Beach part 2

After a few days at Ocean Isle, Avery and I loaded up the car and headed south to Garden City Beach.  We sent Daddy back to work (boo), but we had some fun without him :)  The Gibson family usually rents a house for a week so we got some QT with Grammie, Aunt Lisa, Elizabeth, Rebecca, Aunt Denise, Uncle Russell, Courtney, Joseph, Colby, and of course Aunt Stephanie, Mimi and Papa.  We also visited with Grammie's sister Virginia and her son G.P.
Unfortunately, I don't have lots of pics of the family, but we ate lots of food, put together puzzles, and played in the sand.  Stephanie and I even sneaked out one afternoon to run to the outlets while cousin G.P. was preparing a shrimp and crab feast.

This was on my phone from our trip down from Charlotte - everything she needs: Puppy, Tips, BB, and the ipad. 

 Aunt Lisa brought some old dress up jewelry for Avery to pick through, these are her favorite pieces.

 Let's go to the beach!

 She had me write this one.

Lake time with the Family

So this post is a little out of order, but the cute pics are the important part.  Before we went to the beach with friends and the beach with the Gibson family, we had lake time with the Marshalls.  I guess we saw the summer ending and decided to have a vacation marathon.
We forgot to bring the camera to the lake, so my cell phone and the cloudy weather didn't make for the best shots, but we had fun!  Gigi fed us well as usual, the 2 cousins got some good bonding time and the adults got some good nap time.  It was awesome to have everyone together.  If you haven't already, check out Sara's blog for some other good lake photos.

 Avery buttering the famous Gigi rolls

 She only eats tomatoes directly off the vine and at the lake

 Cloudy weather is great for fishing!

 Everyone is getting in on the action

Some lessons from Uncle David

Going fast with Daddy

That's our girl!

Catching Up

I was waiting on Laura to post something about her trip with Avery to the beach with the Gibson family, but I guess that will happen later.

We have had the opportunity to spend a little more time at home the last couple of weeks in preparation for 7 weekends on the road to start football season so we tried to cram in as much home stuff as possible.

Like fireworks on the new back patio.

The weekend before last, I headed out of town for a business trip to Dallas for a couple days.  We took the opportunity on Sunday afternoon on my way out to go to Avery's favorite restaurant (Vietnamese).  We have been going to this restaurant once a month or so since Avery has been born, so the owner knows her pretty well.  He feels bad that she only eats the rice noodles and every time comes out and trys to get her to try something different.  This time he convinced her to dip her noodles in a little bit of soy sauce.  Previously he got her to try soup (Pho broth), but she only asks for noodles.

The Vietnamese restaurant is near the airport, so after lunch we headed to the overlook to do one of Avery's favorite thing and watch airplanes take off and land.

 When there was a lull in planes landing, Avery pretended to be an airplane for a while.

 Weekends at home are often spent at the pool.

 And backyard rodeos.

Beach Trip Part 1

The first part of Avery's beach adventure was a trip to Ocean Isle Beach with some of our college friends and their kids.  There were 4 2~3 year olds and a 6 week old baby in the house.  To say it was nuts would be an understatement, but it was great to see all the kids playing together.

Avery wrote her name at the beach.  The direction of the letters was driven based on which way she was facing when she wrote the letters.  She would stand up and say "I WROTE A V MOMMY!" and then spin around to write the E.  I still think it is pretty good that she can write her name.

 She gets to see Easton the most so Easton was her buddy during the trip.  Here they are playing under the house waiting to go out to the beach.

 Laughing at something funny Easton did.

 Running back and forth between daddy and mommy.  I think she slept 14 hours that night and even asked to go to bed about 6:30pm.

 Jumping in muddy puddles just like Peppa Pig.

 Remember last year when she had to sit on a blanket to play in the sand.  Now she is digging her feet into the mud.  There were still a lot of stops to get rocks out of her shoes, but she was way better about the dirt than previous trips.

 Here is Avery, Easton, and Hazel eating dinner one evening.

 Avery and Charlotte.  If I had a nickel for everytime that someone mentioned they could be sisters, I would have at least 25 cents.

Nothing like a tea party in the pool.

Little Miss Engineer

Avery is that phase of asking a thousand why questions.  She has always asked "Why?" a lot, but now there are at least 5~10 followup why questions rather than just accepting the answer as a fact.  Any time we are doing anything she wants to watch and ask questions.  Cooking, putting together something, turning on the sprinkler, doing laundry, etc we get bombarded with why questions.   Before we headed off to the beach for about a week (and leaving our camera behind leading to blogging delays), Avery helped me rotate my tires and change my oil.

"What are all these tools for daddy?"

 "Why do we have to take the tire off to change the oil?"

 "What do these lugnuts do daddy?  I'm going to put these in this bowl daddy.  Is that good?"

 "Why do you rotate the tires daddy?"   I had to explain to her to make the tires last longer we had to trade them out just like she wears different shoes every day.

Our little Dogwood

Avery was very excited yesterday to become a dogwood.  She let out a happy scream when she saw her name on the cubby in the classroom.  When I picker her up, I asked what she did for her first day as a doogwood.... "played with Lily".. of course!

Kids Say.... last one?

Here's another poster from Avery's classroom.  It may the last one, because as of today, Avery has graduated to the Dogwoods.  She is no longer a Cherry Tree... our baby is growing up!

Now I'm pretty sure there are no mud puddles on the playground, but they do get "water play" on Mondays and when you combine that with her love of the cartoon "Peppa Pig" - it's a logical answer :)