Apr 22-28

 I have had an itch to update our kitchen lately.  I REALLY want to re-paint.  I saw a kitchen redo picture on facebook that inspired me to want a light blue kitchen. I tried to find it so you can all see how cute it is, but haven't been able to.   I haven't convinced Rand on that yet, but it's happening!  Anyway...so in the mean time, I decided to paint some old vases and put them above our cabinets.  I started with the five vases I already had on hand and and painted them white. Our kitchen is so dark, I think some white above the cabinets will lighten it up a bit.

 Love how they turned out.  Paint makes the ugliest vase look amazing :) 

 Then I headed to salvation army and the dollar store and added to my ugly vase collection.  Rand suggested that I add some color and not just do white.  So I  did some yellow and blue...you know, to go with my future blue kitchen ;) 

This picture is terrible quality, but you get the idea.  We are not sure if we love it, but it's something new and fun. 

Wednesday was the last day for Avery's community center play group. Now what are we supposed to do Wednesday mornings??!!  I think we will try story time at the Library, she seemed to like it when we tried it last. 

Beckett turned 8 months old this week!

He currently rolls all over the house. 

 He doesn't seem interested in crawling yet, but I'm sure will be pretty soon.  

No teeth yet, not even close.

Loves Avery, he gives her the best laughs.

Still doesn't sleep through the night :/

 Loves to scream and jabber, and loves blowing raspberries, 

spitting all over the place and making all kinds of popping/smacking sounds with his lips.

Loves to suck on his blankets.

Barfs all over the carpet while he rolls around, 

leaves us little treats to discover- it's my favorite.

I have to document this...

Avery will NOT sleep without her four "princess books".

Every single night we have to hunt them down, read all four and tuck them into bed with her.  

Even in the dark she knows if one is missing or if some other book is substituted in.

I'm not sure what would happen if we were to lose one! This girl has a crazy princess fetish! 

  Saturday I hosted our monthly Bunco game!  I LOVE it!  My friends are so much fun.  I look forward to it every month. 

Hosting is so much fun, but lots of work!  I didn't get a chance to take any pictures, but for dinner I made yummy mexican food (Rand helped) and for dessert I made these adorable brownie parfaits.  

Seriously cute right??  They were sooooo good too!  You can't go wrong with brownies, brownie flavored whipped cream and brownie fudge! I found the recipe on Pinterest.  I highly recommend them.  Sadly, I didn't win any prizes, but there is always next month right?!

Today was beautiful!  We decided to spend some time out side before dinner.  Avery discovered these "white flowers" and couldn't get enough of them!  She loved blowing the seeds off.  It's a good thing our neighbor's lawn is full of them!

 

Avery loves the trampoline Brock and Katy gave us.  I have a feeling she will be spending a lot of time on that this summer!

 

Apr 15-21

We started off our week by trying out a new cookie recipe with a friend.  Pink lemonade gooey butter cookies.  Need I say more?  They were really good! I wish they had a little more lemon flavor, but that didn't stop me from eating most of them...

I have a really hard time letting Avery help me make things because of the mess it makes.  Terrible mom I know!  However, I let her have at it this time.  It took everything in me to just stand back and watch her! A few times she forgot to take the cookie out of the sugar and just dumped the bowl of sugar onto the cookie sheet! It was a huge mess, but she loved doing it :)

We went to the Library for story time for the first time.  We listened to a story about a dragon and then colored and glittered a dragon on a stick.  Avery loves that thing!  She makes sure to find it every day and leave a trail of glitter every where she goes.  

I really wish she would give me a regular smile ;)

This boy is everywhere these days.  He isn't crawling yet, but rolls all over!  He really likes this super man pose!  It makes me laugh!

Avery gets really jealous when I take pictures of Beckett and not her... so here is her best smile of the week!

Beckett has a fever today and didn't sleep much last night. Not sure what is going on, teeth maybe?  Even though he doesn't feel good, he still rolls all over and gets stuck in his blankets :)

I asked Avery if I could take a picture of her cute dress today, so what does she do?  Start twirling.  Wouldn't stop...so this is as good as it gets!  I got that dress for $5 this week!  Totally cute right?!

 We had a pretty busy week, even though I don't have pictures of everything.  You'll just have to take my word for it :)

Apr 8-14

This weeks post is brought to you mostly by Instagram. 

Avery is really into picking flowers.  She picks every dandelion she sees.  One day she brought me this beauty and said that she picked a pretty flower for me.  It was a really sweet gesture... only that flower came from my garden! So we had to have a talk about only picking the flowers in the grass and not in mom's flower garden :) 

We had a few really nice days this week and a few really cold days.  Gotta love spring right? We decided to head to the park on a really over cast warm day and it was perfect!  We were the only ones there and Avery enjoyed running around with no competition for the swings... and picking the purple flowers.

