Homemade Fun

This was our first week back into the swing of things, with Brent back in school. On Monday night we had our neighbor across the street, Rita, over for family night.

When we moved in she was investigating the church so we have been able to meet with her and the missionaries over the months and in December she got baptized! It has been really fun for us to be a part of the missionary work. Anyways, Rita came to join us for family night on Monday and she helps us remember how exciting the gospel is!

On Wednesday we had Rita and the missionaries over to dinner. We love having the missionaries in our home. When Rita came on Wednesday to help me get the dinner ready, she brought over a toy kitchen for Ava that had just been sitting in their garage! Ava has been loving it.

We put it in the space next in between the kitchen wall and the couch in our living room so that Ava can cook while I cook. Maybe next week I will have a picture of Rita to post on here so you can see what she looks like! We have fun with her.

On Friday night we couldn't think of anything to do. It's kind of weird not having our usual busy weekends filled with friends and family. But we are making the most of our alone time! We went to the dollar store with a $5 budget to see what we could find. I think the hit of the night were Disney Princess maracas for Ava. Haha. Brent's lemon heads were great too. 

On Saturday we went "into town" - more towards Dallas to go on errands. We of course went to Brent's absolute favorite, Steak n' Shake.

That evening we came up with some "homemade" fun. A slumber party in our living room. (Yeah, maybe at some point we will get a social life!) We piled up all the blankets and pillows from around the house and watched a movie. Ava kept leaping on the pile and squealing and giggling. She looooooved it. So did I :) We took some pretty hilarious selfies to remember the evening, and I will spare you and only share 2 of the pretty normal ones.

A few other random things from this week that we want to remember are that Ava's starting to talk so much now! Some of her new words this week were "ba" (bath), "miiiiiine!" "cup," "bops" (stop)  while holding up her hand, "mah-ee" (mermaid- that one's stretching it!) and "brog" (frog). She sings "E-i-e-i-oooooo!" at the top of her lungs, and has been talking at the top of her lungs this week, for that matter. Ava has been retelling us a certain scene from Shrek over and over agin.

(I think you can only watch the videos on a computer, FYI)

She also is getting out of control on the trampoline from you, Grandma Braithwaite! Here's a couple pictures:

Someone get that baby into gymnastics quick! 

Venturing to Fort Worth

We've been trying to take advantage of Brent's time off school and no homework! So when I haven't been working (which was still 30 hours this week) we played a lot and adventured around to see more of Texas! On Friday our friends invited us to go to the Fort Worth Children's Museum. Ava loved it. She loved the pretend hospital nursery and she took care of a "newborn" and rode in the ambulance with her friend.

She also tried to buy the baby at the grocery store part of the museum. She wheeled her up through the check stand and everything. 

It has been so nice and warm here, so she got to go outside and dig for dinosaur bones in the beautiful weather.

After the museum with our friends, our little family went to a yummy BBQ restaurant in down town Fort Worth. It's very authentic Texas BBQ and there are all sorts of dead animals on the wall so we decided we are going to take Bob there when we get a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Cowley!

Our phone said it would take 55 minutes to get to down town Fort Worth, but there is always traffic here so it took about 15 minutes longer than that. This city is huge! But we really love Fort Worth (a little more than Dallas). It's so beautiful and has a total western vibe to it.

On Saturday Brent went to the movie theater to watch a couple movies nominated for Oscars while Ava and I went to a birthday party for a friend we've met in the neighborhood. The mom is from Peru so of course we get along ;)

Today we had Brent's professor and his partner over to dinner. We also had Travis and his partner over too. Travis did the same program as Brent at UNT and is from Provo. We had lots of fun laughing and joking, and chatting about movies. For the record, Ava was a cutie pie.

 Those are the highlights of this week! The beginning of the week was me working, Brent watching Ava, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, etc. Brent did take Ava to the park several times. And as I'm writing up this blog post he sent me this hilarious picture. I think it was kind of chilly?!?

Hahaha. Her hair is in the awkward stage of not long enough to do anything with, but long enough to give some really great visits from the hair fairy.

On their walks to the park, Brent says Ava has gotten very anxious to go swim since the pool is next-door to the park. She even learned a new word, "pool."

As a parting gift, here is a cute video from last Sunday. Remember the picture I posted on Facebook of Ava giving big hugs? Well Brent surprised us by taking a video instead of pictures for part of the time and it turned out kind of funny.

Favorite picture from this week:

That's all for this week. Love you!

For the Grandmas

I decided to create a blog to document our time here in Texas and for the Grandmas to be able to see what little Ava is up to in big Texas! It's nothing fancy, just a way to show pictures and videos. 

For the first video this week, we have... Daddy teases Ava. 

In case you couldn't see, Brent gave Ava her "defective" binkies. 

Next is Ava letting her hair go...

Ava keeps sneaking in to my office while I work. It's so hard to say no when she looks this cute:

On Saturday night we went to the Galleria mall in Dallas, which was HUGE! It was so fancy and fun to walk around. We met Brent's friend from junior high, Adam and his wife Eve, for dinner there. Yes, Adam and Eve. They have 3 kids and recently moved to Dallas. We had fun and hope to see them more, although we live about 45 minutes from each other. We also went to see the American Girl store there, where you can bring your dolls to get their hair done at the beauty parlor, or eat at the cafe. Ava loooooved all the dolls and threw a full-on tantrum when it was time to leave:

That's it for this week! My plan is to do a post every Sunday and include a few pictures and videos of the highlights of the week. Love you!