Ava's a Year Old!

Today was Ava's 1st Birthday! We are up in North Idaho for the Holidays and had some friends over and some cake and presents. She loved everything about her birthday. She is so big. I can't believe how time flies. She is walking everywhere, getting in to everything and starting to say more words. I love how amazing things are through her eyes. Everything to her is so amazing and special. I love to watch her discover things. We are so grateful for her! We couldn't ask for a better little girl! Here is a look back on our first year! ENJOY!

New Toothbrush

Ava got a new toothbrush today, and it has become her favorite toy. She has chewed on it all day. I thought that her Uncle Trevor would be so proud! She will be one of your best patients for sure! She is getting her eye teeth in, and so I think that it must have felt extra good on her gums. At least this is something that I am not paranoid about her having in her mouth!

Caroling!

Tonight for FHE we went caroling. Yes, mom and dad, I went caroling. I know that I gave you a hard time growing up about how I didn't want to go caroling and how we always ended up making fools of ourselves....my mind flashes back to the time when dad fell on the ice chasing after our neighbors who then almost ran him over....the time we saw another neighbor in his undies....and the many times that we were almost killed by various guard dogs....Oh and who could forget the time the lady opened the door and told us to be quiet...classic!
Riley and I are the FHE leaders for our group and we had a request for our activity this month to be caroling. So we made some Christmas goodies and set out into the Rexburg night....
This is some of our group (The cool ones who showed up!) From left to right, there is Cassie & York, Aubrie & Thomas and down front is us!

Ava got to hitch a ride on Riley. She is getting to be quite the walker now, but she isn't fast enough to keep up with us, so we squeezed her in the baby Bjorn, which we have to retire when she gains a few more pounds and off we were. She loved caroling!

This is a photo of the group in action. We had a great time kicking off the Christmas season!

We hope everyone has a fun season!

How many Alphabet Letters can You stick in your mouth??

Ava got some new alphabet letters and numbers and she loves to play with them. 'Playing' means pulling them off the fridge and on to the floor as fast as she can, as well as seeing how many she can stick in her mouth. Luckily, they are so big she can't choke, but I still get nervous about everything going in the mouth all the time.

Here is Ava's tag. She looks so funny in the picture like she is a tough gangster marking her territory. What a sweet little girl :)

These were Riley's contributions.... Poo, cleverly made with the letter 8 turned sideways, and SMRT, which is supposed to me smart. Now this is proof, in referring back to the last post about me marrying a younger man...one who thinks the word Poo is hilarious! At least he fits in with the other boys in my family!

Now how many letter do you think you can fit in your mouth? Ava got to 4! What a talented child we have.

The U is her favorite by far. It fits in so nicely! What a cutie!

Tag Again....this time it's for Riley!

Tamar tagged me for my husband Riley, so here it is....

What is his name? Riley Zane Crebs
How long have you been married? 2 Years
How long did you date? 6 months...: ) It was way too fast!
How old is he? 25...I am 6 months older than him...keeping with the theme in my family of older women and younger men.
Who eats more? Riley can out eat me for sure! He can eat and eat and then in one hour he’s hungry again! he never exercises cause he doesn’t have time, and he still is so skinny! Someday it will catch up to him!
Who said I love you first? Riley did. I was horrible at saying those words back then!
Who is taller? Riley by like 8 inches. I think I am shrinking.
Who sings better? Well I guess I do, cause I used to take voice lessons and all that stuff, but I don’t really like to let people hear me sing. Riley has a great voice though.
Who is smarter? Riley would say me. For some reason he thinks I am a genius. I choose not to correct him and just let him think that. It comes in handy sometimes. But I am no longer in school and so Riley is learning all sorts of stuff, and likes to tell me about all he is learning. I think that he won’t think I am so smart for much longer!
Whose temper is worse? Hmm...I guess we are equal. We are both pretty even tempered, so I don’t know. We can get mad though.
Who does the laundry? I do mostly, just cause I am the one home, but he will toss in a load every once in a while.
Who does the dishes? Whoever cooks, doesn’t clean! So Riley usually does the dinner dishes while I take care of Ava. Otherwise, we just do the dished we dirty.
Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? I think that I do now. It changed when we moved cause I have to be near the door incase Ava wakes up, I can be closer to the door to get her.
Who pays the bills? I pay most of them. Riley takes care of his student loan stuff.
Who mows the lawn? I hope that I can when we have a lawn. I LOVE TO MOW! We both can’t wait to have a garden and do yard work. It is something that we both enjoy. Riley is more picky about yard work though. He worked landscaping one summer, so he has to do it just right!
Who cooks dinner? I do mostly. I love to cook! Riley has a signature dish though.. pork chops and mushroom sauce. Yumm!
Who drives when you are together? Usually Riley, but we are trying to only use one car so I drop him off and pick him up, so then I am driving more these days.
Who is more stubborn? We are both pretty stubborn! We don’t talk about politics, because we both have our opinions and they don’t match some times. But we are both right!
Who is the first to admit when they are wrong? Riley, he is good at it. I like that!
Whose parents do you see the most? We did see my parents more for a while, but now we are closer to Riley’s family.
Who proposed? Riley did. Once without a ring (it was spur of the moment thing) and then he did it again when he had a ring.
Who has more friends? Well.....Riley knows more people in Rexburg. I am at home and he gets to go and socialize. However, I have more close friends that I keep in touch with from my past.
Who has more siblings? It's a tie. But I have more in-law siblings cause Riley is the oldest of his brothers.
Who wears the pants in the family? Neither of us really. We are horrible and always want the other one to make the decision. This is how it usually goes...” I don’t know, what do you think.....I made the decision last time it is your turn!” We are horrible! I think right now Ava wears the pants!

