

It got lots of laughs and we had a lot of fun struttin' our stuff on the catwalk.

Bubbles

We had a fun time with some bubbles outside on our patio one day.

Sophie loved learning how to make them herself.

But her favorite was when her daddy made them for her because he could get so many and some he made soooo big.

Too serious about popping them all to smile much, but we still had a fabulous time!