Avery ~ 14 Months

Cute as a button and ornery as ever! She's so much fun to be around. Right now she's at the age where she mimics everything. She's learning really fast having an older sister to follow around. Allie plays with her really well! It's so cute watching them together. They are always holding hands!!

Avery loves to climb! She climbs into her rocking chair, she climbs up into Allie's bed, she climbs up the step stool and then into the sink....really anything that looks like it could be climbed onto she'll do it. The other day she climbed onto her little car thing and she was standing there like she was surfing. Well, it's on wheels so it started going back and forth (I was quite impressed at how long she stayed up) and then she face planted! She got a bloody lip, but only cried for a few seconds. She's one tough cookie! She loves climbing stairs too. Our stairs are really steep so we keep them blocked off so she can't climb them. We were just using a bin that was filled with toys to block off the stairs but she figured out that she was strong enough to push it out of the way. So we started blocking off the stairs by putting a big, heavy basket in between our couch and chair so she couldn't get anywhere near them. That worked for a couple of weeks until the little stinker found out she could just crawl behind the couch and get to the stairs that way!!! Now we need to figure something else out. She's such a little daredevil and too smart for her little britches. What a handful of cuteness!

Winter...Spring....Summer...

Fall?? All you have to do is call...I'll be there? Really? Are you sure? We seriously came back from vacation at the end of September and it was already in the 60's. It's slowly been getting colder and colder each day! I really don't think we're going to have a "fall" this year....one of my favorite times of the year. We're trying to make the best of it though. Last weekend we went to a pumpkin patch and this weekend we went out to Germantown for some fall festivities.

Our first stop today was Possum Creek Metropark for their Harvest Jamboree. Free pumpkins, t-shirts, horse rides, scary stories and more.
Huge rotting pumpkin





Next up was Tom's Corn Maze.....my first time going through one. It was fun, but cold! I think it would have been more fun to have one other couple with us to race against (and no one else in there). It started to get easier to find the different checkpoints because people were making bird noises everytime they found it...so all we had to do was follow their calls. It still took us about an hour though!
"Over here, Mom!"


The maze theme was "Let Freedom Ring"
We heard that there is a kids "haunted" castle somewhere around here.....not really scary, but just to warm them up to the idea. That might be a fun thing to do next weekend! Then, of course, Halloween and trick or treating would be the following weekend. FUN, FUN!!

Bama Baby

Oh yeah, that's right....vacation in Orange Beach, Alabama!! Never saw that one coming, that's for sure! Florida, maybe, but never ever would have dreamt of vacationing in good ol' Alabamers. It was actually really nice......once we got there.
The drive was supposed to take us 12 hours if we were going straight there. Now, we obviously stopped at Mammoth Caves which added about 3 hours to our trip. Then we stopped in Nashville to pick up a bed cover for Derek's new truck. That ended up being an hour there too. When we hit Nashville we started having car problems. We decided to keep on going. Things just got worse though! The car would eventually only hit a max of 30mph, which is extremely dangerous on the interstate. Luckily it was very late at night so there were hardly any cars on the road. We did make it to Maxwell AFB in Montgomery Alabama around 2 am and got the last room available to crash in for four hours. The next day the car was just worse.....my parents caught up to us and we sent the girls ahead with them. We finally made it to O.B. after 32 hours!!!!! Needless to say, we were stressed out beyond belief (the car only went 10mph for the last couple of hours!)

Anyway, the rest of vacation was enjoyable.....the resort we stayed at was amazing and the white sand beaches were pretty great too. Enjoy the slide show!!!

MAMMOTH Caves

As we were heading down south, for our LATE summer vacation, we decided to stop off at Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. It was right on the way so why not, right?! We were pretty excited to see them. We chose the Historic tour because it was one of the more kid friendly ones. It was well worth the stop although I will say that the cave we visited in Virginia was better.

Friday, September 18, 2009

It started pouring as we were walking to the cave....and it was a warm and fuzzy 54 degrees inside...hence the cold look on the girls' faces!

Hoccckking Hills

ha, ha! Can't you just hear the big ol' loogey?! We went to this place in Ohio, Hocking Hills (comparable to Turkey Run, but better sights), on Wednesday and Thursday. We rented a cabin as a late birthday gift for me since I've been wanting to go to this place for a while now. Lots of hiking = lots of pictures so I'll just post a few of my favorites. I might add a slide show of more later.....I just need to get this up here since we're taking off on more trips tomorrow! That, of course, means more posts to come!
Appropriate!
A hocking we will go, a hocking we will go!

