Miscellaneously Cute

Sorry about the long lapse in blogging (about 7 weeks, I think). I quit right about the time I went back to work. It's taken a while to get used to the schedule with me working and all that that entails. It has been an adventure. It's going fine and I'm happy to be back at work (although I do sometimes long to be at home with Ava again) and Ava is doing well, we are just SO busy! It's hard to find time for all the responsibilities we always had plus a baby (I know, all you seasoned parents are chuckling; yes, we did know this would be the case). We're starting to get the hang of it, though! Ava is doing well at "school". I've been meaning to take some pictures of her classroom ever since she started but haven't managed that yet. Lately she's become the queen of the half hour nap there, but I think that will pass. There's just so much going on that she doesn't want to miss out! She wakes up happy and is generally happy there, so I guess it's not all bad.

Work is going well for me. I have gone down to working four days per week, which has been fabulous so far. I have Thursdays off (random, but it's the day that works best) and I consider them my "work-at-home" days. My goal is to accomplish much of the cleaning and grocery shopping on those days so that we have less of that to do on the weekends. I try not to be overly optimistic with my to-do lists, as it is hard to accomplish much while taking care of a baby. I love the extra time with Ava, though, and try not to let my busyness distract me from the joy of having time with her. And this day off is how I am managing to do this blog entry today. :)

Other than our trip to St. Louis, nothing ground-breaking has happened since I blogged last. We dedicated Ava at church on September 19th. One of our friends snapped some pictures for us, but they're pretty dark (it's really hard to get decent pictures in our church sanctuary). We'll have to see if we can get them lightened up a little to show off. The day before that we did a family photo shoot with our friend Kathryn Bacalis, who is a photographer. We should be seeing those pictures in a couple weeks and I can't wait! It ended up being a cool, rainy day, which was a bummer since we did the shoot outside at the Oval on the CSU campus. The trees protected us from the rain some, though, and the lighting was great for pictures. Ava was a good sport. Afterwards she experienced her first outdoor football game. We went and hung out with Grandpa Clint and Garney while Tyler (Clint's nephew) played pee-wee football. Quite chilly, but still fun (they won, yea!).

Tomorrow evening we are driving up to Beaver Creek to spend the weekend at a condo with the other couples (four others) on our small group. It should be fun and I'm sure the fall colors will be beautiful! Ava's new friend Chase (about 2 and a half weeks old now) will be there, too.

Since it has been so long, we have quite a few random pictures of Ava that I will post here. She's getting so big! 3 months old (14 weeks tomorrow) already!

Sitting at the dinner table in her Bumbo chair. She was pretty interested in what we were doing. :)

Her first walk in the stroller without the car seat. She seemed to love being able to see where we were going!