A Little Ava, A Little Jake

Anyone missing the hoards of pictures of Ava? We're in between cameras at the moment. Costco let us return ours..what a dream. More updates to come when we're back with a camera. Here are a few until then.

Mad Ava stuck in her stroller during the kids' jump-a-thon.

Jake in his favorite Sophie cast-off - the Pegasus costume. Can't flip the pic for some reason.

This is Jake's "mustache."

Star Wars in LA

I'm not sure how to say this, except to just say it: Matt took the boys to the Star Wars convention in LA. (I escaped to Denver to visit Jocie.) The event was celebrating 30 years and was some big deal, at least that was the rationale behind going so that it didn't seem too freakish and nerdy, although everyone will have their say. They had a great time and saw costumes put together by the true disciples. Here are a few:

Zach dubbed this guy Darth Tater.

If you literally dye your skin blue, you qualify as a freak. She said it would wear off in about a month.

Spencer and Zach got to play laser tag with the BBC guy.

Burger King Storm Trooper was there.

They got in a happy day at the beach before driving home.

Capt Zach Sparrow

Zach had his first Pine Wood Derby. He and Matt worked on a great pirate ship with a jeweled treasure chest and skulls, crossbones, and swords. It came in fourth...Great job!

Zach spent a lot of time figuring out the theme for his car. He made a few drawings and then he and Matt went to Darryl's house to cut it. Then came the first coat of paint--and Matt's inventive little spray house.

Then came the artistry - who knew that Matt had such painting skills?! Wow! We'll give you an up close look when we have a camera again.

...then the drilling and weighting

Whistle, Spencie!

Spencer lost his first top tooth! It was hanging there for several days, and finally by a thread, literally. I missed the one chance he gave me to yank on it with floss--I took too long getting the floss wrapped around the tooth and he got nervous. (You can see the hanging tooth in the pic below.)

Easter minus spence

Spencer was with us on Easter, just not at the photo moment. We left him at church with Matt while I took Zach home because he was sick and the others tagged along for the ride. We snapped a quick pic before heading inside. After half the family changed out of their Easter outfits, there's no way we were going to get everyone dressed again for a photo, so here's half of us.

Careful, or You'll Shoot Your Eye Out

Matt and the boys went on a long-awaited search for ghost towns. In short, pretty ghostly and not much in the way of towns. It sounded like fun and I can't speak for them, but I don't think that it amounted to much in the way of excitement. At least they can say they went.

Before getting in the car to head for home, the boys got their first chance to shoot. All went well until Matt was helping Spencer. A shell bounced off Matt's hat and then off Spencer's neck, who was positive he'd been shot and immediately started running around in a panic. Poor kid. Well, that pretty much ended target practice. He finally realized he was just fine.

Bathroom Remodel

I can't figure out how to flip this picture for some reason. Anyway, I tore out the shower walls today. We're going tile to the ceiling using the same tile as the counters.

A Belated Christmas/New Year Post

I'm finally trying to catch up on our family news and thought at least try to hit the major holidays. This year we celebrated Christmas in Bountiful at our remodeling-in-progress home. We tried to get to Denver but that didn't work out and it turned out for the best in the end with all the snow and storms that hit. Midway through December we had breakfast with Santa along with cousins in Provo.

I was Ava's first chance to meet Santa and she was cautious and curious, and then it was time to get away from him.

After breakfast, Matt took the boys for a ride on David's motorcycle. They loved it.

Also in December, thanks to Matt and I not getting around to taking down the trampoline tarp thing, the boys discovered the trampoline is pretty fun in the snow, especially with it being so slippery.

On Christmas Eve, we did the Christmas Ball - use streamers to wrap treats and coins around a small ball and then the kids roll it to each other and get the treats that fall out - then roll around in the streamers after.

Before bed, Spencer and Jake put out chocolates for Santa and sugar cubes for the reindeer.

On Christmas morning, the boys woke up ready to tackle the living room dressed in jammies they got from Mont and Mary.

They were so excited and pretty soon the living room was covered in boxes and wrapping paper. Here they are with stuff from their stockings.

Ava felt horrible. Luckily, she didn't know she was missing out on anything.

One of the highlights was a skateboards and a ramp from G&G Bolen (ramp inside the box).

Later in the day Ava still felt crappy but tried to have fun with her new toys anyway.

A few days later we toasted in the new year with sparkling catawba, those popping streamer toys, games, and wrestling.

It was loads of fun, as you can see.

Ava's Turns One

Ava and Abe share a birthday on February 12. Here are a few pictures to celebrate the day (this picture was taken in the morning, read on for the rest of the story):




For Ava, it was like any other day: adoring fans trying madly to assess her needs and take care of them quickly. She gave smiles and many shouted "Hi!"s in return.

Ava met Barbie for the first time, though we don't much care if Barbie sticks around or not after today. It was fun for the cake. Ava was tentative at first and then had a grand time licking the frosting off her fingers.

I've decided all kid birthdays should ideally be celebrated in the first half of the day, preferably at breakfast. It's just about killed Spencer for a few birthdays running to have to wait until dinner for the party/present-opening/festivities to start. By the time the party hour rolled around, Ava looked like she was about to keel over, poor little kid.

Since she was barely hanging in there, we opened up her present from us--actually, it had never been wrapped because by now we've learned that one-year-olds just don't know the difference and we were lucky to get the cake done as it was. I put the toy together while Ava licked frosting and Matt supervised the boys eating dinner. A little multitasking goes a long way. Then we washed off the frosting and set Ava down to play. The boys liked the play wall as much as she did.
After that we did a speed-opening of the other presents and sent her to bed before she completely fell apart. It was a great day, but I have to say she had more fun with her presents the next day.

Ava can sit up! She wobbles and falls over sometimes, but she can hang in there without props holding her up.





















Ava and her dancing shoes from Aunt Jocie.











Ava had a fantastic time checking out the dry ice in the rootbeer. She was seriously possessed and had baby-style iron grip on the cup you see here.
The flash washed out the cloud of dry ice smoke so you can't really see it. Jake was not to be deterred from getting his rootbeer, though.

An eyeball picture of our very curious Ava.

A QUICK VIEW OF HALLOWEEN AT THE WOOLLEY'S

Ava (8 1/2 months old) was Tinkerbelle and I was Princess Leia. Not much of a connection, I know.



Here, we have Jake as Superman, Spencer as Peter Pan, and Zach as Skeleton Capt. Jack Sparrow or Capt. Hook if we're going for some sort of theme. The end result was a ton of candy. Yay!!!






Ava wasn't sure about everyone being dressed up in costume, so the parade at the boys' school put her over the edge at one point. She survived.