I tag Erin, Ashley, Holly, Camille and Stephanie!

AVA'S 1st THANKSGIVING!

This year was Ava's first thanksgiving! Here are some pictures of her enjoying it! We went down to Salt Lake and spent it with Riley's family. We had a great time! Ava loves her Grandparents and Uncles and really loves their dog! I think that Pepper is probably glad to see her go, cause she likes to bug him when he is trying to take a nap.
It was a full week. We celebrated my 26th birthday on Wednesday. I got some great presents....Thanks everyone....and Riley took me to lunch. It was a lot of fun. Then we had Thanksgiving dinner with his family and later that night saw some extended family. It was fun to see everyone and catch up and they couldn't believe how big Ava had gotten! We spent the rest of the week hanging out and shopping. Then Riley's brother Max turned 20 today, so last night we went to dinner with him and had some leftover pumpkin pie. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAX!
We had a great time and already miss being around family. This Thanksgiving we were so thankful for family to be around. It gets kinda lonely in Rexburg! We hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Here is a great one of Riley after Thanksgiving dinner....classic!

Little Princess

We had a week off for Thanksgiving and we went down to see Riley's Family. Riley's mom had 4 boys, and all though I am sure she loves them very much, she is happy to have a little girl around. These are some pictures of what she did to the guest room at their house. She painted the walls pink, and the crib a few different colors. She hand painted flowers on the crib and there is even some pink velvet and nice pink lace on the walls. Needless to say, Ava loved her little princess Crib and slept like a rock the whole week!! Thanks Grandma Crebs!

Scrub a dub!

This morning Riley was getting ready to take a shower and Ava HATES when we take showers...whenever someone is in the shower, she crys at the door until you are done. This is why I now shower at night when she is in bed. If I ever tried showering when I was alone with her, she would climb in the tub balling her eyes out. So they were kinda unproductive! Anyway, this morning she cried when Riley went into the bathroom and so Riley put her in the sink as a joke and she loved it! It is like her favorite place now! Here are some cute pictures....not a lot of clothes, but still cute!

Riley is mad at me for this one, but I thought it was cute! He thinks that he is so skinny cause he hasn't been able to lift weights in a while...waa waa waa! I have no sympathy for him! :)

Piggy Tails!

Yesterday Ava had real big girl pigtails. She looked so grown up and so cute. It is amazing how fast time flies. There are some pictures of her pigtails, and her bangs that I have had to cut 3 times already! I was going to let them grow out, but they just grow straight down in her face, so for now, she will have some bangs!

One Little Monkey Jumping on the Bed!

Ava loves to jump and bounce on anything she can find. These are some pictures of her on our bed. Before we make the bed and the covers are piled up she loves to get thrown into them. The bad thing about it is when she sees a blanket or pillow on the floor she will just dive into them and sometimes they aren't soft enough and she will hit the floor pretty hard. She's a tough girl though and never cries, but just looks surprised that it was so hard! She is so funny!

Flying through the air!

Who does Ava look like?

Busy Little Bee

For our ward Halloween Party on Saturday night, Ava dressed up as a bumble bee! She was so funny and cute. We couldn't stop laughing. There is a hood, but every time we put it up she would try to rip off the whole costume. Here she is with a very festive grandma!
And her dad that was a back to the future dude. Ava wanted those glasses really bad!

Ava and me.

Here is a rear view. The funniest part is there is a stinger! It was so cute! And you can see the hood with the antenna on it.

Here is Ava with a piece of pumpkin she grabbed from the pumpkin pile that grandma and Riley were creating. She thought it was great!

Ava and her little friend at the Halloween party sharing some kinda goodies.

Here's the gang working hard at carving the perfect Halloween pumpkin and Ava making a mess. The pumpkin later broke, but it would have been a winner for sure!

Here are the ones we did at home. My mom carved the happy face and I carved the candy corn. My other idea on the other side broke, so default candy corn it is!

We hope that everyone has a great and safe Halloween!!

Grandma Griffitts Came to Town!

