A New Blog

Greetings, blog readers!

I've decided to change from Blogger to WordPress (for various reasons), so if you're interested in still following the adventures of my family, take a look at the new blog:

http://davisadventures.wordpress.com

I hope to see you there!

Camping, and other photos

Greetings! I just thought I'd update the blog with some up-to-date photos of the family, as well as give you a peak at Tommy's first camping trip!

First, the photos:

Anna likes to be on her tummy, and has excellent head control! It's tricky for me to get a good shot, but I thought this one was pretty cute :-)

Tommy has been fascinated with the camera lately, and this was taken as he was trying to take the camera away from me! Notice the lack of shirt--Tommy firmly believes that clothing is only optional, unless you're leaving the house for some reason.

Jack being a ham. He's a cute ham, but a ham nonetheless!

Anna waiting patiently on the couch. She actually sits up pretty well in this position (but don't worry, I don't leave he alone perked so precariously on the couch).

More Anna head control! I just thought I'd give several angles so you can get a better sense of what she looks like :-)

On Wednesday, Tommy and Daddy went on a camping trip with their good pals Nate and Teddy Casperson. They went to Otter Creek up on the Blue Ridge Parkway, about fifteen minutes from home. Tommy was so excited to be camping! He asked to go to bed early, but mostly because he wanted to recreate a scene from one of his favorite TV shows "Kipper." He loves to sit under a blanket with a flashlight and say,

Deep in the middle of the dark, dark wood

There lived

a horrible, horrendous,

terrible tremendous...

Unfortuntely, Kipper never makes it past that line, so we don't find out what the plot of the story is, but Tommy loves to repeat this over and over at bedtime. While on the camping trip, he sat bundled up in his sleeping bag, with his flashlight, "reading" this story to his Daddy.

Nobody ever believes us, but Tommy loves to sleep in. Even though it was a camping trip (and I know I always wake up early on camping trips) Tommy managed to sleep in until almost 9am, despite the rest of the camp being awake for several hours before that! Silly kid. He's a cutie :-)

Tommy sleepin' away...

Tommy and Teddy Casperson. They had a lot of fun playing (supervised) in the creek!

Teddy and his Dad, Nate. You can also see Diego in the background, who went on the camping trip as well. He didn't seem to have as much fun, though--according to Logan, he didn't want to lie down pretty much the whole trip.

The campsite! Logan and Tommy slept in the tent on the left. Nate brought the two tricycles for the boys to play with, and Tommy loved them!

Tommy and Daddy preparing to leave on their trip. Still not sure why Tommy thinks this is a good pose for pictures...but at least we can use it for black mailing purposes when he's older!

Creepy

I was working on the computer one day this week, when I hear the boys start to squeal. Tommy runs into the office and says, "Mommy! Bug! Can you get it?" I mumble "yeah, just a minute" and finish what I'm working on, because usually "bug" is code word for "fly" in our house. If Tommy finds a dead one, he wants me to put it in the trash or throw it outside.

So, I walk into the living room to see this:

And yes, it really was as big as it looks in the photograph. That's an 8"x10" photo frame.

My first thought was "Holy cow! That thing is huge!" My second thought was "How in the world did it get this far into the house without any of us noticing????" I'm still at a loss as to how this praying mantis got in, but suffice it to say that he is now out of our house. And hopefully not planning on making a return!

In case you missed it the first time, here he is again:

Can I just say...eeeeeewwww.

Anna's Stats

Anna had a doctor's appointment today, and confirmed my suspicions: she's a big girl!

Weight: 12 lbs, 4 oz (75th percentile)

Height: 24 inches (98th percentile)

Head circumference: 15 inches (50th percentile)

She's growing like a weed!

July in a Nutshell

July.

It's over.

Anyone else think this is NUTS?

Since it's been a loooong time since I posted, I thought I'd shower you with a plethora of photos! Some are fuzzy, so be warned!

To start off, here's a cute photo of Anna (this is really out of focus, but you can kind of see her smile here--something that she's only just begun to show off!)

