the Rizzo Report

I WILL blog again

2012-02-01T12:19:00.006-06:00

I'm one of those people who even as a teenager could never keep a diary because whenever I fell behind I felt obligated to recount every thing that happened since my last entry. So every time I'd get a few days behind I'd give up because the thought of writing everything out was so overwhelming.

And this my friends, is also the reason it's been a shocking amount of months since I've blogged. It's alright though, I've only missed chronicling the months when Madelyn has changed the most. Sigh.

I am fighting the urge to spend 3 days without cleaning my house or bathing my children to sit here and write a 4,000 paragraph entry on everything that's happened in those months. But I will not. I'm starting from today and I'll just add past things as they come to mind. That's my plan.

So here goes . . .

We've settled in to Washington life well. Tony is doing great in school and so far has all the A's he needs to get accepted into Nursing school this spring. I didn't know I married a genius! He's working as a server at Red Lobster at night and for the most part liking that a lot too.

I'm taking care of the home front here and about to start a refresher course to update my RN license with the hope of working a day or so a week this Fall. Just working out details with the hospital for the clinical portion of the course before I start.

The girls are doing great. They are just the cutest, sweetest things (for the most part). Just a few weeks back Madelyn turned the corner and is able to "play pretend" and she and Ava have been having so much fun together. They love to play with their dolls, stuffed animals and dress up clothes. Ava helps Madelyn a lot. Helping her get dressed in their tutu's, showing how to play with her babies. I love overhearing them playing together, especially when Ava's helping get Madelyn into some dress up clothes. The conversation goes something like, "Madelyn you should wear a tutu because the dresses are too big and you might trip. Here, you sit down and I will put it on your legs. Ok, now stand up so I can pull it up. Good girl Madelyn!. Here, do you want this wand? Ok, lets go find you a crown. Hold still while I put it on your head. Good job! You look like a princess!" And then out they come from Ava's bedroom bedecked in all their finery to put on a show for me in the living room. They love to dance and do "tricks" (like standing on one foot or hopping).

Ava is becoming such a beautiful little girl. She (almost always) is caring and thoughtful towards Madelyn and the rest of us. She is very responsible and can pretty much take care of herself. Pick out clothes and get dressed, put toothpaste on her brush and brush, wash her hands and face, wash in the shower, use the toilet, get her own snack and drink, and even clean up her own spills and Madelyn's. And she's getting good at doing all those things for Madelyn too. I can just about retire. The other day I was working in the office and I heard Madelyn asking for a cracker in the kitchen, I finished up what I was doing and went into the kitchen a couple minutes later and there were the girls, both seated at the table with little bowls of crackers in front of them which Ava had gotten both of them from the pantry. If Madelyn's face is dirty after eating she'll get a washcloth and wash it. And a couple nights ago I was finishing cleaning up the dinner mess and I said, "Ok girls it's time to get ready for bed," I turned around and there they were in the bathroom and Ava was telling Madelyn to sit down so she could brush her teeth (house rule) and Ava had both their toothbrushes at the sink and was putting toothpaste on Madelyn's for her.

Ava is also just about ready to read. She knows her alphabet and knows about 90% of her letter sounds. We have slacked on her preschool since Madelyn stopped taking her morning nap a few months ago and it's hard to find a time to sit at the table without Madelyn needing attention every few minutes. We started learning to read about 4 months ago but Ava is a bit of a perfectionist and wants to be able to do things perfectly right away. She was able to read some simple sentences on her own, sounding out the words. But she got easily frustrated so we took a break since she wasn't even three and a half yet. It's about time to pick that up again though because she really does want to learn to read.

Madelyn is learning and growing up so fast. She talks a lot and even started singing her own original songs over the last couple weeks. My favorite being the other night when I was rocking her before bed and she looked up and sang to me, "I love you Mama, ooh ooh ooh. 'Ni Ni me. Mmm. Mmm. Mmm."And she pursed her little lips at the "ooh, ooh, ooh" part, so cute! And she sings her own version of "Jesus Loves Me" that goes something like this, I love you Jesush. Jesush love you. Jesush love me." She also just learned her first memory verse! I've been reading a Bible story to them in the mornings while they eat their breakfast and having Ava learn a short memory verse. The one we are currently working on is "Trust in the Lord with all your heart". Ava learned it in one sitting and then has been asking Madelyn to say it. Teaching her by saying, "Madelyn can you say 'trust'? Can you say, 'in the Lord'?" ect. Then a couple days later I asked Madelyn if she could say "trust" and she said, "Trust, inalawd, wi-all-er, HEART!" I was shocked. I had no idea she'd really been learning it.

Uhg. Jotting down these few things is reminding me of how much I've missed putting down over the last few months. I'm just going to have to write a note at the end of each entry recalling something in our history for the next year or so to get it all in. Thanks to FB where I've been quickly noting things out of desperation . . .

May 14th - was reading a new book to Ava tonight about a little bear who accidentally does something naughty but his mom tells him she'll always love him anyway, and Ava gave me a big hug and said, "Just like MY Mama!" :o)

May 17th - Madelyn's is in her car seat yelling just to hear the sound of her own voice and Ava in her car seat is getting increasing distressed and saying, "No, no Madelyn that's not the right song. Those are not the right words!!!"

And here's a picture of Madelyn last May eating her organic yogurt with flax and broccoli. She liked it more than her face tells, but looking back maybe this is why she will only eat carrots, sweet potatoes, green peas and beets now. . .

Ava's 3rd Birthday Bash!

2011-06-24T16:11:00.009-05:00

Life has been a bit of a whirlwind since arriving in Washington, but we are certainly enjoying it. We spent the first week getting things set up in our new apartment. The second week, I (Tony) did a lot of studying for an Algebra final exam. (got an A in the class though. yee-haw.) And then this past week, I have been getting ready for summer semester and putting together a photography website, in hopes of doing more of that while going through college.

But on June 4th, Ava turned 3! It was a great day with friends and family.

She got to start the morning with Birthday Breakfast! Always a fun tradition. We made her two favorite breakfast foods at the moment - blueberry pancakes and bacon! Madelyn and Ava even wore their spectacular birthday hats.

Teressa is putting the final touches on Ava's birthday cake. And as good as it looks, it tasted even better. Let me know if you want a piece and I'll see if I can mail you some.

Madelyn's posture. Like a teenager. Whats a parent to do...

Birthday Birthday Birthday!
3 seems to be the first year that she REALLY knows exactly what is going on.
The next day she wanted to know where everyone was and what happened to the party?

Madelyn with her Aunt Megan

Granddad sent Ava a baseball mitt and ball. She was SO excited and we have been playing with it this week. She can't seem to grasp the fact that you throw with your hand and catch with the glove. She wants to do everything with the glove... catch, throw, wipe her nose, swat the bug, etc...

Can't believe my little girl is 3. Wow.

Cheese.

Papa Jim with Baby Isabelle

Everyone went about a mile or two down the road to what has become one of our favorite locations in Washington. It's called the Cider Mill and Ava and Madelyn love it. They serve hot apple cider, fresh warm apple fritters and have lots of animals that you can feed.

The kids enjoyed feeding the goats. They have an area where you can put feed in the bucket and then pull the string which takes it to the top of the platform. The goats hear it and run up the bridge to eat out of the bucket. But if you happen to be standing directly underneath of them as they ravenously devour the feed... let's just say that you might get a free bath. I won't mention who may or may not have gotten one, out of love for my spouse.

Those baseball skills are coming in handy already with feeding chickens.

Madelyn had a good seat for each animal.

This is Teressa's sister Megan and her husband John. They are rocking one of those apple fritters that I was telling you about. Seriously. I can't stress this enough. They are quite amazing.

Grandma (a.k.a. Manga) showing Madelyn the goats. It was funny to watch her. She was quite alarmed.

Ava's cousin Daniel. He was feeding the goats grass and laughing at them.
Notice the shirt. Stompasaurus. I like it.

Ava had the "ready" stance for this goat. He was a little zaney and she was ready to dart at any moment.

It was so cute to watch Ava as we sang Happy Birthday to her.
The cake, by the way, was made to order. Teressa asked Ava a little while back what color cake she wanted, what kind of frosting, what flavors, etc... and then she made it. Ava also has a wooden cake that she plays with in her toy kitchen everyday and Teressa wanted to make it look like that. Fun times.

I always forget that kids will follow the patterns of their parents.
I guess I should eat neater from now on.

Our Last Week at Gospel for Asia

2011-05-10T22:50:00.004-05:00

It has been quite an emotional couple of weeks as we finish up this season of life and prepare for the next one. Tonight was our last Tuesday night prayer meeting as a staff family and Friday is my last day on staff. We have served here in Texas as home team missionaries with Gospel for Asia for the past 8 years, but the Lord has made it clear that we are to enter a different adventure in life. Some of you may not have read our newsletter that we sent out, so I thought I would share some excerpts with you.

For nearly 8 years we have been serving at Gospel for Asia and now the Lord has made it clear that He is moving us into a different season. The decision to conclude our time here was a difficult one and one that we took many months to fast, pray and wrestle over. We love GFA and are so excited at what the Lord is doing through this ministry. And not only is the ministry such a part of who we are, it has been part of the foundation of our family - we met here, got married and had our two girls here. And for the past 8 years, we have grown very close with our “family” here at GFA whom we love and respect very much.

However, the Lord began to speak to both of our hearts and we knew that our time here was coming to a close. We didn’t know where we would be going or what we would be doing, but as the months passed the Lord began to share some of those details with us.

Over the last few months, we felt more and more strongly that the Lord was calling us to leave soon. But the actual decision to follow the Lord’s leading and take this first step was a difficult one. One night, as Tony was sitting in our weekly prayer meeting, he began to tell the Lord, “I just can’t leave here. I love being here at the ministry. Why would we move on?” The Lord spoke softly and clearly to his heart, “If you won’t go to the next season, that’s okay, you can stay. But you will be working in your own strength and it will all be as wood, hay and stubble. Obedience is better than sacrifice.”

But even after we felt confident of the Lord's leading and His future plans for us we found ourselves hesitating to actually take that first step of faith. Then one morning while praying and reading his Bible Tony came across the verse in Matthew 4, where Jesus calls two future disciples to stop what they are doing and follow Him. After He calls them, they “immediately dropped their nets and followed Him.” That was confirmation that we needed to stop delaying and that the time for us to leave was now.

The Lord has led Tony to start attending college and pursue an education in the medical field. Tony realized that he has spent many years ministering to people’s spiritual needs, but he will now also be learning how to serve their physical needs. He is excited to be around broken and hurting people and to see how the Lord may want to use medical skills for His glory in the future. And after more prayer, we decided to move to Olympia, Washington, to attend school and are excited to see our family and friends there.

Knowing that selling our house would be the largest determiner for when our moving date would be, we met with the Realtors (a Christian couple) who had helped us buy our house, and they surprised us by offering to buy our house themselves because they were looking for a rental property! In the current economy, we had no idea how long it might take us to sell our house and to see the Lord work out the sale of our home like that was nothing short of a miracle in our minds. As soon as we decided to go ahead and sell the house, everything else started falling into place very rapidly and we are now planning to move at the end of May.

