squares

So I have been intrigued by the idea of a sampler afghan.  I wanted to work with my friends who do knitting or crocheting and come up with awesome random blankets.  The problem with that is there aren't that many friends who do those things or that want to.  Plus then the debate comes up, what to do with the blankets?  My friend Andrea and I have been trying to get a group of people together on a somewhat regular basis to work on projects.  It has been pretty hard to arrange.  So we have a new plan.  We now have a host house, a few committed people and a set start date.  We also have a project.  We are going to knit squares for charity.  Check out www.knit-a-square.com and you will see what we are up to.  We can knit or crochet squares, hats, sweaters, and mail them off, and someone puts them together into blankets for orphans and needy kids in Africa. 

A while ago I got a bunch of wool.  It was super cheap so I bought it figuring I would figure out something to do with it later.  This is it.  The squares are better when made out of wool because they won't burn the little children up!  No seriously, wool is flame resistant versus the acrylic that will melt and catch on fire if it is too close to the open flame.  Anyway.  It is my preschool knit time, so I better get going on the square.

Rhys' sweater is still in progress.  Almost totally done with the body and I will just have to do the sleeves.  Hopefully in the next week or two I will have that done.  Ava can't wear her sweater I made her to school because she needs to have her name in it!  I need little made by Emily tags to sew into my stuff.  I am clearly at that professional of a level.  I think I will then be making some mittens.  I am completely in love with the sweater yarn from Spud and Chloe and they have some good colors for mittens.

poor bubba

Poor Rhys. He never gets any blog posts. His 18 months milestone post came and went and I never posted anything! Now I can't even remember his specific measurement to catch up. He doesn't have any activities for me to post pictures of or anything like that. He is just the little cool dude who hangs out with me.

Let's talk about Rhys for a bit. He is a funny, funny little guy. He has adopted Ava's knock knock joke. Rhys: Knock, knock. You: Who's there? Rhys: Poopie. You: Poopie who? Rhys: (blank stare). Then he will laugh.

He does this thing where he will frown at you to get you to frown and then he pulls his face into this crazy grin, similar to what you would picture if you were trying to smile while on a roller coaster. As soon as you do that face, he will frown again. This will continue on and on.

Rhys and Ava play pretty well together most of the time. He has started to think it is funny to take what she is playing with and run away with it. I hear "Mine!!!!!!!!!!" followed by shreiking about 20 times a day. I don't know who is doing it because they pretty much sound exactly alike when crying or screaming.

He loves to sing and dance. Ever since he was a baby, I would generally chant while rocking him. "Rhys-y, piecey" I don't know why. It wasn't very creative. Ava had a whole song. I guess I could only rock and get slightly above a hum. I was able to keep going even if I was falling asleep. He still likes it when I do it, and now will sing with me.

(he has a thing for hats)

He and Ava are definitely a lot alike. Both are generally very gentle and affectionate and like to cuddle. Rhys is a lot more forthcoming with new people than Ava ever was or still is. He rarely is shy. I don't know if he really knows what that word means. He talks a lot. I can pretty much discuss most things with him and at least find out what he wants or things about it. I think a few of his meltdowns are related to him being frustrated that we don't know what he is saying, but we get most things. His favorite phrases are "I like it." "I no like it." "Open it." "Close it." "Cute" "Don't touch Pepe." "Get down!"

This is what happens when you use a candle snuffer as a microphone.  It is hard to be a performer.

I love where he is at right now. I can't believe he is racing closer to 2 and farther away from baby. I love that he still wants to cuddle first thing in the morning, says "I waf you!" at least 30 times away. He still calls Ava "Aya" or "Awa" and is light enough to carry around. Ava has suddenly gotten long and all leggy and is definitely not a baby anymore. Just thinking that soon the Awa will become Ava makes me want to go home and video tape his crazy dance. "Watch this!!!"

picture heavy

I got this fancy new phone...not really fancy exactly but it is new. I have regular internet access on it, so I can look at a normal webpage. Which means I rarely got onto a normal computer anymore, which means...all my posts sit festering in my head instead of getting typed out.

We have started a new phase! Preschool. So far Ava loves it. She says sometimes people don't share the play kitchen even though she does. I am not quite sure she has the entire concept of sharing down. She says she has made friends but so far doesn't remember any of their names. I think she got tired of me counting down the days with her until the day she started so when it came time to leave for school and I wanted to take a picture, she wasn't having it.

On day number 2 of school, she started making excited little giggle noises when we pulled into the parking lot. I think that means she liked it.

Ava also started dance class.

She has been asking for a while to take dance, even though I had her in swimming lessons. I knew it was the beginning of the classes and even though I only wanted her in one activity at a time (she is currently still playing soccer once a week) I would have to start in dance classes now if she wanted to take them at all this year. I decided not to fight about swimming lesson for the time being, maybe we will take them in the summer when the pool is more enticing. She will learn to swim eventually. So we started ballet and tap. It is a combined class. They do about 10 minutes of stretching and warming up, 25 minutes of ballet, and then 10 minutes of tap. The teacher opens the blinds for the last few minutes of class so we can see what they are doing. Ava is in the very beginner class with two other little girls. She is the the oldest one by about 6 months. So far all I have seen them do is practice walking across the room on the front taps and then jumping with both feet. Ava can manage both of those.

Better late than never

Here are some Ava birthday fun pictures!

Making their cookie pizzas.

Picking out toppings.

Decorating their pizza.

Getting ready to spin the wheel to win free candy. Ava won $5 gift certificates for everybody at the party. She sure knows how to be a good hostess.

