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.

Idaho Falls Zoo

Yesterday we wanted to do something fun, so I looked on the Internet for things to do around here, and come to find out Idaho Falls has a zoo!! We thought that Ava would love it, so we decided to take what we thought would be a "day trip" to Idaho Falls. Well, I think that Riley and I are blissfully ignorant. I don't know what kind of Zoo we thought it would be in Idaho Falls, but we were pretty, well, shocked. It was like in the middle of a park, and on like 3 acres. Riley I think hit the nail on the head when he described it as.... "An old miniature golf course that had been turned into a zoo! " We made it through the zoo in like 30 min, even with stopping and looking for a while. Ava liked it though, so that was all that mattered.

There was a nice little petting zoo. Ava liked it a lot. This is the Lama there.

This was the otter display. I think that there were 2 otters, but we never really saw them. This is how most of the exhibits were....

I think that this was a turtle exhibit.

Ava thought that the Zebras were GREAT!

Little break in front of the Zebras.

The donkey was really friendly. Ava loved him, but the sign warned against petting, cause the donkeys bite!

Here is the Lion. There was a boy and a girl lion. They were huge and beautiful. It was kinda sad cause they were only on like a 1/4 of an acre. I know I sound like a dork, but we felt like we needed to free the animals!!

This was some kinda African cat. It was really hungry and the wanted to eat everything, I think it would have liked us too!

These were the pelican's home. There were a lot of other ducks in there too, and the pelicans just kept chasing the ducks. Ava thought that they were great!

Here are a few giant camels. The funny thing is that you can see to main road and houses in the background, different scenery for a zoo.

This is the Tiger. It was just pacing back and forth waiting for food.

Here is a little goat that was really nice. Ava got a kick out of him.

And last but not least, the giant tortoises. They were like 500 lbs!

So we are trying to get around and explore on the weekends before it gets too cold to do anything but snowboard. Hopefully there will be more adventures to come!

Ava's New Tricks!

Ava is becoming a little mess maker. As soon as I turn around from cleaning up one mess, there is a new one waiting for me! Good thing she's cute.

She LOVES the dishwasher...whenever she hears it, or sees it open, she gets to the kitchen as fast as she can and props her little self on it and won't get down until you move her yourself.

I thought that having an entertainment center with drawers and cabinets would save me a lot of time from cleaning up DVDs and videos, however, now that she knows if there is a knob, it can be opened....nothing is safe. So today, like everything else, Riley had to put baby locks on them. What a little monkey!

This is her new smile. She crunches up her whole face. She is learning so many new faces, it is funny. She also learned her first word besides "mama" and "dada"....On Tuesday she said "Apple!" We have a video of it, but I need to figure out how to get it from the video camera to the computer...so hopefully soon!

Winter Wonderland....in October!

This is a picture taken a few hours later....it just kept getting worse and worse. There were tree limbs down cause it was such heavy snow! Thankfully this week it has been sunny and in the 60's!

I know, I know you are all thinking...I wish I lived in Rexburg and it was already winter time! Well I don't mean to make you jealous, or anything, but here it is everyone....SNOW! Last weekend it snowed, but didn't stick and this weekend, it is sticking! We were up early, as we always are with a baby in the house, sitting around, dehydrating all the apples we picked, and waiting for conference to start, and I noticed something, opened the blinds and there it was....snow on everything! Riley, bless his heart, loves snow. He was all smiles and excited for winter, the snowboards have been unpacked since last weekend when the first signs of winter appeared, which is the one thing I enjoy in winter! (He served his mission in Canada, so I think it makes him feel like he is in Canada again) I guess it is a little fun to have snow so early, but I know that come Christmas, I will be ready for summer and it will still be months away!
So for all of you in St. Louis, Texas, Philadelphia and all those other hot and humid places, you know where to come when you get a little hankering for some snow!! :)

Ava and Cam

This week we have had a great treat! My friend and old roommate Erin, and her little boy, Cam came to town! Corey is helping his family with Spud Harvest and so I get to play with Erin all week long! Cameron is a year old and such a handsome little man. Ava loved having a friend and they loved stealing each others food and sippy cups. We hope someday they will fall in love and get married ! That would be great!

Then we went out to Erin's in-laws farm and picked some yummy apples! It snowed on Saturday and has been really cold, so the apples were so sweet! They tasted like apple jolly ranchers! Ava and Cam tried hard to stay warm and had fun for a while.

They liked their apples. We are having a great time with Erin and Cam and wish Corey and his family good luck with the Spuds!