One more week until Christmas...

and we are ready!

Here are two photos of Ava playing in the snow last week:

I think her favorite part was eating the snow.

After Ava was finished making snow angels, we warmed up with some hot chocolate.

What do best friends do for each other at 3 years old?

Ava's dance moves

Who do you think taught her how to dance like this?

Christmas is almost here

Our Christmas tree is up and our stockings are hung. We so love this time of year. Ava is loving our Christmas tree lights. She loves turning off all the lights with only the Christmas lights on. We also decorated her room this year with lights. She loves it! We are trying to start a few new traditions this year. One being our advent calendar. There are LOTS of ideas out there. I got my idea from a friends blog. You should check it out here. We also have been reading this to her everyday. (Thanks, Catherine!)

Setting up Ava's nativity set




Little treats are inside and something special written that Ava gets to do everyday with mommy and daddy. I get just as excited as she does.

Thanksgiving

First of all, the last post was to promote Shutterfly and in doing that they will give me 50 free Christmas cards. Here's the link if you are a blogger and what to do the same.

Promotion

We had a pretty low-key Thanksgiving. We stayed home for the first time this year. Even though we missed being with our families, it was nice to not travel with two kiddos. Our friends, the Newells, let us come over on Thanksgiving to spend with their family. It was such a nice time of fellowship. (We missed Amber though.) Thank you, Jan and Chris, for letting us spend the day with you. The food was DELICIOUS!

My sweet Ava


Priceless

Jan, Ava and Kristen

Shutterfly makes it easy to have the best Christmas cards

In years past, we would take our Christmas photo to one of the national photo centers. Though they were good, they were not the best. So this year, we have decided to use Shutterfly for our Christmas cards. Shutterfly gives you a lot of options and designs to choose from.

One thing I love to order through Shutterfly is their photo calendars. They are great gifts for grandparents. My parents love them since it's a gift they see all year round.

Also, if you are planning on having a Christmas party, then you should check out their holiday invitions here. They have a lot of fun and welcoming styles to choose from.

Jonathan and I have loved using Shutterfly for a lot of reasons. We have enjoyed their photo books especially. We have made Ava a few photo books and loved how they have turned out. Now we are in the process of making Lily one too.

Memories of your family will always be cherished, why not use Shutterfly?

Sisterly love

Here is a little preview of what Lily thinks of her big sister...most of the time anyways. :)

Lily laughing

Lily is 6 months

Hard to believe that my baby girl is 6 months already. A little about Lily:

Lily really suits her name. She is such a sweet and happy little girl. Her smile is very contagious. She always wakes up so happy in the mornings. It's one of my favorite times with her. Lily loves to see Ava. When you ask her where Ava is, she will look for her now. She is a very content baby. She babbles a lot now - mostly da da da da. (Ma ma will come soon, I hope!) She has two teeth and she's about to have four. She rolls a lot. Hasn't mastered sitting up on her own yet, but everyday she sits up longer and longer. She giggles a lot. Started eating a lot of baby food recently. Loves most everything I've fed her except for squash. She will stare at her daddy a lot and always gives him a big smile. Lily loves her "Sophie" - it's her giraffe teething toy, although she loves Ava's BF Sophie, too. :)

I can already see the differences in Lily and Ava. Ava was almost crawling and pulling up on furniture at this age. Lily isn't even quite sitting up on her own yet. She doesn't seem too active, which I'm thankful for this time around :).

We love you, sweet Lily!

Here's her stats: 13lbs. 11oz. (10 percentile) and 26 in. long. (61 percentile).

Here's my little princess:

My two sweeties

peek-a-boo




bath time

first pony-tail

Lily's first play date with Heidi, our neighbor and friend. Heidi is 3 hours younger than Lily. Yes, that's right, 3 hours a part. If you read my birth story, then you will remember that me and my neighbor went into labor on the same day and delivered at the same hospital. Pretty crazy how the Lord works. They seemed to enjoy their time together and Ava seemed to enjoy it a lot too. As you can see, Ava's pretending to be a baby with a rattle in her mouth. :)

Happy birthday Sophie

Pumpkin patch

Random pictures over the past few months

Sisterly love

Jonathan's parents graciously came down to watch Ava for us overnight a few weeks ago. Ava wasn't spoiled at all! :)

Lily at 5 months - cut her first two teeth.

My sister and her family were in town last weekend. The girls LOVE playing together. We wish we lived even closer, but we are very thankful that it's only a 3 hour drive.

One of Ava's favorite things to do with daddy. She begs him every night to be thrown up in the air. Jonathan gets his work-out for the day, that's for sure!

Ava loves, loves, loves her daddy.