Bozo buckets for more candy prizes. They also played candy bowling but I didn't get any pictures because I was assisting someone in the potty and missed the whole thing.

Decorating the birthday cupcake.

She definitely doesn't mind being the center of attention. "Happy birthday to you"

Present time.

Making cotton candy.

saving money is all the rage these days...

Many people out there have blogs on saving money. I have been looking for easy ways for me to save/earn money by doing simple things. I have yet to become a super coupon-er. As of late, I have not had the extra brain power to use on keeping everything straight. I have decided to just keep it simple for now and just try to use coupons for household items. I am always pretty good about shopping the sales with food and stuff, but a huge chunk of our budget goes to things like shampoo, toilet paper, etc. I haven't quite devised a plan yet, other to follow other blogs and such that let me know about the sales and good deals, so I know when to go out and stock up.

Another way I control spending is actually to shop online. It is much easier to stick with a budget when I can see my running total, compare prices elsewhere and all that. This brings me to this! This maybe the coolest thing I have figured out in a long time. Ebates is a website that allows you to earn cash back on purchases you make online. They are normal stores I shop at too. As long as I am logged in and go to the store through their site, I get cash back from the site on things I would have bought anyway. The site pays out quarterly, so the little percentages can add up quickly, plus right now if you sign up through the link I provided, you will get $5 automatically if you make a $20 online order in the first 90 days. It really is normal sites like target, walmart, barnes and noble, shutterfly, overstock, etc.

Another little thing is swagbucks. You login and use it as your search engine, instead of say google, and randomly you are awarded "bucks" for your searches. They add up little by little and you can cash them in for actual items or gift certificates. Who knows, maybe save up all your swagbucks for a year and have a little stash for Christmas. See the little widget (add of sorts) to the right? Click on it if you would like to sign up for swagbucks. Doesn't hurt to try!

Coming soon...the wine tour weekend!

Currently reading: NOTHING!!!!!!!! Yikes!

4

Have you missed me? Sorry I have been busy focusing on revamping my life. Justin and I have been going to the gym 5 days a week like crazy people. Justin has signed up for this 90 day weight loss/fitness challenge. I officially started yesterday but I don't think he is really starting until tomorrow.

Ava turned 4! I would like to think she had an awesome birthday (pictures will hopefully be posted sometime) Justin took the day off of work and we went to the zoo. Ava really likes it when all of us get to do things together. We had a picnic while we were there and finally got to see the dolphin show. It was closed all last year so Ava has never seen it before. Actually I don't think the dolphins have actually been there at all since they were repairing the tank. The show was completely full, we waited in line forever to get in and we sat there sweating like crazy waiting for the 15 minute show. Ava and Rhys loved it though. Rhys kept yelling that they were "schwimming"

We were touch and go whether or not we would even make it back in time for Ava's party thanks to traffic. Ava had talked about having a friend party this year. We definitely couldn't handle a friend/family combo party, that is just way too many people or two separate parties. So we had a friend party and it was awesome! She invited five of her little girl friends to a candy shop party. They got dressed in little aprons and made cookie candy pizza, decorated their cupcakes, played bozo bucks and candy bowling with a giant jaw breaker, made their own pixie sticks, and cotton candy. Ava won everybody $5 of candy so I actually took them shopping in the candy store. It was crazy, but they really weren't too bad. A few times I was like get your hand out of the candy jar! Ava smiled the whole time. It was so funny to watch her and all of her friends interact like little people. They just thought it would be fun to see who could actually jump and get both feet off the ground at the same time. They complimented each other on their clothes. It was hilarious.

I am halfway done with the sweater for Rhys, but not exactly moving fast on it. Our garden is growing things. We have a lot of cherry tomatoes which is good because Rhys eats them at pretty much every meal. We are apparently growing a watermelon that looks suspiciously like a cucumber. Anybody ever grown a watermelon with spikes?

So restricted

Just recently the old habit of thinking summer was over at the end of August due to school starting finally ended for me. I stopped thinking things like "oh I only have a couple more weeks to wear this before I am stuck in a cold building and wearing my new school clothes." and the likes. Summer ends for us when the weather turns to fall. Not this year though. I guess we will have a transition time. Summer will slow down when Ava starts preschool at the end of August. She will be in school three afternoons a week. That will give us two full days to continue our so called summer schedule. It just makes me feel like I have to pack in the activities. The weeks are flying by and it is just crazy to me. I actually kind of hate the fact that our lives are dictated by a specific school schedule. It is only going to get worse and that actually really annoys me. I don't think it annoys Ava though. She is getting more and more excited about school. She wants to drive by the building all the time. We have also started keeping our eyes open for school clothes. She is definitely growing so trying to figure out sizes is hard. I am thinking she will be in a 3t though. She told me the other day that she doesn't think she should wear jeans to school because jeans make her crazy, so she should just wear comfy pants. She probably is going to end up in comfy pants most of the time since jeans don't really stay on.

We joined a gym...again. I think we have finally done it though. We have stopped compromising on what we want and need from a gym, such as location, hours, childcare, classes, and people I know who go so I have work out buddies just to get something cheaper. Bonus of this gym is there is an outdoor zero depth pool, so we are going to hang out there as a family after we work out this weekend. Hopefully by Christmas we are both much more in shape. I had bloodwork done a few months ago and they said I had high cholesterol. Not high enough for medication, but something to watch which means overall lifestyle change. Justin had his bloodwork done today so we will see what the results are for Mr. Bacon.

reading now: Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore