Avery's party

First, I should mention that I changed the template on the blog because I realized that the template I had was the exact color of a cloudy Washington day. Not a good thing to be experiencing both inside and outside! Not that I can complain; it was SO nice today. Very conveniently too, because Avery had her birthday party today and it was a water party. We had a slip n' slide and pool, etc. etc. It rained yesterday and it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so a big thank you to the powers that be for making it sunny today!

Mike made this castle for the party, complete with a functional drawbridge and turret. It was a big hit!
Some slip n' slide action. I tried to get a picture of Avery going down, but there were some issues with the other kids not waiting their turn so Avery could go, and then Avery taking a long time to get in place, and then getting mad that the other kids were stepping on the slip n' slide while it was her turn. . . it was complicated.

The place of honor. Avery was a little baffled by the fact that she was the only one opening presents and tried to give them out to other kids. To the other kids' dismay, we handed them back to Avery and assured her that they were all for her :)

It got a little crowded around the present area.

The long-awaited Ariel cake. Sorry this picture is so dark - we have issues with our camera. All in all, it was a happy day!

McCall!Avery wanted to ride her "bike" down to the lake just like all of her older cousins. It was a delicate balance for the accompanying adult to push just enough just to get her over rocks and not too much so that she thought she was no longer doing it herself. whew.
This picture turned out pretty cute. We all took a walk around the downtown area after dinner and took a bunch of pictures with this bear statue.
The stairs leading down to the beach area. Avery got a sliver from the handrail and was very brave as we pulled it out with tweezers.
Family pictures in Weiser for Mike's grandpa's 80th birthday bash. Avery got to play with even MORE cousins, as you can see in the video below.

This past weekend we went to my cousin Lindsay's wedding reception in Portland, and drove down with my cousin Cheyenne and husband Will. Cheyenne has some pictures posted on her blog - but I wanted to post a longer clip of Uncle Craig playing for everyone's enjoyment (esp Dad and Gma and Gpa).

Avery was having a five minute "conversation" with my mom on a fake phone; she was telling her all about her upcoming party and about the baby being born, and it was so cute I tried to sneak out the camera and take some video. Of course, as soon as Avery spied the camera she just wanted to play with it and lost all interest in her phone conversation. I tried telling her that looking at the camera would be much more interesting once we had actually filmed something to go on it . . .and these clips are my futile attempt to have her recreate her previous conversation on the phone. It's pretty funny in it's own right. By the way, I've posted pictures of Avery and our office before when I work from home, so please forgive the mess and Avery's odd outfit which she picked out, etc. etc. (sigh).

Aquafest 2008The Lake Steven's Aquafest was the weekend of July 25th - happily, it was also a weekend that Chey and Will and their kids were able to come up to visit us. Unhappily, Avery was fighting off a flu-thing and was pretty cranky. Overall, though, it was great to spend time with our cousins and even Avery managed to have fun towards the end.
Peyton and Deaven and Avery riding the cars.

By the way, as I'm writing this, Avery is in the next room having a really involved discussion with her bath toys and is alternately telling them that she loves them and then putting them in time out :)

Lavender and Frogs The Saturday before last - Avery and I stopped by the Lavender Festival on our way to buy groceries in Marysville. Avery like it especially because it reminded her of going to a Farmer's Market; which it was in a way. We ended up buying some local honey, and I nearly bought some cupcakes as well but we had just eaten a cup of homemade Marionberry sorbet (see below!).
For the curious . . . yes, this did end up all over Avery's clothes. "Uh oh, mom . . .it's messy."
Last Saturday we went to Kla Ha Ya Days (still not sure how that's pronounced) in Snohomish. Paige and Devan, Mike's cousin and her husband, hung out with us that day as well. The picture above is of Avery going forth to spray a frog. They had an activity where, for only 5 dollars!, you got to spray and tickle a frog with a feather to make it jump the furthest. Avery had a very active frog, so she didn't get a chance to spray it much. It was over in about 30 seconds and felt a little anticlimatic :) But she did get a cute frog hat!!
Mike and Avery with Paige and Devan.

