Cocoa Beach and Amanda's Wedding

We spent a beautiful few days in Cocoa Beach Florida with my family.




Avery had a blast playing with his cousins. This was the first time he actually played in the waves.


Gaven catching waves




Alia was the flower girl in the wedding. This is a picture of her before the wedding. The plan was for her to walk with Austin down the aisle.


This was Alia throwing a fit on the floor a few minutes before the wedding.


She refused to walk with Austin, let alone be put down so last minute I had to walk with her. The best man had to walk alone.


This picture is the only evidence we have that Alia was actually in the wedding. Scott had to pry her out of my arms just after this and take her away. He laid her down to change her diaper, she put her dress over her head and fell asleep. Both Scott and Alia missed the wedding and all of the pictures.














Trying to take the attention off of my bad tan lines. I tried so hard to have no lines for her wedding and I was doing great until the day before the wedding when I burned.


Here she is at the reception after a nice long nap. She was all smiles here.

Pretty and Practical

I have been eager to make something after Alia's bookcase but haven't had the time for a big project. I had some small scraps of wood laying around and decided to enhance our kitchen a bit. I always like making things over buying things because you can create exactly what you need. We are constantly cutting food up for Alia and really needed a small cutting board to cut her food on. I scrounged up some leftover strips of maple and black walnut. and added a bit of flair with blood wood feet. It turned out prettier than I thought.



Next I went to the utensil drawer. We only had one wooden spoon in our kitchen and it was used many times every day. I have always wanted to make my own utensils so I found some unique wood to experiment with. I realized that making several was as easy as making one so I made a bunch which spurred several gifts which is why I haven't posted this earlier.



The wood in these pics is either Bocote or Black Walnut. The Black Walnut is pretty but the Bocote polishes up and finishes much better. We have been using all of these for the past couple of months and am happy to say that they are practical, useful, and pretty. I don't think I'm going to go into business doing this anytime soon because I would have to pay myself about $0.10/hr to compete with any store.

Lazy Summer Days

What would you do if these firefighters showed up at your house to fight a fire? Alia was so cute when we started to play dress-up. She caught on right away when we were running around fighting fires. She was the one that brought me the hat to put on her head so she could join in.


This has become one of their favorite spots. It's way too hot here to even consider a bath so this is how we use our tub in the summer.


Avery started "summer school" a few weeks ago. We do school in the basement while Alia is taking her nap. My goal is to get him to learn his letters by the end of summer. That's easier said than done since he would rather do anything else. To make it fun I hide letter pictures around the house for him to find. He then finishes a story that highlights that days letter. This is his favorite part since he can make everything get eaten or squashed. After the hard academic stuff we play a fun letter game. I don't know where it started but we assign an action to each letter. If he says the letter and touches it that action happens. So it works like this. If he does "F" I freeze. "A" and I fall down, "B" and I get up. "C" sprays me with fire, "D" ice, this goes on and on, weird, I know but it works.


For school we find the pictures for each letter, trace the letter, glue the pictures, write a letter story, and write his name. I know I spelled crocs wrong in the story but I couldn't remember how to spell it at the time and Alia was letting me know on the monitor that nap was over.


They needed to get some energy out so I made a hopscotch on the floor with tape.


We went golfing for the first time with the Mom's Club. It was a lot of fun, but way too hot!





Avery loved it and was able to hit the ball a long ways.


We've been doing a lot of baking even though it's too hot out. We made about 120 cookies this last weekend to send off to the dads/grandpa for father's day.

Aunt Laura's Visit

We had a nice relaxing Memorial Day weekend this year with Aunt Laura.


Feeding catfish. They actually come up on shore to get the bread and you can touch them. It's a little intimidating when you do and they manage to splash quite a bit of water on you. Avery wouldn't get too close this time because he was soaked and needed new clothes last time we fed them.


Alia loved throwing bread in, but wanted to go in herself. She loves playing in water.


On the spur of the moment we decided to let Alia and Avery play in the creek. They had so much fun. Avery loves exploring and was trying to catch tadpoles.


She really didn't want to leave.


We enjoyed a nice bike ride. Avery looks bored but it's really because he's annoyed I want a picture of him. Gotta love this age!


Laura and her invisible kid. We have awesome neighbors- thanks for loaning the bike Caren we had a blast!


Laura used my helmet so I got to wear Avery's sweet crayon and cow helmet.


