15 minutes of fame

Our niece Holly works in marketing and decided Ava was cuter than the stock photos she had at her disposal. She did a photo shoot with her over the weekend and has already created this banner to put in one of their stores. So what if nobody in that town knows us and we'll never be at that store. It was still fun!

happy birthday tara!

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear TTTTTTTARA!!!!! Happy Birthday to you! Hope you catch a big one on your special day!

ava's in kindergarten!

I know for a lot of parents it's bittersweet when their baby goes to kindergarten. That's how I felt when Gabe started at least. With Ava, I did not have this feeling. Not one bit. She is ready. She has been ready for almost a year now in my opinion. She is so anxious to learn. She is mad she doesn't know how to read or tie a shoe yet. She gets frustrated when she can't make her little 'g' just right. She brings her "homework" to the before/after school program and works on it before she plays. She wears her "glasses" to school when she's feeling extra studious. (she doesn't really wear glasses by the way) She's a teachers pet, social butterfly, class clown all wrapped into one. I love it! Ava starting school has been so much fun. She raises her hand at dinner now when she wants to say something, and she shows off a new skill or tells at least one story about what she did each day. When I asked her the first week of school who she sat by at lunch, here's what she told me.

Ava: "I sat by Pavo"
Me: "Pablo?"
Ava: "NO....PAVO"
Me: "Pavo?"
Ava: "Yes, but he told me to call him avocado because his name is hard to say. And he calls me banana. Well, I call him Mr. Avocado and he calls me Mrs. Banana."

Now that is something I need to remember!

back to school

I am so far behind with blogging, that I don't even know where to begin. I'm imagining the next several posts to be extremely random and haphazard. A whole last half of the summer, including Gabe's birthday, summer camping, soccer games and so much more has gone on. I guess we were having too much fun for me to stop and blog. For now, I'll start in the middle. Gabe's first day of school. Not such a big deal under normal circumstances. He's in 3rd grade now, he knows the ropes...right? Except this year, less than one week before school started, we found out Gabe was accepted to a local charter school. Great! Except we had to switch gears, return school clothes, try to find uniforms (who knew tan pants without cargo pockets were that tough to find), and, oh yeah, sell Gabe on leaving his friends and starting over at a new school.

We did it! I still am not sure how we got Gabe from "No. No thank you. Absolutely not." to "Yes, mom please, I want to go..." in less than a one hour conversation. But we did, and we are so thankful for it. Gabe has been a real trooper. He misses his friends while he slowly makes new ones. The longer school days and more specialized time have already made a difference. He's been proud of his progress and improvements. We are so proud of him! And really, he looks so good in the uniform.