Learning our letters

Ava has had a new teacher at her preschool for the past few months. Miss Denise has been a great fit at her school, and is incorporating a few new ideas for the 3-year-olds' class to work on learning activities. One of the new things she has started is giving the kids homework, that is due every Wednesday. "A Letter A Week"... starting with the letter "A." On tuesday nights we look through magazines and newspapers, and cut out whatever we can find that starts with that week's given letter, and paste them on a piece of paper and label them, and Ava takes it to school the next day.

Well, so far, we have had successful weeks finding things that start with "A" and with "B." This past week, Ava came down with quite a cold, and started complaining that her ear hurt, and on tuesday night started running a high fever. So she went to bed early, and stayed home from school on Wednesday so that I could take her to the pediatrician to be checked out, and of course to rest up a little and start to feel better.

Imagine my surprise, when we are all getting ready for bed Wednesday night. I went to bed early to read a magazine for a little bit. Ava came upstairs to start getting ready to go to bed herself. She saw what I was doing, and got very excited. She jumped into bed with me, looked over my shoulder, and whispered, "Mommy... are you looking for things that start with 'C'??"

Christmas Pictures!

Ava getting into the spirit, ready to open gifts on Christmas Eve at the grandparents' house!

Aidan is not too sure what to do with all these boxes yet!

Ava and Daddy rip into their gifts - Bounce Back Racers remote-control cars!

Lots of fun additions to the dress-up wardrobe!!

Aidan with his reindeer antlers *and* Santa hat!

Too many sweets + No Nap + Too much holiday excitement =

Christmas Eve Meltdown!!

Christmas Morning! Ava shows off on of her favorites -

The "Dinosaurs In A Rock House"!

Dinosaurs everywhere!!

And we must line them up!

The Whetzel family Christmas tree. Notice the incredible lack of

ornaments on the bottom 1/3 of the tree!!

Ava delivering the goods!

Trying out her very own digital camera. Say Cheese!

Only on Christmas morning is it ok to completely devour a Reese's

chocolate peanut butter tree at 8:30am (straight out of the stocking!)

in a total of four huge bites!

Aidan and his new basketball game

It's the Inchworm!!

A new sandbox for Ava!

Whew, all this holiday excitement. Can you

see the tiredness in his little blue eyes??

Merry Christmas to all of our family and friends, near and far! We hope yours was

as joyous and memory-filled as ours was!

Happy Holidays, 2008!

This year, in an effort to be more financially conscious, we decided to forgo getting our family portraits done at a studio for our holiday cards, and instead made use of our recent investment of an upgraded Nikon camera! Good intentions... yes. Worth it? Hmm, not so much. The end result, after several repositionings of the tripod, several different posed "spots" around the house, setting the timer well over 100 times to run back to said spot in the nick of time for the shutter to go off. Well, let's just say this year, Photoshop editing software was our friend.

Always wanting to help, Ava got in on the action in the kitchen the week before Christmas to help Mom with the cookie baking.





Of course, when you're 3, "help" means taste-test the dough, as often as possible, until the looming sugar high kicks in, and you no longer have the patience to help!





This year's new-recipe winner in the Whetzel house: Red Velvet Christmas Cake Balls!! Golf-ball sized balls of moist red velvet cake, dipped in white chocolate and drizzled with red and green chocolate. One word = Sinful!

Our little gymnast in the making!

Ava is starting gymnastics classes once a week, beginning October 9th. Since Chris and I will be out of town for her first class, I decided to take Ava to the gym she will be going to one evening, so she could look around and see what the kids were doing. At first, she was a little hesitant, but after a few minutes she got into it, and was saying "Mommy, I wanna do THAT!" so I'm hoping she'll have a great time.

Before we left, I let her pick out her first leotard from the racks they had there. This is her pick!

A picture shoot with the 3 cousins!!

