Merry Christmas!

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas! Here's a recap of ours.

We were not able to visit family this year, but Ava made this Christmas the best! I loved getting excited for her. :) Here she is Christmas morning, and no, not all of the gifts are hers.

She did pretty well opening the presents. Better than I had expected. She did however, like to eat the wrapping paper.Here's the best video I have of her unwrapping a gift. I love how she gets excited with the box and whacks herself with it. :)

The best gift this year was a blanket Justin's mom made him. His brother Jason passed away in October and this blanket has pictures of him and his brothers on it.

I love this picture. Do you see Justin? He's the scrawny one flexing. :)

Ava with the puppy mom and dad gave her.

A family picture we took at a friend's house. Thanks to Great Grandma Graff for Ava's shirt and Aunt Heather for the skirt!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

100 MILES!!! .... and more

I did it! I ran 100 miles and finished 3 weeks early.
Thanks for all of your support. I feel good about accomplishing my goal and am now thinking of what I want to do for next year. However, I don't see any marathons in my future, and I must say, I admire all of you who have ran a marathon (or multiple marathons)!

We had our ward Christmas party on Friday. I just had to put Ava on Santa's lap, even though I knew she would cry. Does that make me a mean mom? :)

I will take pictures of our Christmas decorations later, but here is Ava, EATING the tree. I'm not sure why she likes it so much, but we always find her munching on the branches. I'm pretty sure she's swallowed a few pine needles.... extra fiber?


Justin and I thought we were pretty clever with this one. We were trying to clean the house, but Ava kept dumping out her toys or clinging to our legs. We decided to stick her in a laundry basket with some cheerios. It kept her busy for about 3 minutes.

Videos

I've recently been able to capture some pretty cute moments of Ava. All of the videos are short! The longest one is only 24 seconds.... so you have time to watch. :) If anything, you must watch the third one, it's the best.

This first video is of her crawling. She is crawling all over the place, pulling herself up, and walking along the couch.


This one is over her watching herself in the first video. As I sorted through the videos, she LOVED to watch herself. I love how excited she gets about this particular video.
She reminds me of the E-trade baby commercials.



I saved the best for last. This is Ava running. :) Enjoy!

Thanksgiving is... food & friends!

This was my first year hosting... okay well semi hosting, Thanksgiving. It was great! We borrowed a house (the owners were out of town), and everyone helped cook the meal. But Justin and I made the turkey! And I'm so happy, it was not raw or dry. Yay!

We had a great Thanksgiving with friends. I am very thankful for many things, but most of all for family and friends. I love that even though I live miles away from family, my friends have become my family.

We had wonderful food, but more importantly.... we had 10 pies! Not quite like the 47 my family had last year, but at least we had more than 1 pie per family. :) Yum!


Here we are decked out in our BYU gear. I really shouldn't post this picture today (if you know why, please be nice and don't say anything about it). :) I've been wanting to take a picture of us in our BYU shirts but didn't get to it until now, the end of the season, oh well.
Go Cougars!

Good Morning!
This is how I'm greeted each morning. Merry Christmas!.... a little early
Look what Justin got me for Christmas!! I'm so excited! He kept it a secret for 2 months and then realized that it was such a big purchase, he better get my opinion before he bought it. My opinion is that it's WONDERFUL! It's a digital piano that sounds and feels just like a real piano with touch sensitive keys!

Who is that other baby?

This is how I keep Ava entertained while I get ready in the morning.

Two more projects complete!

I've been wanting to make these 2 projects since we moved in 2.5 months ago. I finally did it. I made the flower "pot" and blocks for Ava's dresser (which still needs to be painted - yet another project!)

Story Time with Daddy

I love this!

All Clean!

Grandkids and Pat-a-Cake

This is a picture of Ava with all of her cousins. I laugh at this picture because I remember how 5 year old Kiah was trying to hold all of the little kids on her lap and still smile. You can never get all of the kids to look at the camera and smile all together. Anyway, the kids are (clockwise) Boston, Paisley, Kiah, Ethan, Gabe and Ava.

While visiting my family, my parents taught Ava how to play Pat-a-Cake! I love how she squeals with delight at the end.

Too Many Pictures?

Is there such a thing as taking too many pictures? After reading my account, you will probably say YES!

I recently bought a new digital camera, and I love it! However, when I went to upload the pictures on to my old laptop, it froze. Finally, we got a new computer. I uploaded my photos from the past month (emphasis on ONE month). Our new computer can hold over 100,000 pictures, that's a good thing, because in ONE month I took 500 pictures!!! :)

In my defense, I must say that during this month, we went to Mt. Vernon, Utah, Boulder City, and my sister was in town, and we had Halloween. But still... is 500 pictures too much? :)

All that being said, I couldn't post without a picture!

Here we are at Mt. Vernon (George Washington's Estate.)

Happy Halloween! ...a little late

Ava was a ballerina for Halloween.

We took pictures with her friends, Reagan and Carter.

