'Twas the night before Christmas...

How many of Santa's elves does it take to put together Ava's Christmas presents?? :)
I love these two pictures of the boys hard at work. Jason and I thought we did so well this year- we didn't buy a single present that required batteries. Little did we know that what we did buy would take so much work to put together. Lesson learned for next year...


Hard at work :)

Dinner with the Rainbows

Ava and I had dinner with Lauri and her parents at our favorite place- Chili's! Over the summer the Rainbows did some major renovations on their house and since I spent most of my high school years there, I was dying to see it!
It didn't disappoint- their new kitchen and family room are gorgeous! If they had had the amazing bar set-up in high school that they do now, maybe Lauri could have been talked into hosting a few more parties :)
Lauri and the Rainbows were so sweet to have Christmas presents for Ava- she loved the Elmo book, the cute pink wagon with building blocks and the aqua doodle. Ok, it was more than sweet- they spoiled her rotten! Their house must have made an impact on Ava, whenever I bring up the Rainbows, she talks about their grass- she must have really liked their backyard!

From their house we went to dinner at Chili's- it felt just like old times, except with a two year old sitting at the table :)

Hopefully we'll get together again soon!

The Rainbows and Little Miss

Of course, I was mid-sentence in this picture, but Ava looks cute and that's all that really matters anyway, right? :)

December Parties- busy, busy, busy...

December always brings Christmas parties, crazy hours at Swoozies, shopping, decorating and for us lots of birthday parties! Ava's social calendar was very full this year with back to back Saturday birthday parties for Kyle Fischer and Zach and Bryce Taneri. Kyle's 3rd birthday party was at DacKids, a fun pirate themed place that's like a big indoor sandbox. Zach (who turned 5) and Bryce (who turned 3) had a reptile themed party at JumpIts, with lots of jumpees. With all of the fun things to do at both places, Ava's favorite part of birthday parties is the birthday cake! She loves to sing happy birthday because she knows what comes after. She definitely has my sweet tooth :)

We had so much fun celebrating with all of our friends! Happy Birthday Kyle, Zach and Bryce!

Uncle Tony is Ava's favorite friend to play with!

Ava and Dylan could barely see over the table,

but there was no way they were missing out on cake!!

Yummy!

Ava climbing through the jungle gym at JumpIts

Ava going down the slide with Daddy- for some reason she is being a big scaredy cat and won't go down any slide (no matter how big) by herself.

The birthday boys Zach and Bryce

Again, patiently waiting on cake...

Dylan was driving Ava on their first date- needless to say, Jason was not happy about this! :)

Hi Jeremy and Isa!!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

One of my favorite things to get me in the holiday spirit is decorating the Christmas tree. I love unpacking the ornaments, one by one, and remembering who gave it to us or where we bought it or the memory behind it. It's actually a long and torturous process- Jason hates decorating the Christmas tree (don't tell him, but I don't really blame him!), so Gigi and Grandma came over to help. My favorite ornaments are the ones that I order each year that are personalized with whatever happens to be going on in our lives that year. We have a new house one, a new baby one, a pregnant mom one, Ava's first Christmas and a few others... I love them!

As you can see, Ava was a big helper- she especially liked hanging the gold beads around the tree and modeled them for us as jewelry. She was very opinionated about ornament placement and moved the bottom ornaments around to her liking. In fact, she moved them around almost every day- we only had two casualties the entire month. Overall, I'd say it was a successful christmas tree experience with a toddler!

Modeling the beads

Our little decorator

The final product

My favorite part of our tree

Look, I'm a Big Girl!

Ava started sitting at the table with us like a big girl. No more high chair tray for her! She loves her new placemats, personalized with her name of course :)

Our Christmas Tree Tradition

Tonight we went on our annual trip to get our Christmas tree. This is one of my favorite Christmas traditions! Ever since Jason and I were engaged, we have gone to this little tree farm on the corner of Dallas Hwy, picked out our tree and then gone to get coffee or hot chocolate from Starbucks. This year we are boycotting Starbucks (for many reasons!) and went to Duncan Donuts. Also, this is usually the first time that I get to turn on my Christmas cd's in the car, much to Jason's chagrin :)
This year was especially fun since Ava is beginning to grasp the holiday and she loved going to pick out our tree. The tree farm had lots of blow up characters and christmas lights strung around all of the trees. Ava LOVED the blow up Santa and every chance she got she would run over to him and wave and say "Hi, Santa!" She also made friends with the blow up Frosty, Rudolph and penguin. There was a nativity scene and Ava was very proud of being able to point out baby Jesus and Mary.

