All by myself...

The warmer weather is back! With its return we've been able to get outside and enjoy the sun a little, as well as the longer days. Every day Ava asks to go swing... what she really means is, "I want to play in the sandbox." There is no way to go out and swing and not get in the sandbox, it's just too tempting. So most afternoons after her nap, we head out to play. Sometimes Joshua is able to join us, and other times he isn't. Either way, Ava loves it, and it makes the afternoon/early evening fly.

We even talked Daddy into a little sandbox time on Saturday. He and Ava spent a good 20 minutes putting sand into the funnel toy and watching the wheel spin... great fun.

Last week we took a little walk over to a neighboring playground. We have friends that live in that neighborhood, and knew that the playground was rarely used during the day. Ava loved being able to walk around, free to do what she wanted. I wish we had one in our development.

I think we've mentioned before that Ava's favorite thing is the slide. She loves all slides, twisty ones, short ones, long ones, doesn't matter. We spent most of our time going up and down and up and down on Wednesday.

Here is a video of Ava sliding all by herself. She is getting so big, it's hard to believe that she will be 2 in less than 4 months. (Please ignore my incredibly annoying "yay!!!" at the end of the video. Since losing our camera I am unable to edit videos - our new camera doesn't have that function. I downloaded software onto the computer, and it works wonderfully, but increased the size of the video - go figure- and blogger wouldn't upload it... so you'll have to deal with my cheering, sorry)

All together now...

"Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday Nathan & Sarah, Happy Birthday to you!" (thanks for the help)

Our birthdays aren't until June and July, but we received this gift today:

It's a Nikon Coolpix S4000. It is a bit girly in color - plum, but Nathan said he didn't care, since I'm the one that uses it most often.

After losing our camera, I was totally devastated, (read Gone). I searched our basement and storage and found two old cameras. One I believe might even be a disposable from our wedding, but I've been using them, trying not to miss a moment. I usually pull out the camera at least 2 or 3 times a day and try to capture as much of Miss Ava's personality as I can. It wasn't too easy with a non digital camera... what did we do before we had digital? Anyway, now that we have a new digital, we can get back to taking pictures and uploading them on the computer.

Check back soon for some new pics from the new camera.... as soon as it's done charging you can bet I'll be playing with it.

(stupid formating...I wish blogger was nicer when it came to this stuff!)

Welcome to the family...

Meet the newest member of our family!

(picture courtesy of my Uncle Mark & Aunt Kathy)

Jackson Edward Barr

Jackson was born on Saturday April 24th at 7:29pm to our cousin Annie and her husband Jon. Jackson must have been excited to to get here as he wasn't due for another two weeks. (Maybe we're starting a new family tradition, Ava was two weeks early too) But, he is a healthy boy, and weighted in at 6lbs 10oz and is 17" long. His Mommy also says he has incredible lungs :o) Annie and Jackson are doing well and we can't wait to see them both...Jon too!

Gone...

It's missing, well more like gone I guess. As Ava would say "uh oh!"

We aren't sure how long it's going to be, but our posts from here on out are going to be lacking pictures. Last Monday I discovered our camera was missing when I went to get it to take a picture. I've been asked a thousand times, and the last place I remember having it was here in the office when I uploaded our Easter Egg "hunt" pictures. I also remember looking through the pictures on our camera at one point, but I'm not convinced that was after the upload. Anyway, we searched and searched, checked Ava's toy box and hiding spots, asked Ava if she had seen it (it's very possible she picked it up and did something with it...the trash maybe?), and then searched some more. By that point I was physically sick...literally. Me being the overly emotionally one, I cried for two days. Over the top? Probably. But, this was the nicest camera we'd ever owned and was only two years old. Nathan had gotten it for us for our anniversary. Not to mention there were a few pictures on it, not only of Ava but also of Joshua.... which I feel horrible about. (Why didn't I delete those after uploading?) So there is a few $$$ out the window.

Shall I continue on with what else is going wrong here at our house? It's been an interesting few weeks and everything seems to be happening or breaking. After two years we finally got curtains for the kitchen, and I couldn't be happier with them. They tie in not only the kitchen color but also the tan stripe from the living room. While we were at Lowe's getting those, we picked up a curtain rod for the living room. We just haven't taken the time to "finish" the house, we've had a lot going on (life, baby, new jobs, etc.) So we get home and attempt to put up the curtain rod only to find out the vertical blinds that the previous owners put up are coming out of the wall. Why? They didn't put it in the studs!!!! We had already patched holes from the previous positioning of the blinds, when we painted. We assumed they moved them to put them on the studs. WRONG! That was the end of the blinds. We took them down and patched the holes, but that left us with 4 white spots on our tan walls. Solution: get a double curtain rod and hide them with curtains and sheers... for now. We will eventually paint, but can't do it right now. I must say it looks quite nice and adds a lot to our living room. We both even prefer not having the vertical blinds. (I'd post a picture if I had one).

After the blinds came the DVD player. You've heard us talk about how Ava is addicted to VeggieTales, well, our DVD player is having a hard time keeping up with her demands. Granted, it is 10 years old. (We keep things until they die... have you seen our TV?) So the next thing on the list is a DVD player. We also have several Disney movies on VHS so we'll have to figure out what to do about that too. Why must they continue to come out with new forms of multimedia? I saw a funny thing the other day that said "can we please ignore whatever comes after Blu-ray? I'm tired of updating my collection" We totally agree. Thanks to my super smart Engineer husband, we didn't convert to Blu-ray; smart decision.

