Happy 4th Birthday Avery!

On his birthday I let him make the rules. So far today he's eaten a doughnut with sprinkles for breakfast, had me help with his chores, went and saw a magician, skipped his quiet time, and watched cartoons.


The cake making process was fun. The dinosaur was made up of several cakes, 2 packages of powdered sugar and 3 packages of butter. It may not have been the healthiest but it tasted great! We ended up making a homemade fondant for the scales and they turned out good. The bigger scales started to fall after sitting out of the fridge but a toothpick helped fix the problem.




He ate too many scales and ended up feeling sick. I suppose that would happen since they are mostly made of marshmallows.


Grandpa thought it was funny that he stacked his gifts up.


Alia really liked the scooter. She saw Avery riding on it and she thought she could do it too.


The place we picked blueberries had goats you could feed.




Grandpa and Grandma Davis were here to help celebrate Avery's birthday. They helped us pick blueberries. We were so thankful since it was warm out and we needed a lot to make our jam.


I couldn't pick fast enough. Once she saw my bucket full of berries, she plopped down and ate so many!


So full!


This picture makes me laugh. There were much taller bushes but she claimed there were a lot of really great berries on it.


We fed the geese near our home.


This was the balance bike Avery got a year ago for his 3rd birthday. He is able to balance on his own now. I think he's ready for a bike with pedals. This bike was a great way to teach him balancing and I think we've avoided the training wheels altogether.


He found a turtle on the cart path.


We rented golf carts.


Alia, Grandma, Grandpa and Avery. Avery loves when they come visit. He was so sad when they left.

And finally the pictures you've all been waiting for- the yearly comparison with Avery and Banana!


Avery 3 years


Avery 4 years

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.