Tony talked with the leaders at GFA and they lovingly agreed that we should go and continue to follow the Lord’s plan for our family. It is such an extraordinary time in our lives. On one hand we are so saddened to leave our friends that we’ve known all these years and the ministry that is so dear to our hearts. On the other hand, we can’t stop smiling, because we are so excited to live by faith and follow Jesus on this new adventure as a family. We are literally crying one minute and giddy the next.

On May 23rd, Teressa, Ava and Madelyn will be flying up to Washington (along with the assistance of Teressa’s lifelong friend Jaime, who just “happened” to be able to take time off that week to help with the final packing and the flight). Three days later, Teressa’s dad Jim will arrive in Texas (he also just “happened” to have time off that same week. The Lord has been so evident in even the tiniest details) and help Tony drive the moving truck and our van to Washington.

8 YEARS OF MAKING DISCIPLES!

We can’t possibly thank you enough for standing with us, praying, and supporting us through these years. You have made it possible for us to be missionaries here with Gospel for Asia and you will be partakers in the eternal rewards when you arrive home, in Heaven. Isn’t it exciting to know that the treasures we have stored up in Heaven can never be damaged, lost or lose their value. They are so different from the investment philosophies here on earth. Christ takes the time, prayers, passion, finances and love that we invest and he brings forth tremendous fruit that will last for eternity.

We are so happy to reflect on our years here and on what Jesus has done throughout Asia. Teressa was blessed to be one of Brother KP’s assistants for nearly 5 years before Ava was born. Tony helped in GFA’s website department for his first year, while working to help start our 1-year-College-Internship here. He also worked on a project called Max Missions, where he helped hundreds of families in America raise funds to fully support a national missionary family in Asia. He then worked as the East Coast Volunteer Manager for a few years and trained dozens of GFA Volunteers to share the ministry with the Churches and Christians in their community. For the past few years, he has been serving in the Church Relations Department and sharing the ministry with Pastors around the nation.

Thousands of new fellowships have been established each year! We, as a family, have personally handed out nearly 20,000 books to share the vision of GFA. We have had the privilege of speaking in many churches around the nation about what God is doing in Asia. And through many of these activities, there have been thousands of families who have supported missionaries, dalit children, Jesus wells, church buildings and many other ministries in India.

Thank you for walking on this journey with our family! We want to celebrate, along with you, the hundreds of thousands of Asian people who have found hope in Jesus!

Sunny Morning with the Smith Family!

2011-05-07T22:09:00.002-05:00

Had a great time this morning taking some photos with the Smith Family! We went down to SMU in Dallas and enjoyed walking around the campus. Their son, Rhome, has lots of energy and enjoyed getting to explore a new place. More photos to come. Just wanted to give them a sneak peek.

Outreach Day in Dallas

2011-04-30T20:09:00.009-05:00

I had a great time in Dallas today as I photographed a day of outreach. Park Cities Baptist Church and Cornerstone Baptist Church joined together to do a clothing drive, give free showers, give out food, and do construction on a building that will soon help men after they first get out of prison.

Everyone who helped really had a servant's heart and I could see the gratefulness on the faces of those who were welcomed in.

You'll notice the "1:8" logo on some of the shirts. That is the theme of the missions program at Park Cities and it comes from Acts 1:8, where Jesus tells us to be His witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the Earth. Here are a few images from today.

My Grammy

2011-04-12T23:49:00.002-05:00

This is Tony writing. I just wanted to mention a few words about my Grammy who went home to be with Jesus last Friday, April 8, 2011.

Grammy named her daughter Helene after her mother, who was named Helen. We also gave that name to our daughter Ava Helene, almost 3 years ago when she was born.

She was one of the most amazing people that I have ever met in my life. She had more smiles inside her then you would ever think possible. Even when I knew that she wasn't feeling well or was in some pain, she would let the smiles, laughter and jokes burst forth with greater measure.

I have been looking at the above photo for awhile tonight. I miss her. I am so happy that she is with Jesus though. I smile when I think about the fact that the next time that I see her, we will get to dance together.

This verse has special meaning to me tonight. "For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him." 1 Thessalonians 4:14

All of our hope lies in the resurrection of Christ. Just as Jesus defeated death and rose again, so will those who have fallen asleep in him be raised to be with him. 1 Corinthians 15:22 says, "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive."

And have you ever noticed that term, "asleep in him?" Doesn't that change everything? William MacDonald said "Knowing that it is merely the Lover of our souls giving sleep to the bodies of His beloved ones robs death of its terror."

So there you are Grammy. Asleep in Jesus. The Bible says that "to be absent from this body is to be present with the Lord." I know that you are with him now and as hard as it is for me to believe, I know that he loves your smile even more then we do.

Below, I wanted to include a few words about her that my Nana put in the local newspaper.

Minnie Bastain

Minnie "Betty" Bastian, 97, passed away at her home in Bostwick, Friday, April 8, 2011.

She was born in Williamsport, Pa., the oldest of 13 children born to Helen and Clyde Ohnmeiss. She met her husband, Samuel "Sam" at a bread factory in Williamsport where they worked. They married in 1931. In 1953, Sam began work as a Tech. Rep. for Link Aviation causing them to live in many different cities, including Fairbanks, Alaska. After leaving Link Aviation, they moved to Albany, Ga. They celebrated 56 years together before Sam passed away in 1987. They had two children, Robert "Jack" Bastian, who passed away in 1980 at the age of 47, and Helene Foltis who lives with her husband, Constantine "Connie" in Bostwick. In 1996, Betty moved to Bostwick to live with them.

She leaves behind to cherish her memory along with her daughter and son-in-law, three sisters, Vivian Heller of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Maxine Loudenslager and Ninabelle Aikey of Williamsport, Pa.; eight grandchildren, due to being able to locate a grandson, she is known to have over 14 great-grandchildren, over 19 great-great-grandchildren, one great-great-great-grandchild and many nieces and nephews.

Betty spent most of her adult life as a mother and housewife. She enjoyed cooking and baking, crocheting and making jewelry. She and her husband traveled to campgrounds along the Gulf. Upon returning home, they spent many hours making seashell people and animals from the shells they found. They were members of St. John Lutheran Church in Albany and were active in the "Third Stagers" seniors group.

After moving in with her daughter and son-in-law due to bad health, she was unable to attend St. John Lutheran Church of Palatka but was added to the shut-in list and had frequent visits from the pastors. From November 2010 to March 2011, she was in the Palatka Health Care Center. Wherever she went, she spread love and joy with her friendly and happy attitude. In return, she received love and affection from so many people she came in contact with.

Services will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 14, at Johnson-Overturf Funeral Home in Palatka with Pastor Rick Freese Sr. officiating. The family will receive friends at the funeral home from 5 p.m. until the time of services at 7 p.m. A graveside service will be held at 2 p.m., Saturday, April 16, in Floral Memory Gardens in Albany, Ga., where she will be laid to rest next to her husband and son.

Our Ballerina

2011-03-27T17:47:00.010-05:00

A couple of months ago a friend of ours started teaching a dance class at a local recreation center. It was for girls ages 3-5 and Ava had just turned 2 1/2 but I knew she would love the class and so I asked if an exception could be made for her. I was so happy when they said she could join. And Ava LOVES the class. Every Wednesday morning when I tell her that today is her ballet class she spends the hours between 7:30, when she wakes up, and 10:00, when we leave for class, repeatedly saying, "I want to go to ballet. I want to go to ballet. I want to go to ballet." And I learned not to tell her the night before or she has a hard time going to sleep that night.

She is very, very focused in class. She never plays around or goes off to take a break and do her own thing like some of her classmates might. It's not a fun play time for her, not at all, it's ballerina training time!

From day one she has insisted on wearing one of her tutu's to class.

At home she practices (and makes me practice with her) holding onto the oven door handle as our ballet bar.

These dancing sessions with their wands have led to many lovely songs and dances from Ava at home. She twirls and sings and sways. It's often the same song that she sings while dancing, I don't know it so it must be one Cheryl plays for the class.

Learning to jump and point her toes. This is where her younger age shows, she's not the best jumper. She usually gets her feet about a half inch off the floor. :o)

Everybody following Ms. Cheryl

On their tippy toes

Watching themselves in the mirror

And WOOPS!

Ms Cheryl was showing Ava how to lift her one leg. Ava, trying to do her very best, kept holding her leg up for as long as she could after Cheryl moved on to help the other girls.

Still up. . .

Feel'n the burn . . .

Yesterday Ava taught my first ballet class (at least since I was 5). She had me sit with her on the floor and gave me a little stuffed animal like they use in their class for their stretches. We did several different stretches with her showing me how to do them and telling me, "Mama, point your toes!. Mama, do a butterfly!" Then she had me get up and hold on to the back of the couch and we practiced plie and passe. Then we did some twirling. Then we sat down for circle time and she told me a story about a bear (Cheryl usually reads them a ballet related book during the class). She was telling it in a very soft "story telling voice" so I couldn't catch as much of it as I wanted to, but it was about a bear who went up a hill, was on it's tippy toes and did some plie's and pique's. Then we did some more ballet dancing. It was the best class I've ever taken!

Ava loves Ms Cheryl!

Funny Things and Flying Kites

2011-03-15T09:16:00.010-05:00

Flowers for Mama

Last weekend we went to Target and bought the last Disney Princess kite they had and took Ava to the park to fly a kite for the first time. She'd seen someone flying one a few weeks ago and had been wanting to fly one ever since. When we got to the park the wind was pretty strong and after watching Tony struggle a bit to control the kite we were sure Ava wouldn't really be able to fly it that day. But we let her have a go at it, fully expecting to see our $3 purchase fly off into the sun when she let go. Boy were we wrong! As you can see in the video below she hung on to that kite and kept it from crashing like a pro. And when her arms got tired she just handed it over to Tony. We might have to upgrade to an $8 kite from Costco soon . . .

I have two favorite anecdotes about Ava right now. The first happened about a couple weeks ago. Earlier that morning Ava was asking me about the spaceship in one of her puzzles and I telling her a little about space travel and that if she wanted to, she could become an astronaut and fly into space when she got older. A couple hours later Madelyn and I were in the kitchen and Madelyn was sitting her in Chicco Hook-On highchair at the island and Ava came running up to her and said, "Madelyn, you wanna go to outer 'pace? You be a baby acronaut. Yeah? Alright." And the deal was done. I still laugh at that one. Ava is always asking Madelyn questions and then answering them for her, "Yeah? Alright." I guess I must say that a lot.

And the second one happens every time I take Ava with me into a public restroom. Most recently in the bathroom at Target. I help her use the toilet and when she's finished it's my turn. After which Ava (facing me with her back to the stall door) leans forward with clasped hands and says, "Yay Mama you go pee pee! I am SO proud of you again!" HAHA! It's feels so great to be a hero to your children . . .

