Daddy Daughter Weekend

I had the opportunity to go to our Ike faculty lake trip this past weekend. This is a trip that has been taking place for the last 27 years. The original principal at our school, invites all past and present faculty members to come to her house for the weekend every July. This was my second time to go and I had an AMAZING time! While I was gone, Stephen and Olive had "Daddy Daughter Weekend". They had a lot of fun together and we were so grateful that Auntie Traci and Dano and Honey were able to help out when he needed it. What great assistants! I left the camera at home so he could document their time together...

Thursday night Daddy had a softball game, so Auntie Traci took Olive to watch the games.

Here is Olive watching Stephen on first base.

Friday night, Daddy had really late softball games, so Olive got to spend the night at Dano and Honey's for the first time. I am sure they took thousands of pictures, but I don't have any of those yet. Here are Stephen and Olive before she left to go to Dano and Honey's.

Saturday afternoon he picked her up and they came home and played and played and played!

Waiting for Mommy to get home on Sunday.

I am so grateful that they were able to spend some quality time together. Thank you, Stephen, for taking such great care of our little one so that I could take a little break. I appreciate you more than you know.

Ten by Ten

I was reading on another blog how she liked to do a "ten by ten". This means that on the tenth day of every month, she takes a picture every hour on the hour for 10 consecutive hours. I thought this was a great day to document a day in the life of Olive. Although, today was not a typical day for us at all! We were home almost all day and Olive took a 2.5 hour nap, which NEVER happens. I am grateful if she sleeps over an hour. Here is a peek into our day...

8:00 am - Playing on Mommy and Daddy's bed after breakfast bottle with Daddy, sportin' a lovely hair do.

9:00 am - yogurt and cereal (her favorite meal)

10:00 am -
Wrigley, Olive and I took a walk this morning and stopped to do a little swinging at the park.

11:00 am - reading "Barnyard Dance"

12:00 pm - just went down for nap

1:00 - Mommy wrapped birthday presents for friends

2:00 pm - Mommy is in SHOCK that Olive is still asleep, so I worked on her birthday invitations. I noticed in the last 2 pictures, my creative process is VERY messy! :)

3:00 pm - Late lunch (Clearly she isn't thrilled with my choice of veggies)

4:00 pm - playing in her room

5:00 pm - entertaining herself with the camera case while Miss Cora opened her birthday gifts.

6:00 pm - playing with Daddy at Cora's house after seeing Cora really enjoy her cake

7:00 pm - playing catch with Wrigley

And yes, I realize that this is actually 11 pictures. I guess I just got excited. Hope that your day was as fun and relaxed as our's was.

Big Girl Day

For the first time I realized that Olive really is becoming a big girl! She is out growing the "baby stage" and while I am thrilled to see all of the new things she can do, I am sad at the same time. Usually she does a few things a day that make me think "yep, she is getting big", but today, she did "big girl" things all day long! Our sweet neighbor across the street, Cora, turned one today, so I thought it was necessary for Olive to make her a card. This was her first time to use markers and she was pretty excited. (If you know me well, you know I am slightly obsessed with markers, so I was THRILLED that she liked them!)

"Oooh! I get to play with all of these?!"

"Hmmm, what color should I use next?"

"These are fun to chew on too!"
*Notice the marker on her leg*

*and her face* :)

The final product...I think we may have an artist on our hands!

Olive has become a very picky eater and we all know she comes by it very naturally. I know that I deserve to have a picky child, but I prayed she wouldn't be like me in this area! It really isn't a fun way to live. I have been having a really hard time getting her to eat anything that isn't covered in yogurt. Today I made her a grilled cheese sandwich and she ate THE WHOLE THING! I was shocked and so grateful! I think I can sneak all kinds of things into the middle of a grilled cheese!

Then when she was playing this afternoon, she smiled so big I caught her top teeth on camera for the first time!
And then for dinner, she ate sweet potato waffles! Again, shocked and grateful!

High fives for Daddy for having such a big day!

She is growing so quickly, we are just trying to enjoy every single moment we have with her. She is such an incredible blessing to us!

Whee!!!

Daddy and Olive figured out a really fun new game.

Step 1: Count to three...

Step 2: Lift Olive into the air...

Step 3: Get a big hug and laugh!

And again

"One more time Daddy, please!!"

Happy 4th and 5th of July!

We had a great Independence Day weekend! Mrs. Dava at church got Olive this precious little sailor outfit for 4th of July, so she had to pose wearing it before we left for church.

We spent the afternoon at Dano and Honey's house. Dessie, Paul and Sharla were visiting so we got to spend some time with them.

WWWHHHHEEEE!!!

"Watch me swing, Daddy!"

Auntie M loved playing with me!

Gigi really liked showing Olive off to her sister, Dessie.
Olive discovered Dano's rocking chair from when he was a little boy and she loved climbing in and out, in and out, in and out...

We had a great time with family and then headed home to watch fireworks. The only problem was, Hurricane Alex created massive amounts of rain in our area, so they cancelled the

fireworks. Ugh!

Monday evening, we had a little cook out at our house.

Olive and Wrigley posing by the flag

Molly brought the coolest necklaces and was so sweet to share them with Olive.

Since the city cancelled fireworks, we had to do a few our own. I couldn't stand the thought of Olive not seeing fireworks on her first 4th of July! Here she is safety inspecting them with Daddy. At first, she thought they were really neat. She seemed to enjoy watching the colors.

And then, this happened...

And she freaked out. Poor girl, I've never heard her scream like that before. She recovered fairly quickly when the fireworks were over.

Sweet friends!

Happy 4th of July!

Farm Faces

I got Olive the cutest little book "Farm Faces". It is a book of masks and she loves to play peek-a-boo when we read it. I love watching her try to see out of the eye holes!