Ava - 6 and a half

Ava - 6 years old

I love this Ava girl! She loves crafts and anything to do with drawing, coloring, cutting and gluing. Her drawing skills are greatly improved and now all her people have clothes, hair and beautiful faces. 

She is reading and writing all over the place. All we need now is for her to enjoy it. She knows all the sounds of the letters and is working on blends and sight words like "the".

She is getting better at writing numbers and not flipping them. Her favorite number to write is 8. It's a fun number to write. 

Ava is a great big sister. She's learning when it's ok to tease and when to be a helper. She is sweet to help her little sisters whenever they are struggling with something. 

Ava is an amazing swimmer. She is getting really good with her free-style stroke and rolling over to take a breath. 

She loves to ride her bike without training wheels (learned this in the spring), ride a scooter and pull the garbage can down the driveway. 

Ava learned to tie her shoe this summer and can even do a double knot on her shoes and tie a pretty front bow on her church dress. 

Can't imagine a world without her. 

Love you Ava 

Ava - five years

This girl turned five!!

And she really didn't want to take pictures...can you tell? 

Ava is such a sweet caring person. She loves everyone and is always willing to help. 

She is so good at playing with her sister Lacey. Playing pretend is their favorite past time. She loves to work to get giggles out of Sloane and Tess. Basically, Ava loves her sisters. 

Ava is in her third year of preschool and just loves it. She is learning her numbers and letters with their sounds. She loves art and it very good at rainbows. 

As her mother I'd be lost without her. I love you Ava Rose. 

Ava at 4 and a half

Ava is growing and learning so fast these days. She loves preschool, her friends, Frozen and most days her sister Lacey. Ava and Lacey are now sharing a room. Ava is very excited to meet her new little sisters (she calls them Sweetie and Polly). 

She loves coloring and "reading" books. She is working on pumping her legs on the swing. Ava is working on her letters by practicing writing and sounds. 

She loves swimming. We are going as a family 3 days a week so she is getting a lot of practice in. She's jumping off the side and swimming to mom/dad and diving down and getting toys off the bottom of the pool. 

She is a BIG help to mom who can no longer bend down. So she's always helping with jobs around the house and helping with Lacey.

Ava loves doing her hair, adding barrettes or different accessories. She loves picking out her own clothes (which is sometimes tough for mom). But she has a style that she preferres to display without moms help. 

The world would be so different with out this beautiful and talented girl in it. I love you Ava!

Ava's 4 year photo shoot

My Ava is 4 years old. She is a beautiful and caring little soul and I'm so glad Heavenly Farther sent her to our family to be my daughter. 

Ava is 4 today

First of all I find it amazing that I have a four year old. Not only that I gave birth to her but that I have taken care of her these long four years and we are both still alive. 

Look at her though...she is just so cute! She got this two wheeler with peddles and a bell and a basket...she could not be any happier. She is really good on her balance bike so once she figures out peddling we'll take off the training wheels and let her get stinky with it. 

These days Ava loves pink and purple, coloring, Mac n cheese, treats, only likes carrots with ranch for a veggie, baths with bubbles, cartoons (any kind), helping mom bake. 

We love you Ava girl and can't imagine life without your smiling face. 

3 and a half -Ava

My first born is three and a half today! We would have gone and taken pictures in her new Easter dress but she is sick today and even stayed home from preschool.
Ava is such an amazing girl. She's really growing and becoming her own kind of person (some of which I'm glad about and some I'm not). This girl has an opinion about everything.
She LOVES her sister Lacey. They are pretty funny together. Ava can always make Lacey smile.
She is still a little timid and we are not sure how to help her with that but we love her all the same and usually she just needs to warm up a bit.
If Ava could spend the day at the park playing in the sand she would. She loves helping me with baking and loves measuring things out. Her counting is becoming more concrete, meaning she understands that when she's counting objects that each number is being represented...if that makes any sense. Ava loves her cousins and misses them and talks about them often. She has great friends she loves to play with from our church. She is still learning to share and take turns but now can be reasoned with where six months ago she could not.
We love our Ava girl and can't imagine life without her.

Ava's Quilt 2 of 2

Laying everything out was tough with limited childfree space and it took a lot longer then I thought (pic 1-3). Before I could lay it out though I had to go through and cut out all the yarn ties my mom put in. Sentimentally this was tough, I love everything my mom makes me! Then I flipped it (pic 4). I don't have a picture of all the pinning I had to do but there was a lot of it. I used DNC floss to tie it (pic 5-6) and a little after Christmas it was done (pic 7-8)! I am very happy with it! Now that Lacey's birthday is over I can start on the pillow cases. I am excited for them because they are smaller then a full size quilt I can get a little fancier. P.S. I used a flat sheet for the backing so the fitted sheet on her bed matches the quilt exactly.

Ava's Quilt 1 of 2

The quilt (pic 1) we were using for Ava's bedspread was getting a little threadbare. Maybe because my mother made it for me back in high school. I'd already fixed one tear and a little bit later I found two more. Since Christmas was coming I figured a new quilt would make a good gift. I decided I wanted to use my old quilt as the batting for the new quilt. I got some cute fabric on sale (pic 2) and the next task would be deciding on a quilt pattern. I found a quilt square pattern (pic 3) I liked and thought I would do the whole quilt in the pattern. I laid it out (pic 4) and didn't like it so I kept looking and found the next picture (pic 5) and decided to go generic square. My friend Marin let me cut all the squares out with her rotary cutter (pic 6) and then I mapped out how I wanted the squares laid out (pic 7). Then, all the sewing and ironing began (pic 8-9)!

Halloween Day

We had a very fun but busy Halloween. We got a lot of invites to different things and had a hard time saying no so we attempted to do everything. Thanks to Kensie and Josh for hurrying to meet up with us downtown and Cameron for making dinner. Ava had a blast trick or treating with Collin in downtown Kirkland. The traffic was so bad we barely made it home to eat dinner and then hurry to our friends house to do the "real" trick or treating. I think Ava had fun. Cameron was trying to help her get to the front of the kids so she did not get missed when the candy givers opened the door. Her trick or treat and thanks are really quiet as well so we both were trying to help her with that. She came home and sorted a bit but did not end up eating any. She did get a whole dum dum and licorice earlier (bribe to wear the wig) and that pretty much tripled her candy intake up to this point in her life, on a daily basis that is. She did see candy wrappers in the trash and asked who ate her candy. Thankfully it was Kensie's candy wrappers and I could honestly tell her that but it looks like I have to ask or be sneaky stealth mom if I want any candy.
Happy Halloween!!!