They were so cute! Unfortunately for Reagan, all Ava wanted to do was pull on his costume. Reagan was not too happy about it. I have a whole series of pictures like this. It's like Reagan was saying, "Ugh, leave me alone girl!" Ava couldn't keep her hands to herself. :)

Jason Lee Hawes

Justin's older brother, Jason, passed away about a week ago. When we heard the news, we got on the next flight to Utah. We are still visiting family now.

Jason was a wonderful person. We will miss him, but know he is doing better where he is now. He always brought a smile to our faces. The few years I knew Jason, he was always happy, kind, helpful, and concerned for others. I am so grateful for my knowledge of the Gospel, and that I know we will see Jason again. We love you "J-Man" and will miss you.

1 done 475 to go

Projects that is. I feel like I have a never ending list of craft projects. I really enjoy doing them. I just don't always finish them. :)

I love the idea of letters in a nursery. I wanted huge letters above Ava's bed, but didn't want to pay for 3' tall letters. I cut these out of cardboard and covered them in scrapbook paper. What do you think? I've only finished one side of her room. Once I finish the other side (and the rest of the apartment!) I'll post more pictures.Recent pictures in her Sunday dress.

Helping mom with the laundry.

oops!

Grocery Dilemma

I've always found it difficult to get all of the groceries inside the house, AND carry Ava without making 3 or 4 trips! Today it worked out perfectly.

Step 1: Put baby in box
Step 2: Bring groceries and baby inside at the same time!


*Note: These were just the perishable items. In order to get all of my groceries in at once, I guess I'm going to need a bigger box.

32.5

I'm a third of the way to my goal of running 100 miles by the end of the year! (Well, 32.5 is close enough to a third.) :) You guys need to comment so I know that you are holding me to my statement. If anything, you can say that you don't think I'll be able to do it, because I love a challenge! I had a hard time keeping up with the miles recently because I had a slight cold. But Biggest Loser has started up again (one of my favorite shows), and I have been re-motivated by it.

Virginia Beach

Sorry for the post overload, but if I don’t post this now, I might not remember until December.

A few weeks ago we went to the beach. It was so nice to get out and get some sun! Ava did really well with the trip. She was a little wary of the waves. At first they scared her and made her cry. Then she warmed up to them and was able to let them lull her to sleep by the last day.

Justin enjoyed body surfing, while I enjoyed taking pictures of Ava on the beach. The following are pics from Ava's photo shoot. :)

Ava's face shows her concern about the waves she sees.

.

Not so sure about those waves.

Dumpster Diving - Take 2

Justin took the trash out the other day and came back with this!

We are liking our new place… and the dumpsters…haha. We saw a treadmill the other day, but decided to let that one go. Someone else picked it up before the end of the day. Maybe we should re-name it the “Community Recycling Area.”

Random Tidbits

San Francisco
A few weeks ago Justin went to San Francisco for work. It was his first time there. Although he worked hard ;) he was able to see the sights: China Town, downtown, the Golden Gate Bridge, and he went to a Giants game.

The coolest part about the stadium was that it backed up to the bay. People were sitting in kayaks waiting to catch homeruns. Also, after the game, hundreds of seagulls filled the stands to eat the leftover food. He didn’t see a single seagull during the game.

100 MILES!
I recently made a goal to run 100 miles by the end of the year. Why am I telling you? Because if I’m not held accountable, I might not do it. :) And so, now that you all know, I have to do it! You can keep track of my miles on the side column.

Jumperoo

Ava’s new favorite toy (borrowed from a friend – thanks Nora!) is the Jumperoo. She cracks me up as she jumps. It sometimes seems as though she is going to jump right out. It’s amazing how strong those tiny legs are.

Trash Treasures

I took out the trash today and found this toy sitting NEXT to the dumpers (*note: not IN the dumpster) :) It looks brand new and includes working batteries! Sweet!

The Move

We moved recently! We now have 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms!!! Yay! I’ll post more info and pics when everything is unpacked.

Playtime with Daddy

Ava’s favorite part of the day is when her daddy comes home. He plays with her and makes her laugh for a good 15 minutes.

It’s the cutest thing to watch.

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Happy Girl

All ready for church

Hike

We recently took Ava on her first hike.

We hiked in an area near the Potomac River. It was really pretty, although it was very hot!

Ava did really well. She liked looking around.

We were only gone for an hour.

We didn’t want to overheat the little thing. :)

Ava: “Eh, this hike was a piece of cake! I didn’t even sweat!”

Bargains!

If you know me, you know I love bargins! My new favorite thing is to go to the second hand store to find gently used, awesome stuff! I’m aspiring to make crafts from second hand stuff… I'll let you know if I actually get around to it. :)Here are a few bargains I picked up recently. I got the three board books from the second hand store for .70 cents each (retail is approx. $7 ea). The cute shorts for Ava were $1.99 at Old Navy.

We are moving to a 2 bedroom apartment soon! (I can’t wait!) I found this awesome Ikea dresser for Ava from Craigslist. I paid $20 and it sells new for $150! I also bought an Ikea bookshelf for $10 (it sells new for $70). Sweet deals! :)