Birthday Party

A week before her real birthday, Ava had her party! She has so many baby friends that I thought it would be so fun to put something together. Thankfully, my friend Leandra was down for a double bday party- so we combined Ava's with Ellie's- they're a week apart- and we all had a fun, hot, and exhausting time at the park.

The food. yum. 

Doing a combined party was awesome - we divided up all the work and did setup/take down together- which was a big help for me! Jeff would've loved to be there, but unfortunately he's been having to coach volleyball tournaments every weekend- so it was great to have Leandra and Jesse to do this with.

First cupcake......

......and I think she liked it! haha.

Ava, me, Leandra and Ellie

She was/still is obsessed with this present. 

I could not get both of the birthday girls to look at me at the same time sooo.... just merge these two images in your head ok?

The party mainly consisted of food, cupcakes, park play date, and bubbles. 

Here are just all of the one year olds- all of these babies were born with a couple months of each other-

the older kids (the two and three year olds ) were harder to pin down for a picture :) 

After the party we were all hot, sweaty and ready for naps :)

And we'll close with a cheesy picture of us. 

Happy Birthday Ava! 

Easter

I am so behind in blogging. blah. oh well. Time to play catch up- starting with Easter!

Easter was a lot of fun this year. I didn't get great pictures, but that's ok. We have 11:00 church- which is great but..... it's also right during her nap time so it's a miracle we got any pictures of her in her dress at all. 

These ears are the best $1 purchase from Target ever. Ava loved them, would keep them on- and it was just so dang cute. I let her wear them for the two weeks leading up to Easter.

Another thing that makes this girl go wild with joy- going without clothes! 

taking a break

back at it-  she's the best. I have like twenty pictures of her running around our apartment like this.

Late Friday night I realized we had zero Easter decor. Fail. So I decided to make a quick little sign- that then took me forever- I think I'll stick with mooching off of my talented creative friends for decorations from now on though! woof. It took forever and only half of them are the same size because I became very impatient toward the end and just wanted to go to sleep. 

Unfortunately Jeff had to work all weekend, so we crammed in a whole bunch of Easter in one hour before he had to leave.

Ava's Easter basket: church books, a swim suit, bubbles, plastic eggs, and a stuffed animal- however- the fake grass was the biggest hit.

Because Jeff couldn't come to the other hunt I was taking her too- we just ran over to the park next door and spread some of our own eggs around the grass and let Jeff chase her around. I didn't bother putting anything in the eggs- she liked them enough empty :)

Here she is at the Coppell Easter hunt. It was really a really cool event that our little city puts on every year. They even have a specific egg hunt for the little ones aged 3 and down. Ava actually came away with about ten eggs- but because I'm a mean mom, I made her give all her candy away to the other kids :)

They also had this scary bunny to take pictures with

Some of her finds

and a close-up in case you wanted to see how terrifying giant Easter bunnies really are

and that's it! It was a bummer that Jeff was gone for everything, so I didn't bother making anything special to eat- I think I had cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner and just got really jealous of all the orange rolls I saw on instagram- but not jealous enough to make them :) 

We'll make up for it next year though :)

Texas Blue Bonnets

Last week I was able to check off something on my Texas bucket list - going down to Ennis to check out the Blue Bonnets. Blue Bonnets are these blue flowers that bloom everywhere in the Spring here- a lot of times they're just on the side of the road- but down in Ennis, they have these gorgeous open fields just full of flowers. Luckily for us, it rained the day before so everything was bright and green. 

Even though it was only about a hour drive- Ava was pretty psyched to get out of the car- and it felt like we were out in the country! 

There were horses and donkeys, and we drove on a dirt road- it was wild.

After making everyone drive an hour to look at a field of flowers, I can honestly say I've never felt more like my mom :) We were always going on day trips out to appreciate nature. My 16 year old self would probably die if she knew what I was up to these days :)

We parked the car, took a lot of pictures, and had a little picnic of fresh fruit, cheese, and crackers. 

Life was good.

Love this stinkbug 

Always clapping 

Uncle Mike was a good sport to come with us.

 It was great to have him and Ava get to know each other.