We rode our bikes to the pool and went swimming. During our swim it started to pour so we left. I shouldn't have changed them out of their suits because they got soaked playing in the rain. They had so much fun splashing each other.


We had never been to Centennial Park in Atlanta so we decided to visit on Monday. Avery had a lot of fun in the fountains and would have stayed all day. Alia was uncertain at first and started to cry, but began to enjoy it by the end.

Seriously Amazing!!

This weekend my sister came to visit and we watched Julie & Julia. Anyone that likes cooking would enjoy this movie. It really made us hungry and we decided then and there that we were making a dessert. We googled Julia Child's favorite dessert and found a recipe for Reine De Saba (Chocolate Almond Cake). We weren't that excited about it because it seemed very plain and almost picked something more spectacular sounding. In the end we decided to make it because it was quick and easy and we wanted to try "Julia's favorite". Wow!! I'm so glad we did. I can't quite explain the explosion of taste that hit my tongue when I sampled the first bite. It was soft and moist and dissolved on my tongue. The taste was exquisite! It was like a Willy Wonka experience. First you taste chocolate, amazing chocolate, then it slowly melds into dark chocolate mixed with almonds. If it stopped there it would be the best cake I ever had but it doesn't. By now the cake is dissolving like chocolatey cotton candy and the almond flavor slowly opens up and then disappears into chocolatey creamy rum. This was the first cake that I ate slowly, morsel by morsel, savoring every bite. All I have to say is this was good and everyone should make it. Seriously, try it and you will never look at a regular cake the same again.

Determination

Alia's week long determination finally paid off this week. She always watches me buckle and unbuckle her car seat, stroller, backpack, and highchair. She is fascinated and wants me to show her how to do it over and over again. Tonight when I was cleaning up dinner she walked over to the highchair and tried to buckle it herself. She succeeded in buckling the 3 pieces together all by herself!






I'm in love with those curls!

Backpacking in the North Georgia Mountains

This weekend we celebrated Mother's Day by going backpacking!!! We have always loved backpacking but haven't tried to go since the children were born. Now that Avery can hike for longer distances we decided to look for a hut hike. We found a hike-inn about 5 miles in in the Georgia Mountains and were thrilled we were finally able to go.


This picture is the last time we went backpacking. It was taken in Michigan in 2005 when we did another hut hike. We always talked about the day we were going to be able to bring our kids with us. It was an overwhelming moment when we were hiking on Mother's Day with our two kids.


2010 with Avery and Alia. I'm sad that Venus wasn't with us but dogs weren't allowed and she never would have been able to make the hike that far with her bad knee. Scott and I both had to carry our packs on the front and the kids on our backs (when Avery was being carried). It was pretty tiring hiking so much in but we made it.


Avery did a great job. He hiked around 1.5 miles carrying his own pack. He loved that he had a water backpack. He was also very diligent about looking for the green blazes that marked our trail. He kept saying, "Look, we're on the right trail!"




Alia did a great job. She even fell asleep on my back on the way out. She walked for a short while but it took way too long since she wanted to pick everything up.


Avery and his water backpack.


This was the lodge we hiked to. They provided all of the food and linens so we only had to hike in our personal items. The only difficult thing was hiking in all of Alia's cloth diapers but they were a better option than the disposables since there was no trash service and we had to backpack everything back out. It was better to clean the cloth than hike out dirty disposables.


Avery loved the top bunk.


Alia didn't like her sleeping arrangements as well because she slept in the closet.


They had a great recreation room at the lodge. Avery and Scott are entertaining us with their musical talents. It sounded great since we are such a musically talented family. (note the sarcasm in my voice).

Touch a Truck

From the time Avery was really little he's always loved to play with cars and trucks. I rotate his toys each month but I usually end up leaving one bin of cars and trucks. This weekend he was able to get up close to monster trucks, emergency and construction vehicles. Our town hosted touch a truck where you could actually get inside and explore each one. Avery had a blast pretending to drive. Alia enjoyed her time as well but was really only happy being able to run around on her own. It was all concrete and she fell last week and scraped her nose so I was not all that thrilled that she wanted to walk since she's still so wobbly.

I love his face here, he's driving and making the noise.




Daddy wanted her to be included so he kept putting her in different places.




He wouldn't get in the police car unless I was with him.


We've been making the honey wheat on a weekly basis here instead of buying bread. Avery made his own this week and used his very own kid-sized pan. He was so proud when it came out of the oven.