Oh and I guess there's three because yesterday there was a bag of raisins on the table and Ava was snagging some and I told her not too (she'd already eaten a fair share at lunch). The next time I turned around I caught her with her with one hand in the bag, but the other hand covering her eyes so that I wouldn't see her. Because everyone knows if you can't see anything other people can't see you either. Classic.

We taught Ava how to hold up two fingers and say "Peace". Only she decided that instead of two "pieces" she only wants to hold up one "piece". So every time we tell her to say "peace" she holds up her one pointer finger and says "one piece". And if I try and show her that she needs to hold up two fingers, she tells me, "No Mama, just one piece."

Last week she had her first dream that she told me about. She got up that morning and said, "The girl Mama. She go pique, pique (ballet moves) and then she go plie, plie." I asked her if the girl was in her dream while she was sleeping and she said, "Yeah, and a monkey in my bed eating a 'nana. A black monkey." The monkey in the bed is a reoccurring dream because the other night she woke up in the early morning hours crying a little. I went in and comforted her and helped her get back to sleep. The next morning I asked her is she remembered being sad in the night and what made her sad and she said, "The monkey in my bed eating a 'nana." She said he was a happy monkey so maybe she was just crying because she didn't want to share her bed . . .

Because of a game my mom played with Ava while she was here, where she'd put her face really close to Ava's and place her hands on the side of both their faces, and then tell her a story about "Grandma Bear in the cave", Ava frequently walks around the house with her eyes closed saying, "I in a cave. I in a cave." I'm sending any bills for split lips or busted heads from falling or crashing into walls while her eyes were closed to my mom.

Madleyn enjoying the warm sun at the park.

Bowling Balls and Zebras

2011-03-13T14:29:00.005-05:00

A bit ago we went and used a Groupon to visit a local putt putt golf and game place. Ava loved playing the arcade games and even won enough tickets to win a beautiful princess crown. Well almost, she was a few short, but her Dad sweet talked the teenage guy behind the counter into giving it to her. I think it was the crown that gave her that extra edge in putt putt. She loved playing and caught onto the concept really quickly. Fun times.

The Queen of Putt Putt

Everybody need to take a break when playing such an invigorating game like golf.

Madelyn just observed.

Counting Tickets

Mama helping Ava earn some tickets by playing a little Deal or No Deal

"Strike!"

Perfect form

Playing Catch Up

2011-03-07T21:16:00.000-06:00

I can't believe it's been so long since I've blogged. I have a list of things to write about, which I started because I knew I'd forget them before I had a chance to blog. With two little ones running around I rarely get a chance to sit down at the computer. And so this is like a months worth of anecdotes. So grab that coffee. That is if anyone is actually reading this. It's more of a reminder to myself when I'm reading over this blog 10 years from now and feeling all sentimental. . .

Four weeks or so ago the ladies and I went out for a walk. Ava begged to bring her baby doll in her stroller and I let her so it was a very leisurely stroll. But Ava kept lagging behind and after stopping a few times to tell her to "C'mon" I realized what was happening. About every 5 feet Ava would stop, pretend to pull out a camera from her pocket, hold it up to her eyes, say "click", pause and then return her "camera" to her pocket. And she wasn't just randomly taking shots, she was walking along looking around and stopped to take pictures of trees, bushes, cars and anything else that caught her fancy. I nearly died. I had to call Tony at work and tell him what his daughter was doing. He was so proud. And now Madelyn and I will never be able to walk anywhere with the two of them without it taking FOREVER.

One morning I told Ava that she needed to drink more juice because her kidney's needed the juice to be healthy. Later that afternoon she got thirsty and yelled, "I need juice for my kidneys!"

A couple weeks ago we were feeling a little under the weather and I kept asking Ava if she felt sick and she would always reply, "my toes feel sick". Not sure why she said this, but I thought it was funny!

And on a sad note, on February 24th Hi-You passed on. That morning I referred to her as "Hi-You" and she said, "My name not Hi-You. It's Ava Rizzo." I asked if I could still call her Hi-You sometimes and she did say yes, but she only rarely calls herself Hi-You now and if she does she catches it and says "Ava" instead. Sad. I was just getting over being embarrassed when I accidentally called her Hi-You in the store in front of strangers who thought I actually chose that name for her myself. I was not ready for Hi-You to leave us just yet. . .

But luckily I have a few sweet references to Hi-You to remember her by. My two favorite are Ava on her knees in front of Madelyn, holding a toy out to her, and saying "Crawl to Hi-You! Crawl to Hi-You!" and her running around after her bath with her hooded towel on her head like a cape and yelling "Super Hi-You!!!"

But Ava is really into all our names lately anyhow. She's learned my first name and Tony's and is always asking us what our names are. And yesterday at dinner she called me Teressa instead of mommy. Oh yeah, she's also gone this week from calling us "Mama" and "Dada" to "Mommy" and "Daddy" and has even called my just plain "Mom". Wow.

Madelyn is just on the verge of crawling. She gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth and will push herself forward but she just can't quite get the forward motion thing going. But any day now I'm sure she will. She is such a sweet baby. She loves her Mama, Dada and Ava more than anything right now. So much in fact that for the past couple months she gets a bit hysterical if we try and leave her any where. She's happiest when she's being held loves being cuddled, which makes it hard for me to lay her down especially at night if she's still awake. She gets the saddest little face and big fat tears roll down her cheeks and if I even will just put my hand into the crib with her she's grab it and cup my hand on her cheek and close her eyes and be perfectly happy. But the moment I move my hand her eyes pop open and she starts crying again. It's hard to say no to that, but then again it's hard to stand there for 20 minutes of the precious two kid free hours I have with my husband at night.

Madelyn started talking "baby talk" on January 21st. Using consonants and even saying some "dadadada" and "mamamama". I think when Ava started doing that we counted that as her first words. But we held out for Madelyn to get a little more distinct. I think we can safely say though that she said her first word last Saturday March 5th, because we were eating dinner and Madelyn looked across the table at Tony and said, "Dada" and Ava looked up at me and said, "Madelyn said 'Dada'". If Ava can recognize it as a word, surely it is. I think I've heard Madelyn say "Ava" a few times too actually but I'll have to confirm that before we officially document that.

She learned to clap on February 8th and hasn't stopped since. She loves to laugh and clap! And her bottom two teeth finally came in the first one on February 20th and the second one on the 23rd.

And now here's some pics . . .

Ava taking pictures with her Little Tykes camera

Madelyn's first meal of rice cereal 1/8/11

I think Ava put the spoon a little too far in . . .

Teressa's Surprise Birthday Party

2011-03-06T23:09:00.006-06:00

We had a fun little party for Teressa tonight. Her birthday is on Friday and I knew that if I wanted any chance on surprising her, it would need to be before and not too close to the actual day. She is pretty good on picking up on stuff when something weird is going on.

We made it all the way til the front door. Teressa noticed a camera in my hand and was wondering what was up. I made up some lame excuse and then we went inside. Teressa had thought that we were just having dinner at a friends house and when we had stood there for a minute or two and nothing happened, she figured it really must be just dinner.

Surprise! I'm so glad our friends helped put this together and it was definitely a good time hanging out tonight. Chicken Alfredo. Garlic bread. French cake. Ice Cream. Coffee. Well, at least I know that I had fun...

Ava walked right up to Uncle David and handed him a book. He quickly drew a crowd. I think he has a "Mr. Rogers" gift that he never knew about.

What does a Daddy's Birthday look like?

2011-02-17T21:05:00.004-06:00

It was my birthday on the 10th and my family surprised me with the most delicious ice cream cake. (Fun Fact - when I was growing up, ice cream cake was all that I would eat. If someone had a normal cake, I just thought it was too dry and wouldn't want any. My mom is so sweet, she would always run to Carvel to grab an ice cream cake for my birthday and special occasions.)

Teressa and Ava both made this one. Teressa put some cookies in a bag and let Ava stomp on them. Ava was actually so excited about the cake that as soon as I returned home from the airport on the 9th, I walked through the door and Ava yelled "Dada eat your cake!"

Ava helped me blow out the candles. It took us a few tries but we had a lot of fun doing it. She even sang happy birthday to me. What can melt a Dad's heart quicker than his 2 year old singing "happy birthday dear dadda"

Alright... the layers:
chocolate chip cookie crust
hot fudge
chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream
caramel
bananas
butter pecan ice cream
chocolate
whip cream
crumbled chocolate chip cookies
caramel and hot fudge drizzle

Madelyn didn't get any cake this year. But she celebrated nonetheless!

Thank you family for an awesome birthday!

Skis. Colorado. Family. Tree Wells.

2011-02-12T20:58:00.007-06:00

Some of you know that I (Tony) had the opportunity to go to Winter Park, Colorado for a few days of skiing last week. My Dad and step-mom were headed there with a ski club and I joined them, along with my cousin John. So much fun!

Here is a random assortment of snapshots from my camera phone and Teressa's Canon SD780IS that she so graciously let me borrow. (FANTASTIC little camera by the way for those of you looking for a nice small point and shoot camera for around $200. It's smaller than a credit card so you can always have it on you. It takes great video and has actually gone up in price since I bought it for her. The photos below were all shot with it or my phone)

They had already gotten over 200 inches of snow this year, by the time we arrived. Then they must have gotten another foot or two while we were there. Tons and tons of powdery, beautiful snow. This is a view from the top of a diamond that I skied with John. I say "skied" loosely. The hill kind of owned us on this one. We didn't fall, but we were far from "perfect form." :-)

What does every guy really want to ask but is too ashamed to really say?
Do these ski pants make me look fat?

John throwing up his ski pole gang signs.
People were kinda afraid of us.
Ok.
They were very afraid.

I borrowed this from Ansel Adam's collection.

Love the face.

Above. If you look closely.
You will see the half pipe. It's a lot bigger than it looks.
My Dad, John and I looked like the funniest 3 dorks playing around on that.

We had lots of fun in this hot tub while the snow came down. We all even took turns laying in the snow for a few seconds. The highlight really came when John and I decided to head back to the room and we took Dad/Beth's clothes, shoes, towels, room key, etc... with us. ha ha

We also took a pair of my Dad's... for proper etiquette, we'll say "Hanes."
We put them on the railing one night when it was going to drop to -20 that night.
The next morning, he went out on the porch to discover his clothing that had become an ice sculpture. I have to hand it to him. My Dad knows how to take a joke very very well. But for reasons of my own, and for fear of retribution, I decided not to post any photos of the incident.

We have been hearing about lots of skiers and snowboarders getting trapped in tree wells, so we decided to stage our own incident. It was hilarious and lots of fun. What a bunch of goofballs.

I could not pull John out.
I told him to not eat so much breakfast.
He sank like a rock.

The three of us.
Long gone.

Dad and Beth.
Beth did an amazing job skiing those challenging slopes by the way!

A few of the mountain from my Dad's goggles.

If you see these people on the mountain.
Think long and hard before you get on the chair lift.
Just kidding.
They are harmless.