So what if she didn't get to spray her frog . . .she's still queen of the amphibians.

Fourth of July!I forgot to post pictures from the 4th of July - so here are a few. I couldn't quite get a smile out of Avery in the first pic.
Here Avery and Phoebe are staking out their spots for fireworks watching. We went to go see a fireworks show at a friend of a friend's house because the guy spent a few thousand dollars buying fireworks and rigging a raft thing in the middle of their lake with timers and fuses. It worked pretty well - just needed a few adjustments during the show. The downside was that because we were on a lake, I got about 15 new mosquito bites.
So funny.

Avery quote of the day:

Avery picked up one of my books for work so I said "Avery, be careful, that's mom's book for work."

Avery: "No, it's my book for work."

Me: "Oh really? What do you do for work?"

Avery: "Play with toys."

FREMONT SOLSTICE FESTIVAL
So, the weekend before mom came, Avery and I went down with Rachael to Fremont for the Solstice festival and parade. I was excited because I'd heard that the costumes were really fantasic and a little nervous because clothing is also optional. Luckily, the nudity was pretty minimal and often at a distance so it didn't turn out to be an issue :) Here are some pictures and a video of the parade.

MOM'S VISIT

Avery keeps saying "hooray hooray!" because this is what mom said a lot while she was here visiting for a week. We had such a wonderful time, and even though it makes me sad that we live so far away - it makes it that much more exciting to see mom and everyone else when we do get to see them. This shot is at the sculpture park in Seattle and mom and Avery just happened to be twins that day. We went to the park right after I picked mom up from the airport.
This is also in the park at a little cove on the beach. I'm holding Avery because she wasn't too sure about standing on the "messy" rocks. She's going through a clean phase right now, which makes it really difficult to use public restrooms in particular :) This is at a place called the Country Village that runs train rides for kids during the spring and summer. Avery rode it this day by herself for the first time - she had made a friend in the bouncy house and sat next to her the whole time. You can that she was pretty excited.
On Saturday, we went to my Uncle James' cabin and spent the day with James and my cousin Cheyenne and her family. Avery was in charge of holding the flag and is doing her best here to "hold it high." We're so grateful that James, Cheyenne, and Will are so generous with opening their cabin up to family and friends. We had a great time. The next day, we took advantage of being so close to the Olympic Nat'l park and did some hiking. There's a neat road that goes to the top of Mt. Walker (appropriately) which has really stunning views across the Hood Canal and Kitsap Pennisula, all the way to Seattle and Mt. Rainier. You can kind of get a sense of it in the next couple pictures. We also took a hike to the base of a waterfall; I misread the trail description, which I thought had said "meandering" so naturally I thought it would be easy. It turned out to be straight switchbacks down and then back up from the water, but it was beautiful and worth it, I think :)



It was really sad to see mom go. Avery says she wants to go to Mama Nell's house tomorrow, but I told her that we had to wait for Christmas (and then Avery said, "And go to Santa's house on the water and eat breakfast?" I have no idea where that came from or what that means!). Thanks mom, for such a good time and for all the dishes that you washed. See you again in a few months :)

So, I've gotten a couple requests for a belly shot - since my belly has grown indeed. This way I'll also, hopefully, fend off any comments like "oh my gosh, you're so fat" from people who haven't seen me in awhile :) This first shot is of a few of my friends from church, and we're standing in order of due date. Amanda, the first one in line, is due Monday and is currently laying on her couch and not moving because her mom doesn't fly in until Sunday.

I thought this was a pretty nifty shot. This is at an outdoor art park, I'm not sure what you call it actually. The Seattle Art Museum built a park on the waterfront with all sorts of interesting outdoor sculptures and you can see one of the pieces of art, as well as the Space Needle, right behind our heads.

Avery running around one of the pieces of art. I think we weren't supposed to touch the art, actually, but my goodness - they couldn't really expect that anyone would pay attention to that.

