Random Pictures

My ladies luncheon table, Ava and her ladybug hair clip from Auntie Judy, more fun with Sofi, and a rainbow!

Jack's Award

I was looking back through our posts and had to edit this one from last spring since it said Ava and Sofia were in the misery instead of the nursery. Ha!  I guess sometimes the nursery can be miserable depending.  Anyway when you edit, it moves that post to the most recent posts.  Oh well.  I thought it was worth it. I am a natural editor anyway, and I did notice a few others that needed editing; but since they are from a while ago, I am leaving them if they are easy to understand.  

Jack getting his Awana award and singing in the school choir. And here's Ava and Sofia in the nursery.

Happy May!

Only two more weeks of school! It doesn't seem possible. We will have a graduate on our hands! I have loved being part of Jack's class this year. He has grown up so much. I'm so thankful for a school that teaches so many good things and backs up what we do here at home. Ava still asks multiple times a day where Jack is and wants to go get him whenever we go anywhere. They really love each other, and that's fun to see.

We are proud of Jack for getting 2nd place in his Awana Sparks group. He finished his book, reviewed his book, finished an extra workbook and reviewed that too. He worked hard and won a gift card. He bought a large super hero Legos set. He also sang in the choir for the school Patch the Pirate play. I love hearing him sing the songs around the house.

Anywhere we go, Ava calls it somebody's house. Church is Judy's house, our friend who devotes much time and love to them. Metro Women's Center is Tupee's house. Tupee is the assistant there. And then of course, there's mama and papa's house, (for both sets of grandparents). And mommy/daddy house for ours. She finally has said a few more names, Nana for Nancy, Bent for Brent, and A'a for Ava. I love her little personality which really is quite funny at home. She keeps it mostly for us to see but is getting a lot more outgoing and says hi to everyone in any store which she calls, "oh dis (this) house."
We had to get onto Jack a while ago for answering us with "ok ok" instead of a respectful answer. Ava picked it up, but hers is a very excited OK OK when we ask her to do something, so we are letting that go for now. It's pretty cute.

We are still waiting for spring. I keep thinking with each new winter storm warning that this has to be the last one, but at least there is green grass now and buds on my favorite tree! I can't believe Mother's Day is next week! It sort of crept up on us partly because of the bad weather I think. We are looking forward to all being together. And today we are getting together for a Kentucky Derby party a fun recent tradition for our family. We use any excuse to get together for a party! So happy derby day!

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!

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!

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.

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!