The gang.
So much fun!
Thank you Dad and Beth!!

You talkin to me.
You talkin to me.

Skiing all morning can sure make someone goofy by lunchtime.

As I said...

When the snow would stop, the brightest blue skies would pop out.
Breathtaking.
I only wished I had some lenses and polarizing filters on me.

That's Dad and John ahead of me.

Crouching Snowflake, Hidden Snowball.
(being released in India 2014)

Photography while Snowed In

2011-02-02T19:08:00.004-06:00

Brrr... it is cold here in Texas! While I write this, it is 19 degrees. Which is great, seeing as to how it was 9 degrees earlier. The office has been closed because of the roads being covered in ice and snow. It looks like everything may be shut down again tomorrow as well.

Ava and I were looking for something to do yesterday since it was too cold to really play outside. We spent about a half hour in the backyard, but since the wind chill brought it down to -2, we quickly ran out of fun things to do. We warmed up with some hot chocolate and have done lots of fun stuff inside since then. From puzzles, books, an animated movie, building a blanket fort and even doing some photography.

Ava helped me find interesting things around the house to photograph and we had lots of fun doing it. Her favorite was the train. After a brief break of running around the house yelling "chu chu" she helped me set it up and photograph it. Teressa has been happy to have some extra help around the house too, so it's a win win. Enjoy the photos and let me know what you think!

We grabbed this apple off the counter and sprayed some water on it. These are the best apples I have had in years, by the way. We got them from Costco. There are a few different kinds there though so you'll have to ask Teressa which ones these are.

Don't you love the way that an iPod photographs? We are going to be selling 2 or these by the way, if anyone is interested in a gently used one. I have an 8gb and 16gb iPod touch. 3rd generation I believe. I think we got them last year, but don't really use them very much.

This is a pill box that Teressa picked up when travelling in Scotland. I didn't even know what it was, but Ava thought it was cool so in front of the camera it went!

Teressa got this train while on a trip with her Dad. She was like 10 or 13 (don't ask me, i'm not sure what happened to 11 and 12. that's just what she told me) and she took a train ride with her Dad for her birthday. I think that is so cool though to have this from that special time with her Father.

iPod

A Bunch of Sickies

2011-01-19T09:37:00.005-06:00

We've been struggling to get over a cold at the Rizzo house these days. Madelyn's teething on top of that and having a hard time sleeping at night and so I'm fairly sleep deprived. But we're making it.

Ava woke up this morning and requested 'mato for breakfast so she's eating tomatoes and toast for breakfast this morning. Must be the small amount of English blood she has in her coming through.

Yesterday she and I had oatmeal for breakfast and I was giving Madelyn her weekly attempt at eating some rice cereal while we ate. Madelyn has yet to become enthusiastic about eating solids and tends to just clamp her mouth shut when I bring the spoon up. Ava saw this and said, "Eat you oatmeal Madelyn. Give you muscles." Haha!

Despite not yet being willing to eat anything off a spoon, Madelyn is doing well. She's getting pretty skilled at rolling over back and forth and pushing her chest up off the floor. The other day I even caught her part way up on her knees at the same time. AND she's starting to scoot herself backwards. Not ready for that.

On Sunday she started "talking" out of the blue. Her shrieks and coo's suddenly had consonants added to them. She's been thoroughly enjoying her new grasp on language with lots of chatting going on.

The other day I gave them their first bath together. Their little noses were all stuffed up so I steamed up the bathroom and put them in the tub. Madelyn was sitting in her Bumbo seat and I took a cup and poured some of the warm water into the seat, telling Ava, "Mama's putting some bathwater in Madelyn's Bumbo to keep her warm." Ava wanted to do it so I let her and just told her to only pour it on her lap. She kept gently pouring the water into Madelyn's seat, saying "Keep Madelyn warm" for several minutes and then all of a sudden, she took the cup and poured it right over Madelyn's head. I guess she just wanted to see what would happen! Poor Madelyn was pretty startled but I could tell Ava felt bad afterward. And she did say, "Sorry Madelyn." I felt bad for Madelyn but I also had to laugh a little when Ava wasn't watching.

Last Monday Madelyn had her 6 month check up. She's doing great. She is 27 inches long and 16 pounds, so that puts her in the 90th percentile for height and 75th for weight. Both her and Ava got shots that day. I was nervous about Ava because she hadn't had any shots since she was old enough to really know what was going on. I talked to her about them a little before hand and had chocolate and Lambie available for afterward. The nurse was great though and the shot was over before I knew it and I don't think Ava even felt it. Madelyn on the other hand was ANGRY about her shots. She didn't stop crying until we were on our way home. Poor baby.

Ava will be going to her second ballet/dance class tomorrow morning. I found out last Tuesday that our friend Cheryl was teaching a pre-school dance class at the Rec Center in Carrollton and although it is supposed to be for 3-5 year olds Ava was able to join. I'd been wanting to have her do some sort of activity and be with other kids more and I was so excited for this opportunity for her. A weekly dance class at the Rec Center is cheap too! She already has plenty of tutu's but per Cheryl's recommendation we did go to Pay Less Shoes and buy a pair of tiny ballet slippers, which was a lot of fun for both us us.

The night before her first class we'd watched some YouTube clips of real ballerina's dancing and as soon as we turned it on Ava ran to her room yelling, "My tutu! my tutu!" The she came back properly dressed and she and I danced. She watched the screen very carefully and did her best to imitate the dancers in the video. And if she caught me not paying attention, she rebuked me quickly, grabbing my hand and saying, "Mama like this, like this. Dance!"

So she was very excited for her class the next morning. In fact she had a hard time falling asleep the night before and woke up about an hour and 1/2 earlier than normal that morning. I didn't stay in the class with her but peeked in at the window. She took it all very seriously and came out able to show me 1st position and a plie. We've been practicing this week so she should be all set for tomorrow.

And here's some things I'm loving about my girls right now.

I love when Madelyn looks up and smiles at me. She has the sweetest smile, it's a "secret" smile, like there's something really special that only she and I know.

I love it when Ava asks to hold my hand. She's been holding my hand a lot when we're all eating dinner together and when I'm reading to her. She says, "Mama, hold my hand!" I love it!

Ava likes to hold Madelyn's hand too. Especially when Madelyn is bugging her by grabbing at her face and hair. After patiently repeating, "No Madelyn. No Madelyn." Ava will just take Madelyn's hand and hold it. Very sweet.

Madelyn is a snuggler. When she's sleepy all she wants if for me to hold her and let her snuggle her face down into the crook of my arm. And if she's in her crib she likes to have her forehead stroked and have me cup her cheek in my palm. I have to admit she's a little spoiled and gets to snuggle a lot at bedtime . . .

Madelyn is ticklish. VERY ticklish. And she loves to be tickled. Her tummy and her neck are the most ticklish and her whole body convulses and she just laughs and laughs when you tickle her. It's so cute!

Since Madelyn was born I've been singing to her the little song, "I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck." Only I changed to the words to "kisses on the neck" because it's much more fun to kiss a baby's neck than hug it. Anyway, now when I sing it and to her and I get to the "kisses on the neck" part she leans in and chomps down on my cheeks with those big slobbery baby kisses. I love it!

Ava is really into puzzles and I love doing them with her. She is pretty good at them, and their real puzzles not the wooden cutout kind. She has such concentration when she's working on them. She'll sit on her bedroom floor for a good 30 minutes at a time working on them. She also loves being read to and reading out loud to her baby or stuffed animals. She usually adds quite a bit of detail to each page she reads, but the other day she was reading Are You My Mother and gave the abbreviated version which went like this. "Are you my mother? No. And No. (flipping the pages) And no. And no. Yay! The End." Which is pretty much exactly what that books says. Funny how I can't get away with skipping parts when I'm reading to her . . .

Because I'm Awake and No One Else Is

2010-12-31T08:17:00.013-06:00

Forgot to actually post this last week . . .oops!

Well it's another "weekend" morning and again I'm the only one up because Madelyn woke me up at 6:45, but then an hour and a half later she wants to catch some more Z's but of course I can't go back to bed because I've already consumed a cup and a half of coffee. This is the new weekend for me. So what better to do than type out a blog post eh? I've been meaning to jot down a few random notes about my girls anyway. Yesterday Ava went all day without any accidents (not even first thing in the morning or during nap) in her diaper for the first time, with a grand total of 8 successful visits to the potty chair. And so today, as promised, we'll be going to the Shoe Shop (i. e. Target because this is where we went to get her her requested "soccer" shoes when she asked to go to the "shoe shop" for a pair. She did actually need tennis shoes by the way. We don't always fulfill her every wish.) to get her some new Dora underwear. Or perhaps, "puppy underwear" because for some reason after all the promises of Dora underwear and the excitement she did have over the thought of them, suddenly yesterday she decided she wanted "puppy underwear." Every time I would remind her that if she stayed dry we would go buy new Dora underwear she'd correct me and say "puppy underwear." I sure hope the Shoe Shop can deliver.

Madelyn will be 6 months in just a few days. Hard to believe. I'll be feeding her her first bites of rice cereal this weekend. She hasn't seemed to interested in food/us eating. But I want to give it shot before her next Dr's appointment this Friday in case I have any questions. Guess I better go dig out my Super Baby Food's book for a little refresher . . . She's getting more and more vocal too, especially in the mornings. Lot's of yelling and shrieking, especially if Ava's any where near. She makes all kinds of excited commotion in hopes that Ava will come play with her. Between that and Ava's constant chatter is a wonder I have any sense left in my head these days. She is quieter than Ava was though, I think there's more going on for her to just observe. She LOVES watching Ava and she just gets the hugest smile on her face when ever Ava comes near to her and reaches out to try and grab a hold of Ava. Often grabbing her hair or poking her, which is understandably a little hard for Ava to understand, and so she's always telling her, "No, no Madelyn" and returning Madelyn's hand back to her own personal space. Madelyn can roll over now. From side to side and onto her tummy. Which makes her angry at nap time. I have clear memories of this horrible phase with Ava. They can roll themselves over onto their tummies at nap time, but they can't fall asleep on their tummy or roll themselves back over so they cry and cry until you flip them back over onto their backs only to have them roll back over onto their tummy a couple minutes later. And this nasty cycle repeats and repeats and repeats until their so exhausted they don't have the energy to roll themselves over anymore and fall asleep on their back. Good times. Madelyn's been teething a lot for weeks now with still no appearance of that first tooth. She has to tiny white spots on her bottom gum but they don't seem to be growing at all. Poor thing. She still remains fairly cheerful though. She really is a sweet baby. She loves to laugh and sometimes now will just start laughing if I just look at her. She is loving her exersaucer right and her new found ability to actually play with her rattles and various other baby toys. But she still likes to be held best. Ava liked her "alone" time and was content to play by herself often. Madelyn is for short amounts of time but she wants to be checked in on often and would probably really just prefer for me to carry her around all day. It's really interesting to see already the differences in their personalities and preferences. There's toys we have that Ava did ever really seem interested in that Madelyn really likes (glad I didn't just toss those). When Ava was sleepy she just wanted me to lay her down in her crib and leave her alone. She didn't like me trying to sing to her or pat her back or touch her at all. Madelyn loves to be rocked and snuggles her head down into the crook of my arm. And singing and patting her back or stroking her forehead soothes her. Ava slept on her back with her arms above her head every night. Madelyn is a strict side sleeper, usually with one arm draped over her eyes. When I used to go in to get Ava in the morning she would be ecstatic and shriek and strain to try and sit up and get out of bed to greet me. Madelyn is more relaxed. Still happy to see me but she greets me with just a sweet smile. Just little things but it's just so interesting to see their similarities and differences coming out. Ava is saying some pretty funny stuff lately. I need to be better about writing them down. Last week I was putting her into her new booster seat at the dinner table and telling her how now that she sat at the big table with Mama and Dada she needed to be careful to eat nicely and not make a mess. And jokingly I said to her, "Because Ava, with greater age comes greater responsibility. Can you say that? Can you say 'with age comes responsibility?'" She thought a moment and then said, "No Mama, too hard." We did have a big breakthrough though. She has acknowledged finally that her name is Ava, and yesterday she was scribbling on her white board and said, "Ava Rizzo. My name Ava Rizzo." I said, "Are you writing you name?" And she said, "Yes. My name Ava Rizzo." Of course, she did follow that up by saying, "Mama Rizzo, Dada Rizzo, Hi-You Rizzo and Madelyn Rizzo!" This is good though, because both Tony and I have found ourselves constantly calling her "Hi-You" in public places and being a little embarrassed that the strangers around us think that we actually named our daughter that.