Can you see the sphinx head?

so strong!
Upper "Falls" @ Old Man's Cave
Ash Cave --the picture doesn't do this place justice! This place was really cool.
view from Conkle's Hollow -- again, the picture doesn't do this justice. Absolutely beautiful views. 2 1/2 mile hike around the RIM of the gorge (we are so sore today!) Oh, and Allie said something really cute here...as we were walking along the trail she said it was "too hairy". We were trying to figure out what she was talking about and then realized she was talking about all of the pine needles covering the ground! Too funny!
view from inside the rock house
I just have to mention this because it was one of the highlights of our trips (Well, Derek's anyway.) We stopped to eat a late lunch on the way home and I asked Avery for a kiss. She leaned in and just as she was about to kiss me she belched the loudest burp anyone of her size could possible do! It was disgustinly hilarious!

Gymnastics and a Few Other Things

Yesterday was Allie's first day of gymnastics!! She was really shy at first, but once her friend Adeline got there she was ready to go.

Over Labor Day weekend my family came for a visit and we headed to the beach for the day. It wasn't quite as hot as it has been lately and the water was pretty chilly.....but that didn't stop most of us from getting in (I didn't get in because I had a cold).



On our way home we stopped by Young's Jersey for a BIG bowl of ice cream. So yummy! We passed this awesome field of sunflowers on the way.......
Pretty, huh!?
It was a great weekend.....thanks for visiting us guys...you know we love it when you visit!
Allie was exhausted after the busy weekend. This is how I found her shortly after everyone left:
Speaking of Allie, this weekend we found a lump on the back of her neck. So, of course, I got her in to the doctor as soon as I could. Basically, after lots of poking and prodding and tons of questions the doctor finally said that it was either a bacterial infection or cancer. Great, way to put in bluntly! Of course, there were no tests done to rule out cancer or any other type of information given except to come back in two weeks if it was still there. I was like so I guess that means you think....or hope....it's just an infection and so if that's what it is then it will just go away on it's own.......no medicine. I guess so! Gotta love military doctors!

Avery ~ 13 months

Today Avery went to her 12 month well baby visit. I know, I'm behind....that's nothing new! Everything looks good. Avery was cracking the doctor up because she's so outgoing. She went straight up to him, grabbed his hands, and started dancing. Her stats show her in the 13% for weight (18.13 lb), 18% for height(28in), and I forget what it was for her head. She's staying right there on the tiny side for everything which we expect she'll always be that way......just like Allie.

She's a very accomplished walker now. She flies across the room!! It's so fun and WEIRD to see Avery chasing Allie. It's so fun and WEIRD to see them play at their play kitchen together. For the most part, they get along great.

Avery has two new obsessions.....babies and dogs, especially dogs. When she was getting her one year pictures taken over at the Barkers all she wanted to do was go get Chloe. Whenever she hears a dog bark she gets so excited and start barking right along with them!

As far as her vocab, she's really just addeded.....baby and dog..GO FIGURE!! She does like to point a lot now though, which is pretty cute. It's cute because she has crooked fingers like her momma!

That's really about it. I'm sure she is happy to have this doctor's visit over with since she had to get 4 shots AND blood drawn! It was so sad because it took her forever to catch her breath after the shots and then she went and did the same thing with the blood being drawn :( Not looking forward to her 15 month shots!

28

Man, I'm getting old! In a few years I definitely won't want to be posting my age as the title! :)
Just wanted to share a picture of the flowers Derek got for me. I LOVE them! He never gets me flowers.......we both are kind of like what's the point...they are going to die anyway. So, that made these a total surprise and they are so beautiful!


We went to dinner at one of my fav restaurants, The Cheesecake Factory, while Kevin watched our girls (Thanks, Kev!) Derek also got me the nicest card and a new mp3 player that he already loaded up with some songs....all a subtle hint about, well you know (if I knew how to draw a fat cow here then that's what I'd draw so instead I'll draw my usual) ;)

(____)

( o o )

( - - )

U

Next week, we're going to Hocking Hills.......the plan is to get a cabin and hike around the area for a couple days. I'm very excited about it!!

The Past Week

We've actually been keeping pretty busy lately.

• We got Avery's one year pics taken by Nicole so you can check those out on her blog.
• We went to the base pool once again (wish I would have taken pics b/c Avery had the cutest swimsuit on).
• We also played frisbee golf, which we hadn't done in over a year, so that was a lot of fun.
• Derek, Abe and Kevin installed the tower on the boat and now Derek...I mean we... are anxious to get it out.
• Derek's sister, Louise, and her family visited the past two days. It had been at least 5 years, if not more, since we had seen them last. We had a little BBQ here at our house, went hiking and to the AF museum.

• Today the girls and I did another favorite pastime of ours (again, probably a year since we've done it).....geocaching! I finally figured out how to upload the waypoints straight onto my GPS, which made it a lot easier to try and find the "treasure." That's what I had to call it to entice Allie to search with me. Otherwise she just wanted to play at the playground. The first cache was full of junk, but the second one had "There's a Wocket in My Pocket" and a dinosaur book so the girls were happy with those!