Ava Baby Blessing

9.10.11

We decided to have Ava blessed in our home on a Saturday morning. We hoped this would make more people available to come out if they wanted. A lot of my (Mandy) family lives here in Buckeye, but it has grown so much, that there is none of them that are in my ward!!! They are scattered among...4 wards, and I didn't want anyone to miss out on their own church meetings, or miss Ava's blessing because of their church meetings/callings.

Here's our family!
Ava is wearing the same blessing dress that Savannah wore when she was blessed!

Below is a picture of some of the men who were in the blessing circle: Terry McKinnon (cousin), Roger Wallace (Ava's Uncle), my dad a.k.a. Papa, Uncle Earl, Jason, and Uncle George. Terry was the only one not in the circle.

For some reason Savannah was upset in this picture.

Savannah was at the stage where she was ALWAYS saying the prayer, so when my mom said the Opening prayer, Savannah had a fit over it!! (The picture above was after the blessing, so it was over a different matter). Her Aunt Lottie was giving the Closing prayer, so she told Savannah that she could do it with her.

We had a breakfast for all who came and it was a great day for us, even though Jason still had to go to work afterward.

What a great blessing it is to have the Gospel of Jesus Christ here on earth for us to learn how to be better people! I have a testimony of the Savior and His life is a great example for me to learn from.

Ava Brianna Prince

She is 5 months old now, but here are some pics on her birthday.

June 26, 2011
9 lbs, 5 oz
20 in long

L to R: Grandma Wendy, Granny & Papa

Here is one of her very first pictures after delivery

Here she is with big Sister Savannah. She really was so excited to see her sister. She kept telling everyone, "do you wanna see my baby sister?" "Come see my baby sister"
We must've caught her off guard in this picture!

Here's our first family picture....not the best one, in hindsight, I should've done a close up of our faces together....Oh well. We had about 5 cameras going off from different directions.

I was so excited to have her come out, I was in pain for the last 2 months of my pregnancy with her. It was so nice when they put in the epidural....man, when they moved my legs back up onto the table, it didn't hurt and I was ecstatic...that was the first time they didn't hurt since being pregnant! She has a good set of lungs, when they pulled her out, she cried good and loud! It was wonderful to hear that this time around. I missed Savannah's birth because I was put under for the emergency C-section.

We are so blessed to have her in our lives. Savannah is a wonderful big sister and we've adjusted pretty well to this new addition. She is such a happy baby, and we love her so!

My Pregnancy with Ava

6.25.11 and 6.26.11
I had wanted to do monthly pictures of my pregnancy with Ava, but alas, it didn't happen. Well, for one, I'm not skinny enough to have that tiny baby bump at the 2nd/3rd month of pregnancy, I don't start showing until about 5 months, even though I'm already wearing maternity pants and shirts!! Oh well.

Anyway, so once I started showing, I did want those monthly pics, but just didn't get to it. With Jason's crazy work schedule and me being so tired, and ending up wearing my PJ's all day on many days, I just wasn't up for pictures on most days.
Apparently, my body doesn't handle pregnancies well. My first indication that I was pregnant was the way my hip joints/ligaments hurt when I got out of bed-not a pregnancy test! From that day on, I had those aches and they only got worse, it got so bad by the 8th/9th month, I couldn't move without being in pain. Having stairs in our house didn't help me either! I started making piles at the stairs to take up, so that I would only have to take 1 trip up-when I went to bed.

I wanted to get one last family picture of the three of us before we had Ava, but alas, that didn't happen either! Jason had left for work on Saturday before I remembered, and so I was only able to get a pic with Savannah, before she left with her Aunt Lottie for the night.

Here is a picture of Jason and I, right before we left for the Hospital early Sunday morning.

Hair cuts!

6.3.11
We got our haircuts done by my sister, Mattie Jo. Savannah was not being very good about keeping her hair in ponytails/clips or such, and she was always complaining about her hair being in her way.
I asked her if she wanted to get her haircut and she would tell me no, because she wanted her hair like Tangled Rapunzel. I kept asking though every once in a while and she finally said, "yes"! So I immediately called Mattie Jo, and set up appointments for us. (I was ready for a haircut myself too)

Here's the "BEFORE" pictureShe's sitting so good and being still for the haircut, I was really surprised!! She would look down or lean her head to one side if Mattie Jo needed her to. I was very impressed! I was expecting her, a 3.5 yr old, to be squirmy during a haircut, but she wasn't.

Here's the "AFTER" picture. She loves it! And it's SSSOOOO much easier to wash her hair now! And faster too! I love it too!

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of me BEFORE and AFTER, but oh well.

The only thing with these short haircuts, is that we need our hair trimmed every couple of months or so. Today we just got our hair trimmed, which made me think of posting these pictures.

Our House

Here are some recent pics of our new house, with our furniture in it. Jason has dreamed of putting up our TV on the wall, and it has finally come to fruition, when we moved into this house. Eventually though, he wants to get a projector! Men and their "toys"!!


As you can see, we finally got rid of that old blue plaid. lopsided couch that we've had forever!! We figured, we should get a new couch to go with our new house. We love the ottoman especially because it's got storage underneath it! Yay!


We repainted the kitchen from that dark red color, to white. Any of you that know me, know that I LOVE the color red, but it just didn't work for me in the kitchen.


The front room we made into Savannah's playroom....since we don't have any additional furniture to make it a formal Living Room (a.k.a the Visiting Teaching/ Home Teaching room)
We also bought a new dining room set, since that little round drop leaf table we had was pretty small and would look dwarfed in the eat-in dining room.
We love our house and the space that we have now. It's amazing how we managed to fit all the "stuff" we have now, in the little apartment that we had before.....it was just all in the patio storage apparently!!

Dance class

3.8.11

This was suppose to be her 1st day of dance class, but about 10 min before we left, we got a call that the class was cancelled for that day. She was so excited for the class too!

3.15.11

Here she is ready for her 1st day of dance class!!
I braided her hair, to keep it out of her way. I couldn't believe she sat still long enough for me to braid it!!

Unfortunately, the videos we had of her during her last dance class, somehow got deleted from the SD card, so we don't have those....BUMMER!! They were cute videos of her sonersaulting, and doing different moves. I'm so bummed about that. Guess I should be better about uploading the pics from the camera sooner than later.

She loved her dance class and wished we could've done another class, oh well. Another time maybe.

Phx Zoo

2.25.11
So one day we got to tag along on a field trip to the Zoo with a Pre-school group. Savannah really enjoyed it and had fun with her cousins.

Jackson and Savannah

Brooklynn & Savannah

Feeling for Stingrays