This night is always so much fun, I can't wait until next year!

It took every funny and distracting move I had to get Ava to look at the camera for this picture. She kept turning around to look at Santa and wave to him.

Ava and Daddy warming their hands by the fire.

"Mommy, come and chase me!"

We stayed warm by playing chase around the Christmas trees.
This was our tree we picked out!

We're Pregnant!!

We are happy to announce that we are expecting our second little baby sometime around July 05! We are so excited and thrilled to be adding to our family- we will find out on February 06th whether it will be another little girl or a boy. And for now, I am slowly gaining my energy back from the horrible month that was December and am anxiously waiting to feel those little flutter kicks so that this whole pregnancy can feel real. I cannot wait to hold another sweet little baby in my arms and can't believe that I am almost halfway through this pregnancy- it is flying by so fast! Right now I'm counting down the days until February 06 so that I can put a name on this little beanie... 18 days to go...

Long time, no blog...

Unfortunately, as I am writing this in mid-January, I am just now getting back into normal life- whatever that means :) December was the craziest of months and there were lots of nights that I was working until 2 and 3 am. I spent all of December in an exhausted fog... This was the hardest holiday season I've ever gone through at Swoozie's. The economy made us work for every sale, made customers even crazier, crankier and more demanding, and made everyone work longer hours with less help. I have never been happier to see December 26th than I was this year!
The other reason I was so tired is...

Go Jackets!!... Sting 'em

Ava is modeling her game day gear and her rain coat, which she loves! She thoroughly enjoyed cheering on the Yellow Jackets to victory over the Georgia Bulldogs today. What an exciting game- we can't wait for the Peach Bowl!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was such a nice and relaxing reprieve from the holiday madness that has started at work! We had a very low-key and casual day- we got up and had a pancake breakfast, watched the Thanksgiving Day parade and started cooking. Jason was in charge of frying the turkey (which was the best one he's made so far!) and I always make a sweet potato souffle and pecan pie bites- yum! Alina and Tony came over early and Ava loved getting a chance to hang out with her aunt and uncle. Gigi and Grandma came over and we all sat down for dinner. Ava said the blessing all by herself for the first time- we were impressed she got all the words in- it's so cute! I'll have to catch it on video and post it soon.
This year, we have so much to be thankful for- our beautiful daughter, our loving family and friends, and each other! We are incredibly blessed and fortunate to live in this country and I hope that we never take any of these things in our life for granted.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Alina showed Ava some pictures on the computer- Ava loves 'playing' with the laptop

Walking in Alina's high heel shoes

Tony the Turkey kept Ava laughing all day long

Twinkies

Jason and Ava met Jeremy and Isa at Monkey Joe's today. Ava had fun introducing Isa to all the fun things to do there. Without even knowing it, Jason and Jeremy dressed the girls in the same tops. Next time we'll have to call ahead to plan our outfits!

Birthday Parties Wear Me Out!

Today we drove down to Peachtree City to visit the Muchas for Dayton's 2nd Birthday. Unfortunately, I was busy chasing after little one and I didn't even take a picture while we were there- shame on me!! Ava had a blast playing with all of Dayton's boy toys and she really got the hang of throwing soccer balls, footballs and basketballs through Dayton's basketball hoop! It was fun to watch Ava and Dayton interact- they followed each other around and were only interested in playing and wanting what each other had. Typical two year olds!
We took this picture of Ava once we got home and carried her up to bed. What a sweet little face!

All Dressed Up, and No Place to Go

As Gigi and Grandma were getting ready to leave, Ava went ahead and put on her jacket also. We must have stood there talking for a while, because Ava went and drug her ladybug chair into the hallway and got a book. She gave us this classic look of annoyance when we finally asked her what she was doing. I have a feeling we will be seeing this look well into tweendom!