 Things got a little out of hand when I saw her with this huge arm full of weeds that she was insisting she had to take home :) I'm sure the grounds keeper will be happy that half of the weeds are gone!

 This boy had his first ride on the swing!  He loved it.  I wish I had a big blanket to help fill the swing, but he did ok!

I finally decided to tie him to the swing with his thin blanket and we were in business!

I have been experimenting with Avery's hair.  I feel like I do the same three styles over and over.  It is finally long, but is still pretty thin.  I have this love hate relationship with it.  I love it down, but it ends up in her face and mouth.  It is always a sticky mess by the end of the day.   It has curl, but not enough to just let it go on it's own.  She loves having her hair done and sits pretty still while I do it.  I have been frequenting different hair blogs for little girls and am excited to try more fun do's!

We went swimming on Friday with a friend.  It was way cold outside and we just needed to get out and do something fun.  Avery loves it.

That brings us to today. I had sharing time in primary.  Lets just say it didn't go as planned.  It was total chaos.  Not sure what the kids ate this morning, but they were all kinds of crazy!  Including Avery!  Even when we got home, she was bouncing off the walls!  It took me a few minutes to get her to sit still for this picture.  At least Beckett thought she was funny, he couldn't stop laughing at her.  They have a really cute  little relationship :)

Mar 31-Apr 7

Sorry I missed my post last week!  My mom flew in last Friday and I was way too occupied to blog last Sunday.

We had a great week with Grandma Griffiths here! She flew in Friday evening.  My mom broke her arm and had surgery several weeks ago, so she was physically unable to do much.  Avery was fascinated with her scar.  The first few days she kept asking about it and then they compared scars...it was pretty funny.  I wish I had a picture of it. We pretty much took care of her so she could relax.  It was a very low key week :)

Saturday morning we went to the community center Easter Eggstravaganza!  It was totally raining so they had it all indoors.  

We started out with face painting.

 Cute little bunny!

 They had several rabbits.  Avery loved holding them.  They had a huge one too... like the size of a small child!

 Then it was time to hunt for eggs!  It wasn't much of a hunt  because the eggs were just thrown on the floor in a few different rooms.  Avery didn't seem to mind though.

 Easter morning the kids woke up to see that the Easter Bunny came

 Once Avery saw this bat, she didn't care about anything else!  

She saw an episode on Word World recently that was about playing baseball.  She quickly found her play frying pan and ball and asks to play baseball!  It's a good thing the Easter Bunny knew how much she needed a real bat. She can totally hit the ball too!

 After church we died eggs.  Avery did really well this year.  Usually I kind of dread doing this with her, but there was minimal spilling!  Those little bunny scissors are genius!  Makes removing the eggs so much easier- that was Avery's favorite part.

We had my cousin Marae's family over for dinner that evening and then did one last egg hunt in the yard.

 the loot

 After Easter was over, we were left with mass amounts of candy. No joke...we may have gone a little over board!

These jumbo Peeps are awesome!

 After we all were eating WAY too much candy for days, my mom started getting sick. So she had to take it easy for the last few days.  Luckily she only had a mild cold, but still no fun.

We played lots of baseball.   My favorite part is when Avery pounds the bat on the floor three times and says "Play ball" and then puts the bat behind her shoulder.  Makes me laugh every time.

 We did lots of painting.  Even added in some finger paint.

 The weather was nice all week, and the day before my mom had to leave, we headed to the park while she rested. Avery learned a new trick- flying like a bird on the swing.

 When she wasn't pretending to be a bird, she was down the hill playing on the tree stump.  I kept telling her that the reason we go to the park is to play on the slides and swings...not to tap sticks on tree stumps :)

Before my mom left Saturday afternoon, we tried out the kite Avery got for Easter.  It was crazy windy and that poor kite didn't have a chance...it only lasted a few minutes before it broke :(  So on my way back from the airport I let Avery pick out another kite to try.  She chose a butterfly one.  It did much better, but still broke after a few minutes!  Nothing some duct tape couldn't fix though! Avery had a blast chasing after it!  I'm sure the neighbors had a good laugh at us trying to keep it from landing on the house and in the tree!

I took a bunch of pictures of our kite adventure and somehow didn't notice that the camera didn't have a card in it!  GRR!  So this is the only one I have... from my phone.  We had a fun time with Grandma here and are sad to have her gone.  Thanks for coming to visit!