Its her party and she'll cry if she wants to...

...And crying she did

October 24Th has been a date in my head that I have been anticipating for a long time. Avery's first birthday! Cute presents- check, hello kitty decorations- check, a dog and cat themed celebration- check, grandparents- check, a beautiful dog cake made by my mom- check. Let's see, what are we missing? ... ... hmmmm... .... oh a healthy baby girl.

She has hardly been sick her whole life besides the little runny nose here and there, but of course, on her first birthday the little pooper had a fever, a rash, a major sore throat and no energy! I felt so bad for her. You could just tell she felt horrible, I mean, she actually let us hold her for more than 7 seconds.

I didn't have a very good contingency plan, so I ended up calling the few people we invited to come over and I cancelled the festivities. We took Avery to the local urgent care. She had a pretty high fever and we just wanted to make sure it wasn't strep or an ear infection. It turned out to be just a viral thing. They gave her a good dose of ibuprofen and when we got home she was acting a little bit like herself. This was our window to do a small celebration. We acted quickly and grabbed the presents and she just kind of stared at them and ran to her old toy. Man, we could have just wrapped that thing up! Its funny how the parents are so into the kids first birthday, and the kid could care less. She will never remember this day. Its sort of like the baby's room blog I mentioned last year. The baby doesn't care about its room, its all about the parents. That is the same thing about their first birthday. I had all these expectations of her delving into her cake and all of us laughing and having the best memories, but we couldn't even get her to eat Ritz crackers, let alone cake!

The most important thing is that she is feeling a little better today. Not quite 70% yet but better.

I can't believe we have a one year old! Every day still feels new with her. We have decided we will keep this one. She is a feisty little girl, and I'm sure we will have lots of battles in the future, but when she stares you in the eyes with her mouth wide open in anticipation of a kiss (she gives open mouth ones), it makes everything so worth it!

Here are some pictures in the small window we had when she felt well (thank you drugs!)

Here is the cake and cup cakes. We stressed a lot over these guys, but they turned out. Too bad we have about 25 cupcakes laying around. Anyone want one?

Oh and TC, Avery loves the mechanical doggy you sent her. I'm praying they will have a long relationship and she won't want a real one! Thanks to my parents for being there. It was their 30th wedding anniversary and Avery stole their thunder! We had a lot of fun (I have a ton of blogging to catch up on!). And thanks to those who thought of Avery!

This is her first dolly. She likes to make out with it.

Oh and PS have I mentioned that Avery is walking? Well she is!

Fall rocks!

Except when it already feels like winter. TC, I don't want any "its 85 degrees here in Phoenix" comments. I swear, it was 75 degrees a week ago, and it has been in the 40's this week; however, I still love the fall. I love the smells of Fall, the post Summer feeling, the colors, the wardrobe, and the festivities.

We have done a couple of fun Fall things...

We of course had to go on our annual Louisburg Cider Mill adventure with the Oman's. We double checked the hours of operation last year... see this post.

We got their famous apple cider doughnuts, some more apple cider pancake mix and some other little gadgets. I know this is totally disgusting, but I do have to mention, that last year, Sarah brought me some of those apple cider doughnuts about 6 hours before I delivered Avery and I ended up throwing them up and I promise it was the most delightful vomit I've ever experienced! Usually after you throw something up, you don't even want to ever look at it again, but not the apple cider doughnuts. They were as appetizing as ever!

We had another rookie this year.

Avery loved the scenery. I think she also loved Evie.

We can't get enough of this place! It makes me want to move and live in the country, but my parents would really never come to visit me... he he a little inside joke for Sid and Tam.

A couple of weeks later I took Avery to Deana Rose with a couple of my friends. Deana Rose is a cute farm for little kids. They have a petting zoo, a bunch of different playgrounds and a pumpkin patch.

I think I liked it more than Avery.

No really, she loved it. It was so fun to see how excited she would get to see the animals... oh and to see these animals playing with each other

There were little baby goats and they had bottles of milk that they would let us feed them with. I swear those goats were starving because they were ravenous. They were trotting over kids, nipping each other and doing everything they could to get the milk. Avery was brave, I think she thought she was a goat.

We had fun, I think we will go back soon!

Ok, so a couple of days ago, Travis took Avery fishing at the local pond with some friends. I think he mostly just had to protect our daughter from jumping into the pond. Good thing he could lure her in with ritz crackers!

I hope Fall will want to stay just a little bit longer. Its always in a hurry to leave! Sure wish Winter wouldn't wear its welcome.

Birthday Boy

Trav's birthday was last Wednesday! Woo hoo!

He was in Philadelphia for most of the day, but he flew home around 8:30 PM. I picked him up from the airport just in time to go and engorge on this.

Its a "Five Guys" burger and so worth the extra inner thigh fat.

Then we came back to our place and added more to the chunkiness with homemade hot cocoa and these cinnamon rolls

And we enjoyed them with these people

It was lots of fun!

I have to thank Brandi for basically doing it all. I was going to be lazy and just make Rhodes cinnamon rolls, but she dragged me to her house and we baked. It was really fun! Thanks again for all of your help. You are a good friend!

