The County Fair

So, we took a break from the unpacking yesterday and headed for the county fair. As you can imagine, Ava was beyond excited. The whole way there she talked about what she was going to ride and see and do and ride and ride...you get the idea. First stop on our adventure: the pony rides, followed by our first tour of some livestock barns, then a greasy fair-food lunch, and off to buy the ride tickets. Immediately, Ava spotted the dragon rollercoaster. I thought it looked a little fast and scary for her, but she met the height requirement and begged, pleaded, and insisted that she would not be scared. Against my better judgement, she boarded Puff the Magic Dragon Coaster. And she wasn't scared....for the first two rounds. But that carnie lady just didn't know when to stop. That thing must've gone 'round 10 times with Ava enjoying it less each time. I was just on my way over to ask her to please stop it, when Puff finally began to slow to a halt. Whew. I lifted a pale and trembling Ava off of the platform. It really threw me off to see Ava so shaken. She's practically fearless. I mean, I see her get a little scared or pretend to be scared with her flair for the dramatic, but this time she was honest-to-goodness scared. I felt bad that I had let her ride. Emily is going to be glad that Ava was our test dummy child. Live n' learn, right? Suprisingly, Ava bounced back quickly (after about 90 seconds of TLC and a big drink of Mt. Dew put her right as rain) and was off to use the rest of her tickets on a tamer variety of spinning, whirling, dipping, and potentially vomit inducing rides. She had a blast! Finished with her tickets, she persuaded us to let her bungee trampoline. Are you questioning our ability to make good parenting decisions now? Of course our little thrill seeker loved that too. At this point Mike needed to head back to work, but the fun continued for Ava, Emily, and me. We saw a bear show, Ava won a midway game and chose a neon stuffed snake as her prize, Ava had her arm painted(not a girly heart or butterfly on her face as suggested by the artist...but a sailboat on her arm. Classic Ava.), saw lots and lots more animals, learned how to milk a cow on a weird dummy bovine with synthetic teats (Heh hehehe heh, fake teats. Shut-up, Beavis). We wrapped up the day by splitting a delicious funnel cake and ice cold lemon shake up. Perfect. The Cuyahoga County Fair was super nice. To my Indiana readers, it was on par with the Elkhart Co. Fair, maybe even a little nicer. I was actually suprised by the amount of livestock in a fairly urban county. Next year we may have to venture back to see some of the tribute bands and watch the fireworks. Here are the pictures and a little video clip of Ava on the bungee trampoline.

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Emily's New Trick

Good thing we dropped the mattress!

We Made It!

Just unpacking all of our "valuables"

Ava of the North

The last thing I do before I climb into bed at night is look in on the girls. This is what I saw when I tucked Ava in last night. I had to sneak back in with my camera, it was too good not to capture.

She's had this thing about winter clothes lately. Last week, it was raining and she claimed it was "cold and bwustery(l's are w's)" and insisted that she wear her cut velvet pea coat over her shorts and tee shirt when we went to the grocery. Uh, it's July in Georgia. The other moms at the store all just nodded with a knowing look, but she got quite a few "Nice coat" comments from other patrons and employees at Kroger. After every such comment, she looked at me defiantly...as in: "See Mom, I told you it's okay to wear my coat right now". I had tried to talk her out of it before leaving the house and then again before entering the store. I had explained that people would think her "weird" for wearing a winter coat in the middle of July.

Two days ago, while lounging in a tank top and undies, I found her with 2 pair of my Karen Neuberger socks, one pair pulled up to her knees (they looked like furry go go boots on her scrawny lil' legs) and the other pair over her hands and pulled up to her elbows. "Ava, don't you think it's a little warm for those?" I asked. To which she replied, "No, Mommy. I like cold weather. I wish it was cold weather here ALL of the time." If that's true, I think she'll be very happy where we're headed tomorrow.

Smartypants Emily

It's my blog, so I get to brag if I want to, right? Here are a couple of things that Miss Emily has done in the last day:
* She's starting to walk forwards in her walker (opposed to scooting backwards or sideways)
* She figured out how to push the button on her box of wipes, open the lid, and pull out about 5 or 6 before I caught her. Maybe that's not that impressive, but it was pretty funny. You could see on her face that she knew she'd been "busted" and then she just gave me the biggest smile
* She's starting to recognize certain words. For instance, if I mention "bath" (her favorite activity) or "puffs" (her favorite snack) she gets so excited that she starts squeaking and babbling and waving her arms. If I say "kiss" she actually opens her mouth, leans over and plants a big ol' drooly kiss on my face. I'm pretty sure that she knows what I'm talking about.

I'll be bragging on Ava again soon. We all know she's a smartypants too. This week she discussed "photosynthesis" with me. Love it!

Happy 29th Birthday Karla!

Yesterday was my wonderful sister's birthday. I almost got to spend it with her. Both Karla and my mother-in-law were nice enough to come down this week and help me pack and take care of the girls. It was so good to have help and get to spend time together. I was ready for some girl time! Karla must've liked it down here, because her plane was overbooked on the way home and she tried to give up her seat and spend another night with us (for a $400 voucher). However, there was still one open seat after everyone boarded, so she flew home just in time to spend her birthday with her own lovely family. Happy Birthday, lady! I love ya!

Here are a couple of pictures I took of Karla and the girls the first night she was here. I'd say she's lookin' pretty good. She'd been travelling all day and then I promptly put her to work packing up our toy room and helping with bath time this night.

Playing in the hose

I told Ava, "If you want to come outside and play while I wash out the aquarium, you need to put on some clothes." Obviously, that was pointless. At least she had a good time.