Video Cilps

Here are a couple of video's. One is of Ava stomping about in her new shoes. She lost one of her old shoes at the airport. The other video is Ava licking up the frosting on her Valentines Day Cookie. I have no idea how to make these into normal posts with comments. I'll have to figure that out someday.

Making V-day Cookies

Ava and I made cookies for the first time. Well I should give Pillsbury some credit because they made the dough. We cut out hearts, cooked them, and then frosted them. As you can see in the pictures Ava was all about eating the frosting and cookies. I told her to make one for daddy and she did, and then she ate it. We had flour and frosting everywhere. Maybe next year we'll attempt sprinkles.

Giant HUGS from Ava Paske!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! We hope everyone has a great Valentines Day, even those enjoying nice sunny weather. (:

What a cute Mom!

Ava wants to be just like her mommy. She has my hat, shoes, and one of my gloves on and of course any of you who know me would also say I have owned several sweaters in that style too. Anyway she shuffled around for a bit and then took it all off. Only mommy for a minute!

Flight home

I haven't snapped many photo's on flight and decided that I wish I would have done that on every trip. We had a 4 hour flight from San Fran to Chicago and Ava was pretty good. She got lots of compliments as people were exiting the plane. A new distraction this flight was a deck of playing cards. She would pour them out and then place them back in the box. I was glad that Ava didn't have any ear issues like she did on our way back from Mexico last month. Oh and one more note. Ava likes to eat banana's while they are still in the peel. That sticky peel drives me crazy, touching and draping itself on everything, but she insists on eating it that way.

Finishing up San Fran

After Lunch with Summer. Look at the girl's stare each other down.
Maya put a Kleenex on her head and Ava followed suit with a matching hat. Okay these girls are way too big for this doll stroller, but they had fun anyway. Look at how giant Ava looks while Maya pushes her.

Who knew I could take a week to Blog a 6 day trip (: Tuesday was a much better day. Our cousin Summer came over for awhile. We just sat and chatted and then went to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. It was so nice to catch up with her. Summer is one of my cousins who blogs, so it was nice that there is so much about her everyday life that I wouldn’t have known with out this great resource. Ava was a bit of a pill (Maya stayed back and took a good nap), she even through herself on the ground when we were leaving. Over what I cannot remember. She is constantly testing me with this irrational attitude. Anyway after we put the girls to bed on Tuesday night, Lori and I decided to treat ourselves to a pedicure. Matt was nice enough to watch the girls while we got pretty toes. He even bounced Ava to sleep after I left because she didn't goto sleep right away.

I left my heart in San Francisco........

Maya and Ava ride in Maya's little truck. They were sharing the cab at one point until Ava simply shoved Maya to the ground. My little Bully doesn't realize her own strength.

So I really like California and I am lucky that I have lot family that lives there. We had a really good time on our trip. We played games every night after the girls went to bed. Boggle, Monopoly(3 long games), and Yahtzee. I hate to report, but I never won. My Matt won everything except 1 game of Yahtzee and 1 game of Monopoly. We all ganged up on him because we were tired of him winning. Ha ha. On Saturday we had a wonderful BBQ at my aunt Julie's and uncle Dougs house. Doug made the best Filet tenderloin, Mike made the super delicious potato wedges, Marvin brought a scrumptious salad, and Lori had the best selection of deserts. We all (all 20 of us) enjoyed amazing appetizers prepared by Julie too. Ava loved Julie's fancy crackers and cheese. We had a great time catching up with family and can't thank Julie and Doug enough for hosting the big family event. Of course I didn't get any pictures of all the fun, but did happen to leave my camera there. So we picked it up from Julie on Monday and got to hang out with her for a little more. On Sunday we went to church with Lori and Matt. It was their ward conference. There were some good talks. One talk was about holding grudges and how holding them is like drinking poison and hoping your opponent drops dead. That line cracked me up. Monday Matt flew out to get back to work. Lori and I planned on shopping at Valley Fair after we picked up my camera, but we got a call that Matt's flight was cancelled. He got re-booked on a red eye that night. We decided to spare him the seven hour wait and went to go pick him up. We went to a mall close to the airport that was terrible and it put me in a cranky, I don't want to buy anything, kind of a mood. I could write a very long post about our drive home with the girls but I actually don't want to remember it. Yah that about sums it up. The picture of Ava climbing on the slide was taken at Julie and Doug’s when we were leaving from picking up my camera. She saw the playland as we were walking to the car and refused to get in her seat until I let her go down the slide. As soon as she went down she was fine to get into her seat. She can be so determined sometimes.

Blizzard.....and I'm not talking Dairy Queen!

I wish this blizzard was as exciting as getting Dairy Queen. It snowed all day and it was snowing sideways. And with all the wind we got today, we had huge snow drifts. They were over 3 ft tall. I think we got a total of 10-12 inches, even though it seemed like more. And Ava and I stayed in all day. I couldn't even check the mail because my front door was snowed in, which turns out they didn't deliver because of the storm. I'm not sure how much snow I can take. I have been fortunate that the last eight years have been way more mild compared to this year. Oh and to add to my rant, it is supposed to be -30F this weekend. Wah!

Feed them to the Fish

So I'm not sure I mentioned it in one of my earlier posts, but we had a lot of rain while we were in the bay area. After Go Cart racing we drove downtown to the Aquarium of the Bay. We parked as close as we could but still got soaked. The great thing about going to the Aquarium of the Bay when its pouring rain you ask????? It was totally empty. We had the place to ourselves. The girls loved looking at all the sea life and also running around. After the aquarium we were all starving. Where would you go if you are starving and in the city............. IHOP! Yes, Lori was so excited that my Matt mentioned he had seen an IHOP when he was getting the car. (We were not going back out in that rain). It was fantastic. Kid's ate free that night. Lori and I got Chocolate Pancakes with chocolate chips (sooo yummy) and we watched Matt C put away 6 pancakes. All in a days work. The girls slept on the way home and Lori and I chilled in the back of the mini van. Having a vehicle for all 6 of us was great.

Kid's in Traning

We had a little time to kill and luckily there was a few games to play on. Ava and Maya had fun pretending to race each other. I wish I could have video taped Ava as she would climb up all by herself onto all the fun machines and shimmy herself down. I was sure we were going to go home with bruises and a fat lip, but she managed to stay on her feet. The last picture is of the Go Cart winner and his family.

Go Go Speedracer

Boy's will be boys. After a very eventful flight the night, we finally landed in San Francisco. We excited to get going on Friday. We started out with lunch. Matt Colledge took us to this bar/deli for the best hot crab sandwiches. Lori of course had a veggie hoagie that came with a surprise jalapeno sauce and the girls shared a giant hot dog. We then headed over to the Go Cart racing place. The Matt's got their annual license and then we waited for them to race. Matt Colledge totally schooled Matt Paske and they had a lot of fun. They kept talking about the major adrenaline rush and how much muscle they had to use to go around the corners. The pictures are a little blurry because they were going soooooo fast.