Pigtails & Tongues!

I haven't played w/ Ava's hair much since she discovered I was putting clips in it a few months ago and she'd yank them out right away. So while she was enjoying lunch today, I got to style her hair and she just sat there & let me. I think her pigtails turned out quite cute and I even got a clip in there w/out her pulling it out all afternoon.

Yesterday Ava & I had fun sticking out our tongues at eachother, she's very good at mimicing us these days.

We are getting ready for our 1st Weekend w/out Ava!!!! On the 5th is our 9 YEAR Anniversary, so we are dropping Ava off w/ my Mom and having a quiet, fun weekend alone! I think I may have already mentioned this, but I'm just excited because its in 2 days! Right now I'm cool w/ leaving her, but hopefully I won't breakdown once we're there--though I think Jeremy might! :)

So last night I took at class called Bodyworks at my Gym, the instuctor is a NAZI of a trainer! I had taken the class a couple years ago and kind of remebered how hard it was, but WOW, it was a killer! I've made a goal of going to the gym 3-4 times a week, and have so far kept it for the past 4 weeks and I'm down about 7lbs w/ lots more to go. So I thought since I've been doing good this class wouldn't be too bad, but I'm hurting and I know tomorrow will be worse. Oh well, I like it when my butt feels all hard, even if its killing me!

My little Toddler!

I still think she's my baby, but I guess she's a toddler now! Ava is ALL over the place, now that her legs work great there is no stopping her. She tries to run, but crashes quickly. After about 5pm she is the clutsyist girl-runs into everything, trips, falls, cries and screams! One of the pics show her pushing her baby stroller/shopping cart, she'll circle the house with it over and over again everyday. It's funny to watch her throw her dolls & toys or whatever she can find in there to go for a ride. She's starting to mimic every thing we say (guess we need to watch our language more carefully!). Yesterday she learned "Hi" and says it in this very girly soft voice, Jeremy just loves hearing it. She's great with Daddy or Dada and getting better with Mama. Also knows 'nana' for banana and runs to her highchair when I say its time to have one. She still just blabbles away while reading her books, very funny to listen to. And when I say Naptime she'll (sometimes) run to her crib and grab for her blanky. It's amazing how cuter she gets by the day. Don't get me wrong, she is far from a perfect Angel. Ava already knows about throwing tantrums and hitting Mom & Dad and pulling out our hair and throwing food all over the kitchen. We have our moments! But it is fun most of the time. That's my update on Ava.

We are still battling the wind here. We got to see a power cable that had snapped and was hitting the ground and sparking up, luckily the firemen were there. We had just got back from a walk to the park to check out all the downed trees. Then the cable flew up and zapped another cable then blew the transformer and a huge spark or what Jeremy called an Arc ???? went off. And our power was lost again for 2-3 hours. Crazy stuff! But it's finally calming down out there, just lots of cleanup for some of our neighbors. Jeremy's garden trellises are a mangled mess, but that can be fixed later. I'm soooo ready for the rain to just come back, didn't think I'd miss it but it's alot calmer than what we keep getting!

Every have a candlelit dinner with......

The ELDERS!!!! Our weather has been WACKY this winter. The past couple days we've had horrible wind and last night 2 minutes after the Missionaries got to our house and introduced themselves, the lights went out!!! Now we get wind all the time, because we live near a river gorge and when its high pressure the east wind just pushes down the gorge and smashes us. But this is the 1st real power outage we've experienced. So we lit candles and had a yummy Spaghetti dinner together, it was great. Two hours later it was back on, then went on/off all night. Of course it was off again when we woke, but turned on so I could blow dry my hair and get ready for church. There are trees down all over the place, fences ripped apart, roof shingles flying and its just a mess! This poor girl got smashed in a car by a tree falling on it, she's very hurt. Jeremy walked to the parks and took pics of all the trees down, I wouldn't want to be around them while its still windy. Crazy weather in Oregon, Vegas was sooooo much calmer!!! But we LOVE it here!!!!

Our 2nd Christmas....

We made it to WA the saturday after Christmas and only got to stay till Sunday night, but it was a fun trip. Here is my Step-dad Bill & my Mom, Chris

My cute Nephew Kael, he loved this stroller/shopping cart that Ava has, so I had to go find him his own shopping cart (that wasn't pink!). He loved it!

