A Quick Pic

I have a lot of blogging to catch up on ...

but I don't have time to do it now!

At some point I'll come back and write about how Avery's been doing in kindergarten (great, by the way!) and how Ella's been doing at home without her (also great!)

In the meantime, here's a picture to tide you over.

I took the girls out last night behind our house to try to have a mini session with them. I'm on a quest to get, oh I don't know, maybe 5 decent pictures of my own kids, since I have almost none. Is that too much to ask??

I guess it is. I don't know why I even keep trying! I have such a hard time with my own kids! (Although, I must admit, taking Ella out at the end of a day where she did not nap was not the best idea.) I got a few OK pics, but I'm not sure they were worth all the mosquitos and ants we had to contend with.

Well, when life slows down a bit, I'll be back!!

Ella is a Big Ga!

As I'm home now with just Ella, I really have the opportunity to reflect on how fast she is growing up.

She is becoming such a big girl (or as she says, "I big ga!") One of the things that seems to have happened overnight is the way she now speaks in complete sentences. Here are some of my favorite things she says:

I wa you! (I love you!)
I poop a potty. (meaning she feels like she needs to go)
I watch heigh-ho. (I want to watch heigh-ho aka. Snow White.)
I teat a punkin. (I want a treat in the pumpkin.)
Look me, Mommy!
Day-go. (thank you)
You wecom.

And some of my not-so-favorite things she says:

I no wanna go nigh-nigh!
Dat's miiine!
Stop, Avy!
I neeeed dat!!

She can also count to twelve! (Well, with the exception of the number 5, haha! When Avery learned to count, she left out the number 6.)

She can recognize and point out several shapes.

She can say most of our dinnertime prayer with us.

She loves books, music, dancing, playing with Avery, tea parties, and her "shows".

She loves to cuddle with Mommy, and will snuggle up as close as she can get.

She's also really starting to demonstrate that independence and resourcefulness that I remember Avery developed at this age. If she wants something that she can't reach, she'll pull a stool or chair over to stand on. She's beginning to really figure things out and problem-solve, and it is so much fun to watch.

She also loves to play with her "babies", which are usually stuffed animals, and she's a really sweet mommy. She pushes them in their stroller, tucks them in for naps, cuddles them in her arms, and sings a lullaby to them.

There's no question that Ella has definitely hit her "twos". She's much more stubborn and expressive now, as opposed to that laid-back baby that she once was. But she is truly a joy and a blessing to our family, and we are all incredibly in love with her.

terrible two's

what I get when I ask her to smile for me

Show me your teeth, Ella!

sweet girl

Avery's 1st Day of Kindergarten!

Avery had a great first day of school! She had a wonderful, excited attitude and was ready to take on this new chapter in her life.

It as wasn't as hard for me to leave her at school as I expected, thank goodness. I really think it's because I've spent so much of my life in a school building, so it felt really natural and familiar to be there. However, that evening, after I had put her to bed, realizing that I had only spent four precious hours with my daughter, the floodgates opened. I miss her terribly, and there is a very large void in my day now, but I know she is having a wonderful time and loving it. That's what matters.

I had to wake her up, which is rare. I thought it was so cute how she had placed her backpack at the foot of her bed the night before.

Daddy called during breakfast to wish her a good day.

posing in new clothes and backpack

I told her how to spell her teacher's name and her grade. She wrote "I love you" on her own.

Here's the lunch I packed that didn't make it to the cafeteria, but instead got dropped in the classroom. No problem for Avery! She got to buy chocolate milk and corn dogs in the cafeteria, which was apparently her favorite part of the day.

in front of her new school

outside her classroom, standing under the self-portrait she made last week

Look who's in her class! It's her BFF, Nylah!

at her desk

She got to ride the bus home. Ben and I were waiting, and when she saw us she was so cute waving to us! (We know someday soon she'll be too cool to do this.)

As she got off the bus, she ran straight to us and we got BIG hugs!

The Frog Prince??

After returning home from a super long grocery trip, I'm greeted at the door by Avery, who excitedly tells me she and Ben found a frog outside.

No big deal. She's loved frogs since she was little. Heck, I even liked to play with frogs when I was a child.

But then Avery says, "Do you want to come see it, Mommy?"

Uh, OK. So I follow her into her bedroom (ewww, it's in the house??) to learn that she's found a "great" place for it!






Fast-forward a few minutes: I get distracted by a neighbor who's come to visit. When I come back inside, I find out that Avery went to show Ouigi (yeah, that's his name) to Ella, but he escaped and is now somewhere hiding under Ella's crib. (I think it was pretty easy for him to escape since Avery was carrying him around in the flower pot you see in the first picture.)

I made Ben step in, and Ouigi was rescued. After being placed in a few other objects, like Ella's dollhouse and Avery's puppy carrier, I finally banished the frog back to the great outdoors.

