1st Princess!!!!

Ava was in her first pageant this past Saturday. It was a Sunburst Pageant, I competed in the same pageant was I was little!! My mom brought her just a church dress to compete in. There were 5 other babies in her category. Ava won 1st princess, which is runner up!! She did awesome. We will compete in state in Orlando at the end of May!! Here are some pictures from her big day!!

Ava is almost 8 months old!!

Well it has been a while since my last update!! We have had a very exciting month, I must say. Ava is almost crawling!! She is still rolling everywhere for now, but she is getting up on those knees rocking back and forth. This month we also starting holding our own bottle!! This is such a big thing as you moms out there know!! :) Our sleeping patterns have changed a little, and I am not happy about it. Since the child was born she has slept ALL night long for 10 to 12 hours. Well in this past month we have started waking up once a night between the hours of 1 and 3am!! Its no fun for mama!! I have to admit she does take her bottle quickly and goes right back to sleep, but I still don't like it! I hope we go back to sleeping all night soon. At our last doctors appoint we weighed in at 19.7 lbs and she is 27" long!! We are now wearing 12 month clothes!! We also started eating yogurt and ice cream as well has some crackers. We are also now using a high chair when we go out to eat!! OH, and Ava loves to dance!!! Its the cutest thing!!! Here are some pictures from this past month.. ENJOY!!!

I love the clothes basket pictures!!! This was from one of those nights that she got up and did not want to go back to sleep. So while I folded some clothes Ava hung out in the basket!! I had to take a pictures of it.. she is so stinkin' cute!!!

These are just from a random day!! She is my little flower child!!

Sew Uniquely U

I finally started my own little business!! Thank you Adair Laney for all your help, you have been wonderful! I am now doing monogram and applique!!! I am having so much with it. Mostly I feature baby and toddler stuff right now. Check out my website if you get a chance.... http://www.sewuniquelyu.blogspot.com/ Thanks for looking and keep checking back!!

Home not so Sweet Home...

The week after Christmas Ava and I rode with YaYa and Poppo to Clarksdale. I can not tell you how amazed I was with Ava riding 14 hours in her car seat. God was truly with us!! She did fantastic!! We stayed a week in Clarksdale in my brothers one bed room apartment! I was ready to come home to say the least. It was very fun getting to see lots of old friends though! Ms. Rita and Mr. Gary came over to see us and to meet Ava for the first time. Heather and Jackson came over from Greenville to see us. It was fun to see Ava and Jackson together. They are 6 months apart in age. I wish we lived closer to spend more time with them. Jackson was not sure about Ava being in Heather's lap. He got a little jealous, it was cute. He wanted in Heather's lap too and got right in mommy's face. Aunt Heather gave Ava the cutest outfit and socks for Christmas too. Its lime green with zebra ruffle and cute pink feathery stuff across the chest. I will have to take a picture of it to show.

Jackson, Heather and Ava

We saw lots of Poppo's family while we were there. Aunt Lisa, poppo's sister, was so glad to get to meet Ava. Ava also met mama Young for the first time. While in Clarksdale I also ran into Heather Houston and Kate Dunn it was fun seeing them. Kate and Mason's kids are so cute. They look just like Mason!! I also got to have lunch with my really good friend Kacy and her little girl Ally. I was so glad I got see her. I went and visited with her mom as well. Ms. Kay is always so sweet!! And of course I got to see Merri! I basically had to hog tie her to spend time with me, but that's Merri. Leighton did take me and Merri to the casino one night and got us a suite. It was fun! Free room, free food, free drinks, and I only lost $20 of Leighton's money..LOL! We had a good time. I don't get to spend a lot of time with him so I was glad we had the chance to do something together. I have learned to never say "Never" but I hope I never have to move back to Clarksdale! It was so depressing! I was glad to get back to my bed and my house here.

