LATELY......

...We Celebrated Easter!

...Reece has been getting so big!

...and learned how to pout. It's pitiful!

...And wants to spend every waking moment outside! Literally every moment!

... I ran in he St. Joseph 5K!
... Ava continues to enjoy soccer!

... Reece has really gotten into playing baby dolls!

... and Ava got all dressed up for a darling Mother's days tea and program at her school!

This is our last few weeks in a nutshell. I need to do more in-depth posts over each - but I was feeling like a slacker and some pressure from certain family members so I wanted to get some more recent pictures up! Hope you enjoyed!!!!

Happy Birthday Steven!!!

Happy birthday to the best husband and daddy in the world! We love you so so much - and feel so blessed that you are our dad/husband. We are three lucky girls!

Good Friends and Hip Hop!

A few weekends ago some of our good friends, the Myers came to visit. They used to live in our neighborhood and then moved to Kansas City last year. Ava and Meredith have been friends since they were about 18 months. We used to spend most every Friday morning at their house for our weekly playgroup. I love how the girls just pick right back up where they left off. It's really sweet. We were so sad to see them go, but so happy they came to visit.

Natalie, Ava, Meredith, and Isaac
This picture makes me laugh. Natalie and Meredith both look like they are being strangled! It was so funny when we were taking this because Ava shouted out "best friends forever" She is such a teenager! Do you know how hard it is to take a picture of four kids. It's not easy - let me tell you.


Poor Meredith, Ava still has a death grip on her. She is thinking, I am not letting her go back to Kansas City!

We tried again the next day, and I still couldn't get a picture of the three of them all looking at the same camera. They were having too much fun to stop and take a picture. You would have thought we were torturing them!

These next pictures are from a hip hop clinic that Ava's dance studio put on. The older dancers were raising money to go to a competition at Disney World. Ava of course loved it!

Ava and Savy and Walker Williams. Ava and Savy have taken dance together for a few years now. Walker was a good big brother and came to watch.

Soccer!!!

So we decided to give soccer a try this year, and Ava's first practice was yesterday. I was very curious to see how this would go. Last year I wanted to sign her up and she told me that she was NOT going to wear a jersey! When I asked why, she told me that they were for boys and she wanted to wear something more fabulous! So I am thinking, okay, you might not be cut out for soccer!!! But she needs to be exposed to things that are not so girly, she loves to run, has her father's competitive nature (which scares me to death), and has a ton of energy so I thought soccer would be great!
Well Ava totally surprised me - she was really really good. She was all over the place, hustled her little bootie off, and was such a go getter. I thought she might be a little more timid, but she was not at all - she was loving herself some soccer. We knew she was competitive, but a whole new side of her came out. (For those of you that know Steven - I hope Ava is not that bad, but I do hope she gets all of his athletic abilites!) I know this was just one practice, but Ava is pumped for soccer!

This is before we left the house - she does not have her soccer shoes on yet, but please notice the shin guards over the socks. She was adamant about wearing them over her socks because she wanted to be able to see the purple part of the shin guards! I decided to pick my battle on this one and just go with it!

It was a bit chilly out, so she pulled her socks all the way up!

Ava was the only girl there for a while. I was afraid this would bother her, I asked the coach if she was the only girl on the team and she said there were supposed to be 4 girls. I don't know if Ava even noticed that she was the only girl, or if she did she didn't care. It was funny though, another girl showed up about half way through and they were doing a drill with partners and her coach asked Ava if she wanted to be partners with the other girl - and she said NO! I was a little surprised at that one. Luckily, the boys didn't mind having her as their partner!

This is Blogworthy!!! I ran the Little Rock Half-Marathon!!!

I like to try and keep this blog about the girls, but this is something I want to remember. This weekend I ran the Little Rock Half Marathon!!! I ran with a good friend of mine, Jill Jorgensen!! We started training about 12 weeks ago. The whole process has been such a fun experience. Hopefully this will be the first of many races for us!
My goals for this race were to run (never stop and walk) the whole thing and finish under 2:30. I did run the whole thing and our time was 2:26 - so I was happy! I really wanted to die about mile 10 to 12!!! But you know what, God is good and he kept pushing me on. This is not the best picture, because it's from Steven's phone. This picture was taken real close to the finish line. When I get time I will download more pictures from the camera.

Happy Birthday Reece!

Today is Reece's first birthday!!! We have bible study tonight so we let her eat her cake last night. She loved every minute of it. This child is just perfect!
Reece here is what you are up to lately:
- You are a speedy crawler, are all over the place, and pull up on everything.
- You are a fabulous player and entertain yourself very well. You crawl from thing to thing or room to room finding what else you can play with or get into.
- If Ava is home you want to be wherever she is, and if she leaves you - you yell Aaaayyyyaaa!
-Still go to bed at 7 and sleep until 7:30 in the morning. Occasionally you wake up for a bottle around two or three.
-You take one long nap in the afternoon.
-Love love love blueberries. Your other favorites are bananas, mandarin oranges, and sweet potatoes. You also LOVE water - and drink a ton of it.
-Babble all day - I think you are fluent in Chinese! You have the sweetest voice.
- Love to say "tickle tickle tickle" and tickle everything - even inanimate objects!
-Have a few words in your vocabulary - mama, dada, aya (ava), ugh oh, tickle tickle, bye bye, thank you (or atleast your version of thank you).
-Favorite toys are baby dolls and balls - but you love emptying drawers, baskets, boxes -anything that has stuff in it - that you can take out and put back in.
-Love going to the church nursery and the gym nursery
-Have a great fake laugh that you do all the time.
-Are always smiling!!!

Happy Birthday sweet girl - we Love you sooo much!

Thank you Peaches for my cute birthday dress - you are sooo good to me!

I thought these pictures were cute because she is looking at pictures of herself when she was an infant! What a difference a year makes!

Sweetheart

So in updating our blog, I realized that there were no really recent pictures of Reece. All of a sudden she has been looking so old. It's like one morning she woke up and looked more like a little girl than a baby. I know I am her mom, but Reece is just sooo sweet. She has such a sweet, funny personality that keeps us laughing all the time. Steven thinks she is more dramatic than Ava was at this age, and if that is true I am in for it - big time. But we enjoy her so much, she makes our jobs as parents pretty easy!

By the way - trying to take a picture of a busy 11month old is next to impossible!