We had our first road trip as a family of four over Labor Day weekend! We made the trip up north to see some family, and had some pictures taken with Ava and Aidan, and their cousin, Allyssa. We had a great time! The kids did awesome for the 3+ hour car ride, and the weekend stay in the hotel. It is definitely an adventure traveling with a 3-year-old, and a 7-month-old, but we had low expectations, and were pleasantly surprised!

Ava, Allyssa, and Aidan... their best poses for a great picture for the "Grandmas"!

Ava and Aidan, hamming it up!

Aidan being his cute, smiley self!

Our 2 sweet peas!

A shot of the two girls - precious!





All 3.... and starting to get a little slap-happy!

"Can you believe this??"

"Another beer over here!!"

I love this shot of Aidan.... this is the side of him I see most, now that he is growing so mobile and curious!

Our baby girl turns 3!

Our sweet baby girl, Ava Riley Whetzel, born July 13, 2008, at 8:08 am. 7lbs, 15oz, 21 inches long. Here she is, just about an hour old!

Ava's first birthday!





Ava's 2nd birthday!

And here she is - on her 3rd birthday! It has been an adventurous 3 years, but we have enjoyed every minute of watching you grow up, Ava. The new things you learn every day, the funny phrases we hear you say, and watching you discover and learn to love your baby brother melts our hearts. Happy birthday to our beautiful daughter!

Ava's 3rd birthday party!

We had Ava's birthday party on Saturday - and we lucked out and got great weather! Early in the morning, it was dark, and storming hard. But by 10am, the sun was shining just for us, and it turned out to be a perfect day for a pool party!

She was very into opening gifts this year, even though her attention span still wasn't long enough to get through the whole pile of presents in one sitting! She'd open a few, check them out, say "Thank you!" to the gift-givers, and head back to the pool to swim.

We had a great turnout - lots of family and friends got to enjoy the summer day by the pool!


Ava's pink birthday cake - made with love by Mommy!

This is Ava's new "big girl" swimming style - swimming with only a noodle! She is getting more independent every day.

Our big boy, Aidan, enjoying the party with Grandma!

Ava and her cousin Allyssa, who is much better at posing for pictures!

All in all, it was a great day! Thank you to all of the family and friends that

came to share this day with us!

Our little fish!

Ava is loving the pool again this year, and hasn't lost one ounce of her courage she gained last year. She is such a fish - she loves the water! She probably has more confidence in her ability than she really should... with her little swim ring around her waist, she is invincible, or so she thinks! She jumps off the edge, swims in the deep end, and just generally shows off.

Brother and Sister

Ava is finally starting to play a little bit with Aidan. Now that he is alert, happy (for the most part!) and able to smile and coo in her direction, she is much more interested in him than when he was a baby who just laid there. It is so funny to watch her - she'll grab a few DVDs off the bookshelf, and she'll notice some of the Baby Einstein series, and she'll ask me what they are. When I say "Those are baby Aidan's movies" she'll say "Oh. Ok!" and then proceed to take the DVDs and pile them on top of Aidan, wherever he might be! She means well, and it is cute to watch her share!

Happy Easter!

We spent Saturday morning coloring Easter eggs - this was a first for Ava, and she LOVED it! It was a little tricky for her to figure out how to get the eggs into the cups of dye without a big *kaplunk!* and some splashing, but by the end she had mastered it!

She was very focused, putting stickers on her eggs "just so"!!

Then of course, we all had to have an egg! Ava tried one and loved it. When she took a few more bites and got to the middle yolk part, she yelled "Yay - cheese!" (She was pretty disappointed and decided eggs were not so yummy once she figured out that on the inside, it was not really cheese!)

Showing off her Easter outfit, complete with new pink shoes, and a sure sign of spring - no socks!!

We headed outside on Easter morning to go hunt for some eggs that Mom had hidden around the front yard!


There's one!

Looking cute, with her Easter basket full of eggs!

Grandpa Whetzel, with Aidan, on Easter sunday.