Here's some pictures of Tony's dad and step-mom's visit and then our Christmas tree decorating and some pictures of the girls before we left for the GFA Christmas party.

Hanging out with Granddad Joe and Grandma Beth

Pillow Fight!!!

Story Time with Dada

Ava asked to eat her cereal in the chair so she could "read" while she ate, so I let her, sans milk.

My beautiful Madelyn

Bed Head

Christmas tree shopping at the good Ol' Home Depot. It's a family tradition! :o)

Ava loved helping decorate the tree this year. I started out only putting not breakable ornaments on because I was afraid Ava would break them, but the tree looked a little bare so I added some glass bulbs. Two of them got broken before the tree came down, one by me and one by Tony. . .

Ava totally remembered how to put the star of from last year, she asked to be held up and put it right on.

Ava in her Christmas dress. It has some silver sparkles on it so it's not the totally black unfrilly dress it appears to be, so don't feel to sorry for her.

The two loves of my life (minus the third)

Say Cheese!!!

Senior Photos - Christina

2010-12-29T19:53:00.007-06:00

I had a great time hanging out with Christina and her mom, Shelly, a few weeks ago. We went down to the Arts District in Dallas and shot some senior photos as we walked around. Shelly knows the history behind many of the buildings and locations, so that was especially fun. I have walked/driven around that area many times, but had no idea how old and historical some of the buildings are.

Christina has been blessed with an amazing voice and she hopes to sing professionally after high school, so the part of town she picked was a perfect fit. Enjoy the photos!

A Cowboy Christmas

2010-12-27T21:12:00.008-06:00

As expected Christmas morning with our two girls was a lot of fun. The anticipation for Ava had been slowly building thanks to taking her to the Dollar Store to buy Christmas gifts for Dada and a trip to the Target $1 bins with Dada to buy gifts for Mama, hanging a nativity piece on the Advent Calendar each day and then all the presents appearing under the tree a couple days before. I made the fatal error of wishing her a Merry Christmas Eve the day before and having her leap out of bed and exclaim, "Presents!" and go running down the hall. Then I had to try and explain that it was Christmas Eve and that tomorrow was actually Christmas. As you can imagine that didn't make a whole lot of sense to her and I could tell she thought I had just played a really mean trick on her.

On the for real Christmas morning Tony and I got up and got dressed and got out the video camera before going in to get Ava up. She leapt out of bed just the same as she had the morning before and ran to the tree. I think I was as excited as she was and said to her, "What present do you want to open first?" She said, "The tiny one." What? What child picks the smallest gift to open first? Maybe a smart girl since that gift turned out to be a pair of earrings for me from Tony. Already she knows the size of a jewelry box . . .

But then Tony reminded us that there's a Christmas morning tradition protocol that we have to follow and so we all sat down (Madelyn in her Bumbo seat) and opened up our stockings and Christmas cards to each other. Ava got some plastic play tableware for her play kitchen in her stocking and after opening them she got up and ran off to play with them in her kitchen, perfectly content with only those plastic plates and bowls. I guess we could have just taken her other gifts back. . . We called her back and Tony read the Christmas story and we prayed together and sang Happy Birthday to Jesus. THEN, we moved on to the gifts.

Present opening took awhile. One because two year olds have to open up every gift and play with it before they'll move on to the next one and two, because since we live half way across the nation from both sides of our family we had all the gifts all the grandparents and aunts and uncles to open too. But that was fine with us, we didn't have any thing else planned for the day and we did stop half way through to eat breakfast and put Madelyn down for a nap.

For Christmas breakfast we had homemade cinnamon rolls, which is our traditional Christmas breakfast and traditionally they never turn out. They are either uncooked in the middle, over cooked and dry or don't raise properly. But this year, they were my Christmas miracle, and they turned out perfectly. They were so good. Except for the fact that suddenly it turns out I'm allergic to pecans as well as walnuts and I'd put a good healthy dose of pecans in and had to pick them all out of mine.

Ava was thrilled with every gift. Each time she was handed a gift she'd draw her breath in and go, "Ahhhh! For Hi-You! For Hi-You! Yay! A [fill in the blank] for Hi-You! Yay!" Madelyn enjoyed opening her gifts too, but mostly just because she liked trying to eat the wrapping.

Here's some pictures of our morning.

Reading about the birth of Jesus. Ava clutching her dishes from her stocking.

I love their matching jammies.

Cinnamon rolls

Madelyn wished she could have some too.

Ava loved her "cowboy hat" from her Aunt Danielle. After opening it she stuck it right on head, raised one hand in the air and yelled, "WEE-HAW!" The girl is a native Texan after all . . .

"Wee-Haw!"

Happily serving cake from her Melissa and Doug play food from Papa Jim and Manga. The food is pretty amazing and Ava loves being able to cut it with her wooden knife.

Her Dora backpack from Auntie Megan and Uncle John. She only had the corner of the wrapping off and she exclaimed, "Dora backpack! Hola!" I don't know how she knew what kind of backpack it was since she could only see a small pink corner.

All of us ladies put Christmas bows on our heads. Ava was very into it and kept putting Madelyn's back on her head for her when it would fall off, which was often.

"Ahhhh! For Hi-You! For Hi-You! Yay! A Princess book for Hi-You!" Thanks Granddad Joe and Grandma Beth (Madelyn knows it's for her too!)

"A present for me?!?!"

"What is it?"

"Here, let me show you how you're supposed to play with it Madelyn."

"Hey! That's mine!"

Merry Christmas!

Exposure of the Day - December Leaves

2010-12-26T18:05:00.002-06:00

Took these shots this afternoon. I saw these leaves in a neighbors yard. I'm always amazed that were about to celebrate the New Year and I'm still looking at such beautiful color.

Hope your Christmas weekend was wonderful! I'm going to upload some photos from ours soon.

(Dallas, TX - Colorful Leaves)

Julian and Terri's Wedding

2010-12-22T23:32:00.008-06:00

I shot a wedding recently and wanted to post a few images from it. I have known Julian and Terri for quite a few years now. They are both such kind and joyful people and I can only imagine how happy they are to be married!

There was a small misunderstanding before the wedding, so Julian and I spent some time outside together, locked out of the church. It was pretty comical. But I could see it clearly in his life then, just as I always have. Julian is a servant hearted and humble guy. I think Terri sees that too and it will be such a help to him as he learns to love her more each day.

I like this dress shot.

Props go to Teressa for the idea.

Have you ever seen a groom jump so high?

Soccer

2010-12-21T14:30:00.006-06:00

So after Ava's bath this afternoon I was getting her dressed and she was talking about soccer. And this is the conversation that followed.

"Do you want a soccer ball?"

"Yeah! And go to shoe shop."

"You want soccer shoes from the shoe shop?"

"Yeah soccer shoes to kick ball."

"You want soccer shoes so you can kick the ball?"

"Yeah. Kick ball with Dada."

"Ok, we can get a soccer ball and kick it with Dada."

"In the park? In the sun?"

"Yeah we can go to the park and kick the ball with Dada tomorrow or the next day."

"Go in the car?"

"Yeah, we'll go maybe tomorrow" "Ok lets get in bed for your nap."

"Noooooo . . .no nap!" (crying) Go to park and play soccer! No nap go to park with Dada!" (more crying and crying)

Apparently she missed the part about going tomorrow. Two year olds . . . But after I explained that we couldn't go today because 1) We didn't have a soccer ball and 2) Dada was at work she stopped crying and then reading her favorite George (Curious George that is) book made everything alright again and she was off to sleep . . and to dream about soccer . . .

And while I'm at it. Here's some pictures of our trip to the Texas State Fair. Thanks to the Robbin's hot tip a few years back it's become a bit of a family tradition for Tony to take a half day off work on a Wednesday so we can take advantage of the can food drive and discount admission to the fair. Not to mention smaller crowds.

Our favorite place in the whole Fair is the petting zoo. They have all kinds of exotic animals, most with babies at their sides, that you can feed and pet including zebras, giraffe, kangaroos, Scottish Highland cattle, Emu, along with the usual llamas, pigs, goats, sheep, donkeys. Such fun! We stop by at least twice.

Ava feed some grain to a hungry goat.

Madelyn liked all the animals too!

Tony testing out the Dodge Challenger.

A new favorite, now that we have little girls was this miniature farm exhibit. It was right up Ava's alley. She took it all very seriously, from putting on her work apron and gathering fake apples from the trees, to milking the plastic cow and planting "seeds" in the garden. Once she made it all the way through and delivered her fruit, eggs, milk, corn and wool to the Farmer's Market, they gave her pretend money and she got to go to the General Store and pick out any of the snacks she wanted there. She chose a package of peanut butter crackers and was adamant that that is what she wanted. The girl knows her mind I tell ya.

Off to the "farm"

Planting seeds in the garden.

Picking vegetables from the garden.
Ava carefully took one of each and filled up her bucket. All the other kids around her were just taking a handful and running to the next station. Not Ava.

What a sweet little dairy maid. :o)

Collecting eggs from the hen house.

Driving Madelyn to Market.

Emptying her produce into the bins at the Farmer's Market.

Little Bo Peep

Lunar Eclipse - Dallas, TX - December 2010

2010-12-21T08:49:00.003-06:00

Here are some shots from the Lunar Eclipse last night. (The Colony, TX)

It happened to be about 65 degrees here last night, so watching the moon turn orange was very enjoyable.

