This face

How can you not love this face? Poor guy gets kissed on all day long.

Mark and I have been busy - I keep waiting for things to settle down, but I guess that won't happen for years to come. He is helping at a new Chipotle and was working long hours and long weeks. His schedule is a little more normal now, for which I'm thankful. For 2 weeks, Ava went 4 days without seeing her Daddy. It was hard on both of them (and me!). I've been busy working part time for a friend who has an eBay business. I was only shipping items, but have taken over pretty much the whole operation except for packaging items. Things are slowing down significantly for the summer months, though. It has been a blessing to have a way to earn some money working from home.

Carter is crawling all over and into everything. The bad part is he is VERY quiet! So, we have to keep an eye on him constantly. He like to crawl under things and climb over things. One day he crawled under a little table we'd gotten for him and Ava and got stuck under a chair, but he kept on crawling taking the chair with him... right toward the kitty dishes - the water dish is far too tempting.

Just last week, he learned how to sign, "more" after several weeks of me attempting to teach him and basically giving up. (I don't want to compare kids, but Ava picked up her first sign in one day! I was beginning to think he might never "get it.") I have it on video, but need to find the right cable to download it to the computer.

Ava is so happy that we can play outside! She even asks if we can go out and play in the rain - we keep telling her it's not quite warm enough for that, yet. We got a "Finding Nemo" book from the library about a month ago and she LOVES it. Has it memorized, sleeps with it, recites lines from it randomly... it will be a sad day when we can no longer renew it, but I have been looking at it on eBay, so I may go ahead and get her a copy. She also love Cinderella and talks about being a princess and wearing pretty dresses and dancing. It's especially fun to see her act out scenes with her dolls and stuffed animals. Sometimes she tells me she's Cinderella. If Mark is there, he, of course, is the Prince. When he isn't, I get to be the Prince. She continues to make us laugh all the time.

Even on the days they make us crazy, we couldn't imagine life without them!

Crawling and Easter!

Carter is officially crawling. Over the weekend, he has perfected the army crawl and can get from one side of the room to the other... much too quickly for my liking! Of course, his favorite things to get into are whatever Ava happens to be playing with at the moment. The other day he managed to crawl over and get himself squeezed behind Ava's "house." And, boy was he impressed with himself.

Here's Ava in her Easter dress. Gotta love the posing... at least we got her to stand still. Once the dress was on, all she wanted to do was twirl.

Deja vu

I posted a picture of Ava in one of my old Easter dresses a few days ago. Well, my mom also sent another dress of mine - I remember thinking this dress was super fancy and wanting to wear it often. Ava wanted to wear it when she saw it, and after she put it on, I told her she looked as pretty as a princess, to which she responded that she needed a crown. I found her flower headband, which seemed to appease her and I asked if I could take her picture. She's always willing to have her picture taken! So, here she is:


After she went to bed that night, I went looking for a picture of me wearing the dress, and found this:


I couldn't believe we were both posing the same way! Too funny!

Spring Snow!

This past weekend we got over a foot of snow! A friend was telling me that around this time last year, she remembered working outisde - she should remember correctly as she was 9 months pregnant at the time.

We had fun playing, but are now definitely ready for spring! While Carter napped, Mark, Ava and I went outside. Mark and I shoveled while Ava played and then our neighbor came over with his 4-wheeler with snow blade attached to help Mark while I caught up with his wife. We hadn't talked to them for a while, so it was nice! Then we came in for some hot chocolate and watched the snow continue to fall.

Ava is talking non-stop these days. She loves to color and sing and run. I can't believe the things she comes up with. One day she wanted me to turn on my cell phone so she could see the screensaver, but I told her the battery was dead. A minute later, she brings me the tv remote and says, "This has batteries!" She misses nothing and it's especially funny to hear her repeat some of the things we say on a regular basis.

My mom sent me an Easter dress I wore when I was Ava's age. The only problem is I was apparently much shorter than Ava! Our birthdays are only 2 weeks apart, but I don't think I could take her out in this dress! Here's me in the dress as well. I'm surprised at just how much more hair I have at that age than Ava does. (Don't you just love her fake smile??)


Carter is still rolling like a madman, which means he's also spitting up like a madman. Since he never stays on the blanket I put down, our carpet is full of spots in a wide variety of colors. Yuck. He likes to stand, now, and here's a shot of him standing with no assistance! And a second one because he's just so cute!