I can't believe she's two months old already! She's getting pretty good at holding her head up, and she loves to sleep. I am so grateful for that! She's my first child that can be put in bed awake, and will fall asleep. She actually gets kind of ornery when she wants to go to bed--as in, she's sitting there trying to say "Mommy! Just put me to bed already!" It's fabulous.

This photo was from a long time ago...like, when Anna was two weeks old, but it's cute :-)

A much more recent photo, this was taken of Anna just two days ago. Note the hair sticking up on her head. We gave her a bath, and when her hair dried, it was stuck like that. No amount of brushing or patting her head will get it to go down. I have a feeling she may have "troll hair" (remember those dolls from the 90s?)

Is it just me, or is she adorable?

Just to show that I do remember that I have other kids, here's a whole section dedicated to them! At the beginning of the month Nanna, Papa, the kids and I all went to the Lexington Balloon Rally, which is held around the 4th of July. We had fun walking around and seeing the booths, and eating kettle korn and having pizza by the slice. Nanna and Papa gave the boys adorable three-cornered hats, and they loved wearing them around town!

The obligatory group photo. Don't they look festive?

Tommy is getting so big! He's gotten much better at using pronouns, and loves to sing songs to his little sister. Whenever we have the family hold hands for walking across parking lots, etc., he immediately breaks into "Weeeee're off to see the Wizard! The wonderful Wizard of Oz!" He doesn't know all the words, but he sings with gusto.

When Logan and I first got married he showed me his photo albums from his youth, and one of my comments was, "Boy, there sure are a lot of photos of you sleeping!"

Now that I'm a mom, I understand why. It's very cute/amusing to see kids asleep in funny places. Case in point:

When Jack has a meltdown, he sometimes settles into a type of cry where you just know he's going to fall asleep. This happened one day while he was sitting at the table, and he fell asleep--still sitting at the table. You can't see it here, but a lot of drool was involved. (And yes, I was a nice mom and put him in his bed, but I had to take a picture first!)

This is actually an older photo, but Anna just happened to be wearing the same outfit as the more recent photo up top. I think she was about a month old here. She has filled out a lot, and has a very expressive face! She loves to mimic mouth motions, and always looks like she's trying to tell you something. So cute :-)

The next stop on our July trip is the Rockbridge County Fair! The boys, Anna and I went with Nanna and Papa on the first night it was open, and we were sure glad we did! The next three days had weather close to 100 degrees, with heat advisories and warnings to keep your pets inside. It was probably between the mid-seventies and eighties while we were there, and it was plenty hot for us!

There was a stage coach at the fair as an advertisement for Wells Fargo, and they were kind enough to let our kids ride in it.

The Three Amigos.

Jack loved these puppets. Sadly, he did not get to keep them, but they were fun while they lasted :-)

There was no camel at the fair this year, but the boys did get to ride ponies! This pose that Tommy is doing is becoming fairly common. For some reason he thinks he needs to have a claw in photos--not sure if he's a dinosaur or monster, but it's one of the two.

Jack and Nanna with their pony.

We knew that Tommy would want to ride the rides at the fair, since he did it last year, but we were worried that Jack was too small (i.e., short) for most of them. Jack has a history of melting down when he can't do what Tommy does, and I was pretty nervous about that. Papa ingeniously solved the problem by taking Jack down to the animal barns before we got to the rides, so he didn't even know what he was missing!

Two handsome Johns.

Tommy had a great time on the rides! He talked about them for quite a while afterwards.

Tommy's favorite "ride" was the big slide, which he remembered from last year. After Tommy had already gone down twice (with Mommy) Jack and Papa joined us, and they let me take Jack up there for a ride. What a rush!

So, there you have it! July in a nutshell. Oh, and we did a lot of house hunting, too, but we don't have pictures of that.

And now, for the final event, I present a video of Anna "talking"! I wanted a record of her adorable coos, and here you have it :-)

Here's to a fantastic August!