Ava is ready to open more presents, yippee!

My brother Brian, niece Kiera & sister in law Shanda

Shanda & Kiera-beautiful girls!

We even got to have another big, yummy feast and celebrate! Families are soooo important, I love every chance we get to spend with them.

We had quit New Years', well sort of. We went to bed around 11pm (bums!), but people and their illegal fireworks woke me at Midnight. So I wished Jeremy a Happy New Year and went back to sleep when they finally shut up! Exciting, I know. Sleep is important though and Ava still wakes around 7am!

Hope each of you have a Happy New Year!!!!!

Our Holidays...a little late!

I've been so lazy, I check everyones blogs but don't update my own! So here are some of our Christmas pictures. We got snowed in and had our 1st Christmas in our house (we've lived her 4 years!). But we have gone up to WA to my Mom's since we all moved from Vegas, so we missed it with them.

My sister Melissa came up with the bright idea of making Snow cones w/ all the beautiful snow outside. And I just happened to have flavoring for it, turned out yummy!

My sis Melissa, modeling off the outfit we got her for Christmas. She's soooo skinny, lucky girl! My siblings & I started doing a rotating gift exchange since there are 6 of us, thankfully I had my sister this year or else she would have gotten nothing on Christmas! We had a good day together.

The Frey's! Ava looking a little doopey!

Funny Ava, she's obsessed with dolls right now, so we got her one for Christmas with money her Frey grandparents sent for her. She opened it and was sooo excited, then Melissa and Jeremy tried to get it out of the box and Ava lost it! Love the pic, captures her little tantrum while Melissa gets the doll out.

Life is better now, doll is mine!!!!

Later Christmas afternoon we drove across town (slid on the freeway a couple times, scared us a bunch) to my Grandparents house and had dinner w/ them and two of my Uncles' families. It was a great day, though sad not to be w/ my Mom.

Playing in the Snow!!!

Melissa (my sister) & me!

Jeremy is straping Melissa into the snowboard, she went down the drive and the street a couple times.

Melissa & Ava investigating the funny looking snowman. By sunday he was just an ice block!

Ava got a few runs on the snowboard, she LOVED it! Wish we had a sled or something to pull her around in.

The Family! Trish, Ava, Jake, Bobby & Jeremy

Funny story....so Mailmen work rain, snow, shine or just whenever! So Jeremy clears the driveway Sunday night so he can get out. Well Monday not 5 minutes after he left I get a wake up call saying he is stuck on the street by our side yard (around the corner)!!! I put on every warm thing I can, then go out to help get him out. We dig and dig and a nice neighbor even came to help us out. Well, it wasn't going to work. So we got the car parked by the curb. Jeremy being the ever so diligent employee then takes off on foot to work, took him about 34-40 minutes to get there, when its normally a 5-8 minute drive. He got a ride home, but this morning again walked to work! He is CRAZY! My work got canceled for yesterday and today. Looks like more snow tomorrow and we are pretty much stuck here for Christmas! Should be in the 40's by Friday, so we'll go to WA this weekend to celebrate and drop my sister off so she can see the rest of the family. Meanwhile, we are trying to entertain eachother and not go crazy stuck indoors. Ava is having a blast w/ her Aunt though! Good thing I finished shopping last week, cause we only made it out Saturday and that was a bit scary. Enough of us, Have a Merry Christmas!!!!

Another snow day!!!

This is the 2nd sunday in a row that church has been cancelled!!! How CRAZY is that. The weather here is absolutly nuts. Its snowing like mad crazy again right now, there was already 6-8 inches or more out there. My boss called an hour ago to say he closed the office for tomorrow!! :) My sister Melissa is here hanging out, hopefully we can make it up to WA for Christmas on Wednesday. We were brave yesterday and ventured to the store, though the roads were crappy and we slid around a little. Jeremy was off snowboarding w/ the YM at Mt. Hood. We did a little snowboarding in the drive way today also, pictures to follow soon! I'm starting to feel "cabin fever" being on lock down! They have few plows here and don't use salt to de-ice roads, so staying home is safest! Oh well, it'll be a white Christmas for us! Hope the rest of you are having good weather!