NYE

So I am actually going to post some photos that have nothing to do with Ava...maybe a 1st here. Darren & I went out downtown on New Year's Eve this year...a first in a long time. It was really fun and a pretty low-key night which was great. We even stayed downtown. Really good time with really good friends...and yummy food courtesy of The Melting Pot.
Beau & Trina

Me & Trina

And I just had to post this montage of self-portraits (of course I doctored these up a bit). And if you are wondering what Darren is doing, he blowing a horn.

Visiting with Jeanie/Granny's Family

We headed to Columbus today for a long awaited visit with Jeanie's side of the family. Most of them had not met Ava which means we have not seen them in over 3 years! Crazy. We had a great time catching up and Ava did a fantastic job playing with everyone...no shyness there!

Darren & his Aunt Betty (and godmother!)

Ava getting her nails painted by Kaedy.

Jeanie/Granny with cousin Gayle and Emily.

Aunt Pat blow drying Ava's hair.

A group shot of all the 2nd cousins? Not sure, these are all Darren's cousins' kids so what does that make them? Never have figured that out but they are family and they are fun! (Alexa, Ava, Kaedy, Ian & Jordan in the back and Kristen, Emily & Emily, well kind of)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to everyone. I tried to take some good photos of the kids seeing all their Santa gifts when they woke up but to be honest, none of them were that interesting. So instead I bring you "Strawberry Haircut." SH is the name of Ava's salon...she got a whole pretend makeup/hair set from Santa that she was madly in love with. And Ian, being such a good sport, let Ava do his makeup, hair and nails all day long. Seriously, I think a good part of the day I saw them playing with the pretend polish and the blow dryer. Good times.

And then Ava & Ian decorated a gingerbread tree as a little art project. Of course Ava refused to take a photo with it (too much exciting stuff going on) so I just got a really cute shot of Ian with it. He looks so proud!

Christmas Eve Posed Photos

Here's a few of my favorite posed photos that we took after going to church on Christmas Eve.

Darre, Ava & I

Ian & Ava (we call this series of photos the prom pictures)

Smooching one another.

Family photo

Silly family photo (with me reworking the lighting and such). I think my favorite silly face has to be Mike's. He makes me laugh when I look at him in this photo. Or maybe Emily who is wondering why her whole family has lost their minds.

Fun in the Rain

We headed down to Conroe today for Christmas with the O's and Friends. We tried to go see the huge Christmas light spectacular that this guy does every year (see here and here for a refresher) and in the middle of checking it out, it starting POURING rain! Not to mention it was cold.

But Ava had fun anyways as we ran back to the car. Here she is with Granny laughing at being all wet.

Darren hamming it up for the camera.

And I insisted on having a photo taken of me all drenched.

G.A.L.S.

Cortney came up with this acronym to desribe our girls...the G.A.L.S. (Griffin, Ava, Lexie & Sawyer). We tried to take a group shot of the 4 of them in their matching jammies but this is the best shot I got...sad but true.

If you crop out Ava & Lexie (who were too busy fighting over a camera to focus on photo taking) out of this other photo you end up with this: a super cute photo of G & S.

But I did catch S & A smooching on the staircase later...man those girls are so loving!

And then I found Lexie with her mischeivious grin playing with a ball popper...great hair action (if only it made it into the shot!)

Baby Griffin

This post is all about our niece Griffin. She is 8 months old and SO adorable. Seriously. Most wide-eyed baby ever.

Ava was a bit obsessed with "Baby Griffin." She wanted to help feed her, play with her etc. Here she is smooching her Griffin does not seem amused. This is one in a sequence of about 10 photos and they are pretty funny when you see the progression.

Sorry Dad! There actually was a better photo where G is not crying but I had to post this one as it makes me laugh out loud..totally reminds me of the Santa pictures you see people force there kids into except instead of Santa, Pablo is there. Hilarious!

Darren and Griffin...too cute!

Griffin really enjoyed our pets while she was here. She squealed with delight when she got to play with them and of course Zaphod was excited to be mauled by yet another kid (he is so weird!).

She also got up close and personal with Smokey...I think from the smile you can tell she loved him too. Smokey, on the other hand, was not so sure about this.

Christmas with the McFaddens, Pablo & Team Tilson

Today was the big day that Pablo, Cortney, Jack & Griffin headed in to town for our little Christmas gathering. We spent the day hanging out and then in the evening Team Tilson came over to open gifts and eat dinner.

Here is Ava when she saw P & the McF's driving up...pure excitement!
Ava was excited to see Pablo! or Plablo as she says.

