Toys, Shoes & Giggles!

I finally found the battery charger (actually Chris found it) and recharged all of our batteries so that I can take more pics! Here is a great pic of Ava laughing at the dogs. Today Maya snipped at her and all she did was giggle more. Ava really has a great sense of humor. We love that about her.I'm convinced I'll never have a clean, organized house again! These are pictures of our living room being taken over by toys! For those of you who know us well - you know that not only does Ava have a lot of toys but so does Chris (GI Joes & Transformers). He has taken over our computer room - at least they are shelved and organized though.

Today I decided that instead of spinning my wheels cleaning the same things over and over again, I'm going to do some sort of project everyday that has been needing to get done but gets put on the back burner due to the stuff that keeps the wheels spinning.

Today I tackled all of the the laundry that hasn't been folded, hung up, etc. That's really something that should be done all of the time but we took a long break from doing it. (This is embarassing but we had Ava's play pen packed with clean clothes to be put away!). Tomorrow I think I will finally organize under the bathroom counter in the master bath. Of course I'll still have to do all of the other things too but I think I'll feel more accomplished getting some of these projects done.
New shoes! I finally bought Ava a pair of Crocs. I realize why so many people have them now - so easy to put on and clean and supposedly comfortable. Chris suggested I get myself a pair when I was pregnant but with my already large feet I didn't want to draw any more attention to them. (I wear size 11 and have been wearing size 10 + since 5th grade. When people ask me my shoe size I just resort to saying, "size clown". Okay, not really.) Ava LOVES hers. We opted for the bright green color instead of pink this time. YIPPEE FOR CROCS!

Mommy & Me

I signed Ava up for Parent-Child swim "lessons" through Parks & Rec. We've had a pretty good time. The idea is to help the kids to become more comfortable with the water. My teaching artner Diane and her daughter also signed up so we get to play in the pool together. The class meets at the Indoor Aquatic Center (I love not having to mess with sunscreen but that means I will remain bright white) for 25 minutes a day for 2 weeks.

Although Ava is the youngest in the class by a few months, she is the chattiest! It's interesting to see your child in a class setting like that. She's also becoming more independent - trying to shrug my hand away as she walks into water up to her chest. I don't think so Miss Ava.

Today we worked on going underwater. She did pretty well but still hasn't learned to take a breath first. We're also still working on learning to blow bubbles. Oh well - the point is to have fun and that is what it's all about in my mind.

Garage Sale Thoughts

So I'm just now starting to rest after an eventful week/weekend. I've been spending most of this week cleaning out my old classroom and garage in preparation of our garage sale. We participated in a neighborhood garage sale (we figured free advertising - why not) Friday and Saturday. It's amazing how much work putting on a garage sale is! At some point you start calculating (at least I do anyway) how much time you're putting into it and then how much per hour after figuring your profit you made...and then asking, "Was it worth my time?" Here are a few of my thoughts:

Reasons to have a garage sale:
make some $
get rid of stuff
some people enjoy the whole "salesman/playing store" idea
get to meet lost of interesting people
you might get to see someone happily treasure your trash
motivates you to clean out your garage (something we're still working on)
our garage sales end in a friendly donation to our local goodwill - also a tax write-off

Reasons NOT to have a garage sale:
lots of WORK
it's hot outside
your junk is on display for everyone to see and wonder why you ever bought it in the first place
you get to meet lots of interesting people
old ladies might try to steal stuff (ask me about this one later)
you don't have any "junk" of value
it might stress out your family
underpricing woes

Greatest Garage Sale Moment(s):
It's a tie between selling our alligator dog bed to a nice lady who was going to give it to her little chihuahua to sleep in and playing Go Fish with my sister Kelly while waiting for customers. (pretty exciting)

Biggest Garage Sale regret:
Originally pricing our 7 yr. old 27" Sharp color TV for 50.00 (part of the little plastic base was broken off on the front - moving incident) then marking it down to 35.00 too early. After a lady bought it for 35.00 and I put a "SOLD" sign on it, LOTS (7-8) of people were disappointed and said they easily would've paid 50.00 for it. Then the lady I sold it to kept asking me if I was sure it hadn't been dropped. I told her 3 times that it hadn't - she obviously didn't trust me. OH well. We got it out of our garage - that was the point.

So what did I decide?

I decided that it was worth my time. Getting rid of things that you don't use or need anymore feels so good. I'll never miss those things! Chris & I made a pretty decent sum of cash - although I found a great garage sale with the cutest, inexpensive, name-brand baby clothes and spent a good portion of our profit on Ava's wardrode for the next few seasons. Although I feel the fruit was worth the labor, I have decided that the next family garage sale will be held at someone else's garage. I'm too worn out to do another one at our house anytime soon.