We're also in the process of updating our master bathroom. We like to refer to it as apartment sized, so we want to make it look a bit better. We haven't started yet, but we've picked the paint and fixtures and priced everything out. It's just so hard to get much accomplished when you've always got something going on. Maybe this weekend we can at least get the paint.

I don't know what has been going on, why we've lost things and can't find them, why things are falling apart, but it's very frustrating. Yesterday Ava and I had to go to Babies R' Us and replace a lost Lambie. I'm sure you've seen Ava's lamb that she can't part with. Well, it too was lost a couple weeks ago. We had a spare, but after a mishap and Ava had to go to bed without Lambie, we knew we needed to get another one. Hopefully, we can start fresh and get our acts together and stop misplacing things. So please bare with us, we will get a new camera eventually, and get back to posting pictures of our beautiful daughter and our insane life.

Forget the hunt...

There was no reason to call it an Egg Hunt, even though we did hide (barely) some of the eggs. Instead it was more of a free for all, candy hour. With the Egg'stravaganza hunt turning up candy the kids wouldn't eat, I decided they needed some good candy (in my mind at least), so I filled our eggs with Reese's Mini Eggs, Mini Twix, and Starburst Jelly Beans (the only jellybeans allowed in our house!).


Ava waited patiently for Joshua to come outside so the hunt could begin. I think she actually took this time to scout out the eggs. The minute we let them loose, it was over. After they each found one egg, all they wanted to do was eat the candy inside.

first egg: jelly beans...yum!

Ava checking out her candy

Trying to get Joshua to put the egg in the bucket...

nope gotta get the candy first.

their bunny sippers, too cute to pass up.

Once Ava and Joshua realized there were more eggs (could it have been me waving my arms like an idiot trying to get their attention?), they started to get the idea. We eventually tossed all the eggs into the middle of the yard, so they could get to them easier.

Joshua enjoyed finding the eggs, opening them, and immediately dumping the candy then moving on to the next egg. Ava caught on to what he was doing and started picking up the candy and taking it back to their picnic table.

the goods

enjoying the fruit of their hunt

checking out the jelly beans in the bucket

Ava thought this was the easiest and quickest

way to get them in her mouth...

of course she ended up dumping the whole thing.

I wonder if things will go a little differently next year... maybe we should tape the eggs closed!

*sorry for the lack of Easter dress pictures, we were so busy with early church, and then rushing home to meet company and cook lunch, we forgot to take any.

The Kiss...

no question, our child is in LOVE!

Ridiculous...

and never again!

Today Ava and I joined our neighbors, Shayne, Kristi, Joshua, and Noah at the Victory Family Church's Easter Egg'stravaganza just up the road. We missed our (Discovery's) Egg'stravaganza last week due to a birthday party and the fact that Ava fell asleep on the car on the way, so we thought this might be fun to try. It is absolutely beautiful here today, maybe a little on the hot side (our car was reading 86 degrees) and everybody and their brother was at this event. It was RIDICULOUS!

We had to park down the road at the auto auction place and be shuttled up to the church. We all got separated when a nice lady wouldn't allow me on the comfy shuttle bus :o). So Ava and I (along with our stroller) took a school bus with the "older" kids. It wasn't too bad and the drive was only about 5 or 10 minutes. We eventually met up at the church entrance. From the outside it looked pretty calm, but the minute the doors opened, my goodness! There were kids everywhere, screaming, yelling, crying, laughing, running, etc. We decided to head over and get a balloon first, that line wasn't too long.

standing in line

watching Cindy make Ava's flower balloon

the flower

our child who puts EVERYTHING in her mouth - luckily it didn't pop

Ava deciding she liked Joshua's "Monkey in a tree"

balloon better.... should have know.

After we all got our balloons, it was almost 12:30 pm (we left our houses at 11am, and its less than 3 miles away). We headed outside to give the kids something to eat, although they weren't too interested in eating. Ava, who loves PB&J took one bite and didn't want any more. Gummies (fruit snacks) won out. It didn't feel like longer than 2 minutes and they were announcing that that 0-3yr old Egg Hunt was about to begin. We packed up and rushed over to the roped off area and waited. It was essentially a 50'x50' square with eggs laying on the ground. Once the hunt started Ava wasn't too sure about picking up eggs... that was until she realized candy was in side.

But then of course, she picked up one and didn't want to pick up any other until she had eaten the candy. After much coaxing, she started to grab a few others. Poor Joshua didn't like the candy inside (the fruit flavored tootsie rolls) so we scrambled to dig candy out of the goodie bags we were given.

darn egg won't open

It was shortly after this that we were actually "told" to leave the egg hunt area.... it was kind of rude. Not sure why this happened, there were others still out there as well. All in all, I think Ava enjoyed hunting, err... picking up eggs.

After the Egg hunt we thought we'd go back inside and see a puppet show before the kids completely melted down... plus it was much cooler inside. On the way, we had to make a pit stop and see a friend.

ELMO!

Joshua like Oscar better

After seeing the line for the puppet show and realizing it was 1:30 we decided it would be a smarter idea just to head home. Plus we wanted to skip the mad rush to the parking lot - the event ended at 2pm.

waiting on the shuttle

Kristi laughed when I told her the title of my blog would be "ridiculous." Then she added "and never again!" (so thanks to Kristi for helping me with that one.)

Overall, it was an experience I'll never forget, that's for sure. And I do think the kids had fun. Ava fell asleep in the car on the way home, and.... oh, I think she just woke up, a good 2.5 hours later.

Hopefully we'll get to do our own Easter Egg Hunt tonight in our yard. Maybe it will be better this way, and Joshua is sure to like the candy we used.

Happy Easter!