And just in case you are wondering... yes, I did wake Teressa up around 2am to see it. But no, I didn't wake Ava up. ;)

There is nothing new under the sun

2010-12-20T23:42:00.002-06:00

I was shooting some Senior Photos in downtown Dallas a couple of weeks ago and saw something I had never seen before. It was so unique that I wanted to share it with all of you. Isn't this a wild pool?

Cupcakes, Snow and Handstands

2010-12-19T00:42:00.010-06:00

Today was a fun family day. We have been especially busy this past week or two, so we spent some fun time together throughout the day and really enjoyed it. The weather here in Texas is so enjoyable right now.

Ava learned a little more how to steer her tricycle down the sidewalk. We still end up in the grass quite often, but she is getting the hang of it. But even the fun of pedaling can't compete with the glee she finds when she gets off, lifts up the seat, and begins to feel the "storage compartment" with leaves, sticks and acorns. I can't wait until she can apply those skills to organizing her room.

She is learning how to jump and hop. She saw her friend Esther doing it this past week and now she wants to do it more and more.

Let's ride.

Rock those sweat pants Ava.
On that cool cherry red motorcycle of yours.
I love you.

Her favorite part was driving past Madelyn and honking the horn. Madelyn was sitting in a Bumbo chair in the grass near the sidewalk. Ava would yell "wait, horn" as we passed. I would wait until she located the horn button. Soon, she'll learn to whistle.

Have I mentioned how much I look forward to this smile when I get home from work? It never fails. Every single day that I come home and look at Madelyn and smile, she gets this huge grin on her face. She is never too tired to return a smile. I love love love her.

Ava wanted to learn how to do a handstand when she saw me doing it.
I was actually very impressed. She was getting her feet up in the air without crashing down on her face.
The black bar on that photo wasn't really necessary.
But it's kinda funny, isn't it?

Madelyn is teething a lot right now.
No teeth have actually showed up yet, but they must be close.
She doesn't seem to be in much pain, which is nice.
But if your not watching your finger and it gets close.
Chomp.

I also got to teach Ava about climbing trees today.
Boy, did she have fun.
I could see that she had never even thought it was a possibility.
She is always picking up the leaves on the ground.
So the thought of picking them straight off the tree - even better.

We then went over to the neighboring city, Frisco, for their Christmas celebration.

Lot's of blue trees. One of Teressa's favorites.

Ava always enjoys light shows that coordinated to music.

Practically everything here was free. Lots of fun.
Even 7-eleven set up a booth and was giving out tons of free coffee and travel mugs.
I'll give them props for that. Really hit the spot.

They had a big Sledding Hill set up for kids.

Ava looked at me several times when the horses trotted by.
I think she was trying to figure out why they weren't free to run around like they are in the books she reads.

There was a really nice Balloon Glow going on tonight too!
I really enjoyed it.
I have been to several in the past, but they normally never let you close to the balloons.
Tonight, people could walk right up to the baskets and talk to people and look at the flame as it rose into the balloon.

They had a large model train village set up.

We did all decide to share a cupcake towards the end of the night.
For those of you who don't know, Teressa really enjoys making cupcakes.
And in my opinion, they are VERY good.
So we like to see what other shops are working on when we get a chance.
When it came to the end of the cupcake, there were two bites left.
Teressa offered a bite to Ava on a fork.
I could see Ava's mind working.
She then grabbed the empty fork.
Then grabbed the fork with the cake on it from Teressa's hand.
She had successfully figured out a way to get the second to last bit, as well as the last bite.
Well played young food lover.
Well played.

Okay, this may seem silly.
Especially to anyone from a "northern" state that is reading this.
But what brought us to Frisco tonight.
What really got us in the car and headed that direction.
Was the promise of FREE SNOW.
They have a couple of "snow" machines set up that sprinkle snow off of the top of the buildings every 15 minutes.
Is it kind of lame to dance around on the sidewalk with strangers as you stick your tongue out in the air hoping to catch some snowy-looking soap bubbles?
Yes.
Did we do it?
You betcha.

This is my snow-angel.
I would like to take credit and say I made her.
But that belongs to Jesus.

This is Ava helping "Hop" to enjoy the snow.
Hop is actually a deer.
Ava thinks he is a kangaroo for some reason.
And not just any kangaroo.
A kangaroo named Hop.

Catching Snow

McDaniel Family

2010-12-16T12:52:00.002-06:00

Just took a family photo for the beautiful McDaniel Family yesterday!

ps: If anyone out there needs some video work done, let me know and I'll hook you up with Matt. He is really good with editing videos and would be a big help for any project your needing done.

Forgotten Christmas

2010-12-09T15:14:00.000-06:00

Check out this video about how easily Christmas can be forgotten!

Our New Kitten

2010-12-07T23:47:00.007-06:00

Yesterday were finishing up yet another attempt to have her use her potty chair and as I was putting her diaper back on I was telling her again how when she learned to use the potty chair all of the time and didn't wear a diaper anymore I would buy her a special, special toy. I asked her, "What toy would you like to have when you don't wear diapers anymore?" She thought for a minute and then said, "Pretty outfit."

I think something like this is what she has in mind . . .

Getting all prettied up. Ava loves to put on "make-up" with mommy.

Filling her bucket with sticks and rocks. It's what she does everyday in the backyard.

I didn't even have to show Ava how to pick up her dress when she walked. She started doing that and twirling the minute she put the dress on. Some things just come natural when you're a true princess.

A true lady is always gracious to the paparazzi.

(I pinned up the front of her dress so she wouldn't trip)

Trying hard not to feel silly in her Kitten outfit.

But have you ever seen a cuter kitten?

"MOM! Stop pulling my ears!"

Sweet. Sweet. Sweet.

Off to the Trunk or Treat Harvest Party

Mmm. Chocolate. We dolled out her candy over the next few weeks and every time she had to go find her bucket first and we had to put the candy into it before she would eat it. There's always a right way to do things in Ava's mind.

Silly Face!

Bubbles on my Tongue

2010-12-06T22:34:00.005-06:00

Ava discovered bubbles this fall. When Teressa and Madelyn went out one night, Ava and I played with bubbles in the back yard. She wanted to slide with bubbles, swing with bubbles, catch them on her tongue and of course, wipe then on her Daddy.

She soon found the really fun job. Learning to turn the bubble machine on and off. again. and again. and again.

It was a pretty safe time, all in all. Except for once, she got a little ambitious and tried to catch a bubble while going down the slide. Even I would have trouble with that one...

Pumpkin Village and Madelyn's 4 month check-up

2010-11-14T11:02:00.016-06:00

I really mean to update the blog more often and funny things happen every day and I say to myself "I have to remember to put that in the blog". But then the days just fly by and suddenly it's been two or more weeks. Sheesh.

Like right now I wanted to jot down the stats from Madelyn's 4 month check up, which I thought was maybe 5 or 6 days ago at the most and then I look at the calendar and see that it was 10 days ago. At this rate I'm going to be really old, really fast . . .

So yes, Madelyn had her check up and she looks great. Her belly button's all healed up, so no more treatment needed there. She's 14 lbs 13 ounces and 26 1/2 inches long, putting her in the 98% for height and 75% for weight. She's one inch longer than Ava was at this age and just a few ounces lighter. All I know is that she keeps growing out of all her footie pj's and if she doesn't slow down she's going to have to cut the feet out!

She's still a happy happy baby most of the time. She is just about to start rolling over and is really enjoying her hands and feet and exploring new toys. She loves being in her new Exersaucer from Papa Jim and Manga. She especially loves the little mirror on it and shrieks and yells at the "other" baby looking at her.

Ava is enjoying Madelyn more and more. She likes to read books to her and show her how to play with her toys. Yesterday Madelyn was in her Boppy seat and Ava sat down with her snack right in front of Madelyn and just chatted away at her the entire time she was eating her snack. So cute!

A couple of days ago I asked Ava what she wanted for Christmas and she said "Presents!" (I guess she does remember last Christmas after all. At least it's obvious that she knows the real meaning of Christmas . . .I'm such a good parent . . .). Then I asked her what kind of presents she wanted and she said, "Pink ones!" So I asked her how many she wanted and she said, "One." So just to be sure I asked her, "So you want one pink present for Christmas?" And she said, "Yes!" I'm pretty sure we'll be able to make her Christmas wish come true this year.

Ava's favorite thing to do lately is play hide and seek. She asks to play it all the time and she especially loves playing it with her dad when he's home. Usually we take turns, first me and Ava hide and Dada finds us and then Dada hides and me and Ava find him. After every turn Ava says, "Hide again?" She's really good at it too and hold perfectly still and it totally silent, even "shhhhhing" me if I get too noisy.

A couple of days ago Ava put her baby in Madelyn's carseat, buckled her in, gave her a toy and a blanket and then laid another blanket over the top of the carseat. I was on the phone at the time and Ava came over and tugged on my pant leg and said, "Shhh Mama. Baby sleeping."

Tonight while I was getting dinner ready Ava came running into the kitchen carrying her Doodle Board exclaiming, "It's me Mama! It's me!" showing me the picture she'd drawn of herself. She held it up and said "cheese" so we could take a picture and text it to Dada since he's been in Arizona at a Catalyst conference. She's always asking me to draw things for her on the Doodle Board. I ask her what she wants me to draw and then I do my best. There are four scenes I usually end up drawing at her suggestion. 1) Hi-You, Mama, Dada, Madelyn and Lambie, 2) Dora, Map, Boots, Tico and stars, 3) House, tree, apples, swing, slide, Hi-You on the slide saying "whee!", grass, flower, sun, clouds, moon and stars, and 4) Kitty cat, Dog, monkey, another dog, a baby dog, another kitty etc.

Just before Halloween we went to the Dallas Arboretum to see their Pumpkin Village thanks to half-off tickets from Groupon. I love, love, love the pictures we got here, especially of the girls matching dresses and Ava's pink cowgirl boots!

Playing in a house of pumpkins!

Silly face!

Whee!

Ava loved playing with the pumpkins. It was hard to keep her from throwing them all like balls though.

Madelyn loved the pumpkins too . . .

That hair. . . can't keep a good thing down . . .

"Mama! She's squishing me!"

My beautiful little Texan

There was a band playing and Ava and Dada had fun dancing together.

Twirling

Sisters

South Padre

2010-10-27T08:04:00.008-05:00

While Tony was gone last week Madelyn learned how to blow raspberries. It's her favorite thing to do now. A couple weeks ago she started grabbing at the toys on her play mat and now she can grab on to a rattle and play with it for a few minutes. She's also started laughing more and I've discovered that she's very, very ticklish in her arm pits. I love tickling her and watching her squirm and giggle. She's such a cutie!

I had to box up all of her newborn and 3 month old clothing yesterday and it made me a little sad. They grow so fast! We also finished getting her room all ready for her now that Ava's slept successfully in her big girl bed for a week now. Well semi-successfully anyhow. She still has a hard time falling asleep at nap time. Yesterday, after she laid in bed talking for an hour, I went in and rubbed her back and sang hymns to her for about 15 minutes until she fell asleep. I haven't sang her to sleep since she was a tiny baby. She always preferred just being left alone and didn't want me rubbing her back. It was good for my soul.

