Shortcomings

I meant to just give this a trim. Just a smidgen off the bangs, so she could see again. She would go cross-eyed staring at it hanging in her eyes. I am a failure as a hairdresser. I got a little scissor happy. My poor girl is sporting the latest in baby mullets.

Junior Ag Day

During our recent visit to Navasota to see my parents, Avery and I took a trip to the fairgrounds for Junior Ag Day, where my mom was working with her Master Gardener's group. We saw so many great animals! And then we Purell-ed and washed our hands immediately after.

Baby ostriches - one of them was only 4 days old, I think. Maybe it was 2 days? A friend of my mom's raises ostriches, but she sells them to another gal who hatches the eggs.



We loved the baby alpaca! The owners said that they had the mom trained to keep the baby on the far side from predators at all times, including them (the owners).

So cute!!





Avery wasn't too impressed with the chicks. Or she was hot. Either way, not even a smile.

May 2010

What a busy month! I'm so behind on posting pictures, again. We did some traveling to visit family around the middle of the month - first to Houston for Mother's Day to celebrate with my mom, and then the following weekend for the huge paintball tournament at Luke's grandparents house in Louisiana. The boys and Luke's sister Haley played for two solid days, although much of the time on the first day was spent finding the perfect place and calibrating the guns, or something like that. I watched from a distance and kept my cool in the AC of the house.

At Grandmommy's house, sporting some new pigtails. They lasted about ten minutes, and we haven't tried it since then. She's too wiggly.

We of course forgot to take the camera to Louisiana, so no pictures or video of Avery mastering her walking...after two weekends in the country with lots of room to roam, she figured it out and just took off. She was DONE with crawling.

We also had a great playdate with Avery's friend Hadley and her sweet mom Kim. We love Hadley!! She was zonked out on her mom's shoulder upon arrival but quickly woke up and gave us a winning smile. Avery is used to running around with kids a bit older than her, so it was interesting to see how she would behave. She only tried to step on Hadley once (so sorry Hadley!) They decided to pass the paci-clips back and forth for awhile; as always, what someone else has is infinitely more interesting. It was great to spend some one-on-one time with Kim, as it's hard to wrangle all of the kids together in larger groups and still get to visit.

Memorial Day weekend we spent a quiet weekend at home. I was able to get out of the house one morning and do some much-needed shopping for a much-needed wardrobe pick-me-up. After church and nap on Sunday we ventured out to a new splash park not too far from home, and Avery LOVED it. That might be an understatement. Memorial Day - cooked dinner, had a friend over, Avery was a toot, and she promptly went to bed at 6:15. She was done with us, we were done with her. 13 hours of sleep later, we all woke up in better moods and she and I started June off happily.

Cookie Monster

 Why hello, you yummy banana whoopie pie!

I was working on some new recipes the other day, and taking photos for future use, and along came my little cookie monster. I'll often give her a taste of my creations because I like to hear her go "Mmm-mmm", but it's rare that she actually gets to enjoy a whole cookie. I'm working hard on instilling those good eating habits. So, she decided to just help herself this time as I was busy taking pictures and had my hands full with the camera.

Wait a minute, I see the cookie monster approaching. 

 If I can't see Mom, then Mom can't see me touching this cookie.

 Almost. Have. It.

Ha, oh yes. 

(Mind you, the pictures slow this process way way down...don't let her cuteness fool you -she's quite fast.)

 I'm just gonna lick it, Mom.

 Psyche!

Uh-oh.

 Oh yes. Delish.

The Birthday Party

Thank you to my sweet family for putting up with me as I went into "work mode" for this party - my training as a pastry cook kicked into high gear as I churned these desserts out. Thank you also to my family for helping cook, set-up, decorate, and entertain - I couldn't have pulled this party off without all of you!

Just about everyone on the invite list was able to make it, which made for a very full house and an overwhelmed birthday girl at one point (see pic below). Some of my takeaway notes from this party:

• it is REALLY easy to get stressed over your child's birthday, if you decide to invite 40 people. Perhaps this is too many, and the following parties will be smaller. 
• A dessert table is so so so fun to do, and I'm gonna go even bigger next time (maybe I didn't learn from note number one up there). Amy Atlas is my dessert table hero - I don't have the funds nor the eye nor the space for something so elaborate. But I will continue to have fun looking at hers.
• Don't open presents at the party - people get bored, and so does the tiny tot. But thank you again to all of you for the sweet gifts...Avery is loving playing with her new toys and sporting her new threads and drinking from her new sippy cups.

The dessert table - none of the pics of this came out well, due to lighting issues, but at least you can see the pom-poms I made. 

The sign I made awhile ago - I'm thinking this might come out at all of the birthdays. I love it!

The strawberry cream cheese cake.

Lemon meringue tarts

Fruit tarts with vanilla bean pastry cream

Cherry swirl brownies
(and not pictured, chocolate silk tarts, m&ms in party colors, oatmeal white chocolate cherry cookies and flower sugar cookie favors)

Poms and banners

The sign-in table...my little sister Bri painted this tree for Avery, and everyone left a leaf thumbprint and signed their name. Idea came from here, among other places...don't remember the original source now.

Avery was napping while everybody was arriving, so when we brought her downstairs, she was a little overwhelmed. She quickly warmed to everyone, but this made for an awesome picture.

Taking her very first steps.

With some of my family.

With some of Luke's family.

Avery and the Chair from Luke Presley on Vimeo.