Wicked

Last night, Gabe and I had a date night.

First we went to dinner at Lento. We have never been before so we decided to try it. The food was very good-we both had steak and Gabe also had some lobster. It's a little expensive, but the food was worth it. And when you eat there, you support the local farms-they buy all of their food fresh from local farms daily. Their menu changes daily based on what they have fresh which is pretty cool.

After dinner, we headed to the Auditorium Theater to see Wicked.

Neither of us had seen it before and I had heard nothing but rave reviews. When tickets went on sale back in March, I bought them right away. The story is the prequel to The Wizard of Oz and it's a somewhat complex story. I'm not going to give away too many details because I don't want to ruin it for anyone. If you get a chance to see it, I highly suggest it!

The only pitfall was that it was in the 80's here yesterday and the theater had no air conditioning! We were up in the balcony and roasted! It was pretty hot-I can't imagine how the actors handled it....ugh!

Overall we had a great night-it's nice to get out and be baby-free every now and then! (and thanks Mom for babysitting!)

Current Obsession

The Cat book....she'll read it over and over

Ten Months Old!!

Yesterday my baby girl turned 10 months old!! It's crazy that I'm already starting to plan her first birthday party-where has this year gone?!

Avery is continuing to grow and change so much-she is just a barrel of laughs these days! New this month-her version of dancing, clicking sounds with her tongue, pulling up to stand, using her sippy cup all by herself, making her scrunched up face, doing "sooooo big", pointing, and doing her fist sign "all done".

She is still nursing really well and eating lunch and dinner. She tried a few new foods this past month-pastina, toasted cheese, pancakes, black olives, cantaloupe, canned peas (which she loves!), banana bread, and hamburger. She's really funny with meat-she will not swallow it for some reason. She just keeps it in her mouth for like a half hour! I have no idea why, but we haven't been too successful with it yet!

Avery is still napping twice a day for us and does pretty well at night-she either sleeps all the way through or just wakes up once to nurse. So it hasn't been too bad! She has her nights here and there where she keeps us up for hours at a time, but thankfully it's not too often!

Her favorite toys at the moment are the fisher price stackable rings-she doesn't go anywhere without them! She usually has a ring in each hand and crawls around like that-it's too funny! She is also obsessed with a Cat book Molly got us-we read it numerous times a day!

Here are her 10 month shots-once again she was very tricky to take a picture of!

Trying to lunge off of the chair:


Yanking at the sticker:

The rest are my favorites of the bunch:

This is her doing "sooooo big!":

Again yanking on the sticker:

Loving her FP rings:

Daddy lifting her up to see the fan:

Seriously?!

I woke up to snow this morning....

Seriously Mother Nature, have you seen the date on the calendar????

Nice Weekend!

Another Sunday night....the end of a weekend and back to "the grind" tomorrow.

Friday Avery and I went to a friend's house for a playdate. I of course forgot my camera, but it was fun! She played with Ryan who's about a week or so younger than Avery. Avery spent most of the time chasing their 3 cats around the house-it was pretty funny. She could have cared less about the new toys-she just wanted the kitties!!

Yesterday was such a nice day out! We decided to make our first family trip to the public market for the year. It wasn't really busy and we bought more stuff than we ever have-sausage, burgers, rolls, pineapple, grapes, cheese, cookies, oranges....so many good deals! Avery loved watching everything and she had a great time!! When she went down for her afternoon nap, I went grocery shopping then started getting ready for the evening. Our friends Julie, Richie, and Carly came over for dinner! Again I didn't take any photos (shame, shame) but we had a very nice evening. We always have a nice time when we get together with them!

Today we had a pretty relaxing day. We had lots of play time with Avery....and hopefully she got tired out!
One of her new things is to check under the furniture for things:

Her favorite toy of the week is her stackable rings...she loves them and doesn't go far without one (or two!) in hand. So today I picked one up and looked at her through the hole and she came up to me and looked at me at the same time. It was so cute! Gabe got a few pics of her doing it:


She hates the rings actually stacked-she wants nothing to do with stacking/unstacking them-she just wants to carry them around everywhere with her!

Of course she did lots of crawling:

And had fun playing with her "purple ball":

We went over Aunt Connie and Uncle Francis' for dinner-they haven't seen Avery in awhile and wanted to make us dinner to thank Gabe for fixing their computer. It was a very yummy meal and a nice visit. Now Avery is in bed and I'm just winding down the evening before checking into bed!

Rest In Peace Grandma Bobbie

Gabe's Grandmother passed away today.

She has been battling Alzheimer's for years now but finally gave in. She lived with Gabe's parents for years so Gabe and his sister were very close to her. I met her several times when we first got together and she seemed like a wonderful woman. She was still living with his parents at that time.

Eventually her Alzheimer's got bad enough that they decided to put her into a nursing home so she could get the care she needed. We visited her a few times while she was there, but she really didn't know who we were anymore.

Earlier this week we got the news that she wasn't doing well and her kidneys were starting to fail. They thought she only had a few days to live so Gabe and his sister went to see her one last time. Sure enough, today we got the call that she passed away.

We'll be going to her memorial service next week to celebrate the wonderful 87 years that she lived.

Rest in peace Grandma Bobbie-you will be dearly missed.

Caught Some Cuteness!

I finally caught Avery "in the act" of doing things today. When she does new things I try to get photos or video and most of the time she doesn't perform for the camera! Today I got her in action though so I had to share!!

She has perfected drinking from a sippy cup now (yay!)-it took her awhile to master tipping it back, but she finally got it about two weeks ago!

I mentioned in my last post that Avery has been making a funny scrunched up face and breathing heavy through her nose....well, she did it for the camera at lunch today!

And at dinner we have her new trick....

She's just so darn cute!!