talking to the dog

well, we had a busy night. we watered the grass. i pulled out boxes of old christian books from the attic for our yard sale on saturday morning. we even made up some signs to put out by the road tomorrow. it's going to be fun. our friends casey and summer are going to bring some stuff over and do the yard sale with us. some other friends might drop by and sell stuff too.

then i found a large garbage bag full of stuff that needs to be shredded. old bills and stuff. but we have had forever, because when do you have an extra few hours to shred stuff? so i started a large fire in this metal firepit thing we have in the back yard and i torched it all. it got a little close to the lower branches in the back yard, but thankfully, the wind was at a minimum tonight.

well, enjoy this photo of our little dog whisperer. what do you think they were talking about?

Recovery

So Ava is still recovering from our trip apparently. She hasn't had a fever since Sunday but she's been sleeping A LOT and only happy for approximately 28.6 minutes after she wakes up and then she's crying again. Yesterday I made a dash to Costco with her for some much needed supplies and she had 5 meltdowns in the 45 minutes we were there. And not her usual "meltdown" which is whining for a few minutes until I make a silly face at her. These were real meltdowns, the kind of screaming where no sound comes out and then it does, in one long long shriek and everyone within a ten aisle radius is wondering if she's just a bratty kid or if I beat her. And all because I wouldn't let her take the eggs out of the carton.

I know it's just because she's worn out from the trip and being sick and after (hopefully) a few more days of sleep her happy self will be back. But the crying is wearing on me. And so in my vast 14 months of parenting experience I've learned two very important tactics for dealing with this. 1) Take time to play with her and especially to play "tickle time". It reminds both of us that we really do like each other. 2) Dress her in cute clothes. Shallow maybe, but we all must admit that a crying child with snot running down her face in a little pink sundress is cute. You focus on the cute pouty mouth and elephant tears and not the snot. While a crying child wearing a dirty shirt and a diaper with snot running down their face is not so cute. You may feel sorry for the kid and but all you can focus on is the snot. And that's also why I like to take the time to look at cute pictures of her, like these from the Thurston Co. Fair while we were in WA . . .

Does anyone else see Audry Hepburn here?

And here's a bonus picture of Ava's cousin Eli. Isn't he adorable?

walking in the grass

we spent the day around the house today. good to be back.

we returned from washington on tuesday. it was supposed to be sunday, but there were mechanical delays. actually, it was just one big big delay. ha ha. but it worked out nicely on the flight back. we got two bulkhead seats and ava even slept for a half hour on the plane. that almost never happens.

ava seemed to come back with a bit of a fever. she has had it the last few days, where it has gotten up to 101 or 102. today, it seemed like its headed back down. i think it's because we prayed last night at the all night prayer meeting. and when people are up praying at 3am for a fever to break, it breaks. :-)

it was a fun night last night. a large group of us went out for breakfast after all night prayer. we were out til about 4:30 or so at ihop. casey had fun making us think he injured his eye, but later revealing that it was only a leaking container of creamer. we then taught matt the game of spoons. man, i love that game. i can't believe it always works. classic.

today, we jumped right into some cleaning. i mowed the grass that grew into a small forest while i was away. then i put some bricks around the a/c unit outside so grass wouldn't get to close to it. as i went to start yard work this morning i picked up my shoes that had been in the garage for a couple weeks. im one of those guys who always shakes his shoes to see if something is inside them. normally, there never is. but today, wouldn't you know it, a gecko jumped out. glad he didn't have to endure a cruel death next to my sweaty toes.

we even washed the windows and screens today. yeah, are you as amazed as i am?

well, there will be plenty of photos coming these next couple of weeks. we had lots of fun shooting photos while in washington. these ones below are of ava walking in the grass at teressa's parent's house. isn't that a picture of summer? we were all so glad to be in the nice soft washington grass where theres no fire ants or anything that wishes to bite or harm you. or so we thought... later on in the week, teressa met the wrath of a very naughty bee in that same grass. i guess we learned the grass is always meaner on the other side.