Great Grandma and Ava

On Sunday, Grandma and Gigi came over for dinner and Ava got some special one on one time with her great Grandma. Grandma let Ava try on her clip-on earrings and Ava thought that this was the best thing- she talked about it for days after and she was not happy that my pierced earrings didn't quite fit on her ears the same way Grandma's did.

Ava and Grandma deep in conversation

Special times together

Ava's First Haircut

Jason finally twisted my arm enough about getting Ava's hair cut (it was getting a tad long), so we took her to Pigtails and Crew Cuts. Pigtails and Crew Cuts is specifically a kids salon- they have a play room with tons of toys, a train table, movies playing, a table covered with paper to color on- it was perfect to keep Ava entertained. When our time finally came, Ava chose to sit in the airplane and Ms. Keisha, her stylist, was so sweet! Ava sat still for the whole time and wasn't even bothered by the hair dryer. It was a great experience- we'll definitely be back!

The first snip!

Driving the airplane

Being patient... almost done

All done! Ms. Keisha put Ava's barrette back in her hair

Picking out our prize for sitting so still

Monkey Joe's!

On Friday, Ava and I had a play date with Jen and Dylan at Monkey Joe's. The last time Ava saw Dylan was at his birthday party, so on our way to Monkey Joe's I asked Ava if she was going to have fun jumping with Dylan and she said "fun and birthday cake?" My cute little girl has her mommy's sweet tooth :)
She had lots of fun chasing Dylan up the stairs of the big slide- I was SO impressed, this was the first time she's gone up the ladder all by herself. Of course, when she got to the top of the slide she didn't want to come down. She would play at the top until I went up and slid down with her. I guess that will be our next milestone to aim for next time we go. As usual, we left Monkey Joe's with Ava exhausted and falling asleep in the car. What a fun morning!

Yea, jumpees!!

Dylan loved to stand on this big jumpee and jump off, thank goodness it's all soft-he's such a boy!

Ava was working on her own cool moves

Climbing the big slide all by herself!! I was so proud!

Jen and Dylan stop long enough to say cheese!


Taking a quick breather

We tried many times to get a picture of the two together-

unfortunately, this is as good as it gets :)

The Children's Museum

Today we met Nikki, Christian and Collin at The Children's Museum in Atlanta- this month there was a Bob the Builder exhibit. Ava left the museum saying "Yes, we can!" in Bob fashion. For a little while I wondered why Ava has never watched Bob the Builder before, and then I learned what his catch phrase was and I realized that maybe the Republican in me subconsciously never turned him on!
For those who have never been to the Children's Museum, it is an amazing place that has a stage and dress up clothes for dancing, a shadow box, a life size grocery store with a huge banana slide, a farm with a huge tractor, a water table with a waterfall, a tree house to climb and slide, a big table with moon sand and all sorts of other fun things for the kids to play with. Ava is still on the younger side to enjoy all of the exhibits, but that just means we'll get many more years of fun out of our visits! I've been told that a Curious George exhibit is coming soon and we will definitely make it a point to go and see it.
It was great to spend time with Nikki and the boys- Christian was a ball of energy, he was SO excited to see Bob the Builder and Collin has gotten so big! My apologies for all of the pics below, but I had a hard time choosing between them all.

Ava poking her head over to say hi!

Being silly

Playing at the sand table with Daddy- moon sand is the best, it wipes off so easily! We didn't take any sand home with us at all...

Christian and Nikki building really important things

Christian and Ava riding the tractor- I love the expression on Christian's face

Ava loved playing in this kitchen- she made sure all of the fruits and vegetables were thoroughly washed and then here she is putting them all into the dryer!

Jason has always wanted to teach Ava how to fish- I'm not sure this is what he had in mind...

This is my favorite picture from the trip- Jason was sharing all of his engineering knowledge with Ava on how to fix the sink and put all of the pipes together- doesn't she look like she is just soaking it all in??

Ava loved going down this slide- over and over and over again!

I only got this quick picture of sweet Collin- he slept almost the whole time we were there