Early Park Time

Avery and I were up a little before 6:30 this morning which worked out well because we were going to leave at 8:00 to go get coffee and play at the park. 8:00 is not my usual park time but that's when my neighbor likes to take her boys. She's having a hard time right now so I'm glad I spent some time with her. I think she's teetering right now and is about to go over the edge lol so I offered to watch her boys but she chose the park. We're going to meet on Sunday for coffee though without the kids.

I bent over to pick up a plastic tea cup and now my back is pinched :(

We literally spend the majority of our time outside. Avery is so tan. Her arms are so dark. Not me though. I've got color but she's darker and I think she's darker than David. Her hair is pretty light. Today at the park another mom was talking about Avery to my friend who has blonde hair. I think she thought my friend was Avery's mom and probably thought her dark headed boys were mine.

I guess we'll be going to our neighbor's for the 4th of July. I asked if I should attempt some allergy free food to bring but she said to go ahead and bring regular food--that her husband would be so thrilled to eat regular food :) You can see Sugar House's fireworks from our neighborhood which is supposed to be the biggest show in the state.

I can't believe it's already July...

Happy Birthday David!

 Today is David's birthday. He's having a hard time swallowing that he will be 30 next year. I guess when you get closer to these milestone birthdays you start reflecting on what you have or haven't accomplished.

Here's a picture of Avery with a neighbor boy. He's wearing an adult shirt. Avery doesn't play with him   much, he lives further down the street and splits time between his mom and dad.

Last night I went to this book launch. It's just a bunch of birth stories but it's all about the spiritual aspect of it. The LDS spiritual aspect. I don't really think of birth as a spiritual thing and I'm not LDS soooo...I'm just reading it for the positive birth stories I guess. I went because my neighbor's step sister is one of the author's. At the party I was looking at the bio's of the authors and saw that the step sister has a blog. I recognized the name of it and came home to double check and realized it was a blog that I used to read quite a bit and "liked" on facebook a long time ago. Now that facebook changes weekly it seems, I was no longer getting her posts in my newsfeed and forgot about her. It's a small world :)

We went to the park today. It was hot as heck but we came home and played in the shade. Our neighborhood has get togethers and today was at the park so my neighbor was there and then our kids played outside when we got home.

There isn't much else going on. I've been dealing with getting our back patio rebuilt on our house in OK so that we can get everything re-roofed. That'll be a load off when it's all done. One thing at a time :) I might just end up with a decent house!

Hot!

It's been hot here so we broke out Avery's new swimsuit and set up the sprinkler for her. You can see in the top picture how tan she is. The second picture doesn't show it as much. Her arms are so dark. Everyone mentions how tan she is.

I forgot to mention on here something someone said at Home Depot a week or 2 ago. It was so funny to me so I wanted to write it down because I'll forget. We came walking down an aisle and there was a man looking at some stuff. He looked like a guy who probably has a motorcycle. He had long hair pulled into a pony tail and balding on top. Anyways, he looks over at Avery and says "Wow, she's pretty cool looking!" and laughs. Imagine him saying it with this hippie type accent I guess you could call it. We kind of laughed and said thanks and he starts shaking his head yes and laughing saying "She's alriiiight".  I don't want to say he sounded high but he was just a laid back, 70s kind of guy lol. It was funny to us.

I found out that my neighbor's step sister wrote some book about birthing and so I'm going to go with her to the launch of it at a local bookstore. I'm pretty excited. My neighbor hangs out with "birth junkies" and so I was excited to find that out! I think the book is written from an LDS perspective but that's fine. I'm just excited to go meet people who like natural birth! I've really enjoyed getting to know my neighbor. She likes to talk about homeschooling, vaccinating, circumcising, crazy food stuff and all other kinds of things. I love it! She's probably one of the smartest people I've ever met.

I also really like my other neighbor a few doors down. I spend less time with her but she's sooo nice and always has a smile on her face. She has 2 boys ages 5 and 2 (almost 3) and lately she's been working on discipline with her boys. She feels she was too lenient with her oldest one and so now she's obsessed with this Love and Logic method and is trying to implement it. She's been a little stressed since her oldest one is trying to buck the system lol but I told her I was proud of her that she recognized that what she was doing wasn't working and is trying something else instead of getting defeated and letting her kid act like an animal. She's not confident in her parenting and admits it. She says I am...lol we'll see when Avery's 5! I guess Love and Logic is pretty big out here in Utah. I don't know much about it but I've got some thoughts on parenting but I'll leave it alone. Like I said, we'll see how it's going when Avery's older haha!