It was crazy setting up Ava's crib for a baby though. Raising up the mattress, putting the bumper and mobile back on the crib and getting the changing table all set up. It seems like a decade ago we were doing all that before Ava was born and struggling to comprehend that in a few weeks we'd actually have a real, live baby sleeping in there. Now it's hard to imagine life without a baby.

A few weeks ago we were able to go to South Padre Island for a little family vacation. Tony was sharing at a church there and some friends of ours from our church here had moved down there and offered to let us stay in their beautiful condo while they were out of town.

Thanks to Dora the Explorer we made the 10 hour drive there and back (which with frequent stops to feed Madelyn took more like 13) without mishap and had a wonderful time together as a family at the beach. The first morning we went walking on the beach and Ava was so excited. The love of the ocean is in her blood and she wasn't afraid at all and just charged right into the water in her sundress.

The weather wasn't wonderful but we did get to spend one whole afternoon at the beach (where Ava spent a lot of time in the water with her dad and building sandcastles and Madelyn hung out in her stroller in the shade), swim a couple times in the condo's pool, walk around the town a bit and just relax and enjoy our time together. On Sunday Tony shared about GFA with Island Baptist church and we had such a great time with the body there and having lunch with the pastor and his wife afterward. Tony even got to go night fishing in the bay with the pastor the next night and brought home a gallon Ziplock bag full of fresh fish for us to take home.

Here's some pictures of our trip.

I love vacation!

All ready to head out to the beach.

What's taking everyone so long? Let's go!

Vacation is all about the naps.

Ava color coordinating her shape sorter pieces to the bar stools.

She was a little bothered that there was not a correct stool color for each block but she finally conceded that the pink piece could share with the blue piece on the blue stool and that the purple piece would have to go on the yellow stool.

I was super happy that we were able to take some pictures of the girls in their matching dresses in this beautiful house. And even happier that we made it through the weekend of beautiful breakables, all tile floors and snow white couches without ruining anything.

I don't know why but this one makes me laugh.

My sister's on the shelf!

Dada's home!

2010-10-26T05:59:00.007-05:00

Sunday night we went and picked Tony up from the airport. He'd been in Virginia for 5 days and had been at GFA late the night before so it had been 6 days since Ava had seen him. She was pretty excited when I told her we were going to the airport to get Dada. As I was packing up Madelyn and getting my stuff together she came running up to me with Tony's Redskin's baseball cap and said "Bring Dada's hat?" So I said, "Yes, you can bring Dada his hat." She carried it out to the van, held it on the trip to the airport and carried it out to the airport. We met Tony out on the sidewalk outside the terminal. She she was him she took of running, arms out stretched, hat in had. When she reached him she gave him a HUGE hug and put that hat on his head, saying. "Dada's hat! Dada's hat!" It was so cute! I think I need to go away for about 6 days so I can get that sort of welcome home!

Ava enjoying watching the waves at the Nubble Lighthouse in York, Maine

Megan and John

The whole gang. (Teressa's Dad's side of the family)

Benedicta Cemetery

Our lake view

Our lake house. Good times!

Big Girl Bed FAIL

2010-10-18T10:15:00.011-05:00

So last night was the night we decided to finally move Ava into her big girl bed. Ever since I read in Parent's magazine that it's best to keep them in their crib for as long as they still fit in it (as long as they're not climbing out of it) I haven't been in a huge hurry to make the switch. After all it is nice to know she's safe and snug in her "cage" and not roaming the house or pulling down the curtains in her bedroom at 2am. But we're getting tired of Madelyn being in our room and I think all three of us will sleep better in our own space. Ava jumped to sleeping 10 hours a night soon after we moved her to her own room.

All that to say that yesterday we bolted her shelves to the wall, put safety latches on her closet doors, double checked everything to make sure it was child proof and then Ava and I put her new sheets and blanket and pillow on her bed and had the talk about how to stay in our bed until morning. She's taken a handful of naps in her big girl bed and done very well and she was very excited to go "night-night" in her new bed. We video taped her getting into bed, we read our Bible story and prayed and she snuggled down like she was going to go to sleep. But I guess the excitement was just too much.

At 12:30 I gave up and put her back in her crib. She never got out of her bed, she just never fell asleep either. For a girl who usually promptly goes to sleep at 8:00 every night this was unheard of. I know I could have just left her and she would have eventually fallen asleep but I'm the type that can't go to sleep myself until all my little chicks are sound asleep and I've checked in on them. So I guess we'll just nap in there today and try again tonight with maybe a little less fan fare. She should be plenty tired after her late night last night.

I'm catching more and more Spanish words coming from Ava. The other night Tony said, "I think she's speaking Spanish because she's holding her hands out wide and saying "largo" and then bringing them in small and saying something else." We determined she was indeed and saying "corto", Dora must have been teaching them "long" and "short"? Could it be that Dora can actually teach her to be bilingual? If only, that would be awesome. I may need to brush up on my college Spanish so I can keep up with her.

Yesterday we went for a walk out to Lewisville Lake. We walked out on a dock and we're sitting there taking a little break and enjoying the beautiful weather. Ava was sitting next to Tony who was laying on his back. Tony licked his thumb and rubbed some dirt off of Ava's cheek, then laid back down. About 10 seconds later I see her stick her thumb in her mouth and then lean over to wash Tony's face with it. Startled him and cracked me up. So of course she kept doing it. Sticking her thumbing her mouth and then scrubbing his cheek with her slobbery finger. So funny.

Also yesterday, she and I were in her bedroom doing something and I heard Madelyn start crying in the other room where Tony was. I asked Ava, "Can you go see why Madelyn is crying?" just because I was curious about what she would do. Ava said, "Yeah" and trotted off down the hall to Madelyn, very business like. I followed and came in to see her putting a toy in Madelyn's hand. Tony said Ava had come running in, found Madelyn's lion and gave it to her, than found the toy for her and was saying, "It's ok Madelyn, don't cry Madelyn and patting her tummy. After that little test I'm pretty sure I can go to the mall by myself and leave Ava to watch Madelyn.

Here's some more pictures of Maine. I think this may be the last of them and so the pictures of our trip to South Padre are on deck. :o)

Signing me and Madelyn in at the Reunion under my Grandpa Frank's (deceased) name

The Rush Family Reunion
8/21/2010
Benedicta, Maine
"To Work is To Pray"

Aunt Rita, my Grandpa Frank's sister

Harold, my Grandpa's brother

My cousin Robert

And his wife Sara

Aunt Rita asked to hold Madelyn. They both really enjoyed each other. She sure has a knack with babies.

Uncle Jerome my Grandpa Frank's youngest brother

My Daughter Hi-You

2010-10-14T14:29:00.009-05:00

So the one major mistake Tony and I made with Ava that we will not be repeating on Madelyn is this. Every morning we'd go to get her out of her crib and greet her by saying, "Hi you!", a phrase that is common in our household. One would think that no ill could come from something so simple.

But when Ava first started talking she learned to say her name, a very sweet little "A-ya" would come out of her mouth. That lasted about two weeks and then suddenly one day she started referring to herself as "Hi-You". It took us a little while to catch on to why she was calling herself that and when we did we thought it was funny and would be a quick little phase that she'd grow out of in a week or so. But the weeks passed and Hi-You didn't.

So we stopped greeting her and anyone else with "Hi you". I started having her practice saying "Ava" and tried to explain to her that her name was not "Hi-You", all to no avail and eventually we gave up assuming that it was just a longer phase than we'd originally thought.

Alas, we were wrong once more. I'd say that she's been calling herself "Hi-You" for a good 6 months now, no, probably more like 8 months. And now that she knows more words and can speak in small sentences we actually argue over her name. And while she will answer to the name "Ava". If I say for instance, "This is Ava's toy." She'll correct me and say, "No, Hi-You's toy." And if I say back, "Your name is Ava." She'll say, "No. Hi-You me."

This was our conversation at lunch today.

Me: "Are you done with your lunch."
Ava: "Hi-you all done"
Me: "Your name is Ava"
Ava: "No Hi-You"
Me: "Mama named you Ava because that's a pretty name, don't you think Ava is a pretty name?"
Ava: "No"
Me: "You think that Hi-You is a pretty name?"
Ava: "Yeah. Hi-You me. Hi-You out now." (She wanted out of the conversation and out of her high chair)
Me: So you want Mama to call you Hi-You?"
Ava: "Yes. . . (some thing I didn't quite catch) Mama say Hi-You."
Me: But I want to call you Ava. I think Ava is pretty.
Ava: "Hi-You me. Hi-You out"
Me: "Ava"
Ava: "No Hi-You"
Me: "Ava"
Ava: "Hi-You!"
Me: "Ava"
Ava "Hi-You!!!"

And then I gave up . . .I guess we'll make her wait until she's 18 to legally change her name . . .

And on a totally different note, here's more pictures of Maine!

We took a trip to Uncle Willy's Candy Shop. Ava was pretty impressed with all the jars of candy.

But she loves chocolate most so we got her a chocolate dipped pretzel.

Crunchy and chocolaty. My favorite.

Ava and Dada on the tractor at Aunt Rita's farm

The girl loves to drive.

Feeding the cows. When Ava heard we were going to feed the cows she immediately bent down and plucked two strands of grass, about three inches long apiece, and carefully carried them over to the cows (She remembered picking grass for Manga's neighbors goats I guess). This is her giving those two precious blades to the cows, who unfortunately missed seeing them fall from her hand being that they were so tiny!

A kiss from Manga. (Ava's interpretation of Grandma Margie)

Eli!

Playing on the hay.

A sleeping Madelyn and a camera shy Ava

My brother Jed.

Dinner around the farmhouse table

Picking sweet peas with Papa Jim

A visit to the lake.

Mama made me a daisy chain bracelet! (Tried to that is)

I was so tired this morning that . . .

2010-10-12T08:17:00.008-05:00

. . . I scrapped the last teaspoon of jam from the jar and then dropped it into my coffee instead of into my Greek yogurt, thereby leaving me without breakfast or ability to actually wake up in one fell swoop. Nevertheless, with a cup of tea on the desk in front of me I'm still going to try and get a blog post up before my little ladies wake up.

Life with two girls has been fairly all consuming lately, but I'm starting to get the hang of it I think. I'm finally starting to be ok with the new level of "clean" for our house and resigned to the fact that probably for the next 5 years the whole house will never be perfectly clean all at the same time. And I'm starting to feel even happy about the fact that it's more important for me to spend time playing with Ava and cuddling Madelyn than it is that the toilets are always spotless. I hate cleaning toilets anyway . . .

Madelyn is growing fast. She is quite vocal now, especially in the mornings. She is definitely impressed by the sound of her own voice. She rarely cries, except for a few cries of resistance when she's tired and doesn't want to close her eyes. She doesn't even cry when she wakes up hungry in the morning. She just yells for me. She's also learned how to grab onto toys and she's loving the play mat with it's dangling toys now. Which is great because she's also getting bored pretty quickly of laying on her back and needs some entertainment. She loves watching Ava and smiles any time Ava comes into her line of vision.

