A Busy 4th of July!

We had a great 4th of July this year! The weather was perfect and the smoke seemed to go away for the day (for those of you who don't watch the news, just about all of Northern California is on fire...the smoke has been absolutely horrible! Several of our friends have been evacuated from their homes and it only seems to be getting worse-pray for rain!!).

We started 4th of July morning off by going to Raymond and Jenny's orchard. They invited a bunch of people for pumpkin planting. What a great idea! The pumpkins should be ready by Halloween. Ava and I planted some seeds-we'll have to watch them grow...

Miss Ava tried to keep cool by eating some watermelon.

Mark took Ava for a ride on Raymond's tractor. If you look close, you'll see she's near tears. She didn't like the noise of the tractor.

We then headed to Cindy and John's house for a BBQ (Cindy watches Ava two days a week). There was lots of food, fun and swimming. Cindy had a baby pool set up for Ava, but she wanted to be where the action was-in the big kid's pool!

Ava, in the pool for the third time. She would not get out!! I think I stood in there for about an hour!! She was getting pretty brave-she wanted to let go of my hands and go under the water!

Ava, giving Lucy a little lovin'. She learned how to give Lucy hugs a few weeks ago and does it all the time now. Lucy's so good with her, I think she might be smiling in this picture.

We left Cindy and John's and actually had plans to go watch some fireworks. Ava fell sound asleep as soon as we got in the car. I felt so bad, I didn't want to wake her up. We just went home and she ended up sleeping for 12 hours that night-what a party girl! I guess she'll have to wait until next year to see some fireworks...

We have a walker!!

Ava is walking!! She started really walking over the weekend and has almost given up on crawling. Mark bought her pink vans (s0 cute!) this weekend and he swears the shoes helped! She is so proud of herself when she walks--she smiles so big. She holds her arms out in front of her, Mark says she looks like baby Frankenstein. I keep thinking she can't possibly get into anymore than she already does now that she's walking...right? I think I have a lot to learn--after I videotaped her walking around the house I turned around for 2 seconds (literally) to plug my camera in...I turned back around and Ava had climbed up on our dog, Lucy, and was straddling her like a horse! She was laughing and kicking her legs! I would've grabbed my camera to take a picture (it was pretty hilarious), but I was afraid Lucy was going to stand up with Ava on her back and take her for a wild ride. I think we're all going to learn a lot over the next couple of months.