Book club last week went really well. The ladies were nice. I was the youngest one but I liked it and think I'll continue to go.

I bought Avery a potty chair. I'm not going to try to train her just yet but I want to introduce the idea to her. So far, she'll sit for about 2 seconds!

Avery got up at 6 this morning and now it's only 7:25. She's been watching TV all morning. I try to be nice in the mornings to our downstairs neighbors and keep her quiet and not stomping on the floors early in the morning so that means cartoons. She LOVES Blues Clues. She also watches Curious George and The Cat in the Hat. If she's up early enough she'll watch a little Sesame Street. Sesame Street sucks these days too.

We went to Whole Foods and bought some wheat free cookies that my neighbor made. I wanted David to try them so we got some and I just can't get over how good they are. The texture is just like a regular cookie. David said "hmm, not bad for a hippie cookie". I also tried coconut water for the first time yesterday. Gag me. I also quartered a chicken for the first time, then we brined it and grilled it. Yummo! It turned out good!

Well, I could keep going on about random stuff but I'll quit. Think I'll get some more coffee. Better put my 4th Keurig to use. Stupid Keurig. I was going to just go buy a coffee pot and give up on the Keurig's but I knew they'd send me a new one and it's free so well, I went the free route and number 4 is now sitting on the counter.

Make it a good Monday!

Radio Flyer Tricycle

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love KSL. I never appreciated the local classifieds since I didn't want anything. David has had a love affair with it for a long time :)

Now that I've got Avery, I love to watch KSL. I got this tricycle for her yesterday for cheap! It has a handle on the back that I can steer her with.

Our neighbor kids liked it more than her I think. They fought over it. It came with a little bell on the handle too.

It's hot here in SLC. It was 101 yesterday with 2% humidity. I love it :)

Love

This morning I can't get over the love I have for Avery. She is the most precious thing. She's playing on my Nook. She's doing a connect the dots game and she's good at it. She always starts on number 1 (the dots are numbered). Sometimes I feel like I could squeeze her to death! She's so fun and sweet.

The other morning she yelled out "Dad!". I thought that was cute because it showed she thinks about him when he's not here. She yells "Dad!" a lot. Something she has started saying that I think is so funny but admittedly not a good thing is when you ask her something or say something to her, she says "What?" She'll repeat it too if you don't repeat yourself. David says he hopes she hasn't learned that from him...It's super cute to hear her say it though. Even her "no" and "yeah" are cute. Everything she does is cute haha.

Last night we told her to say "please" and she did. Repeatedly. Never has she so easily picked up a word. She will say it and sign it. The sign for it is to make a circular motion on your chest but she kept doing it on her belly. She is finally picking up words and it makes this mama happy!

She's doing more pretend play. She cooks at her kitchen now and makes sound effects when she pretends she's putting something in the pot, like salt and pepper. She will put her baby or stuffed animals in the high chair and put a plate on the tray and feed them or give them a drink.

I am going to Walgreens today to pick up pictures that I had printed. Avery's therapist suggested I take pictures of her things (shoes, toys, books, etc) and make a little book for her. She said sometimes when kid recognize their own things, they're more inclined to say the word.

She got a cute little swimsuit yesterday and I can't wait for her to wear it. We've been playing a lot with water balloons with the neighbor boy and she thinks they're great. She'll throw it and just laugh when it pops.

Avery needs one of these. It has a sandbox below it :)

I can't believe my girl is going to be 2 in a few months. I think the above picture would be a great present! I've already been working on David lol!

Happy Birthday to me!

Our neighbor invited us to go to This is the Place! again. We had a lot of fun. We were there a long time. Avery loved riding the train.

While we were there, Avery ate a berry that is believed to be poisonous. Well, she bit it and spit it out. I'm not sure how much she actually ingested. After talking to the people at This is the Place and Poison Control, we figured she was fine. She was. They're going to have the bush sent off to see if it's toxic and if it is they're going to remove it.