Birthday Party

We celebrated Ava's birthday at Prairie Park. We invited family and some friends of Ava's for bbq and birthday cake. Ava had a great time. She got to toddle around, swing, play with kids, and even ate an entire piece of cake!
Some of Ava's friends had to cancel and it was raining when we set up so we didn't know how long the party would last. It's kind of hard to grill hamburgers when it's raining. Thankfully, the rain went away and actually cooled the place down a bit. We had lots of rain-free time to celebrate.
Ava LOVED her cake. No shocker there. She sat and ate the whole piece...one hand-full at a time.

More Birhday Pics

Here are some more pics from Ava's birthday. Ava got a Little People farm set. So cute! Ava, William and Grandma had fun exploring this new toy.
Here is baby Kate in her fruit dress. Ava has a pair of pants and overalls (she wore them at her party) from the same line.
The first thing Ava wants to do when she sees her baby cousin Kate (they are 8 months apart) is hug her and hold her. She just loves babies...especially baby Kate.
We got Ava a baby Leap frog pad. We hope she likes it. She loves books so this will at least entertain Chris and I as well as Ava.

An Amazing Year!

Today is Ava's 1st Birthday! I can't believe my little sweetheart is already a year old. Take a look at how much she has grown and changed over the past year!

Happy Birthday Ava!

Quote of the Day

We babysat Lydia tonight so our friends, Matt & Camie could go out to eat for their anniversary (Happy Anniversary by the way). We asked Lydia to say the dinner prayer. Here is what she said,

"Dear Heavenly Father, please bless that my mommy and daddy will come pick me up at Lori's house. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

Chris and I had to keep ourselves from laughing. Chris was concentrating so hard on not laughing that he wasn't paying attention to what he was doing and accidentally drank Lydia's milk. Not sure how this happened...Chris was drinking flavored water in a tall "grown-up" glass and there was Lydia's milk in a small, plastic "kiddie-cup". That's when I lost it. I'm still laughing about it.

Mass Exodus

I'm so sad! A lot of my favorite people are moving away. First - Andrea, Now - Sandra, and soon - Camie! Just as my schedule is freeing up to be able to do more with them too! They had a farewell picnic for Sandra on Wednesday.
There was a nice turnout and the kids seemed to have a good time. We'll miss you, Sandra and family!

Wading Room Only

Today was playgroup. We were having a water gun/pool party...only it was a little crowded. You should've seen it when all of us adults got in! (haha) Luckily there was also a slip-and-slide. Ava liked splashing in the water but didn't like falling down in it because it was so cold.
It was cousin Kate's first time "swimming". She had a pretty good time laughing at all of the kids splashing around. I just noticed that it looks like Ava is being "held up" in this picture. :)
Here's Ava petting Smokey, one of the dogs up for adoption from the Humane Society.


I decided to post some pics from our trip to the library Animal Fair last weekend. Ava really likes to look at the animals. She was a little upset that she was too short to pet the bunnies so Chris helped her. She LOVES dogs. She really liked a friendly dog named Smokey. I've been teaching Ava baby sign language. We have two chihuahuas so Ava learned the sign for dog quickly. Anytime we see or hear a dog, Ava will do the sign which is sticking your tongue out and panting. It's so cute but then again, I wonder what people think when she does it. Oh well!

After the fair we went to our favorite bakery, Great Harvest, and got some Honey Wheat bread. I just stole some strawberry jam from Camie to go with it...yumm.

Good Times

Last night a group of us got together to play some kickball. I reserved a nice fenced in softball field and brought the true red rubber kickballs that we played with in grade school. We didn't have a huge number of people attend but were able to play 5 on 5 which worked out just fine. I know Chris and I had a GREAT time and are excited to play again. I hate to admit it but we are so sore! I guess we did a lot more running and used a lot more of our muscles than we normally do. It was well worth it though.

Today we went to Costco to order Ava's 1st Birthday cake. I can't believe that my little girl is turning 1 already! Everyone told me that it would go by so fast and they were right.

After that we went to the Public Library for their "Animal Fair" to kick off their summer reading program. Ava liked seeing some of the animals, mostly the doggies and the baby goats. The Zoomobile from the Kansas City Zoo was there but we weren't all that impressed. Ava did pet a "big" millipede however.

We then all came home and took 2 hour naps...the highlight of our day.

Neat stuff

Here are some of the pictures from her book. As you can see I've even included pictures of the dogs. She really likes to point at the picture - then the dog. Her favorite page to look at so far is the one of her baby cousin Kate.
I made Ava the cutest little book yesterday. It has pictures of all of her family members with their names on the page as well. I used Microsoft Publisher but also used a lot of digital scrapbooking type things - backgrounds, embellishments, ribbons, and then printed it off onto photo paper. (I also had fun making some embellishments of my own - hello graphic design!) I then used my Xyron to adhere the "photos" with enhancements, and then used my Xyron to laminate the pages. Last, I hole-punched each page and put them together using rings. Hopefully Ava will really enjoy it and it will help her learn the names of her family members.