Now its the part of the annual birthday post where I go off about how old Trav is and how he robbed the cradle yadda yadda yadda... but I'll spare you and just tell you why I like Travis:

He always watches Avery when I need to go someplace without any complaints... I kind of think he wants me to leave sometimes because those two have lots of fun together

When he tries to be funny, he isn't, but when he just randomly says something, or does something wacky, it cracks me up. I get tears

He usually tells me he loves me everyday, and is always the first one to say it

He is addicted to cuddling... he's the girl in the relationship

He is a sucker for any kind of action, science fiction movie. All you have to do to get his money is have some sort of action hero in a story

The man cannot do two things at one time. Seriously, its comical. He will take 30 seconds to answer one simple question when the TV is on

When its time to leave, he will spend an extra 30 minutes saying bye to each and every person there

He will never cheat on me because when he likes one thing, he sticks with it. For example, he has a million pairs of shorts, but only wears the same ones every day

He can do everything. He not only is very smart, but he is amazing at the piano, can hold a tune, can play the guitar, and is athletic

He is all boy

He loves me unconditionally, which is huge when you have to put up with some of the things I put down

Hope you had a great birthday Trav. I sure do love you!

The Now

I have been working on updating my blog more frequently so that I don't always have a huge amount to write about. Obviously I suck. Here is another novel...

Travis:

As I mentioned before, he is on his 4Th year of medical school. This year is different because he gets to pick and choose where and what he wants to do for his rotations. He has mostly stacked his schedule with anesthesia rotations. He is, however, doing an ER rotation right now and is actually really liking it. Some of the stories he comes home with are not blog appropriate, but I will just say that one night Trav had to console a guy who had castrated himself because he didn't want to be a guy anymore. That's a hard one to relate to. Trav is thinking ER might be a second choice if he can't get into an anesthesia residency. Things are kind of stressful right now because its time to apply. Trav is still his laid back self though... I probably stress more than he does, I just need to remember, "come what may and love it!"

Besides the med school stuff, Travis is fully committed to BYU football. I'm pretty sure he can relate to "that time of the month" because one week he is ecstatic with the team, then the next week he is depressed. Darn FSU!

Milli
I thought it might be an adjustment from Utah to Missouri, but I fell right back into the swing. We have such good friends who we go to the park, go swimming and stay busy with.
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The cool thing about a small city is that in those races, the annoyingly fast, tiny short wearing track stars don't usually show and and claim all of the glory; thus, I took second place in the female category. The best part was that I won 50 bucks! We can eat this next week!

I also wanted to show off some crafts I did in Utah. I made Avery a quiet book for churchThe reason that I am tooting my horn is because I am horrible in this area. My friend Rachel can tell you that when I attempt to sew, I get all sweaty and hot and it makes me say bad words. When I was a sophomore in high school, I got caught cheating in my ceramics class because I used my friends project from a different class. Not my best moment, but it just proves how bad I am at artistic things.

 Here they are, they aren't great, but I was proud that I actually finished them without any tears.

She has torn it up a bit but I'm just thrilled that it actually works, she is occupied for more than five minutes!

My next project was for TC and Anabelle. I wanted to make them matching aprons.

TC's

Anabelle's

My mom's cousin helped me with TC's, but I was on my own with the small one, with NO PATTERN! I was wearing extra deodorant during this project. Avery is the model.

The last project was the easiest. I just made leg warmers for Halloween. You just cut the feet off of the sock and sew the bottom.

It was fun, but haven't touched a string of thread since. One day I hope I will get a sewing machine.

Avery

This is what happens when you leave this girl alone for 5 minutes. Don't be jealous of our bathroom floor!

Where do I begin with this girl? She is 11 months old, probably one of the busiest little girls alive, and so so sweet!

Her favorite things are climbing up the stairs, playing in my makeup bag, swinging on the swing set, and ritz crackers.

Most everyone thought that she would be walking by now because she has been pulling herself up since she was 7 1/2 months, but she doesn't seem too interested in it. If you have seen her crawl, you will notice her amazing speed. It would probably slow her down if she started to walk, and if anyone knows Avery, you don't mess with her agenda or she will let you have it!

She is still pretty small, but filling out a bit. She has eight teeth now and will bite your arm if you aren't too careful. She can say "Mama, Dada, Doggie, Ah-Ow (when she drops something), Night Night, Bye-Bye" and "Kitty".

Every age she grows into quickly becomes my favorite. It is so neat to see when the light finally goes on and she understands a new thing.

So that is the latest and greatest. Hopefully I can get my act together and post shorter and more frequent posts. Things are good around here. This past week, our townhome got renovated. I will post pictures of that soon. We are excited that it is fall. In my opinion, its the best season in Kansas City!

Back To School

So, it's that time of the year again. All is normal, except for one minute detail... it think my life is finally over this time. No more summer vacations, hanging out every day at the pool for 3 months. Yep, my last tan is behind me.

This is how Milli feels about it, I think.