We played outside all day today and Avery was in a great mood. She had speech and she did awesome today. She's saying more and more words so it's always nice to report that to the therapist.

Then we went to dinner and then came home and watched some Thunder. I've got a book club to go to in a while. I hear the ladies are a bit...a lot...stuck up so we'll see how it goes. Apparently my neighborhood is a little stuck up.

My birthday was a nice one. Think I'll get to go shopping tomorrow since we ran out of time today! Woot woot!

Happy Father's Day!!!

Happy Father's Day to my dad and David!

Today we went for a little Father's Day hike. We hiked up to Ensign Peak. It wasn't the prettiest hike but it gave a great view of the Salt Lake Valley.

Ready to load into her carrier.

Ready to go!

A plaque at the top of the peak.

A shot from yesterday.e

The Salt Lake temple.

Tool Comments

Wanted to write these down so we have them always. David found these comments about his tool on a forum online. Someone left the question on the forum: Tool to remove valve springs without removing heads? "Jim's told me there was such a tool for evo big twin, twin-cam and sportster, but they did not make it, or know who did. Uses compressed air in spark plug hole, which I already have set up. Does anyone here know?"

Answers:

"I have one from Nub tools! Works great on stock or bee hive springs. 5 minutes per spring...pricey but I made my money back on it already...Nub tools makes it...Goodson sells it."

"Goodson order no. CF-HDIF
249.99
1-800-452-1830 or check out their website"

"Nub tool is the ticket"

"Nub tool is great."

Productive day today :o) Getting rid of lots of stuff! Woot woot! Feels good!!!!

Yum! Hot Chocolate!

I was doing dishes so Avery was drawing at the table.

I was folding laundry and heard Avery pushing the chair.

I have no coffee pot because Keurig's are pieces of crap and I'm waiting on my 4th one. So, I wanted coffee this morning but had to settle for hot chocolate. I gave some to Avery and you would have thought I gave her crack. The first time she had it was when we went camping a few weeks ago but it wasn't very chocolatey.

At first I just gave it to her on a spoon and she immediately started signing "more". Good stuff :o)

David's working on getting some more stuff sold. Feels good. It felt really good when we had the garage all clean and organized. Then David cleaned out the storage unit and brought more stuff back and now it's a mess. He sold his welding table a few days ago. He was sad to let it go, he's had it a long time. It does feel good to be out of the storage unit though and have all of our stuff at our house.

Feels so good to get rid of stuff.

Splash Pad Fun!!!

Oh my goodness! Avery LOVED the splash pad! Loved it! There's a big splash pad and 2 parks. One park is made for little kids and it was perfect! We definitely have to take daddy back :)

This is a pic from the zoo the other day. Avery and Marcus.

New Words

Avery and I are going to a spray park over in Cottonwood Heights. I can't wait. I think she'll love it. We are going with our neighbors. I'm so thankful there are kids that she can play with. They love her. Every time they see her (any of the kids) they yell "Avery!!!"

She loves it. She starts squealing and waving.

This last week has been horrible as far as her sleeping. Thankfully last night she only woke up twice.

I'm wondering when she's going to quit putting stuff in her mouth. She likes to eat things with weird objects as utensils. For example, I have caught her eating yogurt with a tampon (unused of course, she loves to get them out of the cabinet.), a comb, a tooth brush and a lighter.

She's become finicky about eating. She prefers to snack rather than eat a meal. I know this is normal though.

She's started saying some more words. She says shoes and car regularly now. She said grandma once. She says ball and signs it. She also signs "eat" and "more".  She's also making new sounds. She says daddy now consistently too. She's said "night night" once.

She loves people. When she sees any neighbor out she has to go say hi and wave. She waves at people in the grocery store except for men. She's still leary of men.

She's a true OK girl...she loves sweet tea. Ok, she's really a westerner so far but whatever.

Oh! Yesterday we were looking through an animal book and when we got to the cow she said "moo"...that was a first.

I can't believe in 4 short months she will be 2. My my, how time flies :)

Park!

I cannot get Avery to look at me when I take her picture. Making noises used to work but not anymore, she still ignores me.

We went and fed the ducks and then went to the playground. It's a hot one today. I think it's supposed to get up to 97 so we I didn't last long.