My baby is 17 months today!

Miss Ava is 17 months today, so I felt like blogging about her. Though she is really the only thing I blog about anyways! I took all these fun pics over the weekend. The top one is Ava loving her belly. She just kept pulling up her shirt and patting her tummy, she likes to do that with our tummies too.

Ava is such a bath baby! If she is cranky, just put her in the tub and she is all smiles again. Lately she enjoys eating the bubbles and putting them all over her face. Silly girl.

We've had a few decent days to wander the yard, the flowers are coming up, it's almost Tulip time! Not sure how they'll survive with Ava wandering out there, but they'll sure be beautiful.

One thing I LOVE about Ava; she is out at 7pm!!! That is a fantastic thing, I like having my quiet time at night or sneaking off to the gym or just catching up on my blog & facebook buddies. Life is good!

Somehow we all survived MN......

Sorry Minnesota, it's nothing personal, but the last 2 times we've visited Ava & I were very sick! Unfortunately this time Ava, Trish, Jeremy, both Jer's parents and his brother were all sick with a nasty cold. Jer & I have had it for a month! But we still had fun with the family and all they really wanted was to play with Ava!

Terry (Jer's sister) & Ava at the bowling alley. Ava just wanted to play w/ the heavy balls and flirt with the little boy next to us.

Jer's Grandpa Lipovsky, Ava, Jer, & Jer's Dad Lester-playing some cards or should I say, Gambling. I kept my cash hidden from being used in this game~so they had to use good ole' chips. Ava had her game face on!

Ava & the talking Parrot. Jer's Grandparents have a ton of animals and things that talk, make noise or sing, Ava was fascinated. Jer's poor sick Mom is on the couch, not doing great that day.

Jer, Ava & Grandma Frey! Grandma Frey is the master of homemade Pizza's. She's all of 4 feet and some inches tall, Jer is on his knees in the pic and she barely comes to his head. Sweet little Grandma!

We took Ava to the Aquarium at the Mall of America, total rip off of $18 for an adult. Ava was scared of this alligator and a giant sea turtle, but fascinated by the large sharks swimming over her head and of course NEMO! This tank had a clown fish, Nemo and whatever Dori is in it. Ava stared at it for like 5 minutes, funny because we had just watched Finding Nemo the week before.

All in all, we had a good time and survived. Got to hang out w/ some of Jer's buddies and leave Ava w/ the Grandparents a couple nights. Even got some snow. One day the high was like 8 degrees! It was cold. Jer has sworn to everyone that we will not come during the winter/cold season again, especially since I rubbed it in his face so much of my dissatisfaction w/ planning this trip. Oh well, we are home and still recovering, poor Ava still has a nasty cough. And when we flew into Seattle and stayed the night at my Mom's house I got a fever and chills and just felt yucky. Today is better! Sorry if I've gone on and bored you all, not that you have to read it all though. But that was our trip, we're alive and Ava was an awesome trooper!

Some recent events....

Ava is such an active little tot, like I'm sure all toddlers are! She gets bored at home if I don't try to find new things to do each day. Suggestions are always welcomed by the more experienced parents!!! It's a bummer we live in OR, where it is cold, wet and windy for most months out of the year. But today was a lovely 60 degrees, so we ventured out alot & Ava loved it. Too bad the camera isn't working, could have got some cute shots, but these older ones will have to do.

She's a very serious, focused driver.

2 weeks ago we went to this Rec center that has an awesome indoor pool and slide, even a kind of lazy river area. Ava LOVED the slide, though I thought it'd be scary for her. She must have gone down it 8 or 9 times w/ Jeremy. We spent 2 hours just playing in the water, way fun. But I think that's where Jer & I caught a nasty cold that we are still fighting and now Ava has it too.

Jeremy got Ava a wagon to pull her to the park in, she climbs in it and is ready to go!

Who dressed this child anyways???? Haha, it was me! She loves these Tiger slippers and they just went great w/ her stripped tights.

We are gearing up to go to MN on Sunday for a week of COLD fun! Just hope we survive the plane ride w/ Ava on our lap! Ahhhh.

Almost to 10!!!

The scale said this morning that I'm 1/2 lb away from 10lbs GONE!!! Okay, I'm excited. It's been a lonnnnggg time since I've been motivated enough to lose some weight, especially after years of all that infertility crap and drugs and stress, not to mention a bit depressed. I'm feeling good and actually enjoying my workouts at the gym. Food is the hardest for me to change, snacking is in my genes (just ask my Mom). But I'm making small changes at a time. Though after 7 weeks of this I would have liked to have lost more, its okay, slow and steady wins the race! I do have a deadline though, Jeremy is dying for another baby!!!! We have an appt next month to talk about using our frozen babies w/in the next couple of months. So I'd like to get off a bit more before I become a whale again. But hopefully I'll be better at exercising and eating right while pregnant this next time.


All else is good around here. Ava still continues to grow and make us smile each day. She's copying everything we say, like today she learned cookie (well kind of) and got to eat a few too many of them. Dang Girl Scouts! We are getting excited to see all the family out in Minnesota in 2 WEEKS from tomorrow. Everytime Ava does something cute/funny, Jeremy says "Mom and Terry (sister) are going just going to love this." Though, those who know Ava already know she is cute & fun! I know his Mom and sister are way excited to see her though, and a bunch of other relatives as well! New pics to follow soon....are computer is OLD and running out of space, so instead of buying a new one (cheap husband), he ordered some additional memory to install. My computer comes to a stand still when I open Kodak pictures & try to edit them. Oh well!

9 Blissful, Happy Years! HA!

On the 5th we celebrated 9 flipp'n years together, not quite sure how we made it to this point, but its a shocker to some people that know us! :) So I planned this whole weekend up in WA on the Olympic Pennisula at one of my Dad's timeshare places, which was way nice! My Mom was so wonderful to put up with Ava for the weekend, our 1st time away from here. And they had a great time, Ava acted like this perfect Angel for Grandma until we showed up, then the true toddler came out w/ all the whinning and crying to go along with it. Glad she was good for Grandma though!

This is the view from our deck, it's on Discovery bay. The other above pic is from some tidepools we went to, didn't see alot but it was fun climbing around on the rocks.

Saturday we were out in the nature ALL day hiking and exploring the beautiful area. We went to some waterfalls and to the beach and the tidepools, not quite the relaxing trip I planned, but fun. At least I got my exercise for the weekend done.

The deer in front (to the right, can barely see it) walked right out in front of us and stood there for awhile while I shot lots of pics. Then he started walking toward us and stopped, then this other deer walked on out and they crossed the path together. Later on another trail we got close to yet another deer and we also saw a coyote booking it down the beach, gotta love animals out in wild!

So on our actual Anniversary, Jeremy made us watch our wedding video and re-live all the fun of that day. It's pretty funny to look at, we were SOOO young! Alot of my fellow bloggers where on there like Audra, Kerry, Jeniece, Korrie, Melissa, & Sarah. I think its pretty awesome that my cousin Kerry caught my bouquet and got married about 6 months later, guess it works sometimes! Memories are great! To another wonderful, joyous year of Marriage!!! :) Or so we hope!

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!