Adventures in Kroger

Ava's new love is the slide at the school playground by our house.

This girl knows how to have a good time!

Now that I'm nearly 18 weeks along in my pregnancy I'm finally starting to feel more like my normal self and less like I absolutely must take a nap in the afternoons lest I die. It's been nice.

A few months before I found out I was pregnant I started learning about the mystical world of "couponning" in order to try and save a little more money on one of the few somewhat flexible areas of our budget. Since we don't eat a lot of what the majority of coupons are for, like frozen meals and processed food it's a little more complicated to make it actually work for me. But it's been fun to figure out and I was just starting to get the hang of it when I got pregnant and hardly had the energy to go shopping period and so shopping with Ava trying to grab my list and toss my coupons into the back of the cart while I'm trying to do math in my head (never a strong point of mine) was out of the question.

Licking Frosting with Dad

Well for the last month I started buying the Sunday paper again for it's coupons and today went out to Kroger for my first full-on coupon shopping trip since then. I had a new pocket style accordion folder pouch thing for my coupons that I'd organized the day before and Kroger was having a "Mega-Sale" where if you buy 10 items the qualify you get and instant $5 back and if you have coupons for those, which Kroger doubles, you can save quite a bit. I was really loving my new coupon organization system and feeling more like a super savvy shopper and less like a frazzled penny pinching mom. Ava was being good and helping load the cart by tossing items in the back that I hand to her. She LOVES doing this.

So as I head for my last item, frozen veggies, relieved that we've made it through the time consuming coupon shopping trip without Ava crying and I'm worn out from all the mental math. Ava is wanting to hold my coupon holder and since I'm done with it I let her. I head to the check-out and get the thrill of watching my purchases ring up to $51 and then after sale prices from my Kroger card and coupons go down to $23. So worth the trouble. We head out to the car and I unload the groceries and start to get Ava out and I realize the binder is missing. I look in my purse and in the cart and in the car and realize Ava must have dropped it in the store somewhere. So we head back in, look down all the aisles, no luck. Ask the cashier if she's seen in, no luck. Ask the customer service desk if someone turned it in, no luck. So I figure it must have been picked up by someone and I head back out to the car feeling bummed that I just lost a good months worth of coupons not to mention my handy-dandy coupon holder. I start to load Ava in the car and decide I have to go back and look again. So I hoist Ava onto my hip and we head back into the store and look down all the aisles again and lo and behold we found it. It was in a store clerks shopping cart they'd been using while doing inventory. Ava loves to toss things into the cart and I guess while my back was turned getting a bag of frozen broccoli she tossed it into that cart.

Refusing to get out of her crib after her nap because she wanted to read.

Now this adventure will probably only sound like an adventure to those of you who know the joys of lugging toddlers around the grocery store and how you want to get in and out as fast as possible. These are the adventures my life is made of now. . . thrilling. . .

Family Devotions

Were pretty excited to have my (Tony's) mom and sister visiting us this weekend. I know Ava is going to have a lot of fun. She always does when grandparents visit!

In the spirit of family, I thought I would pass along some words about family devotions. I read these awhile ago and liked the idea from Pastor Mark Driscoll. I thought I would share them.

Step 1. Eat dinner with your entire family regularly.
Step 2. Mom and Dad sit next to one another to lead the family discussion.
Step 3. Open the meal by asking if there is anyone or anything to pray for.
Step 4. Someone opens in prayer and covers any requests. This task should be rotated among family members so that different people take turns learning to pray aloud.
Step 5. Start eating and discuss how everyone’s day went.
Step 6. Have a Bible in front of the parents in a translation that is age-appropriate for the kids’ reading level. Have someone (parent or child) open the Bible, and assign a portion to read aloud while everyone is eating and listening.
Step 7. Parents should note key words and themes in the passage and explain them to the kids on an age-appropriate level.
Step 8. Ask questions about the passage. You may want to begin with having your children summarize what was read—retelling the story or passage outline. Then, ask the following questions: What does this passage teach us about God? What does it say about us or about how God sees us? What does it teach us about our relationships with others?
Step 9. Let the conversation happen naturally, listen carefully to the kids, let them answer the questions, and fill in whatever they miss or lovingly and gently correct whatever they get wrong so as to help them.
Step 10. If the Scriptures convict you of sin, repent as you need to your family, and share appropriately honest parts of your life story so the kids can see Jesus’ work in your life and your need for him too. This demonstrates gospel humility to them.
Step 11. At the end of dinner, ask the kids if they have any questions for you.
Step 12. If you miss a night, or if conversation gets off track, or if your family occasionally just wants to talk about something else, don’t stress—it’s inevitable.

