Thursday, April 18, 2013

More Ava

Ava knows the colors red and pink.

She also can count. One, two, tee. If there are more than 3 things, she says, "one, two, tee, two, tee..."

When we get in the car, she tells us all to buckle.

She makes sure we are all praying during prayer time, even her dolls.

She loves books especially if they can be sung like nursery rhymes or play music.

OH AND....drum roll.....she went in the potty! It scared her to death, but once she discovered how excited we all were and that she gets M&MS, it helped. I'm hoping she will be a quick learner!

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Ava progress

All of a sudden, I can mostly understand Ava! Yesterday she told me, "Mommy, me 2" and held up 3 fingers. I have been telling her not to cry when she's frustrated and instead to say, "Help please", and what a surprise when she started doing that! Like something just clicked. She also pointed to an "A" and said "A". Then she pointed to a bunch of other letters and said "A". But I'm convinced she knew the first one!

Of course, right now she is in time out beside me for being mean to a little girl at McDonald's. That's the nature of ages 2-3, I guess. I'm sure we are in for much more fun!

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Happy birthday, Aunt Bek!

We had a great time celebrating Rebekah's birthday all together. Jack's helping blow out the candles as is his tradition. And here's Ava praying. She looks so cute and innocent when she prays that Auntie Heidi took this picture.



Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Vacation Time and Easter

We are back from our vacation and we had a wonderful time!  We missed the kids, of course, but it was so nice to be able to get away together for our vacation as we celebrated our 10th anniversary.  We were able to spend a couple days in Florida with Uncle Larry and Aunt Carol and then we took a 7 day cruise down to the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands.  We had nice warm weather and calm seas!

I always like to get a round or two of golf in with Larry
This is the car we rented in Florida.  The reason I am including this in our pictures is because we bought one that looks exactly like this when we got back to Minnesota.  We had been getting killed at the pump by our Ford Explorer ever since we made it our only vehicle.  We did the math and realized that we would save money by buying a fuel efficient vehicle like this.  It is a 2012 Chevrolet Sonic and we are loving it so far.  
Here's our ship!  It is huge!
Enjoying a beautiful sunset on a beautiful ship with my beautiful wife!
Beautiful view of the Atlantis Resort from our room
There was a lot of fun things to do on the ship like mini-golf
Zip line
Flow rider
Rock wall.  That's me at the top ringing the bell
I tried the stand-up flow rider.  Shannon said she was going to try to get a picture of me as soon as the guy let go of my hand....
She wasn't quick enough
We got to meet Puss in Boots
When we arrived at St. Thomas we saw a bunch of these guys hanging out on the rocks
We got to swim in the ocean at St. John
St. Maarten's.  The water around these islands was incredibly clear and beautiful.
It was great to get away but it was so wonderful to be able to come home and see our kids again.  Here they are on Easter Sunday morning getting ready for church.
Ava liked her gloves
Of course they enjoyed getting candy too!
We took like 4 or 5 pictures of our family at this time and in every picture Jack is looking in a different direction.  He gets distracted easily!