Ava in her super hero cape and wristbands courtesy of C, J & G. Too cute--etsy is such a great place for this kind of stuff and Cortney really got a lot of cute stuff for the kids there.

Gabe & kids getting ready to open gifts. The whole gift opening scene was a bit chaotic and no good pictures really came out of it as 3 of the 4 kids (excluding G) were just opening gift after gift and running about. Pretty fun (despite the crazy tantrum Ava had -- no nap = unhappy Ava).

And my favorite: making Cortney cry upon opening Griffin's custom storybook (http://mokru.blogspot.com/2010/01/custom-storybook.html) about coming to Texas to visit family. I knew I could get her to cry! No it really was a great reaction and I'm so happy she loved it as I put a lot of time into it.

Thanks everyone for everything! Only wish we could have had more time together.

Christmas with Me-Mommy

Today was the start of many Christmases this year. We did a little gift exchange with Me-Mommy today since we will be headed to Conroe in a few days. Here is Ava waiting for her big surprise...

a dollhouse! Thanks Mom. Ava was super excited by all the fun gifts and it was a great way to start the holiday season.

Yeah! New Family Dolls!

So way back when Ava was little, I came up with the idea to do custom dolls of family members who did not live in Austin so that Ava would know who they were and could play with them at any time. The first 2 attempts were not great so I went back to the drawing board.

Many many months later, I finally figured out how I wanted to do them and so I enlisted the help of my AMAZING graphic designer friend, Brooke, to help me accomplish my goal. (She is also the one who painted this super awesome portrait of Ava--she's talented!)

She was able to create the blank doll bodies, attach the heads and provide them to me in a jpg so that I could print them, sew clothes on and sew backs on them too. I love the results and can't wait to give these 3 little dolls to a very special someone (can't tell you who!...yet).

Best part is that the clothing/backs are made from fabric scraps (and Darren's clothes are made from a tshirt and pair of shorts we were giving to Goodwill...good way to go green & recycle if you ask me!)

Front:

Back:
Thanks again Brooke for the help! Now I want to make Ava a set of all of our family and make these for other people....although not all at once and not that soon. Bit tired from all my projects :)

PS. Need to get better photos of these but it's been wet outside and the lighting was not quite right.

Ava's Sing-a-long

Ava's school had their Christmas program today and we were very excited to go see the children sing. They all walked in with crowns on their heads and then got up front and sang 3-4 songs. We were really proud of Ava b/c she danced and kind of sang. And when she spotted us in the crowd she gave us a huge smile and wave and was so proud of herself.

I only got shots after the program...this one she is making her classic silly face at me...

and here she is waving good-bye as they left to go back to class. So cute!

Unexpected Babysitting

So Gabe & Lyndon went to Mexico for a wedding and Me-Mommy was all set to watch the kiddos that weekend. UNTIL...she got violently ill. So much in fact that Darren & I had to step in. No big deal since we were planning on hanging out anyways but it was sort of an adjustment for the girls to come stay with us since they expected to be at home with Mom.

So to fill the day we did many fun things with the girls including playing with playdough, playing hide & seek, and bathing the dog... (they actually enjoyed this and Smokey surprisingly sat still enough for them to dump cups of water on him).

We took them for Amy's ice cream (and took a group photo in the photo booth with not so good results).

We also took them to see Santa (Lexie would not get near him, Sawyer hid behind my leg and told me she was shy, and Ava decided to show off and go hug him, go figure).

And finally after dinner we took them to the Lakeway Trail of Lights. Best part of the day in my opinion. Never seen Lexie so happy or talkative. She was so cute, running around with our flashlight (the girl was obsessed with it...if we did not already have her a gift I would get her one for Christmas I swear), saying "Lights lights lights" and then "Run run run." Too. Cute. For. Words.

We even tried to take a group shot but of course I ruined it. In all fairness the guy working my camera did not know what he was doing and since this was set to Night Portrait, it takes the photo at a weird time and I guess I blinked. Oh well!

We had fun and I had to wonder all day long if people thought all 3 of the kids were ours...man if they were, I would be one TIRED lady. Not that I'm not already. :)

Serenade

This is Ava during one of her many serenades to us....we were laughing at how funny she is. At the same time I was thinking she looked a lot like someone you would find down on the Drag begging for money back when I was in college...maybe it's the hair? Who I am kidding, it's the whole ensemble really.

The Tilson Girls Sleepover

Ever since Ava slept over at the Tilsons, we thought that Sawyer & Lexie needed to come stay here. So they did tonight.

Group shot! They were excited!
Storytime with Darren.

Playing hide and seek...this was the big hit of the night.

Lexie loved hiding under the trampoline...

And on the couch!