This is adapted from Trial: 8 Witnesses from 1 & 2 Peter, a study guide. (Mars Hill Church, 2009), pages 68-69. (http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/misc/trial-8-witnesses_document01.pdf)

What I love about Ava at 19 months

It's been awhile since I've done this and since this blog is sort of our way of keeping track of Ava's milestones I thought I'd make an updated list of what I love about Ava.


I love that Ava loves wearing hats and often points to her coat rack and yells "hat" as soon as I walk into her bedroom in the morning. I also love that she can now put them on herself and often goes into her bedroom just to grab one and put it on.

I love that Ava will do anything for chocolate and the mere mention of the word will send her to the kitchen where she'll sit down and fold her hands in her lap because I've rewarded her with a chocolate chip a few times for obeying me and sitting down when I asked her to.

I love that she loves her baby doll, lays it down next to her at night in her crib and covers it with her blanket and then rolls over and gives it a kiss.

I love that Ava is sweet natured and likes to obey and that I could decorate for Christmas pretty much like I do every year and she (for the most part) only touched the decorations when we told her she could and obeyed the "use one finger" rule.

I love that she loves to run into the room and yell "HI YOU!"



I love that every morning when I hear that she's awake I go in and she pretends to be asleep and then then jumps up and says "Hi!' and then pretends to go to sleep again. . .and the cycle repeats about 6 times. It's our regular morning ritual.

I love that if I'm busy cooking she'll go to her room and get a few books and then come sit with her back against the refrigerator and just read her books to herself.

I love that she prefers to sit on a pillow or a blanket on the ground and if she's on the couch she wants a throw blanket over her lap. . .just like her mom who's always cold. And that the other day I came into her room after her nap and she refused to get out of her crib because she was sitting there, with her blanket over her lap, reading a book to her baby doll and lambie sitting beside her. She stayed in there a good 20 minutes "reading" out loud to them.

I love that she will give us kisses and hugs whenever we ask. I try not to abuse the privilege and only ask for them about 100 times a day. There is nothing better than having her run across the room with her arms outstretched and a big smile on her face because I asked for a hug.



I love that when she wants in a room and the door is closed she'll stand there and knock until I open it for her. And when we arrive at someones house she walks up to their front door with her fist out ready to knock.

I love that she's silly and goofy and gets a big kick out of plugging her nose and making funny voices while she talks.

I love that she loves to dance and dances in her car seat and sings with me in the car. I especially love when she dances with her baby doll or lambie in the kitchen while I'm making dinner.

I love and I hate that she is obsessed with two books right now, Baby's First 300 Words and Richard Scary's Best First Book Ever. We read them over and over every day and as soon as I sit down she brings one of them to me (and they're both so big she can hardly carry them) and tries to climb into my lap with it so we can read it together.

Right now my favorite animal noise/imitation she does is a squirrel. She puts both her hands to her mouth (like she was eating a nut) and sways her head side to side and says "Num, num, num, num".



I love that she picks up after me, putting my shoes back in my closet if I leave them out and putting clothes on the floor into the dirty laundry hamper.

I love that she somehow knows when it's almost 6:00 and goes and waits by the front door for her dada to come home and gets SO excited when she sees him.

I love that when I'm in a room she likes to leave the room and shut the door on me and then stand out there until I come out and when I do, stare off into the distance like she's up to nothing, then give me a sly smile and crack up laughing at herself for locking me in the room.

I love that even when we forget to pray before meals sometimes, Ava never does and sits there folding her hands until we stop eating and remember to pray, and sometimes if we don't catch on quick enough she just starts praying (unintelligibly) herself.



I love how much fun she has pretending to make food with her dad at her play kitchen and bringing cups of "water" back and forth for me from her play sink.

I love how she's starting to act out what she sees happening in her story books, pretending to fall over herself and giggling at the bear who fell into the river, rolling on the floor like the bears who are playing and wrestling in the book, etc.



This list could go on and on, Ava is just so much fun right now and learning something new every day it seems. She's really into playing with her dolls, feeding them, wrapping them up in the dish towels she steals from the kitchen and rocking them. She loves to pretend to be doing whatever I'm doing, sweeping, folding laundry (in fact Tony has some t-shirts that are horribly wadded in a drawer right now because Ava "folded" them and then put them away) and cleaning up around the house. She doesn't talk a whole lot yet but she's learning new words all the time and she seems to understand the vast majority of what we say and can follow any commands we give like, "Go put that in the trash", "Take your diaper back to your room and put it away", "Go get your towel so we can take a bath", "Go put that book back on the shelf, those are Mama's books." Stuff like that. She's also mastered just about every animal sound we can think of and now wants to know what the giraffe in her book says and the armadillo and the porcupine and . . .we're running out of ideas . . .

So that's Ava. :o)


And here's us all raking up and playing in the leaves in our back yard. I know, only in Texas does it take until January for all the leaves to finish falling off the trees. . .

182 days to go...