Before we went to the art park, we had lunch with Monte and Sandy on the pier. They were in town with some youth for a temple trip. Monte helped Avery with her fry-throwing technique.

So we've been busy doing home improvements the last week. I should say, Mike and our friend Kyle have been busy with home improvements. I was more busy keeping Avery out of the way and stressing about the improvements being done in time for a couple baby showers that were being hosted at our house :) (Not for me!) So now the fireplace and downstairs bathroom are finished and the tile is done in the upstairs bathroom. Now we just need to get toilet and sink in there; hopefully in time for mom's visit the last week of June.
Just a cute picture of Avery and her friend, Benjamin.

Last, last Saturday Avery went to her friend's birthday party. It was a Mickey Mouse party with blowers and bubbles. Lots of fun.


This past Friday, Avery and I went to the piers in Seattle while Mike went to a baseball game with some friends/clients. Avery and I headed down to the water and ate some Ivars and threw fries at the seagulls. Then we went for a walk, watching the ferries come and go and looking for a treat. We found a candy store, but then saw that it was closed . . .the owner saw us looking disappointed outside and opened her door to give Avery a free lollipop! With both of us now blissful - Avery because of her sugar rush and me because of how nice everyone was - we walked a little further and then found a bicycle driven rickshaw to take us back to our car. wheee! When the sun shines in Seattle, I think it must be pretty close to paradise :)

Last Saturday we went to see Sesame Street Live at the Everett Events Center. Avery won a local coloring contest through our newspaper and got free tickets! (I'm sure it was because it was the first entry received . . . or maybe she's just exhibiting my dad's art gene). Speaking of my dad's art gene, here's a link to a new potrait he just finished of Avery. www.cusworthfineart.com

I would have posted earlier but my computer has been nonoperational for the past week. I had what apparently is called a BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH (cue maniacal laughter). It started last Saturday, and because we were pretty busy neither Mike or I noticed that our computer was cycling through an endless loop of crashing and rebooting the entire day. Anyway, after a fruitless Sunday morning of trying to fix the problem myself, I realized we'd have to consult an expert. So, anyway, we found a local guy at a great price who was able to finally come this morning and take care of the issue. The computer is working fine. . .for now ;)

To get to more interesting things . . . we went to Moscow over Mother's day to spend time with Monte and Sandy and Darren and meet Darren's sweet and beautiful girlfriend Cari. Here Avery braved the mobs and stole a quick turn on the slide at the farmer's market.


Because we were dropping off Darren and Cari at the Spokane airport on our way home, we took advantage of being in the area to visit Brad and Amy and their two cuties.
We had really amazingly good weather for three days last week, thankfully it was over the weekend so we could enjoy it. We took advantage of the warmth and invited some friends down to our beach area for a BBQ. And the missionaries :)

Avery playing "kill the bad guys" with a friend.

I know some of you may be getting tired of the scatological references in my posts: but since using the toilet is a big deal around here right now, this is where a lot of the day to day drama happens. Anyway, I thought the following story was blog worthy . . .

This morning Avery went to the toilet after getting out of bed. As she flushed she said "tinkle going away . . .Bye tinkle. Come again to Avery's house. I miss you!"

:)

Princess Party!

Avery was invited to a princess party on Saturday. The girls looked so cute, I had to shoot a couple pictures. You'll see below that Avery wasn't always a very happy princess. I think the problem here was that her Ariel shoes wouldn't stay on her feet. Not a trivial issue when you're trying to look your best.

The crazy weather continues . . .Here are pictures from our trip to the Mariner's game on a Thursday night. It was quite chilly and wet. Three days later we went to the tulip festival on a beautiful, warm, sunny day!
This graffiti was on a wall next to where we parked for the baseball game. I thought it was funny that the weather is even getting to street hoodlums :)

Yay! The beautiful tulip festival. We got there early enough to avoid the real crowds - I think most of WA descended on a three square mile area that day because this was one of the only sunny Saturdays we've had. It was worth it.

Avery exploring the daffodil fields with her friends Benjamin and Hannah. We went up to the festival with our friends the Williams.