Valentine's Day

Ava loves her new Valentine's Day book from Nana and Grumps! It's called "Snuggle Puppy" and is named after a song on the "Philadelphia Chickens" cd that she has - she loves the book and can say the title. And isn't she just so cute?



Listening to her Valentine's card :) She loves the cards that play music when you open them.



More investigation of the book. She also had a little Valentine's party at her school that Perry and I went to. It was fun. Her favorite thing was the cupcakes!

Kitchen

Ava got a play kitchen today!!! It is fabulous. It was only $45 at Walmart..... but we discovered it was so cheap because we had to completely assemble the entire thing ourselves. It took over 2 hrs of both of us working on it to put it together! But it's worth it - it has a stove, oven, microwave, dishwasher, fridge, sink, and cabinets. Also pots/pans/plates/cups/cutlery. And a cordless phone!



Ava was "cooking" up some treats tonight - on the menu was baked Play-Doh!! She kept "checking" it in the oven to see if it was done (imitating me). She is a very busy little girl and is very happy to be "bustling" around her little kitchen like quite the little suzie homemaker :)

Fun in the laundry bin

What a goofy kid! They do the funniest things. Look at that perfect drumming form! She was doing a great job - just sitting there in the laundry bin, drumming away.....

SNOW!!!!!

Well you may have heard that it snowed a little bit last weekend........



It was way too deep for Zoey to walk in it. She refused to pee and poop in the yard.



I decided to continue the Pendley tradition of baking cinnamon rolls from scratch on a snow day. We were totally snowed-in - absolutely impossible to go anywhere all day Saturday. And a good thing, since the cinnamon rolls take about 5 hrs to make!! Boy were they YUMMY! They turned out great. We ate half and brought the other half (pictured above) to a Super Bowl party on Sunday, where they were a huge hit.



A picture down our street taken Saturday afternoon. You can see that the snow is quite deep!

Praying

This is Ava's prayer posture. She loves to pray recently, and asks me to pray "again" and "again." She loves to say "Amen" at the end, and she is pretty good about closing her eyes and putting her hands up to her face to pray. She was obviously peeking in this picture, but that might just be because she knew the camera was out! It is so adorable. She will even remind me when we sit down to eat if I forget to pray. She says something like "dear jesus blehta hesoitja oaisdhfoij amen." :-)

Ava is learning how to sing bits and pieces of songs, such as "twinkle twinkle little star," "ashes ashes all fall down," "row, row, row your boat," and the "wiggle wiggle wiggle" song from the Mickey Mouse clubhouse album (a new favorite). It is so amazing how quickly she is learning. I think that in a few months she'll be able to sing entire songs on her own. She can also count from one to two :) Haha I know that's not much. But she does understand what "two" is and will say "two" when she has two of something. I'm trying to work on teaching her "three" but she seems to have some sort of mental block with that one. Maybe soon she'll figure it out.

Just a cute photo of Ava and Daddy hanging out. She was allowed to watch a Winnie the Pooh show for a while since she's been sick this weekend and was a little cranky. With age, her attention span is lengthening and she will actually sit still for 30 mins or more to watch a show. She's feeling better today, but I think she's getting a little stir-crazy from being in the house all day for the last 3 days! Poor thing.

This is really only her second illness of the school year so far (not including the pink eye). So I'm pretty impressed with Kinder Care, because I know other kids in daycares who seem to be sick more than they are healthy. We are so fortunate to have a clean, safe, fun, educational place to take her. And she enjoys her time there, too. I would heartily recommend our center to anyone.

Feeding the Cat

Ava loves the cat a lot more than the cat loves her back. She tries very hard to pet Li-li, and to get her to sit in her lap. That NEVER happens :) Ava sees Li-li sitting in my lap, and so she pats her own lap saying "li-li, li-li, up, up!". It is so cute.

In these photos she was intrigued with watching Li-li eat her food. Then she sat down right next to her and started patting her legs saying "Li-li, li-li, lap, lap, up, up!" But Li-li was much too focused on eating her breakfast to worry about what Ava wanted.