Frio River

Whew! Are you tired yet from all of our travels? Last post. At least until we travel again in August.

We got home from New York on Wednesday and left for the river on Thursday. Our families had planned the trips so we didnt have much say in the matter. We had just enough time to pick Macy up at Alli's, repack, get a good nights sleep (we woke up at 4:45 am on Wednesday to catch our early flight), drop Macy off to be boarded, and then hit the road for a 7 hour drive to West Texas. It was tough but like I have said before, all worth it to spend time with our families.

The river was extremely low this year. In fact, according to locals they said it has never been this low in recorded history. It was impossible to float the river much less find a spot deep enough to sit in with running water. We tried though!

This is the riverside view from the house we stayed in this year with my family. You can barely see the river! Usually this is a spot where we could sit on the back porch and wave to all the tubers. So sad :(



We did find a small area for Ava to swim around in close to the house.

It wasn't all that great so we decided to go to the low water crossing where we usually camp instead. Much more water but much more people. We got Ava a life jacket so she could "swim" around more.

Yumm, snow cones!

Playing with Kay Kay in the water

One of the best parts of the trip was watching Ava, Big Bob, and Mimi play together. They hadnt seen each other since at least Christmas time maybe longer.

Big Bob's turn for bandaids! He didn't mind one bit!

Big Bob, Ava, and Mimi

Every year the guys have a washer tournament. It is usually headed by my silly uncle who goes all out in planning it which includes making this sign, designating Ava as the person to throw the first washer, Alli singing the national anthem, names for all the players involved, and a tournament bracket. The big winner this year...cousin Reagan.

Ava throwing or dropping the first washer to start the tournament. Uncle Matt videoing it of course.

The spectators had covered front row seating

I didnt get nearly enough pictures this year. Hopefully next year the river will be higher. It was nice to be in air conditioning but I think it is back to tent camping for us!

All the pictures from our trips, including some from Brinley's birthday, are now on our shutterfly site. Warning, there's a ton!

Lake Chautauqua

Our final stop on our vacation up north was Lake Chautauqua. We came here last year on Father's Day weekend as well. This year we stayed in the Chautauqua Institution which is a small community on the lake with the most beautiful homes you have ever seen. The Institution holds all kinds of performances, summer classes, speakers, etc... We went the week before all the festivities start so it was quiet and we almost felt like we had the place to ourselves.

Mikey's mom, aka Gigi, created these cute shirts for the family to wear on Father's Day.

Here is the whole gang for this year's family photo.

Ava looking adorable in her blue shirt

The house that we stayed in was so beautiful. It must have been one of the oldest houses in the Institution. We think it was built in the late 1800's or early 1900's and there were old old pictures of the original homeowners in the house hung on the walls. Some things in the house had been updated a little, mostly paint and a few modern ammenities, but a lot of the house was left the same. It was kind of spooky but charming at the same time if that is possible. I felt like I was in a museum.

One of the things I loved most about the house were these tubs. Ava loved taking baths in them.

This was one of our favorite houses in the Institution. Absolutely beautiful! Almost every house had multiple front porches and hanging baskets with gorgeous flowers.

Many people have vacation homes here or are permanent retired residents but there are a ton of places to stay, like the house we rented for the week, or beautiful hotels/old homes like these.

While we were there we did lots of running and playing at the nearby park. (By the way, I love watching this girl run. She has the cutest little tippy toed run! )

We went on lots of walks, mostly down to the "beach".

(Tania, Gigi, Ava)

There was a small beach area with some sand near the lake's edge that we went to everyday after naptime. Sadly it was Ava's first beach experience but she loved every minute of it. Makes me want to take her to a real beach.

We ignored the sign and played anyway!

Ava got to play with more second cousins from the other side of the family. The girls had a blast playing with each other and running up and down the beach together.

(Ava, Leah, Cami)


Collecting rocks with Gigi

Sitting on the shore with Daddy

Ava has a slight obsession with bandaids. Gigi knows this and brought multiple boxes of bandaids for her to play with. They're like stickers to her but even better. She's figured out how to open the paper and the reveal of what is on the bandaid is so exciting! And THEN she gets to peal the sticky tape off the back, oh boy! Not to mention she loves playing doctor and making people's booboo's "all better". Gigi was a good sport. (these entertained her for quite some time on the plane too although I got lots of stares afterward with all my bandaids)

I loved experiencing new things and new places with my girl

On a side note, Ava was a champ on the airplane!! She couldnt have been better (thanks to bandaids, movies, magnetic dress up dolls, and markers!)

Thank you Gigi and Bpop for an amazing vacation with family on Lake Chautauqua!!

Olean, New York

We kicked our two week vacation off with a trip to Olean, NY. This is where Mikey's mom and dad grew up and where his Grandpa, and a few other family members on the Seamans' side, still live. We stayed with Grandpa at his home and Jim, Mikey's brother, and his friend Tania met us there too.

We played a lot in Grandpa's backyard which included jumping like frogs with Uncle Jim and Tania

Mikey enjoyed spending some time with his big brother

We went on walks and collected rocks

We went to a family dinner at Spragues (one of the most popular restaurants in Olean)

(Me, Grandpa, Aunt Karen, Aunt Pat, Uncle Tom, Jim, Tania, Mikey, Ava)


Ava had her first trip to McDonald's while in Olean. Such a monumental event it needed to be captured on camera.

We visited Grandma Seamans at the nursing home and brought her flowers for her 89th birthday. She adored Ava and just kept saying how beautiful she was.

