Expecting...

...a baby on May 14th! We are excited and looking forward to sleepless nights again! LOL! We did a family photo shoot with Sarah Franczyk from Franczyk Photography a few weeks ago and took a couple to announce our news to everyone. 

Visit with Carolyn and Natalie

Ava and I met my friend Carolyn and her new baby, Natalie for lunch today while we were up north visiting Jamie's brother Aaron and his wife Darcy in Minnesota. Natalie was born in May and she's just the sweetest baby...it was so fun to see them and meet her! We met for lunch at Friday's and were able to catch up for an hour or so with the girls. I generally don't order Ava her own kid's meal because I never know what she's going to eat but today decided to get her the grilled chicken tenders on pita bread with a side of fruit. She literally ate like 3 bites of pita bread and nothing else except the cup of milk it came with (except for a handful of my french fries). Really glad I paid $4 for that.

Ava's Words

Ava is talking up a storm lately! She says all kinds of things and is repeating and imitating all the time now too. Some of her favorites: "dog" (she constantly points at dogs and says "dog" and "woof woof" over and over...plus the woof woof she uses her whole body to say it), "HI!", "Buh-bye", "Uh-oh". She points to her own nose, mouth, eyes, ears, etc and to ours now as well and says those things....nose sounds like no with a cute inflection in her voice. I asked her to say belly button yesterday and she did pretty good with that one, surprisingly, since there are quite a few syllables! She knows that dogs say "woof woof", ducks say "cack cack" and cats say "meow" (kind of). She tries to say Bella sometimes and dada/daddy sounds like a lot of different things. Her favorite expression is "that guy" (that's what it sounds like she's saying at least) and I think it means what's that or something along those lines because she often points while saying it. She repeated "stinker" after me the other day (guess we're really going to start having to watch what we say!) I'll have to get some of these on video soon and post them because the way she says things really is adorable!

Val's Wedding

One of my very best friends from college, Val, got married the first weekend in May. We flew to Leesburg, Virginia for the wedding on Thursday and stayed until Sunday. Friday, I went to go get manis and pedis with Val's mom, sisters, and soon to be mother-in-law and we had a great time. Friday evening was the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner and Saturday was the wedding. She was a beautiful bride and I'm so happy her her and her new husband, AJ, as they begin their lives together!

Visit with Becca, Delaney, and Geoff

The Girls

Ava

Delaney

Becca, Geoff, and Delaney came to Des Moines to visit us again in April. Becca and I have a scrapbooking weekend normally once a year here in Des Moines. They came to town on Friday night and we scrapbooked all day (9am-midnight) on Saturday while the boys watched the little girls. On Sunday, we went to church, went out to lunch at Felix and Oscars (one of Jamie's favorite places to eat at when he used to work at the Merle Hay Cinema in high school) and got delicious pizza, and then went to the mall and walked around in the afternoon. We were glad they decided to stay Sunday night as well so we could have the day to hang out, especially since they are moving to Cleveland soon. :(  We will have to find a new location for our yearly scrapbooking weekends!

Random Ava-April

Carolyn's Baby Shower 4-2-11

Here's a video of Ava eating yogurt by herself...I love how she was holding the container in one hand and her spoon in the other. 

Here's a couple pictures I took of Ava the other day. She's getting sooo close to walking, just a little nervous about it I think. She did take one step on her own last week but I'm not counting it yet.