Friday, March 11, 2011

Hello...

...my name is Avery and I love to color...
...usually I color my hands and then I try to make hand stamps.
...and then my mom gets mad at me.
...but that's what my teachers do with me twice a week!
...so I'm confused. And apparently I'm not supposed to color on my arms and legs and face and lips and tongue either.
...being 2 is tough.

Fixin'

A tinkerer already...

She was trying to put Kendall's training wheels back on the bike

...or something like that.

Can your hair do this?

The bouffant is back.
Believe it.

Valentines Day

The girls before their Valentines day parties at school

Stuck...

...on the windowsill while mommy runs to get her camera to practice these sorts of shots.

Is there anything sweeter than a sleeping baby?


Especially when 2 hours earlier she was looking at me like this....



She's Five


She's a princess in her world.

Crafting and coloring are her passion.

She's got a heart of gold.

She treasures her friends.

Sometimes I worry that she'll get walked on by others because is so faithful, so accepting, so tender-hearted.
She's my cautious one. Quiet and always observing. Very much a follower.
She's an old soul. Look closely and you'll see it in her eyes.
My life was forever changed when she came into my life. She teaches me more than I could ever teach her. She's my baby...and she's five.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Christmas Night

Here are a few pictures from Christmas night. Mike's family came over and we opened gifts then had spaghetti and meatballs/sausage. Mmmmm...that sounds good - I guess I should go eat some lunch already. It was the first time that I've been able to get a picture of all of the Hurlbut grandkids. They are Raymond's boys (Raymond is Mike's brother) and then our girls. Grant is 7 - Kendall is his shadow when he is here and he adores her as well. And the baby is Alex who just turned one this past January. We have a full range of ages and they all had such a great time!

It was also a great celebration because it was Alex's first Christmas. He was born in January at only 24 weeks. He had quite the struggle but God brought him through and gave us this perfectly healthy sweet little boy.

Becca, Mike's sister made the largest array of cookies I've ever seen. Enough to feed an army! We thoroughly enjoyed picking through them and eating way too much.

The kiddos
Baby Alex - he was all smiles and so happy the whole night (until he had to leave) Avery tired of me and my new flash

Avery and her giant stuffed bear who Baby Alex tried to steal away from her. Poor Alex - getting all the blame b/c he can't talk.

Avery and Aunt Becca (Mike's sister)

It's March - Who's ready to see some Christmas Pictures?!?!?!

It's a nice day outside...we just got a big wooden play system from our neighbors so I'm blogging in the backyard!!!! This counts as "quality time" with my kids right?! I'll post pictures of our play system soon. I love it! And more importantly so do they. Now let's just pray that we are able to keep the wasps away.

So where was I...ah yes, Christmas. Here are a few pictures. What else is there to say? It's was Christmas! Just the 4 of us in the morning and then Mike's family came over that evening. The first is from Christmas Eve (before my external camera bounce flash!!) That was the big present that I really wanted that Mike let me open early. I just helps take better pictures indoors without the hard built in direct flash.

Aaaaaaaaanyway... Kendall really wanted a dollhouse from Santa. I thought that request came out of nowhere until I realized that the little girl Gigi from the movie THAT HER GRANDMA TORI GAVE HER gets a dollhouse. I already told Grandma Tori thanks a lot for all of the stress this caused as I searched for a dollhouse that wasn't going to cost me $200.

I mean, I really had no idea if Kendall would even play with it. I didn't want to order a $200 dollhouse with $75 shipping if she was only going to play with it for 5 minutes. But as time would tell she actually loves it. Of course I spent hours (hours!) searching for not only the dollhouse but for dolls too. They have about a gazillion different options and sizes. I mean you don't want dwarf size dolls in a dollhouse right? And don't even get me started on the creepiness of 99% of these dolls. Seriously. Creepy.

I would also like to give a shout-out to EzBuyFurniture. I was able to find the dollhouse through a Google Search that led me to their store. I ordered it, was charged and then found out that it was backordered until MARCH. I was NOT HAPPY. It had already taken me 14 hours of Google and price matching to find this one!

I called, canceled the order, they apologized and said it was a manufacturer problem (KidKraft). Long story short, I ran to Target (45 minutes away at 8 pm b/c that was the only store that had one in stock) bought one there. Got home, and had a personal phone message from the guy at EZ Buy saying that he had called KidKraft and they guaranteed him one ASAP and he would ship it to me FedEx Next Day Air and to please call him back. So I hemmed and hawed a little more and then called the next day to tell him to please send it on. HE ALREADY HAD! It had to have cost a LOT to do next day shipping for this thing. Anyway, I really appreciated this guy working so hard. I didn't have a chance to call him back until January, but I did and just said "hey, I wanted to thank you so much for what you did. It meant a lot to me and even more to my daughter." I think that when people go above and beyond like this guy did the least he deserves is a phone call of thanks. He was stunned that I'd called and said I'd made his day! I told him that I'd recommend him to everyone and use him in the future. So here - go to EZ Buy Furniture and order something!!!!

Back to Christmas...sweet little Avery is easy to please and doesn't really have an opinion so we just got her a scooter and called it a day. I mean that was her "big gift" - they both got a few other things...

I do realize that it's my own fault that I run around like a chicken with my head cut off around Christmas. I try to do as much during the year to prep as I can, but it's just not possible! But I also try to take a step back and remember what the season is all about - a Savior who was born. We had a great very fun day.