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!