Ava's name

Lately Ava and I have had "school time". I take about 30-45 minutes in the morning to sit with her and work with sounding out letters and writing them. She will ask to have school time every once in a while, too, so she seems to really enjoy it. She's just soaking it up. It's been fun seeing her learn and how quickly she's picking it up. This past week I've been working with her on writing her name. She finally did it all by herself. I was estatic! And I know, her name only has three letters and two of those letters are the same, but she still did it and I was so excited for her. Makes a momma proud! Now we're working on Lily's name. (So I pick easy names for my kids. Didn't have that in mind when we named them, but it's kind of nice when they start learning to write their name!)

*Update on Lily: She is growing a little better now. We started her on cereal, but she doesn't seem to be too interested. So, we'll keep trying and sooner or later she'll be eating like a champ.

Lily

Lily has found her feet! For the past few months, Ava has been biting her toe nails. It's disgusting! She knows she's not allowed to do that anymore, but now that she sees Lily sucking on her toes, Ava thinks she can do it too.

My sweet girl

Lily is old enough for the Jumperoo now. She loves it, although she isn't quite ready to actually jump yet. It brings back a lot of memories of when Ava was a baby. She would jump forever in this thing. That should've been my first clue to tell how active she was going to be. I'm surprised it's still in good shape. :)

And she likes her Bumbo seat. It's great having her sit with us during dinner now.

Lily is growing up too fast. And even though a lot of moms say that about their babies, I really can relate after having Lily. With Ava I was excited and ready for her next milestone. It was all new to us. (Even though I did get sad when she moved out of the babies nursery into the toddler nursery!) But now that Ava is 2 1/2, I really do know how fast they grow up. Every stage is exciting. I'm trying not to think about how fast time flies, but to enjoy this stage of Lily's life.


*Quick update on Lily: Lily's weight is still dropping in percentile. It was at 47% and now it's at 10%. The doctor isn't quite sure what's going on yet, but right now we will keep monitoring her weight. I'm offering her a bottle after every feeding now. She will take it sometimes, and other times she won't. They aren't sure if it's my milk supply or if something else is going on. We check back in with the pediatrician on Tuesday. I'll try to update then.

Just a little crush

Ava has her first crush - his name: Mr. Steve.

She likes the older married men apparently. Ava sees him at church every Sunday and loves to run up to him and then she'll run away from him just as fast. She gets all flustered when he's around. (It's cute, but I'm not too sure what his wife thinks of this.) :)

Sunday they asked if they could take Ava out to lunch. I knew she would be in heaven to be with Mr. Steve & Kristen. Kristen took a few pictures of the day, so I thought I would post them. Ava was spoiled...just a little!

First stop: Wendy's

3D shades with her happy meal.

Next stop: the park
And yes, Ava is a climber if you haven't noticed.

Ava and Mr. Steve
Last stop: ice cream

On her way home about to fall asleep.
Thank you, Kristen and Steve, for taking Ava out on a date. She had so much fun! What a blessing you are to our family.

Gatlinburg Trip

Here is a short video that Jonathan made of our family trip to Gatlinburg.

Summer

Thought I would add a few more pictures today, since I'm in the mood for blogging and all. Just thought I would share this picture of Ava sleeping since it's too cute not to, and also because I never get pictures like this anymore.

One morning, Jonathan met Ava, Sophie and I at the pool for Jonathan's lunch break. Catherine, Sophie's mommy, came to my house to watch Lily for me so I could take the girls. (Catherine was 9 months pregnant at the time and didn't feel like torturing herself in the heat.)

The above picture is the Newell's family photo we took when we were there for the fourth of July. Can you tell it was around July 4th?

And here is the Thompson's family photo. We were able to all meet together in Gatlinburg this summer. It had been about 2 years since I had seen my brothers and their families, so it was good spending time with everyone. Our families have grown a lot since our last family photo.

Wow...an update!

Yes, I'm finally updating my blog. I know ALL you readers out there have been missing my blog post. HA:)

Over the fourth of July, we went to visit Jonathan's family. It was a super quick trip, but we had a good time seeing his family. Unfortunately, I didn't take many pictures at all. But I did capture the photo below and it's absolutely adorable! This is Lily and Claire. Claire is our niece and she was born a day before Lily. And, I caught them both smiling. Beautiful!

My grandma came to visit us for a few days this summer. I really enjoyed spending time with her. I just wish I could see her more often. It was nice for her to get to meet Lily for the first time, and spend time with Ava. Ava still talks about Grandma Jo.


Daddy and his girls.

My little cutie pie!

Mommy and the girls.

And here are just a few pictures of Lily a few weeks ago. She is four months now - growing up way too fast! We had he check-up last week and she is growing, but not as fast as the doctors would like to see. So, I'm trying to offer her a bottle once or twice a day after I nurse her. She is little bitty. But then again, so was Ava. I guess we just have little babies.