Christmas at Our House

Christmas Eve Lance and I took Ava to church at St. Anthony's here in Brooksville. The Church was decorated beautiful. Christmas trees everywhere and tons of beautiful red poinsettias all over the alter. Church was so crowded that we sat in the back on folding chairs. Ava was dressed in her red and white plaid dress and looked adorable. She was very good in church as she always is. I hope she continues to get this great behavior as she continues to grow. Christmas Eve night Lance and I grilled out steaks and baked potatoes. Its a tradition in both our families to eat steak on Christmas Eve night so that's what we did. Christmas Morning was quite exciting!! It was Ava's first Christmas. She had no idea what was going on. I would put her presents in her lap and she just wanted to take the bows off and play with it. YaYa and Poppo came up Christmas morning. We were very excited to see them. I had already gotten my present from them which was my monogramming machine, by the way I will be starting soon, so I knew I was not going to have any presents from them. However, when mom and dad got here they were bringing in presents by the car load!! I asked mom what were all the presents for, I thought I already got my gift. She looked at me and said, "These are for Ava". LOL what was I thinking!! She got the cutest big girl pj's from YaYa, they are pink and have little girls all over them. She also got a talking dog from leap frog. The dog will learn Ava's name and teach her how to spell it. The toys these days amaze me!! Ava also got a pink cozy coupe from GiGi and PawPaw to open Christmas morning! Lance had to put it all together, but he did a really good job. She looks so cute when she is playing in it. She loves for me to push her around the living room in it. YaYa also brought up a turkey, dressing, and green bean casserole for Christmas dinner. She fixed everything and it was all so good. Lance and I had a really good Christmas!

Christmas 2oo9 in Gadsden

So sorry it took me so long to update the date, but December was a crazy month for our little family!! Lance and I had a wonderful Christmas! We first spent Christmas with PawPaw and GiGi in Gadsden (Dec 10-13th)! We were so excited to get there. It was Ava's first plane ride and she did so good. Everyone was complementing us on how well she did! When we got off the plane in Birmingham PawPaw and GiGi were waiting on us. Of course they scooped up Ava and loved on her right away!!! The first thing we did once we were in Alabama again was eat at Jim and Nick's!!! Yes, real BBQ!! Lance picked the restaurant of course, but I love it too. We finally made it to Gadsden and PawPaw and GiGi's house was all decorated for Christmas, it was beautiful. GiGi had one of the prettiest Christmas trees I have ever seen. The house looked great!! Thursday morning Lance, Ava and I woke up early, and Lance went and got us Cothran's donuts. They are only the best donuts EVER!! That night we went to Top of the River in Gadsden to eat. Lance and I had been talking about their catfish for months, and we already knew what we wanted to order!! That night was the first time Granny met Ava. Friday Ava and I stayed in... it was so cold and she started teething so bad. She cut her first 2 teeth. She also ended up developing a terrible diaper rash. Saturday morning was Christmas was us!! We opened all our gifts! We got a video recorder, blu-ray player, Lance's got clothes for work, I got scraping stuff and candles, and of course there was a pile of stuff for Ava!!! She has toys and clothes everywhere!! That afternoon we had Christmas dinner with all the fixin's. It was great just being back we had such a wonderful time!! Sunday was a cry fest to say the least!! Its always so sad to leave family! But here they are pictures from Christmas in Gadsden!!

Ava Meets Santa!!!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!! We traveled to Naples to see my parents. The trip normally takes us 3 hours... it took us over 5 hours to get there!! Traffic was awful! We saw 11 major accidents on the way. We finally made it though and Ava was so ready to be out of the car, she had had enough!!! Thanksgiving day we had turkey and all the fixing's. My mom made her wonderful homemade dressing! Friday was the IRON BOWL..and we WON!! ROLL TIDE!!!!!!! Saturday morning we took Ava to meet Santa at the Bass Pro Shop! They had a winter wonder land. They were selling cookies and fudge, had a tons of toys out for kids to play with and making crafts!! Ava loved Santa... she was pulling on his beard.. and took a great picture!