the Rizzo Report

Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone!

We're spending it at home. We thought about going camping or something but we've had a busy last few weeks and Tony was gone at a conference most of last week. So we're just hanging out here.

Last weekend Tony's dad, step-mom and his sister Danielle and her two kids came to town for his step-sisters Corrina's graduation from law school. We had a great time with them and I was really glad Danielle and Morgan and Adam were able to stay a couple of nights at our house. It was so fun. Many pictures are sure to come of that weekend. Some especially cute ones of Morgan, Adam and Ava all in their Redskins gear. Very adorable.

Weekend before that we went down to Austin for one night. We scored a 3 1/2 star hotel for 39 bucks. Can't beat that. We had a great time and great pictures of that weekend are long over due. Ava swam for the first time in the hotel pool, ate her first taste of ice cream and played in Barton Springs. She sat in the river and played with the rocks. She loved the river so much she screamed bloody murder when we took her out of the water and to get revenge on us, peed all over the back of the car while we were changing her out of her soggy river diaper. And then to get revenge back at her we held her up in her birthday suit in the middle of the parking lot and rinsed her off with a bottle of water. After that she gave up and decided she'd rather be warm and dry and eating cheerios in her car seat.

It's ridiculous how much she's growing up. She's turning into a little girl and I'm not ready for it yet. This past week she's been trying to brush her own hair with her comb, put on her shoes by herself and putting her toy bag over her shoulder like a purse. She can also walk only holding on to one of Dad's hands. Impressive.

I'm getting pretty excited for her first birthday party. I went to the dollar store last week and found some pretty cute butterfly and flower plates and streamers and such. So she's having a butterfly theme party. I think that's how the theme of all her parties will be determined-by whatever the dollar store has to offer. She almost had a dinosaur theme this year, but luckily I found a small stash of the butterfly stuff just in time. We're having a small party for her on the 6th, if you want to come and see her get all frostinged just let me know.

So today we got up and went to home depot to look for some ground cover for our flower beds in the back yard in which there are no flowers and we don't flowers because when it rains water pours into them and has drowned everything we've tried to plant there. Anyway, we all went and I wish we had a picture of Ava riding in the front of the cart just fully lounging with her arms up on the sides of the backrest. She looked like she just needed a cup of coffee in one hand. She's always leaning back lounging in the front of the cart when I take her shopping or if I take her in her stroller she always lays back and has her feet propped up on the cup holders. She does it for all the laughs she gets from the fellow shoppers. It's sort of her claim to fame at Kroger right now.

So we came home and did some yard work and then decided we'd go running after Ava's nap. Then Casey called to see if Tony could help him unload some bookshelves so we decided to run to their house, a little over a mile away. We headed out and noticed some gray clouds in the distance but we figured we could make it and if it did rain it didn't look like it would rain hard (You can probably see where this is headed, especially if you live in the area). We got about half way (or so we thought) and it started raining. We ran a little while in a light rain and then decided to wait in out under a tree. Mind you we had Ava with us and she was dressed only in a light sundress. Well we waited a few minutes and it started torrentially down pouring like it does sometimes here in Texas. We were soaked in about 10 seconds flat. So we decided we were probably closer to the Shorts than home and we'd just make a run for it. Unfortunately we were further from the Shorts than we realized and we kept coming up to street after street thinking that this must be there's ...but it wasn't. About 6 blocks worth of that, and running through a few backyards, finally we came to the church by their house. But we had to run across that big field in front of the church and in front of the whole line of Main Street traffic. CPS is probably getting all kinds of calls from people worried about that poor baby who's stupid parents had her out in a rainstorm (I have to say though that Ava did admirably well and after a first few whimpers when the rain started she didn't cry at all). By the time we made it to the Short's Ava was shivering and our cell phones were in a pool of water in her jogging stroller. Summer brought us towels, a space heater and a change of clothes for Ava so we were dried out in no time but we're still not sure about the phones. . .so yeah, it was kind of a fun adventure, but I don't think we'll go running when the horizon is gray ever again . . .