Spring Fling

Aven's daycare held their annual "Spring Fling" program last night. As a member of the toddler class Aven got to "perform" in two different numbers. After weeks of practicing dance moves to "Wheels on the Bus" and "If You're Happy and You Know It" all the toddlers got up on stage and didn't do any of their rehearsed dance moves. I love the above picture because it is so descriptive of what a toddler performance consists of: on the left you can see the center director's hand waving as she tries to get the kids to do just one dance move. The teacher on stage is probably hoping none of the kids make a sudden move and fall off. The three boys refused to wear their costumes. One is sucking on his hand, about to burst into tears, another is already crying, and the third is trying to locate his mom in the audience while Aven's main concern is whether or not Ian and I see the super-cool costume she's sporting.

Whenever we go to these cute little performances I always cry just a little because the whole production is so priceless and it is made up of those sweet moments that totally define who your kid is at that precise moment. There's also something about how dedicated the teachers are that gets me every time. They go into this whole thing knowing that they will spend weeks practicing only to have a group of kids stare out at an audience and do nothing except look cute and make everyone "ooh and ahh".

Having a kid is the best.

4 Pirates

In honor of "Pirates 4" I present to you 4 pirates:

Arrrrrgh!

Party in the Park

The weather was forecasted to be good, so we decided to have Aven's birthday party at the park. We woke up to an updated weather report of possible thunderstorms in the afternoon with a high of 80 degrees. We decided not to worry. The party started at 2:00 and the weather was holding out okay- windy and cloudy but nice otherwise.

Payton and Zachary were having fun playing with the balloons until the knot came loose. It was fun to watch three grown men chase after a bunch a balloons. You may be surprised to learn that the balloons got away from them.

After the balloons escaped Aven opened her presents. She got some great toys, movies, clothes, and books.

Her immediate favorite was the bike. She's been asking for a bike, so I was glad to find this one.

After presents we did the Elmo pinata. I like the new pinatas that have the pull strings- much lower chance of major head trauma.

Next we sang happy birthday to Aven. It was too windy for candles, but she did blow out a candle at home a couple nights ago.

After the singing came the cupcakes. By the time we sat down to eat the cupcakes we noticed that the temperature had plummeted quite a bit and the sky was looking more bleak by the moment.

There are no more pictures because shortly after eating we had to pack up in a hurry and high-tail it to the car due to the threatening looking sky. As soon as we got in the car it thundered and started to downpour- lucky timing. It was a fun birthday party even though the weather didn't cooperate.

Time Flies

2 days old:

2 years old:

I can now understand statements like "it seems like she was just born yesterday" and "before you know it she'll be going off to college". I'm doing my best to enjoy every moment. Happy 2nd birthday Aven!

Honda Civics are Awesome

Back in 2003, after graduating college and getting a job that paid some decent money, I went out to purchase my first car with my own money. I ended up purchasing a 98 Honda Civic Ex, 2 door manual transmission, for about 11 grand. 

My sweet ride for the past 7 years. 

The car has been great to me over the years. I've never had a major problem with it mechanically, it was fast and fun to drive. I'm also proud to say I paid it off and it was completely mine back in 2006. Then as you all know in 2009 we had a wonderful little bundle of joy come into our lives. A bundle of joy that legally requires a fairly large car seat in order to ride in the car. Now I'm sure some of you can image it might be a little difficult to get a child into a car seat in the back of a 2 door car. For those who can't just trust me. It wasn't easy. Someone usually got hurt bumping their head into the roof or having to twist in ways our bodies were never meant to. But it worked, and we rarely took my car anyway. Usually we took the larger 4 door Outback. So last month I got my little reminder in the mail that it was time to register my car again for another year. And that's when I thought, Maybe it's time to get a new one. So I went on a rush to go find a new car before the end of the month. I learned that small cars with stick shift's are hard to find in the valley, Both the Honda and the Toyota dealer only had 1 in stock, and I wasn't happy with either. There was a nice Subaru Impreza that I found but I couldn't justify the drop from 36 mpg for my civic down to 26. I was hoping to get better gas mileage not worse. With 2 weeks left in the month I decided I would list my car for sale online to see if I got any bites on it. I was thinking that if I end up selling it I'll buy one of the other cars listed by some private sellers, and if I didn't sell by the end of the month I would go ahead and register the car and wait another year. I listed the car on Tuesday at work and had 4 phone calls before I even finished posting the photo's of my car. I ended up selling it less then an hour later for only $100 less then asking. Luckily he let me keep the car until the weekend. I needed to get to work the rest of the week after all and I didn't have any free time to go looking at cars until Saturday. I had a back up plan to borrow my dad's truck for next week if I couldn't find anything I wanted. Then on Wednesday night I got a phone call from the Honda Dealer. They had just got a 2005 4 door Honda Civic Hybrid, stick shift, on the lot that day. I drove over on Thursday after work to look at it. It was in great shape, low miles only 51,000 not a thing wrong with the interior, and only a small dent and some scratches on the side rear panel. I came home and talked about it with Cara and then bought it the next day. They even repainted the scratches for me.

My New Ride

4 door's. No more back breaking bending to get Aven in.

Hybrid car, 43 mpg average

Spring . . . is that you?

Yesterday we woke up to a little over an inch of snow on our front lawn, today we spent close to four hours playing outside even though the temperatures stayed around 55 degrees most of the day. Based on the number of people enjoying themselves at the park I would have to say that everyone is desperate for warm weather and would rather pretend that the weather is nice than stay inside another day. Since yet another storm is blowing in we took advantage of the wind and went to Sugarhouse Park to fly our kite.

We got out kite pretty high up there, but the wind was shifty, so the kite kept dipping down, threatening to get stuck in a tree.

Aven is not a fan of wind, but managed to enjoy kite flying for a few minutes.

I managed to capture the magical moment that Aven let go of the kite string, sending Ian scrambling across the hilltop, returning with many grass stains on his new pants.

After we finished flying our kite we took a few minutes to appreciate the forces of nature while trying to keep a very curious Aven at a safe distance.

Happy Spring! We're really hoping for warmer temperatures (and no flooding).