Little Ava Big Texas: March Jenga

This month was so hard for me in the sense that it was sooooo busy and stressful. Just when I thought things couldn't get crazier or worse, they did. I called my mom one day and told her it felt like we were playing jenga with our life. We were balancing so many things, and then something else would happen and be added on top of us, and we would have to keep trying to balance everything. Piece after piece, I'm telling you! Luckily we had lots of blessings and help from family so that we didn't completely fall apart.

Ava is a wild child. She takes her hair out when she gets home from school, but this day she looked kind of model-ish I thought!

Brent was brave and took Ava to her four year old check up. She was so so so sad to get shots. Check out this dramatic face- before the shots even happened:

She was about 50% on height and weight. After, Brent took her to Chick Fil-A to cheer her up. Poor Ava was already sick with a bad cold and had two ear infections.

This week was so incredibly busy with my busy season and it was spring break for Ava, which meant no preschool! So the kids wen to the babysitters two days. Brent worked away at his thesis and we worked through all the ~~jenga pieces~~ curve balls Wells Fargo sent to us in trying to get the loan for our house.

On Wednesday and Thursday I got Ava's cold but I got so sick with fever, chills and body aches. I haven't been that sick in a long time. Jenga piece. It was awful, so I went to my doctor on Friday morning. She thought I had some form of a flu, and luckily by Saturday afternoon I was feeling better enough to go to the new Beauty and the Beast. It was so good!

Brent and Ava can be pretty picky but at least Coen thinks my cooking is yummy!

Coen is so obsessed with the Mickey Mouse characters. Whenever he sees me wearing this PJ shirt, he begs to wear it. He loves to wear his own Mickey shirts that my friend Wasana gave him, and sometimes won't take them off for bed and sleeps in them.

We had the sister missionaries over to dinner. We haven't done that enough this year! We also got a call from the realtor of the house that we're living in that we were going to have to start doing showings. It got so crazy and stressful, having to keep our house clean with babies! (Jenga piece). People also would put in requests for showings at 3:00 pm for... 3:00 pm. Like, now. Ugh.

I thought Ava looked cute when I picked her up at school, so I took her picture by her building.

Coen just looking cute at the park. I love that pot belly of his so much.

Mr. blue eyes.

Ava's favorite park is Eureka Park, which is next-door to her school. I took the kids there on Friday afternoon since I felt like we all needed to get out of the house! They were so cute together, running around like this.

If Ava ran off without Coen, he would shout, "Ava!" until he found her. Then he would get all excited and walk up to her and wave to her. It was the first time I really heard him pronounce Ava so well. So I took a video :)

We finally got all dressed up to take a picture to announce we are moving to Oregon!

Ava's faces are so funny.

Brent was gone to the library quite a bit to work on his thesis. On one afternoon, I was making dinner and Coen was getting restless in his chair. Ava brought her table over and moved her chair by Coen and got them both coloring pencils. She was such a good helper!

I took Ava visiting teaching with me and she was excited to come. She packed a little bag with a few toys and books.

Sunday afternoon we had a storm move in and the tornado warning started going off. The sky started looking like this:

Brent liked watching the storm for a while until I convinced him to come in the house.

Here's a video of the storm before it got too bad:

It started getting a little crazy and the tornado siren (Ava called it the tomato siren) was still going off and she was scared. So I gave the kids popsicles to distract them. I had them sitting at the kitchen table when all of a sudden it started to hail. The hail started to sound so huge that I ran to the window to try to see how big it was. Then I proceeded to do a u-turn since it started sounding REALLY big. I yelled to Brent to help me get the kids away from the windows. We moved them just before our kitchen window shattered! (Jenga piece)

Here's one more video during the hail storm so you can hear how loud it is.

After it was all over, Brent picked up a few of the hail in our yard and we couldn't believe how huge it was! Our entire neighborhood, part of the city really, was covered in this size of hail.

Lots of roofs in our neighborhood needed to be replaced, and people's cars were damaged.

We should have known that this hail storm was the signal of the most crazy week! The last week of March I worked 45 hours. That may not sound like a ton, until you think about that Brent also worked that much and we only had a babysitter for Coen for 15 hours that week. Basically that meant a lot of late nights working for hours after the kids went to bed, and little sleep. (Jenga piece)

Here's Coen and his friend at the babysitters looking cute:

Ava has gotten so into coloring lately. She is starting to get really good at staying in the lines and it's fun to see her so excited and proud.

Since I was working so much, Ava was really craving my attention. I let her bring in her table and sit by me coloring while I worked.

Here's another jenga piece thrown at us: Coen woke up with a crazy rash one morning:

He had had fevers on and off for a few days, but I thought they were just from his teething. He was also on amoxicillin from ear infections, so the doctors thought he might be allergic to the medicine. My friend's boy had just had scarlet fever and it was going around, so I thought he maybe had that. Either way, it was not so fun, poor buddy. We later found out after his babysitter's daughter got the same thing (oops) that it was a virus called roseola.

Ava was excited to wear her new favorite dress for picture day at school:

Inspecting hail damage on the siding of our house. We have about 5-7 of these holes.

Ava was getting in the car one day and Brent was coming around to help her, when she got spooked and ran to me and said, "mom, there's something in the garage!" I told her that it was just dad. She said, "no, it had legs!" I thought Brent had just surprised her so I told her it was just dad, go get in your car seat. A little bit later Brent found this guy:

Brent and I laughed a lot that I told her "it's just dad." Ava was terrified of this lizard that made his home in our garage! Sometimes it would give me a heart attack too when it would just run out in front of me. Sadly, he only lasted a few weeks and then he got SMASHED by the garage door. It was so gross, we aren't even going to go there.

Electronic babysitters. Coen will play for quite a while in their bedroom with toys if Ava is up on the bed watching a show and not bothering him.