Here are some web addresses of sites that I really like. Most of them offer free items.

http://www.twopeasinabucket.com

This one offers a free monthly digital kit with background papers & embellishments. I used a lot of stuff from this website. GO to the "digital scrapbooking" tab and scroll to the bottom for past monthly kits.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/activityCenterHome?lc=en&cc=us&cat=47205&dlc=en&

This is a site by HP, Hewlett Packard that offers lots of free projects for download. Lots of the projects have pieces that I like and would probably use for other things. If this link doesn't work - just go to hp.com and click on "activity center."

http://www.onescrappysite.com/downloads.html

This site has tons of free fonts for download.

http://www.scrapvillage.com/fontsb.htm

Another site for free font downloads.

http://www.typadelic.com/free.html

This one also has some free fonts.

http://www.creativedelights.com

This is one of my FAVORITE sites for purchasing true type and picture fonts as well as other embellishments to print for cards and scrapbooks, etc. If you sign up for their newsletter you can get 10 free fonts. They also have pretty good periodic sales to watch for.

Well, I hope to have helped at least a couple of you!

First Swim!

Yesterday was the first time that Ava has been swimming. We almost didn't get to go because of the lightning but waited it out and were able to get in. We took her to the Indoor Aquatic Center - didn't have to worry about sunscreen or hot sun so that was nice.

Ava LOVED swimming. We weren't surprised. She didn't know what to think at first but I told her it was kind of like a bath. ;o) It was a short time before she was splashing and playing with the equipment. We stayed for about an hour or so - until we saw that Ava's lips were blue. She never complained though. We had lots of fun and can't wait to get more swimming in this summer.

"Hi!"

Ava's been trying to say "hi" since she was 5 months old. Some say they heard her say it then but I never really counted it. Well, lately there is no question that she understands the word "hi" and knows how to use it. Today at church she was saying "hi" to the two Vonfeldt girls sitting behind us. Then in primary she was saying "hi" to those on the back bench. I, of course, think it is way cute.

I got a new camera for Mother's Day, (a Canon PowerShot A620), and I REALLY like it. I was having camera envy for my sister Heidi's camera. We bought our last digital camera in 2001. The technology is so much better now. Needless to say, I've been taking a lot of pictures lately. Now I REALLY need to get going on my scrapbook albums.

Ava hasn't had much patience for me to take pics of her. I've been getting a lot of "walking away" shots. I guess Mommy's just too slow.

I'm planning Ava's 1st Birthday party. We're having it at a park. Let me know if any of you have any ideas for activities. There will be kids there ages 0-8 years old or so.

Here are some of my recent shots. As you can see, Ava spends a lot of time with her cousins William and Kate. She LOVES babies and always wants to hug Kate and pat Kate and give Kate her binky, etc. It's really pretty sweet. Ava likes to watch and play with William too, (when he'll let her that is). One of the pics is of Ava and my sister Kelly, Ava's (and everyone's) favorite Aunt.

Growing Up

Ava is really growing up! On most days, Ava and I wait for Daddy to get home from work. I usually try to keep us busy by watering or looking out the window or sitting on the bench and waiting. Ava's face lights up the moment she's sees Daddy's black truck turning the corner and driving up to our house. Her smile appears when Daddy pulls up onto the driveway and starts waving. It's very sweet. Chris then usually takes Ava with him to walk and get the mail. I think it's great Daddy-daughter time.

I was finishing watering and looked over to see how they were doing. I forgot how small Ava was until I watched her from far away. I saw her and Daddy getting the mail, Daddy putting her down and letting her walk, Daddy trying to hold her hand, Ava shaking it off - showing that she could do it without him, Ava walking right past our house and continuing to walk further away, Daddy running in front of her and trying to get her to turn around...etc.

We survived!

Thursday was the last day of teaching for me. We made it! I'll miss many aspects of teaching and working with school-age kids, but I don't think I'll ever regret staying home with Ava.

Here are some pictures of my 3rd grade class on the last day of school.

Last Day!

For those of you've I've visited with recently, you know that I have been counting down the days to my retirement (for now at least---a long "for now" if I have my way) from teaching. Tomorrow is my last day with the kids and then Friday I have a half-day working in my room. I love teaching and love the kids but I am ready to be a full-time mommy. I only worked half-time this year but it has still been too much for me. I figure I'd rather be a little poorer than work right now.

Ava is almost 1 year-old. I can't believe it! This time last year I was very pregnant, (elephant foot and ankle pregnant) and was just finishing my first year of teaching. (I know, who gets pregnant their first year of teaching?? She was the best surprise I've ever had. ) One year later I have a beautiful little girl who is the center of our world. It's so amazing!

Joining the Blogging Party

I've decided to "join the club" and start a blog for our family...thanks to Camie for the convincing. I think this will be nice opportunity to say a few things, post a few pictures and hear from some of you! I hope to at least entertain you with the misadventures of the George family. Please feel free to post your comments!