Halloween

What can I say? She was adorable, her cousins had a blast, and she was ready to call it quits after 2 streets. I don't blame her. She still can't walk on her own, she was overdue for a nap, and suckers, especially tootsie pops, don't last forever. Now that I know she reacts this well every time she has one (I have tried twice now) I think that I will not be giving her one again for a LONG time! Candy makes children crazy.

Scare on the Square

Joe and I both enjoy walking around downtown areas. It can be a nice big city like Dallas or sometimes it is even nicer when it is a smaller city like McKinney. We like the old buildings and the way they are renovated to house new fun stores or places to eat. We think that you can find some of the coolest places to shop in such areas. Due to the weather, Joe and I had to keep postponing our outing to Old Downtown McKinney. The day before Halloween the weather finally cleared up and we decided to venture out. What luck that we did!

When we arrived everything looked fairly normal. Spiffy restaurants, cool old hotels, antiques, boutiques, and lots of other awesome stuff. We noticed a few children in costumes with their parents and thought that it was cute that everyone was feeling so festive. About 30 minutes later we realized we had stumbled upon something amazing. The number of children in costume were increasing and the number of shops blocked by witches, wizards, ghouls and vampires was doing like wise. What we had found completely by accident was McKinney's "Scare on the Square."

How cool is this? Just after 4 o'clock all of the shops shut down and the owners come out all dressed up for the holiday. Then hundreds and HUNDREDS of children with their parents come down and trick or treat from store to store. We were lucky we showed up when we did because not even an hour later there was NO parking and there was a solid line of trick-or-treaters going around the whole downtown area! We saw some of the cutest costumes ever and the festive feeling was making me giddy. Add to that the yummy cake treats I had and I'd call this a marvelous afternoon!

The Dallas Aquarium

It is more like an indoor zoo, but they insist on calling it an aquarium. Our first few days in Texas were chilly, cloudy, and RAINY. We had all these great plans to visit pumpkin patches and enjoy the fall weather, and then had to make last minute changes to our plans. The aquarium was a great alternative on out rainy Monday.We had hoped that Avery was at least at the point in her life when she could enjoy watching the animals. She may not know what they are or what sound they make, but who doesn't like watching monkeys swing from the branches or manatees wrestle? I'll tell you who: Avery. With all of the up-close-and-personal animals available, Avery wanted to walk up and down the wet stairs the whole time. There were sharks to see and a jaguar up close and a sloth 6 inches away and sea dragons and penguins and white alligators and... get it?! And Avery wants STAIRS! Silly girl.

On our way out, but...

We are leaving for Texas in just a few hours and I still have packing to do, but I just got these pictures yesterday and I HAD to post them. There are so many more that I love but no one likes a slide show with 130 pictures! These were taken by my good friend, Ruth, so if you are interested, check out her blog and contact her. I have so many talented friends!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Nathan

I should have posted about this before, but my brother, Nathan, moved in a week ago. I'm pretty excited to have some family down here with me, but Avery is even more excited to have Nathan here. She has always loved to go down the stairs, but now that there is a person down there with a room full of things she has never seen, and probably should never touch, I can't keep her upstairs anymore. Luckily Nathan is very tolerant and is willing to entertain Avery a lot of the time. And he tries his best to keep his Wolverine claws out of reach.

Happy Anniversary!

Joe and I have been married for 4 years TODAY! I know, it seems like just yesterday we were celebrating Avery's birthday. Oh, wait, we were! And that is why I love October. The weather changes and gets cool and breezy, my baby was born this month, and, best of all, I met and then married Joe in October (keep in mind those two things were a year apart). I am happy to say that I still love being married to Joe and I can't wait to have more adventures with him in the future.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AVERY!!!

Today is the day. Avery is one year old!! She has become the most hilarious baby over the last year. She talks and giggles with her dad and grown-up friends (2 and 3 year olds!), she goes up and down stairs, she is the FASTEST crawler I know (still no walking yet), and she can get hours of fun from a cat toy (thanks Michelle!). She is the joy of our lives and we LOVE having her in our family.

Very last minute we had a little party for the monkey at our friends, the Hobbs, house. Just some cake, ice cream, and presents, but it was too fun to see Avery interact with all of her favorite people, both young and old. Well, older anyway.

Sorry, the slideshow is REALLY long this month.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Video Games...Already

I had a lot to do to get ready for my brother Nathan to move in. Lots of cleaning, rearranging, you know, stuff. I was afraid that Avery would be underfoot, bored, or just neglected while I tried to get stuff done. Luckily, Jared came over to play some video games with Joe. Little did I know that my little bird would LOVE them. I think that she could have sat and watched them play all day. I didn't let her, but she was definitely NOT bored that day. Something about Ultimate Alliance 2 just spoke to her. Thanks to Jared for the much needed escape for everyone!

Good Friends are Lemonade in Life

I learned this last week that I have very good friends. I think that I complain a lot that I don't have a lot of family down here. Really, besides my in-laws, I don't have any family. My mother lives in Texas and my sisters all live in Utah and Texas. (Brothers too, but you'll see why I list sisters specifically.)

On Thursday night I had a miscarriage. We weren't really telling people we were pregnant; we were afraid something like this would happen and we would have to un-tell everyone. It was pretty late at night when it happened, but we had just left Joe's kickball game so we knew a couple of our friends were up and about. After two phone calls I had people willing to babysit Avery, bring us food, come and sit with me, and generally do what ever I needed at that moment.

The next day was much the same. People wanting to know what they could do, what I needed, and if I was okay. It was amazing. A good friend even sent me flowers and red vines to cheer me up. Luckily I also have an amazing husband, so even though I had lots of friends willing to help out, Joe stayed home from work the next day and took care of me.

It was certainly a terrible and traumatic experience, but I don't think that I knew I had such loving friends until this week. So there we are; lemonade.

Special thanks to Anndalyn, Katie, Dom, Michelle and Ruth. And the most love and thanks to Joe.

Jazzercise

Remember when I left breakfast for Avery up to Joe? It was donuts. Powdered donuts. I sent him to change Avery's diaper before bed the other night; a not uncommon occurrence. But for some reason she came out looking like this:

What the heck? It's like he's never encountered a onesie and pants before and he clearly doesn't know how to use them. Poor jazzercise baby.

DoChara Photography

It's official; Avery is a model. She went in to have some pictures taken last week by my good friend, Jacqui, and now she is featured on Jacqui's official business blog: http://dochara.blogspot.com/.I told her that I would be MORE than happy to advertise for her so this is my pitch for her company, DoChara Photography.

If you live in the Phoenix area and need some photos taken, visit the above website or visit her official website at: http://www.docharaphotography.com/. You can see pictures of Avery there too! I'm only going to post a few of my favorite pictures for now. The rest of them will be in her monthly slide show in a few days. Isn't she the cutest?