The Good Moments

Since my last post there have been several more incidents. One involves me standing outside the passenger side door for a good ten minutes yelling at Ava (I mean trying to communicate to Ava) to "push the button" (the unlock button!). And though my week has been filled with craziness, scares, and "I'm so sorry" 's (that one involves me grabbing Ava by the hair to keep her from falling down....it was a reflex but it was NOT a good idea!) it has also been filled with a few moments like these:

It is so fun to see how much Ava loves her baby sister. And I see it in Sadie's eyes too. She loves Ava.

(Ava is taking a picture of me)

One of Those Moments

**Okay, I've never had a single scare with Ava! Now, twice in two days I've had them with Sadie! Just a minute ago I looked over and she had the cord from Chris's xbox controller wrapped around her neck like 3 times! Luckily they weren't choking her yet but they were pretty tight. Sheesh! It's really hard to keep my eyes on both of them at the same time. I was so focused on Ava because she woke up with a fever. Being a mom is scary! It's a good thing it's so rewarding too otherwise no one would do it!**

Today I had one of those moments....the one where two things happen simultaneously. The first thing that happened was my mommy instinct took over immediately. Without thinking my body knew exactly what to do...and did it. The second thing is that while my body was doing what it needed to my mind was thinking "please don't let this happen to me!"

Sadie started choking today. I had let her play with a candy bar wrapper (stupid me!) because she liked the crinkling noise it made. I have no excuse other than that sometimes I am brain dead (I get it from my mom.....love you mom!!). I just didn't think about the fact that she has teeth now and could easily rip the wrapper. Which is exactly what she did. And then proceeded to choke on it. (and not the kind where the kid gags a few times and then spits the food up, I mean the real kind). In full on mommy mode my finger immedietly went into her mouth, to the back or her throat, and did a sweep (exactly like I've always been taught I should do, without ever actually doing it).

I've never been so scared being a mom!

Sadie is fine. No permanant damage I hope. Mostly the scaring will just be on me.

Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, & Happy New Year

It's been a busy couple of weeks.....

As most of you already know by now my family was here for Christmas this year. My Mom and Dad, all seven kids, and their spouses and kids spent Christmas at the Ranch. And by now you also know about our Christmas Eve incident. We took everyone sledding and my brother Keith ended up in the ER. To read the story and see the video of the crash go HERE.

Now for the rest of the week..... The kids LOVED the snow. They loved it so much they even braved the freezing cold to go outside at night and have snowball fight!
Samm, James, and Aunt Krista declared war on Uncle Kenny.

Ava could care less about the forts and snowball fights. She just loves to eat snow....I'm thinking soon we'll have to have the talk about yellow snow!

Uncle Josh building a snow cave.

Aunt Krista and Uncle David building a fort.

Christmas morning!!! Thanks Santa!

Ava cared more about the candy than anything else.

Chris and I gave her dress up clothes for Christmas. So cute!

And just because I thought it was so funny and very ironic.....Poor Keith got a baseball glove for Christmas.....kind of hard to use when both arms are in casts!!

Ava and cousin Macy, who are only 3 weeks apart, played good together most of the time. Although there was a LOT of "mine"s being thrown around. :)

And for me this amazing weekend ended with the sweetest letter from my favorite
Samm in the whole world! In case you can't read it it says: "Dear Aunty Jen thank you for letting us come to your house this week i love you so much love samm."

We also celebrated Ava's 2nd birthday during the week. For pictures see post below. The new year was spent with my mom and two youngest brothers who due to an airline booking error are stuck here until January 8th.

Happy New Year everyone!!

Happy Birthday Ava

We celebrated Ava's birthday on the 23rd this year so that my family could be here for the party. The cake decorater was off work when I showed up so I had to write on the cake myself....not too pretty. But apparently it still tasted good. It made a nice red mess all over Ava!
Of course Ava loved opening the presents. It didn't take her long to figure out that there were toys inside!

And it wouldn't be Ava if we didn't have at least one meltdown. I honestly have no clue what it was even about.

So there it is in a nutshell. Ava is two!!

It really is THIS cold......

Today Chris came home from work with these pants. Yes, that's right. They are frozen solid and standing up on their own. It's 6:00pm and the current temp is 0*. BBBRRRRR!!!!

I think tonight is a perfect night for a movie and hot chocolate!

Hope For Benson & Claire

Many of you may remember the online auction my sister Sally put on for her good friend who lost her husband and was in need of help.
Again I am donating items to an online auction which I feel strongly about. The wonderful ladies over at BLOOM are hosting an auction for Benson & Claire, two little children in need of our help. Claire is in desperate need of a kidney/liver transplant. My father-in-law is also in need of a kidney transplant so this particular story is very close to my heart.
Please, please, please, do what you can to help. The auction begins on BLOOM tomorrow and goes until Sunday. To read all about Benson & Claire go HERE. The pictures below are the items I have donated.

The Girls

Some say they look nothing alike. Others say they look exactly alike. So here it is: A picture of both girls at exactly the same age (to the day!)
I think they look nothing alike. What do you think?

I'm Not Ready

While I am not even CLOSE to being ready for potty training I can at least appreciate that Ava is showing signs of interest. As I was putting on my makeup this morning I hear Ava grunting and saying "poo poo" which is not an uncommon thing. She can usually tell me when she is going or when she has already gone. But after I realized she was continuing to say it (usually this means she is waiting for me to acknowledge her) I finally looked over to find this: Ava was sitting on the toilet going "poo poo". I got a good chuckle out of it and continued on with my makeup. Then a minute later I hear "wipe" and look over to see this:
Ava had helped herself to a piece of toilet paper and was wiping.

I'm so proud!

Our Lucky Day

I have to admit that when Friday the 13th came up as the best day for Chris and I to get married I was a little apprehensive. I don't consider myself a superstitious person but for some reason the idea of getting married on a day that has so many people running scared had me a little nervous. And rightfully so. A great many things went wrong that day. But I won't bore you with that. We still got hitched and in the end, all of that other stuff doesn't matter. I don't have a picture from our wedding because my mom still has them. (I think. I hope.) But here is a picture that pretty much sums up our marriage. But wait, that's not all. After 3 long, stressful, tear filled years, we finally decided to go ahead with invitro fertilization so we could have a baby. And because we did this, I happen to know the exact day I got pregnant with Ava. Yup, you guessed it. Friday the 13th!

And now, 6 years from when it all started, here we are with two beautiful girls and we could not be happier! So I guess you could say Friday the 13th is our lucky day!

Is it lucky for you or does it have you running scared?

"I too dizzy"

Well I wasn't planning on taking Ava trick or treating this year...she is after all not even two yet. But some friends and family were having a party and I decided we wouldn't be the party poopers. I borrowed a costume for Ava and I have to say she looked pretty darn cute as a little poodle!

Here is our little group of kids. We have two transformers, cleopatra, a lion, a poodle, a zebra, what I think was a princess ballerina, and the boy on the right was supposed to be Thomas the Train, but didn't want to put his costume on. (I wish I had a picture of it though. His mom made it and it was really good!)

My little cutie!

My sisters little boy used to (or still does, I don't know) say "I too dizzy" when he was too tired. I thought of him last night as Ava sat down on the street after about only 10 houses and decided she was too tired to go on. She just wanted to eat her candy.....

So we went home so she could at least sit down and eat her candy where it was warm!