Our Weekend in Prescott

 We went up to Prescott for the weekend to celebrate my Grandma's 83rd birthday. We left Friday late afternoon and came home this Sunday morning. It was nice to escape to cooler temps even though I was secretly hoping it would be cold enough to wear pants and long sleeve shirts. It was in the 80's, so I guess I will take it. Mike and I went out to dinner Friday night when we got there. Ava had a blast hanging out with Grammie and Grandpa Dwayne. She loves new places to explore.

My mom has 2 steps to get into her living room and Ava spent most of the weekend going up and down them!!

We went to the fair on Saturday, just to see the animals.Ava really enjoyed them. There weren't a lot of them, but they were fun to see. We had to take a tractor ride over to where they were and she did NOT like the tractor ride. She jumped between my mom, Mike and I the entire ride there and back.

She played outside my mom's  backyard too. There was a ceramic bunny that she was very interested in.

We celebrated my Grandma's birthday Saturday evening and we all had a blast. A huge storm came in that night and the loud thunder woke up Ava around 10:15pm that night and she didn't finally fall asleep until midnight. We were all a bit tired the next day. We brought her into our bed because she was in a new place and a different bedroom and hoped she would fall back asleep and then we could just put her back in her crib, but nope. She was probably not very comfortable being crammed into a double bed with Mike and I.  I know I wasn't.  After a while, Mike did try to put her back down, but she wasn't having it. My mom rocked her for a bit and I think she was tired enough from being up for the past 2 hours that she went right down.

She has been talking up a storm. The other day, she had a stuffed animal in her hand and she just started naming his body parts all on her own. Usually we have to point and ask her what something is. If you say a word, she will repeat it a million times in a row. Usually, we will point to something, like the garden in my mom's back yard and say "garden", then she will say "gar" and then I say it again as if to correct her and get her to say the full word. We will go back and forth quite a few times!

She has officially learned the word "no". I know for a lot of kids, it is the first word they learn, but not Ava. Just this past weekend, when I would ask a question, she would answer, "no". At first I thought it was a fluke, but she has continued to say it when you ask her to do things. It is cute and sometimes it means yes, but she is learning to assert herself.