That's why, as I type this, I hear Ella calling, "Ouigi, Ouigi, come bat here, foggy!!"

The Great Hair Debacle

OK, so this is just for those who don't know this story from Facebook.

Last week Avery decided she didn't want Ella's hair to get long, so she took matters into her own hands. While I was upstairs working, she chopped Ella's bangs off and trimmed one pigtail. Incidentally, that day was Ella's first time to wear pigtails. (This is a big milestone if you have a girl, and we had waited 2 years and 3 months for Ella's hair to grow long enough to style like this!)
Of course, I freaked out and was not a happy mom. After sending her to time-out, I had a long talk with her, trying to impose the seriousness of what she did. I told her how dangerous her actions were, how Ella trusted her, and how it wasn't her decision to take away Ella's pretty hair. Then I banished her downstairs to "think about what she had done."

Well, I guess my guilt trip worked a little too well. About 10 minutes later, I hear a small voice cry, "Mommy, I cut my hair."
I raced to her room, praying that she was just being silly, but sure enough, there she was, lying in her bed and crying, with bangs about 1 cm long. She had grabbed her hair and chopped it as close to the forehead as she could. Then she had also taken out chunks of her own pigtail. Avery is very interested in wanting to look beautiful and having pretty hair, so for her to do this was a huge punishment to herself.
Of course, my heart was broken for the guilty sacrifice she made. I must admit, though, I was also still pretty ticked off by the new looks both my girls were now sporting.

Anyway, I piled them into the car, took them to my salon, and they did damage control. Ella experienced her very first haircut, and Avery got a shorter 'do with a nice little comb-over in the front, just in time for kindergarten.
It's a rite of passage, and I'm sure just about every girl reading this has some kind of experience with self or friend-imposed childhood haircuts. I just never thought it would happen to both of my girls at the same time!

1st pigtails that morning

looking cute and feeling like a big girl

after Avery got her hands on her

what Avery did to herself

Ella's 1st haircut (She did so great, by the way!!)

guilt is gone, feeling pretty again

showing off new haircuts

VBS at Foundry UMC

It's blog catch-up time, in case you were wondering!! ;)

I had the incredible privilege of getting to document this year's VBS at our church. This program is for kids who have completed kinder-5th grade. However, if you volunteer, then your preschoolers get to attend their own modified program.

Last year, I was a group leader for a bunch of adorable kindergartners, and I rotated through each section with them, but this year I had the BEST job! I got to see every single thing that went on, every rotation, every group, every story, every craft. I just floated from place to place like a fly on the wall. Wow, what an experience!

Children were led to Christ, personal stories were shared, relationships were solidified, people were inspired ... it was just incredible. I am so proud of my friend, Brigitte, who coordinated the whole thing, but also humbled and amazed by every single person who worked to make it all come together.

I took hundreds of pictures, but here are a few of my faves:

volunteers praying

God sightings (where kids wrote down all the ways they saw God's goodness)

my favorite (Laurel is my friend, Mel's, little girl)

praying over blankets they made for children in the hospital

This one had me crying. The kids had their "sin" wrapped around their arms. One by one, they removed their sin and placed it on the cross, giving it over to Jesus.

speaks for itself

music time

one of the many amazing Bible stories I saw

I was so blessed to have been a part of this incredible week!!

Dance Class

Avery is taking ballet and tap this summer and really loving it. Here are a couple of pictures from a few weeks ago.This was right after her birthday party, so of course she had to wear her new princess earrings! I love that she's so girly!

{P.S. These pictures look strange because I had to shoot with no flash through a one-way window.}

Avery's 5th Birthday

This was such a fun birthday! Avery had been anticipating it for at least the past 6 months. After changing her mind several times, she finally settled on the theme "Pinkalicious" after one of her favorite books (and her very favorite color, of course!) She also knew she for sure wanted to have her party at "the gymnastics place", so that's what we did!

It was a ton of fun, and she had a ball being the center of attention.

(That's her, being thrown way up high into the foam pit.)

Ella had lots of fun, too!

Happy birthday to you!



We had 17 kids there! The coaches were busy!

On the day of her actual birthday (the following Tuesday) we had an all-about-Avery day. Boy, did she know it and milk it! She would say, "Since it's my special day today, can I ______?" Of course, how could I say no to anything she asked for?

She spent the morning at our church's incredible VBS, then went to Studio Movie Grill to eat lunch and watch Charlotte's Web. That night, the four of us went bowling, followed by dinner at Chick-fil-A (her choice of course). I'm not sure why Ben and I even paid for shoes, because Avery bowled for all of us.

I LOVE these pictures we got! They totally capture the mood of the evening.

It's really hard for me to believe my baby is FIVE already!