We met up with the Seamans' side of the family at Mikey's cousins' garage sale

(Mikey, Kevin , Jim, Uncle Larry)


Ava's second cousins were so sweet to her

(Maddie, Ava, Alyssa, Brady, Gavin)


It was another great trip to Olean. I love the small town charm that Olean has and getting to see family made our visit perfect.

From Olean we traveled about an hour and half to Lake Chataqua to meet up with Mikey's mom and the rest of the Hull family. Stay tuned!

(I will be uploading all the pictures we took on our trips to Shutterfly soon. This is just a preview. :)

Back home!

We are finally back home from our back to back vacations! Two weeks being gone is way too long. We had a blast with our families but we are glad to be back home. I'm too exhausted to upload pictures and we have a sick puppy dog I will be taking to the vet today (I think a combo of being stressed and exhausted from being boarded so long).....so stay tuned for more posts on our fun vacations.

Ordinary day

This video isn't anything special {well, ok I think it is because Ava is in it} but I am posting it because I want to do better at capturing everyday moments with her on video. Someday soon I want to do a "day in the life of Ava" post and just take the camera with me and take pictures of all the things we do on a typical day around the house. I heard from a friend recently that they knew of someone who hired a photographer to do this with their family. I love that idea! Those are the memories that I want to capture in a picture. These precious days that her and I get to spend together will way too soon become just memories. Is it wierd that I am already getting sad about her going to Kindergarten?! Geez!

*sidenote-letting Ava play in the bathroom sink while I get ready in the morning has been awesome! A little messy but at least I can keep an eye on her and she is entertained.

Rocks, Flowers, and Coloring

What do these things have in common? These are Ava's three interests, at least at the moment, that I want to remember and make a concious effort to focus some activities on. She likes a lot of things but it is amazing how much attention she gives to playing with, talking about, and noticing these things when we are out and about. For example:

Rocks-Anytime we are in the sandbox playing all she wants to do is use her little sifter toy and sift through the sand so she can find tiny rocks and put them in a little cup and talk about them. She could do this all day. She notices rocks at construction sites and rocks in the pavement. It makes me want to start a rock collection with her. I think she would love it and they might just become her most treasured possessions and travel with us everywhere we go.

Flowers- When we go on walks around the neighborhood she is on a mission to spot any and all flowers along the way. She would pick all the flowers in our neighbors yards if I let her. Now everytime we are on a walk or in the car and she sees flowers she says "Can't pick'em. Not ours." She has heard me say that enough that it comes out of her mouth immediately. This little phrase has also come in handy at Target when she sees something she wants because usually if I just say "We can't touch it. It's not ours" then she is cool with it and we are able to escape without a tantrum. I'm thinking since she loves flowers so much that that should be my excuse for buying fresh flowers for the house every week like we were able to afford when I was working. ;)

Coloring- Do I really need to touch on this topic? The girl is cRaZy obsessed with it and I love that about her, I truly do. Not a day goes by where we dont spend at least 10 minutes coloring together (whether its with me, daddy, or by herself). It' so cool to me that at such a young age I am already beginning to see the things that she is passionate about and is good at! Studying rocks and flower gazing definitely come second and third in line to coloring but I want to encourage all of these things because she loves them. I just wish I could encourage her NOT to want to color in the car because melted crayons on the seats and floorboards, which there have been a few already, are not going to be good for resale value!

Maybe someday my little Ava will become an Artist, Geologist, or Horticulturist and now I can show her this post and say "See, I knew when you were 2!". :)

Learning Time

My friend Melissa recently recommended a great book on learning activities to with your kids called Mommy Teach Me. I began reading it and my love for teaching started to emerge again. I had already been doing little things with Ava but after reading this book and then coming across this blog, thanks Cassie, I quickly went out to Dollar Tree and bought a few items to start incorporating "Learning Time" into our day.

We by no means do this every day but whenever we have some free time I will sit down with Ava and teach her something new or just let her explore new objects and let the teaching go from there. Our conversations have been amazing and she is already learning so many new things! I have been wanting to do things like this with her for some time because a) I want and need to spend more one on one time with her with no other distractions b) I want her to develop a love for learning and c) it makes our day a little more fun and productive.

One of the first things I did with her was let her play with all my buttons. I tell ya, they were and still are a HIT!! (In fact we have had our fair share of crying fits when we have to put them away) As she was playing with them we would talk about concepts such as big and small, same and different, shiny and dull, and also learn new colors like gold and silver. I tried to get her to sort them in this white muffin tin but she wasn't really interested in that just yet. Baby steps mom! I can't expect my 2 year old to do things that I did with my 1st graders!

I had these tongs out too to help her work on her fine motor skills but she could care less about those.

Here she is comparing two of the buttons. It is so cute and makes me proud to hear her say "Look Momma, same" :)


Last week our learning time was playing in some water tubs that I put together. At Dollar Tree I bought some sponges, some test tube shot glasses for pouring (ha!), and a baster for squirting. She loved playing with them and pouring or squirting the water (fine motor skills) from one container to the next. The Noah's Ark crew joined in the water fun too.

Looks kind of lame but she enjoyed it!




Macy also got a sponge bath!


And she figured out a very clever way to water our new flowers.






Midway through we had a popsicle break

Another idea I got from the Little Hands Big Work blog was I froze some buttons and army men in a muffin tin and then let her play with them in the water tub.

We talked about how the water was frozen and the toys were stuck inside the ice.

Until.....

the ice began to melt and turn back into water

and then they were completely out and we could touch them!

(and is my dog "draggin butt" in the grass in the background???!!! Busted Macy!)

I have a feeling someone is going to love preschool!