Ava loves Madelyn too. She loves helping me give her a bath and dress her. Yesterday Ava was holding her Lambie and I told her that soon Madelyn would have a Lambie too. Ava took off running for her bedroom and brought back a fluffy stuffed lion that Tony bought for Madelyn. Weeks ago we told Ava that the lion was a special toy "like your Lambie" for Madelyn, but that Ava could play with it until Madelyn was bigger. Apparently she remembered that conversation. For the rest of the day, wherever Madelyn went, Ava made sure the stuffed lion was by her side.

But she's not always so sweet to her. This past weekend she and I were playing in her pool and we'd set up her slide so that she could slide down into the water. We were having a great time playing together while Tony and Madelyn watched the Redskins game. At halftime Tony came out with Madelyn and put her toes in the water and Ava started crying and saying "No babies! No babies!" But we told her she had to share her pool with Madelyn because they were sisters and then she was fine with it and even had fun holding Madelyn's feet as Tony helped Madelyn "slide" down into the pool and get her toes wet.

Ava talks constantly all day long and I'm understanding more and more of what she's saying. She likes to pretend she's Dora the Explorer and I've even heard a few Spanish words. She likes to use my nursing pillow as either a horse (she bounces on it and says "neigh, neigh") or a boat (she sits on it, usually with Lambie and Baby on it in front of her and uses anything she can find as a paddle and says "paddle, paddle, paddle!).

A few days ago she had been playing with her blocks and they were scattered all over and so I asked her to clean them up and put them in their basket. I came back into the room a few minutes later and she'd already put every block away. I told her, "Ava, you were such a good girl to obey mama right away and put all of your blocks away. I'm going to give you a chocolate chip because you were so obedient." I got the chocolate chip from the kitchen and met her coming in carrying the basket. I tried to give it to her and she pushed it away and cried, "No chocolate chip, two more blocks! Two more blocks!" and ran to the kitchen window sill, where she'd left two blocks (one in each corner of the window because Ava has to have everything even . . .I wonder where she got that from . . . ) hours earlier. I couldn't believe that she remembered those were there! After she put them in the basket her task was finally complete and she came to get her chocolate chip from me.

Ava loves getting mail. My grandma sent her a note a few weeks ago and she carried it around for days. She even wanted to sleep with it but I made her put it in a special place on her shelf. But as soon as she woke up the next morning she ran to the shelf and asked for her mail. A card came for Tony a couple weeks ago and after reading it he gave it to Ava. I asked him what is said and he said "Here, read it" and he tried to take it from Ava to hand to me. Ava started crying and said, "No! I was reading it!"

Just for record keeping purposes I have to add here that Ava can count to 20 now and is always counting things, counting out blocks, counting the butterflies on her sheets, counting her pieces of toast in the morning, counting, counting, counting. And we're getting better and better with our alphabet too. My favorite word of hers is noodle, Which she pronounces, and now we all do too, "noon-nel". Which reminds me that when she was younger she had a picture book that had noodles on one page and when she'd ask me what it was and I told her "noodles" she'd always crack up laughing like that was the funniest sounding word ever. I guess it is kind of a funny sounding word . . .

Well this is quite a long post already but I have some pictures of our trip to Maine to post so I wanted to add a bit of that on as well.

We had a great time in Maine. My brothers family was sick for most of the week and my sister and her family also got sick towards the end of the week, which was a huge bummer as the cousins didn't get to play together as much as we'd all hoped. But it was relaxing and fun to all be in a house on the lake with them, especially since we don't get to see them very often.

We had fun visiting my Aunt Rita's farm for a big potluck one night. There Ava got to see cows up close and personal, climb on big rolls of hay, play in a barn, climb up into a huge tractor and pick sweet peas right out of the garden and eat them. Her Papa Jim (my dad) showed her how to pick them, pull off the string, open them up to eat the little peas inside and then eat the shell. She ran up to show me and it was so cute seeing her chubby little fingers working so hard at each step of the pea eating process. She also played a game of tackle football with her dada. Now I have to watch out because she'll come running at me and yell "tackle" and try to push me over!

We also had a great time kayaking on the lake at our rental house. Ava loved leaning over and running her hands through the water.

The family reunion was on a Saturday and we toured the little Benedicta cemetery where all my grandpa's relatives are buried. We saw one family gravestone where three children were buried. They had all died within three weeks of each other from small pox. The oldest was like 7 and the youngest was only a week old I think. I was heartbroken for that mother. Ava loved playing in the cemetery and climbing on all the old headstones. At first I thought I should maybe stop her out of respect, but then I thought that if I was dead and buried there and a cute red cheeked grubby little girl in a blue dress and pigtails was laughing and climbing over my headstone I'd be delighted. And so I let her keep playing.

The whole trip was a lot of fun and I'm really thankful that my grandma left all of us grandkids money in her will to take this trip. I'm only sorry that she didn't get to be there with us because she would have really loved that.

Only one bad thing happened during our trip. On the last night we were there we were sound asleep on our futon on the floor and I had this dream that a mouse was crawling on my hand. In my dream I could feel it's little claws and it's whiskers. I woke up from the dream with a jump and that woke Tony up. I said to him, "I just had this crazy dream that a mouse crawling on my hand and it seemed so real." Tony sat up in bed and turned his phone on and then I saw it. There was a mouse about four feet away from our bed. It hadn't been a dream after all. We jumped up and the mouse ran into the kitchen and hid. We couldn't find it so we tried to go back to sleep. But after a couple hours of not being able to sleep because I kept feeling like a mouse was on me again, we decided to just get up and get an early start on our drive back to Boston. A really early start since it was only like 4am. We got the car all packed up and then loaded the still sleeping girls into their car seats. It was cold and pitch black out in the woods and I felt like we were the Von Trapp family trying to escape the Natzi's. But we were really just the Rizzo family trying to escape a small mouse . . .

Breakfast time! We all took turns cooking so that we all got days off from having to cook at all. It was great.

John and his very own gluten free coffee cake

Madelyn in the morning

Daniel post bath

Megan and Eli

A morning on the lake

Daniel helped himself to a snack

Hanging out on the deck

White Water Rafting - Penobscot River

2010-10-08T00:05:00.007-05:00

While we were up in Maine, I (Tony) did get to go on one big "man-up" excursion. We went white water rafting down the Penobscot river! It was a blast. I had never been before and so I naturally assumed that what we had signed up for must be a class 3 or 4 river. (They go from 1 to 5) I was surprised the night before we left, when I decided to read about the river and find that there were class 5 rapids. Nice.

I went with Teressa's brother Jed, her father Jim, her cousins Jordyn, Tanner and Robert. There were some other Rush's because of how large the family reunion was this year, so we got to meet them on the bus ride.

This is Jed.
All business that day.
He was ready for some rapids. ha ha.

Tanner kept us laughing.

Jordyn and Jim

Jordyn was happy.
She didn't fall out of the raft all day!

We actually didn't have anyone completely fly out of our raft that day.
We rescued lots of others though from the water.

All of these rafting photos were shown afterwards from a projector on the wall.
These photos are just my failed attempt to take photos of them.
But hey, at least we can remember the day, right?

My favorite part is when we would go "surfing."
You would head into a large rapid backwards.
You would paddle as hard as you could in the calm water until you were very close to the bottom of the rapid. Then you would paddle right into the bottom of the rapid and the people in the front would all lean forward so that you could get the rapid to "take your raft." The water cascading down would eventually land on the front of your raft and take the front half of the raft underwater while the back of the raft shot straight up. It's pretty easy to flip doing this.

Another highlight of the day was tossing my father-in-law in when he wasn't looking.
Good times. ;-)

The first time we "surfed" a large rapid, that was my favorite moment. I had been waiting for that dangerous thrilling feeling all day and that is when it came. I was completely unprepared for what was going to happen. I was in the front. And when that rapid took us underwater, I thought we had flipped. I started swimming for a few seconds and next thing I know, the boat pops out of the water and somehow I'm still in it. Then you just stay in that rapid for a couple of minutes doing that again and again. Such good times. I felt so blessed to get to enjoy the water, crisp air, and beautiful scenery that afternoon. Thank you Teressa for watching the girls so that I could go!

Old School good times.

I think I'm crying in this one.

Here I think I was screaming "Hold on! Stop the raft! I have some water in my eye!!"
But no one even cared.
No one stopped the raft.
They just kept on going...

John 7:38 says "Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” As I look at these photos and remember how powerful a river of water truly is, it makes me think of this verse. Is powerful, surging, unrelenting rivers of living water flowing out of my heart and life into others and blessing them, loving them, and serving them? Jesus, please make it so. I believe in you.

Nubble Light - Sound the Alarm

2010-09-22T00:15:00.003-05:00

Well, Madelyn is still up. So that means that were still up. So what better to do then to post a quick blog entry?

I think Teressa had a long day today. There are several ways that I know that...

A) When I call her, I can hear the kids in the background even louder and more clear than I can hear her voice.

B) When the kids voices get even louder, she says "I gotta go." (ha ha)

C) And third, Teressa has fallen asleep while talking or doing other things several times tonight.

I'm praying that the kids will want to get lots and lots of sleep tonight. They are really very good sleepers, its just that they inherited a few things from me, and one of them is liking to party until dawn. Don't they know it's bed time?

We finished a newsletter today. That's always good news! We hope that our supporters and friends are encouraged by the Lord's faithfulness and by some of the things he has been doing in our lives, and in the lives of so many in Asia.

Prayer was a blessing at GFA tonight. One of our leaders shared about "remembering where you came from and who you are." What a good example our leaders are when it comes to remaining humble and dependent on the Lord. That message has had me thinking tonight. Where has the Lord brought me from? Who am I, apart from Christ? If he hadn't so passionately pursued me, loved me, forgiven me, taught me, and cleansed me, what would I look like? I would be a lazy bum, a mean-spirited punk, a selfish guy with no friends. Without Christ guiding me, I honestly can't think of many wise things that I have ever done, but I can think of hundreds of people that I have hurt and thousands of mistakes I have made. Jesus Christ living in me is truly my only hope, and anything good that has come out of my life has been graciously given and done through his mercy.

1 Corinthians 1:26-31 (The Message) "Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That's why we have the saying, "If you're going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God."

I also thought I would include this photo I took last month of Nubble Light. It's a famous lighthouse in York, Maine that we stopped at while heading to the airport. Ava had so much fun watching the waves crash up on the rocks. I didn't have a tripod but was able to snap a few photos. I have always liked lighthouses for some reason. I think mostly because they illustrate our call as believers to sound the alarm. Each of us are called to turn on our sirens and lights and warn those near us about the impending doom awaiting them if they continue on their current course. There are large rocks ahead that will shatter them and many have perished before them. I pray that the boldness and love that comes from Christ will abound in our lives and will flow like rivers of living water out of us.

Good night.