Taste of Europe Party

Our friends JD and Chrissy just returned from Germany and threw a party at their house last Saturday. They had lots of German treats and some good polka music!

just playing and watching dada

well, we have been busy getting ready to fly to washington this friday for the calvary olympia missions conference, so we havn't gotten many photos up. i know we were at a couple of parties this past weekend and i hope to get some of those out soon.

tonight i mowed the yard. ava woke up from her nap and watched me out the window as i went back and forth. hopefully she didn't see me give the lawnmower a kick when it stopped working like it always does after about 15 minutes. ha ha. i guess i'll know if i see her give her little blue hippo walker a little kick tomorrow. but then she came out to watch me with the weed wacker. she finally has a pair of shoes that she can walk in wherever she wants. she has been walking lots and lots now. especially if she has shoes on, oh boy does she love shoes. teressa told me that she wanted to try some different ones on her at the store, but everytime she would take a pair off, ava would start to cry. she loves shoes and wanted to keep every pair!

here are some photos of ava reading her book and acting silly. we were having some daddy time the other weekend. she loved that red book. . . it taught her how to brush her teeth.

oh yeah, and teressa doesn't want me to tell anyone how much she is learning from blues clues. he he. because honestly, she is only watching a couple episodes a week. but i put one on for her a couple of nights ago because she had been such a good girl all day. and Steve starts singing the "mail song" because they got a piece of mail. then it got quiet and ava leans forward in her high chair and yells "hi steve!" then i hear all the kids on the video yell "hi steve" after she had yelled it. i did a double take. did she just remember that from a different episode a few days ago when she watched one??? so i rewound it and let it play again. sure enough. . . "hi steve!" she's cute.

eye-de-you

today, young little ava learned "i love you!"

she has no idea how happy she made her parents to hear it. even though she was first saying it over and over again to her teddy bear while in her car seat, she later started saying it to us too. well, at least she must be hearing it enough to learn it, thats a good thing. but she says it like eye-de-you!

tonight as we were laying her in her crib. she just kept pointing to use saying "eye-de-you!" and smiling. it was one of my favorite moments as a dad so far.

we just got back from two parties today. wow. we visited ava's friend annie for her first birthday party earlier this afternoon. that's josh hewitt's little girl, for those of you who remember my former roomate josh. and then we went to jd and chrissy smith's house for the "taste of europe" party. they just got back from a trip to germany and had all sorts of german food, desserts, music and polka going on.

it was quite an eventful day it seems. we woke up and went for a bike ride this morning. we have been borrowing a bike trailer from my friend steve and ava loves it! they put in a nice 4 mile hike and bike trail down the road, so we rode around on that.

on the way to the party tonight, i saw a car a couple hundred feet in front of me swerve to the right. i told teressa to look up in front at this red suv that was swerving. it began to fishtail to the right, left, back to the right, then it began to flip and flip. the suv ended up halfway on the grassy shoulder, and was all smashed up. we pulled over and had 911 on the phone. when it seemed that the car was safe enough on the edge, i jumped out and ran up to the car. a guy with a bloody arm was crawling out of the driver side window, but praise the Lord, he was okay. we were able to help him gather his cash and wallet and stuff that had scattered all over the street and grass. then i flagged cars over til the ambulance and fire engine came. it was a sharp reminder to keep that seatbelt on. because of that, the guy seemed to make it out pretty much completely unharmed, even though his car was very very smashed.

last week, chick-fil-a, a Christian restaurant down here, had their annual "cow appreciation day!" we went there for lunch, and if you dress like a cow, then you can have any meal you want for free. both ava and her daddy got free meals! they even came to take ava's photo so they could put it in their magazine.

enjoy the photos from cow appreciation day!

ava showing her new balloon to her mommy

father teaching daughter how to appreciate cows.

ava knew something was weird about that cow sitting at the table eating. . .

ava was a little frightened when the cow got up close and personal. i think i would be too. i mean come on, look at the size of that head. . .

giving her cow kisses

even cows wear bibs.

ava's buddy colton. i should have known we'd find him there scoring some free chicken too.

Kids Do the Darndest Things

So Ava's had a diaper rash for the last couple of days and has been spending a risky amount of time diaperless. She had only had one accident on the floor (so glad we have laminate) up until last night.

Last night, she was nekkid after her bath per our new custom and she was standing up holding onto my knees and eating her bedtime snack. As she was standing there I realized that both of my feet were directly beneath her and between her legs. Realizing my danger I said to her, "Ava you better not pee on my feet!" No sooner had the "T" sound at the end of "feet" left my mouth than both of my feet suddenly felt very warm and wet. Yup. She got me. And Tony got to see the whole thing . . .

I'm kind of glad it happened because from now until she's 25 whenever she things something is unfair I can say, "Well I don't think it's fair that my feet got peed on." Or when she thinks I'm being mean I can say, "You want to talk about mean? What about the time you peed on my feet while I was feeding you?" Or if she wants to go do something I don't want her to I can say, "Well I thought about it and I was going to let you, BUT then I remembered that time you peed on my feet and I don't think you should any more. You can't be trusted." And I'm sure I can think of numerous other ways this occurrence can be used to my advantage in the future . . .