This weekend My mom came to town. She has two good reasons to come, she has a grandbaby down here and I am her hairdresser!! So it has been about two months and she couldn't take it anymore. She flew down on Thursday afternoon and Ava and I picked her up while Riley was in class. It was just about lunch time so we ran some errands and then got some lunch and brought it to the falls to have a picnic. It was a beautiful day!

There were a ton of Canadian geese standing in a line right on top of the falls. There were so many, you couldn't see where the line ended.

Then we went on a walk and walked around Rexburg for a few hours. We went to see the temple and took a picture in front of it. You can't see the temple, but we are all in it!

We had a great time with Grandma and hope to see her again soon, maybe even Grandpa too! :)

Fall Time

It is fall in Rexburg! Ava and I went to Erin's in-laws again to visit them and it was a beautiful fall day! So the kids played and ate the fall foliage and Erin and I got to talk and laugh. It was a great time! This is the cutest one of them sharing a leaf.

Here is Ava covered.

They are so happy and have fun together, even though Ava tries to knock over Cameron all the time. She tries to use him to stand up and it ends up just knocking him down.

They had a big dog, and the kids were pretty good around him. Sometimes Ava got a little nervous, but they are pretty tough little kids. Here is Bernie giving Ava a nice bath...he's so thoughtful!

This picture is so funny. It looks like Ava is so disgusted that I would put a little princess in such filth!

We love having Erin and Cam around!

GAME OF TAG!

Well I was lucky enough to have been tagged by my best sister-in-law ever, Tamar. The rules are as follows:
1. Each person list 6 facts/habits about themselves.
2. At the end of the post, the player tags 6 people and posts their names, and then goes to their blog and leaves them a comment, letting them know they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog for the rules.

So here we go....
1. My dream is to be a professional ballroom dancer. But for now I stick to dancing around with Ava, cause she can't talk yet and tell me to stop cause I look stupid.

2. One of my goals is to finish my bachelor degree. I didn't finish, cause I changed my mind about what I wanted to do and then after three years in college I left for beauty school. I like that I have the skills to do hair, but I would have loved to finish school. I think that education is important. As soon as Riley is done it will be my turn!

3. I do my own hair. I know, as a previous hairstylist, it sends chills down your spine to hear someone sit in your chair and say..."I did it myself." And I have had my fair share of taking to people and having the old discussion that was brought up back in the days of 'Steal Magnolias' that you never trust anyone who does their own hair! But after the birth of Ava things changed. I no longer got my hair done at work for free! It took a while to get used to putting the foils in right and the first time it took my an hour and 1/2 to highlight my hair. Now I can do it in 20 min! Someday I can again go to the salon and pay outrageous amounts of money to get it done, but for now...that is my little secret.

4. My lowest 'brain age' on Riley's Brain Age game is 28. I will be 26 years old in one month, so it is not so far off, and I am beating Riley so that is all that matters.

5. I get board really easily. I love to rearrange the furniture, change the blog background, and really anything that doesn't have to be the same all the time, I love to change a lot!

6. I found Ava a Halloween costume for only $2!! I will post the pictures of our ward Halloween party next week and they will show the cute little outfit. I love to bargain shop! The cheaper things are the cuter they become. I get a sense of pride when the sales person says..."You spent $8.42 and you saved $318.00 today". TRUE STORY TOO! I love a bargain!

Thanks Tamar, and I chose to tag.... My Mom, Camille, Erin, Ellie (Jenni), Meagan, Ashli!

TAG YOU'RE IT!

Ten Months Old

Today Ava had her 10 month birthday and she got to share an ice cream cone with her daddy. Every time she took a bite, she looked like she didn't like it, but them she kept wanting more. It was funny.

She kept staring and Riley until he gave her another little lick, and when he popped the whole thing in his mouth, she was like...HEY!

So he gave her a little piece of the cone and she liked that.

She is getting really good at standing. She will stand for a few seconds and then slowly squat down and sit. It is really fun to see how fast she is catching on to things and getting so big! She thinks she is pretty cute too!!

This is her breakfast. She enjoyed it... needless to say.

This was after her breakfast!

Here she is again...the little mess maker in action. She now can reach the second and third drawers. She got into the toilet paper and the towels. There is no stopping this little one.
**Note the fashion statement of a fleece with no pants! She hates getting dressed now and so I figure if I can get one out of the two on, we are good!

SO... while I was cleaning up the bathroom, she got into the kitchen "junk" drawer. I came out and found her with a screwdriver, a creme brulee blow torch (don't worry there was no gas in it) and a little mini stapler among other non lethal things. So we went to the store, got plastic bins and put everything in plastic bins and up high. Now the only thing in those drawers are bibs and plastic bowls. I feel a little better about that now.

This is her and Riley, watching her favorite movie...Baby Neptune explores water. It is her only movie, but her favorite non the less. It is what I put on when I need to make dinner and she just sits there and stares. It is really funny. There are little puppets that come up and scare her though, so then she crawls to me and I put her back in the living room and she is enthralled until the next dumb puppet scares her.