House Huntin'

Originally I was keeping this information "under wraps", but since everyone around here knows that we're trying to rent our current house out, I guess the cat's out of the bag! Basically, we've outgrown our little Pine Avenue cottage, and need some space! So we've been exploring options.

We've spent the last three weeks touring the houses in BV and Lexington, and believe me, there are lots of options! Not all of them are great options, but they're there to be explored. It was fun finally seeing the insides of houses we'd looked at online for months (Logan and I are addicted to trolling the MLS system). What with the housing market being the way it is, most of these houses have been on the market for months, if not years. Yeesh!

We started this process because someone who was moving called us to see if we were interested in looking at their house. It had quite a bit more space, but it was an 80 year old house (lots of updates, but still that really old feeling) and Logan really isn't crazy about that aspect of BV houses. Plus the way the space was arranged would only work for us for a few years, and we'd like to find a house that could work for at least the next 10 years (whether or not we'll actually stay in a house for 10 years is unknown, but we'd like the option).

Since we know we want more children, we'd like a 4 bedroom house, or a 3 bedroom with an office. As we've gone through different houses (and even made an offer on a few) we've really been able to find out what's important to us, and what's just extra fluff. Surprisingly, the style of house we're settling on is "ranch", which I never would have guessed. I've always been more of a cape cod/2 story house kind of person, but they're so daggone expensive, plus the use of space inside is much less efficient, giving you less bang for your buck. Since we have a budget (and we're stickin' to it!) we need something modest, but very efficient. Like, super efficient. Ranch houses are great because they usually have a basement that ends up doubling your square footage, and provides lots of storage space.

Tomorrow we're looking at another option, and I'm pretty excited! It's in Lexington, so it's closer to Logan's work, and it looks like it's been nicely updated, and the price is right, so we're hoping for a match!

Will this be "the one"? Only time will tell!

Mt. Vernon

(Note: I started this post about two weeks ago, couldn't finish it in one sitting, saved it, and promptly forgot about it. So sorry the news is a little old, but hopefully it's still interesting!)

June is over, and I can't believe it! My last post recaps most of what happened in June, but I haven't posted anything yet about Grandma Rae Rae and Grandpa Tad's visit.

We had a great time! The kids had a lot of fun getting to know their grandparents better, and Anna was a sweetie pie most of the time. We went up on June 21st to DC so that the boys could go to a Mariners/Nationals game, and then Rae Rae and I went with Anna to a lia sophia show I had slyly scheduled in Arlington (about five minutes from our hotel!)

Grandpa Tad was pretty good at keeping the boys entertained, and was a good sport about sitting in the "tight spot" in between Jack's car seat and Tommy's booster seat. This allowed us to just take our minivan up (have I mentioned how much I love our car?)

Jack got some pretty good naps in on the way, and reminded me an awful lot of his father while he slept...

When we checked into the hotel, the boys had a lot of fun mauling their father and climbing on the beds. They love hotels! So exciting to children.

The boys had a lot of fun at the baseball game (no photos, though)
These photos were taken at the Mt. Vernon Gristmill and Distillery. We were already planning to go to Mount Vernon, and then it just so happened that I was assigned to work on the jacket cover and page design of a book about George Washington's distillery operation. We got to meet the guy in charge who wrote the book, and it was fun checking everything out!

The boys weren't terribly interested in the gristmill or distillery, but they did like looking for the lizards that were hiding in the bushes!

This is our little family in front of Mt. Vernon (Anna's in the baby carrier that I'm wearing. How would we survive without it?) It was a pretty warm day, but the kids were pretty cooperative (all things considered).

They have an awesome interpretive center there, where the kids could play with a miniature doll house of Mt. Vernon (Tommy liked that) and they could have even dressed up like George Washington (but they didn't feel like it). There were lots of other fun things, so we'll have to go back again sometime when it's a little cooler outside!

There is so much history in this area! We'll have to try and plan more day trips in the upcoming summers.

And these pictures are just for fun...

We had a great time, and we were so glad we could spend it with Rae Rae and Tad! Thanks for making a fun memory with us :-)