The snow is almost gone now and we look forward to warmer weather and outdoor pictures. On a side note, this weekend my parents will be celebrating 40 years of marriage! We love both sets of parents so much and are so grateful for them.

Time for an update!

It's been longer than I wanted to take between updates, but Mark was sick for about 3 weeks with the nasty flu that's been going around and our laptop died. Mark's starting to feel better, and our laptop is running again, but we did lose everything on the hard drive. Thankfully, I don't delete the pictures off our camera until I've backed them up on CD, so I don't think we lost many. (I'd deleted some because my memory card was full - oops).

Carter is finally sitting up pretty well, now. His primary mode of moving is still rolling. He continues to be a happy, sweet baby.

A few weeks ago, while I was in the kitchen making dinner or some such thing, Ava was playing on the steps. This is not something I usually allow, but she was playing so nicely, I didn't make her stop. After a while, she called me over. I could hear the pride in her voice and she was beaming as she showed me how she had set up all her friends in a row. I cheered and asked if I could take a picture, which she readily agreed to. I went back to what I was doing and she called out to me a little while later to tell me everyone was sleeping. She wanted me to see, so I walked over to the steps and found even more friends... all sleeping. She was so pleased with herself, neither she nor I could stop smiling.

Later that same evening, she continued her adorable behavior by wanting to put on an apron and walk around with oven mitts. It was a fun evening, and I need those especially on the nights Mark works late and I'm putting the kids to bed by myself. We have a pretty good routine in place for when that happens, but it seems like if one of us falls apart, we all fall apart.

Ava is talking up a storm. I love the way she says certain words or has her own words for things. I get a little sad when she starts using the "right" term for things. A diaper used to be a "d-dup," but lollipop is still "loppipop" and a slide is still a "wee-boom." I'm simply amazed at how much she has to say! (I think she takes after her daddy). She also loves her books and with most of them, you can leave out words or entire lines and she'll fill in where you left off. Several times, I've heard her "reading" to herself - she has more of the books memorized than I realized!

That's about all the excitement at our house. Hope all of you (if there are any!) reading this are doing well. We'd love to hear from you!

A New Year

Well, apparently the real estate market continues to get worse and worse and Mark's hours with the home inspection company went from part-time to none at all, so he is currently pursuing management again at Chipotle (ever since he started back there, they've been pursuing him, so we're glad he has that option!).

All of us except Mark have had colds the past few weeks, but that seems to be standard with toddlers and babies this time of year. I don't have many pictures as I normally would since we've all had snotty noses and it's not a good look on us!

In the past 2 weeks, Ava has started saying, "Love you, Mommy (or Daddy or Carter or Bear)" complete with hug with no sort of prompting on our parts. So precious. We are working on the intensity of hugging when it comes to Carter... she is quite unaware of her own strength. Not that he seems to mind at all - he loves any and all attention he receives from his big sister.

I can tell Ava is anxious for Carter to be able to play with her. She brings him toys (and often shoos him away from things she doesn't want him to touch). He does tend to get into everything already. Even though he's far from crawling, he is a master roller. I can see him spot something across the room and off he goes rolling toward it. Frankly, I'm a little nervous about how much he'll get into when he CAN crawl!

Several times when I've gotten Carter after he's been sleeping, I notice a hand-print on his face. Since he's too young for a pillow, I guess his hand works just fine.
I swear, that is NOT my handprint

Christmas and such

We had a wonderful Christmas, but it's hard to believe we're on to a new year already and it's time to take down the tree (Ava will be very sad) and put away the decorations. Amy's parents came out Christmas Eve and stayed until last Sunday. Ava is now a pro at unwrapping gifts and has had lots of fun playing with her new toys. Carter slept through the present opening, which simply meant Ava got to have a second round of unwrapping since Carter has a way to go on hand-eye coordination. Mom and Dad also spent some days at Amy's brother's house while they were in Ohio. We were able to see a good friend get married on Friday night while Ava and Carter got to have Nana all to themselves for the evening.

Sunday was baby dedication at church after which we were able to spend the day with our good friends (one couple lives in Texas so visits with them are greatly anticipated). There are 6 kids among the 4 couples (and one due in February), so we don't get to actually catch up much, but it's still so good to be together.


Since then Carter has started cereal and Ava has gotten to play in the snow! It's been a busy week!