Grant's Farm

We visited Grant's Farm today. For those of you that don't know, Grant's Farm is the location of the historical home of Ulysses Grant located in St. Louis, Missouri. It is a 281 acre wildlife preserve and houses the world famous Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales. Ava had a lot of fun feeding the animals.

The baby goats had a great time feeding on my dress when they weren't being bottle fed.

Be careful ... they spit!

PS: These spit too!

Ava and Daddy petting the Clydesdales.

What a great day! It was in the 70's and beautifully sunny. Boy, we sure don't like it when Kevin is gone, but days together like this when he is home are worth the wait. Love you babe!

Ava is 9 Months!

(FYI: I have edited some of the photos since original posting. They were printing out really dark the way Sears had them. I lightened them in Photoshop. They look much better now.)

Well, she now been out as long as she was in. :) We have treasured every minute of the last nine months. What a blessing our sweet little girl is. We got Ava's 9 month portraits done today. Boy, was that a chore. Now that she's mobile it was quite difficult. By the time I positioned her and got out of the way, she was half way across the room! She wasn't offering many smiles today either. (Remember that episode of Friends where Chandler can't take a photo without looking all wierd? Well, that was Ava today. She smiles all the time at home but once in front of the camera, she kept making this strange "what are you doing to me" face.) Oh well, we did manage to get some really good shots anyway! The one here is our fav, but we are posting all of the high res images to the photo album on the right hand side. Just click on the album to be directed to Picasa where you can download the high res images. We did get prints as well. We'll be sending those out once we get them. They are mostly of the photo above. If you'd like any of the other ones, just download them from Picasa and print. Or additionally, you can go onto the Sears website to order prints. I'll send that link out via email seperately.

Have a great weekend! XOXO

Happy August!

Well, Ava had her first sickness last week. She came down with a stomach bug suddenly Last Tuesday evening (thank goodness Kevin had just gotten back in town). I'll spare you all the yucky details and just say that after two late night calls to the ped's exchange and much cleaning and laundry later, she is just fine!

We enjoyed the last week with Kevin home. Once Ava was feeling better we took her to Monkey Joes (an indoor playland of bounce houses). This Wednesday I'm taking her to an introductory class at The Little Gym. We're excited about that. If she likes it, we'll enroll her in the Fall class.

We're teaching Ava this week to fall asleep on her own. We're on Day 2 now. This will mean a LOT of extra time putting her to bed and a LOT of heartache for mama. :( Hopefully it gets easier...fast! We picked up a video monitor yesterday though to help in the process.

The last set of pics are a little Daddy/Daughter time this afternoon before Kevin took off. We'll miss you this week babe!

Hope you all have a great week!