Photos from Rob's phone

snug as a bug

workin' with mommy 

 Sara likes to put crowns on Ava's head...

resemblance?  

 chillin'

 hair

 Sisters

Daddy and Daughters

Family Photos

My whole family was all together for Thanksgiving, so took some family photos. I think they turned out pretty good!

{the whole gang} 

 {the grandkids}

two on the left from me,

three in the middle from my oldest brother,

one on the right from my sister.

 {our little fam}

 {baby Ava}

 I love the little smile on Ava's face in this picture. 

Thanks to my brother Derek for use of his camera and photography skills!

Love it. :)

The Beach

We spent Thanksgiving in California with my family and spent some time at my parent's newly acquired beach house while we were there. The weather was wonderful, and we enjoyed a nice walk on the beach.

Sara loved digging in the sand.

Sara and her cousins went back to the beach later in the day. Here they are before leaving the house. Not sure what that face is Sara is making!

And here's an awesome video of Sara doing what I think is supposed to be hula dancing, but she calls it "Sand Dancing". Silly girl. :)

Sara likes doing exercise videos

Halloween

The girls each had two Halloween costumes this year. Accidentally. Well, kind of.

Here's what happened.

I was determined NOT to buy a Halloween costume for Sara this year, only because she has several dress-ups that she could use, most of which had never been used for Halloween, including a mermaid, a bee, and a purple princess dress. The tricky part was, I wanted Sara and Ava to have cute matching/coordinating costumes, so I had to think of something to go with one of Sara's already owned dress-up costumes. I thought Ariel (aka, "The Little Mermaid") and her sidekick fish Flounder would be adorable, but I wasn't having any luck finding a cute Flounder costume on the internet. So then we went to plan B, which was pull out the costume Sara wore on her first Halloween when she was 10-months old, and hope it wasn't too big for Ava who was 2-months old. It was a little big, but it worked.

So, Halloween costume combo #1 was, a strawberry and a bee. This was at our neighborhood Trunk-or-Treat.

And for some fun, here is Sara wearing that same strawberry costume three years ago for her first Halloween:

{Sara, Halloween 2009}

I dressed up a little as well, if you call wearing black and buying some Halloween-colored striped tights "dressing up". I also have bats floating above my head, so it counts as a costume, right?

For anyone keeping score of Halloween costumes past (though I doubt any of you are!), yes I did wear that same bat headband once before, and yes, I just wore black and called it a costume at last year's trunk-or-treat too. Sometimes we are creative with costumes, and sometimes we're not. When I'm not feeling creative with costumes, I usually just end up re-using something I already have. Works for me!

Oh, side note: So we were getting ready for the trunk-or-treat and I asked Rob to make a paper spider and web to decorate the trunk while I was out running errands. In my head I was picturing just a plain old two-dimensional spider and web, but Rob had something much better in mind.

It's hard to really tell from this photo, but that spider is 3D, origami style! And the web has some slight 3D effects to it also. Let me just say, I was SUPER impressed! We taped the spider and web to our front door after the trunk-or-treat, and I fully intend to save them to use for decorations next year too! THAT'S how good they were!

Oh, and lest you forget, it was totally Rob who decorated our trunk with construction paper last year too. He realized that the under-side of our trunk had these cut-out shapes that looked like a giant face, so we just added some paper and voila! On the cheap halloween decor!

{last year's trunk-or-treat decor}

So, as you can see, we keep Rob around for decorating trunks once a year. He's pretty good at it. :)

SO...I started this little story by telling you the girls each had two costumes for Halloween this year. RECAP: Costume combo #1 was a bee and a strawberry. 

NOW onto costume combo #2!

As I mentioned earlier, I really wanted the girls to be Ariel and Flounder from "The Little Mermaid", but I couldn't find a cute Flounder costume and couldn't attempt to make one in time for the trunk-or-treat which was the Saturday before Halloween. BUT, I was able to talk Rob's mom into whipping up a last minute costume for actual Halloween day, and here's what we ended up with!

Can you believe Rob's mom made that Flounder costume? It was so awesome! She used a yellow jumper she already had (it's one that her kids used to wear!) and altered the length and added felt for the flippers and fins. I helped, but she did all the work. Thanks Angie!

We already had the mermaid costume, so I just needed the red wig and we were good to go.

So there you have it! The tale of two Halloween costumes. I just hope they won't be expecting two costumes every year from now on!

Time to buy new snow pants?

We got our first snowfall of the year on October 25. Not much, but enough to play in for a bit. I pulled out Sara's old snow clothes that she has worn for the past two winters. They are size 18-months. Sara will be 4 in December. ... What do you think; will they last another year?!

Here's a fun video of Sara playing in the snow.



Then a few weeks later we got more snow, and this time it was over a foot deep!

She seems to be doing just fine in those too-small snow clothes! But I suppose we should break down and buy some new ones.

That's all! :)

Songify

Rob recently downloaded an app on his iPhone called Songify which transforms speech into a song, auto-tune style. Well of course we have been having a lot of fun with that app over the past few days, but last night Rob struck gold with his telling of Dumbo to Sara. It's pretty awesome because the climax of the story coincides with the climax of the song without Rob even knowing it. Plus, he gives a pretty darn good synopsis.

Give it a listen by clicking here.

Rob's auto-tuned version of Dumbo as told to Sara:

"When dumbo was born he had really big ears and none of the elephants liked him except for his mother. And when his mother defended him she got locked in a cage, and Dumbo was sad till he met Timothy Mouse who showed Dumbo he could fly, but he needed a magic feather. And one day Dumbo was falling and dropped his feather. He was going to hit the ground! Oh no, Dumbo don't hit the ground! And then he realized he could always fly and flew away. Go Dumbo go! Good job Dumbo. Good job."

I love it. :)

Ava 1 month

Our little Ava is one month old today.

In these next photos, I'm trying to give you a sense of scale. 

Here she is on her crib mattress:

And in the rocking chair (with the boppy pillow helping her sit up):

And here are a few with Sara:

And to get a sense of how much Ava has grown in a month, here is a side-by-side comparison, although I didn't get a shot of the two of them together in the green chair when she was first born. I should have!

Ava 1 month vs 2 days old

It's hard to tell in the photos, but Ava has already grown a lot in her first month of life! She has gained almost two whole pounds already! She is well past the 10-pound mark. No worries about whether she's getting enough to eat here!

Ava 1 week

There are too many places on the internet to post stuff; blogs, Facebook, family websites, Instagram, etc. It can get overwhelming at times trying to keep up with all of them. Maybe my blog should be more for actually blogging (aka writing) and not for photos....

Anyway, I realized I never put any photos up from our little photo shoot we did when Ava was one week old. So here they are!

Some of Ava by herself:

And some of Ava and Sara together:

And some of Sara being silly: