Redneck BBQ

Dad and Vicki had a fun Redneck BBQ last weekend!  The weather was beautiful for a long afternoon outside shooting guns, riding 4 wheelers and having a BBQ! The afternoon began with appetizers, shooting clay pigeons, and then dinner! Dad smoked pork, chicken and ribs! We had all of the delicious sides and everyone had a belly full! 

After dinner, we played the famous Bucket Head game. Bucket Head you ask?! Yes, bucket head... This is the classic game where one person rides on the 4 wheeler back and forth at one end of the lawn, while everyone else is at the other end of the lawn hitting golf balls at the person driving the 4 wheeler with the 5 gallon bucket on their head. The only rule is, if you hit golf balls, you must take a turn to ride. 

(if you look close enough, you can see the 4 wheeler and the green bucket)



Then to wrap up the evening, we played a little bonfire pool. It started out innocent enough, but as the fire got bigger, it wasn't quite as easy! I turn per player, per round. We kept track of who got the most balls in! I don't even remember who won, but I do know my Dad played the longest and was practically on fire before he decided to quit!







Avery and Harper sitting 100 yards away from the fire and still sweating!

Summer Family Photos

AWANA

Avery had her first night of Awana tonight! She was so excited to go and get her vest and meet her class! She was really hoping to be in Laynie's class, but that class was full. Avery is in the Yellow Group and Miss Melissa is her teacher, and will be her teacher again next year too! While Amanda got her kids checked in Charlie hung out with us for a minute, of course I had to take a picture of them! 

I walked Avery back to her room and sent her off with a smooch. She, of course, didn't need any encouragement and just went right in like she has been doing this for months! After swimming last week, I didn't know how it would go... she sure likes to keep us on our toes! Anyway, I dropped her off and went to Target for an hour to kill some time. 

I went back a half an hour early and peeked in her classroom. She was having a snack at the table and was visiting and being silly with her new friends. It was so fun to watch her! Her teacher said she did great and even recited the bible verse of the week in front of the whole class on her first night! 

She was so excited when we left, talking a million words per second! 

Here was our conversation walking to the car:

Avery: Mom! Mom! We learned about Chris, he had owies on his wristes and foot wrists, and he died and got all the cwasaqwinces for us!

Me: Do you mean Christ? 

Avery: Yep, him! And he had big owies and he got owies so we don't have to get owies. And I got a sucker and a badge for my new vest and I have new friends and I made this color sheet and we learned about C for Christ and A for Always With Us and we had Minion Applesauce and I had two applesauces and we did our verse and all that. 

Me: Wow Babe! Sounds like you had a lot of fun at Awana! 

Avery: I did. I am going to go home and tell Daddy and then I want to learn my new verse tonight and I really want to eat my sucker because Miss Melissa said maybe after dinner if we ask you maybe we can. 

The next day Avery wanted to journal about Awana!

Her journal entry says:  I had so much fun at my first week of Awana! My teachers name is Miss Melissa. My favorite part about Awana is "singing Deep and Wide and getting a sucker and helping Mommy sew my badge on my vest". Her picture is adorable, her with her vest on holding her orange sucker!

Little Blossoms: Up & Running!

I am so excited to say that I am finally licensed and have my daycare officially open! Heather, from Sherburne County, came out yesterday and gave me the "all clear"! 

Jaxson and Weston have been coming since September, and now that I am licensed Eli started this week too! Tyson will start right after his first birthday at the end of October! And now that we are expecting our own little one, I am not planning on taking any more kiddos until after the baby is here and I am feel like I can manage! 

We have been having a lot of fun with our new friends. Avery is just loving every second of being at home all day and having friends here to play with. She is a big helper and great friend to all of the kiddos! 

Jaxson, 4 Years Old

Eli, 5 months

Weston, 3 months

We have been enjoying lots of time outside and the big kids have been riding their bikes like crazy! We have been painting and doing out preschool workbooks, playing games and making friends! It has been everything wonderful so far! I feel so lucky to have this opportunity to be home every day and to be with Avery. She sure brings a lot of joy to all of those around her!

Here is my little helper, folding towels! This is a job that she is very good at, thank goodness! I have a load of little white towels to fold every day! We have to use them to dry our hands after washing, a new towel each time! Needless to say, we go through a lot of them every day with all of the washing!

!

Punctuation

This morning after Brandon got home from duck hunting, he was goofing around with her and lifted her shirt and poked her belly button asking "Avery, what's this?"

In a matter of a second, she wrinkeld her eye brows, flung his hand off her her belly and replied sternly "Dad, it's an apostrophe, it's my belly button, so it has an apostrophe and it's just for me, so don't touch it!"   

AND YOU ARE CORRECT ... I guess she told him!! We all laughed pretty hard! Where does she learn this stuff?!? 

Neighborhood Fish Fry

Tonight we got to meet ALL our new neighbors! The neighbors right next door hosted a Neighborhood Fish Fry and invited all 50 houses in our neighborhood! The weather was beautiful! We arrived knowing only Karen and Kevin across the street and Sadie, Austin & Daisy who live right behind us. Daisy and Avery are close in age, Daisy is almost 3. The girls have a lot of fun playing together, and I'm so glad she has a friend in the neighborhood! Everyone brought a dish to share and Cory & Lisa provided the fish! Little did I know, Avery LOVES, and I mean LOVES fish! She ate 3 whole pieces of fish, passed on everything else to have more fish... and I think if I would have let her, she would have kept chowing it down!. 

There was a big map of the neighborhood on the wall, we each put our names, phone numbers and occupations by our house on the map and Lisa is going to make Neighborhood directories for all of us! This will be so nice to have, especially since we are trying to learn who everyone is! 

After dinner and visiting the party headed over to the next neighbors down the street for a bonfire and drinks! We didn't stay and party too hard, like most of them, but we did have fun! I was so busy visiting I only took one picture on the way and one picture of Avery and Daisy driving the Barbie Jeep - which was their entertainment for the evening, they ran that thing right out of batteries! 

Anyway, I am feeling blessed to have moved into such a welcoming neighborhood filled with caring and supportive neighbors! 

Swimming Lessons

We have long been talking about swimming lessons... and the day finally came! All morning, Avery was roaring to go. We got all ready and headed to the Middle School Pool for her first ever swimming lesson! It is a private one-on-one lesson on Saturday mornings from now through November. We got to the pool, she gave us a thumbs up and the she walked off around to the other side of the pool with her teacher. She got all the way to the other side, and then froze. I mean shaking, tears streaming down her cheeks, and all kinds of nerves set in. I knew from her body language that she was terrified, I had never actually seen her act like this before - EVER! I stayed calm and quiet, just watching from across the pool, knowing this is normal for most kids and knew she may, or may not, snap out of it. I knew right when we walked in, and saw that it was male teacher that this might happen, but then when she walked right up to him and went I didn't think we had anything to worry about! WRONG!

After a few minutes of crying and tears the instructor invited me over to see if I could help. I helped her into the pool, and she clung to the edge like she was terrified of the water, and if you know Avery, this is not the case! She goes tubing around the whole lake without batting an eye! She swims laps in my Mom's pool for hours! She dunks her head under in the bath tub. She loves the water! 

Maybe it was the HUGE POOL, or maybe it was the "boy teacher", we will never really know. After a few minutes of her being so shy and clingy I asked if we should try leaving the pool area for a few minutes to see if that helped. He said it sometimes helps, which from my years of teaching, is often true. This was not the case for Avery. When I peeked my head back in a few minutes later, they were both back out of the pool and she was screaming at the top of her lungs for me, almost hyperventilating! She was shaking, and crying and couldn't catch her breath! I held her shaking soaking wet little body in my lap, calmed her down and sat with my feet in the water (completely soaking the butt of my pants and sweating near to death with my vest on). We kicked and splashed and she was starting to have fun. 

Her instructor was AMAZING. He was patient, and fun, and gentle with her. He encouraged her and praised her. He was so wonderful. He was never upset or annoyed that I brought my three year old who seemed terrified of the water to swimming lessons. Not once did he ever make her or I feel like we were "wasting his time" or anything like that. In fact, he came up with games to play outside of the pool, they poured water from a watering can down a pool noodle and back into the pool, and they kicked and splashed. For about the last 5 minutes of lessons, she got the courage to hop in the pool with him and swim. She held the noodle under her armpits and kicked extra hard to splash me when they went past. She laughed and giggled as I got soaking wet, it was a great way for her to end her lesson! 

On the way home, she said "I loved swimming lessons, that was so fun!" Brandon and I just looked at each other in disbelief and smiled back at her. The whole way home, I sat in my soaking wet clothes thinking "Hopefully next week will go better"!