No Power...

Well, we now know that we can kinda survive without power, as long as we can still make it to the store- thank goodness that some of the stores were open. After remnants from Hurricane Ike hit Columbus we had NO power!!!! At first it was fine, we thought it would be right back on, SO not the case. We called the power company on Sunday and got a recording that said to plan for 7 DAYS!!!!! I started to freak out. Blayne went to the store and got a car charger for our phones and some powdered milk for Ava, which she refused to drink. Luckily she still eats a lot of baby food since she is a slow teether, so she didn't notice that much of a difference, since she goes to bed about when it starts to get dark anyway. After staring at the wall all night that first night, Blayne got out our games the next day, so we had a nice game of candlelight Scrabble. But man, does this ever make you realize what kind of things you need to keep in your food storage, if we couldn't have gone to the store, I honestly don't know what we would have done. After only 2 1/2 days of peanut butter and honey sandwiches and fast food, and 1 cold shower the power returned, just in time for the disappointing final episode of Big Brother- Dan- come on!!!! Anyway, I don't think I have ever been as excited as when the lights came on while I was reading next to a candle, I started jumping up and down, trying to be quiet, since Ava was sleeping, but man, was I relieved!!! The whole time I just had to keep reminding myself that it DEFINITELY could have been worse, and thank goodness it wasn't!

Cute Dress & New Bike

So, last Sunday we were all taking a nap, and when Ava woke up Blayne was nice enough to go get her so that I could keep sleeping. Too bad once she saw me she wanted to lay on me, as you can see, I was NOT ready to be awake, but she was so cute. What could I do??
This is her dress that she got from Uncle Brad last year for Christmas, we LOVE it and are SO glad that it fits her now. Isn't it cute??!!
Like mommy- like daughter.
I was getting started with dinner and someone was playing peek-a-boo under my skirt- what a weirdo!!! She actually says peek-a-boo now, it's really cute. She's starting to talk a little, so it's really fun. She walks and runs EVERYWHERE- it's so funny how much she has changed in just the month that we have been here. She just had her 1st birthday yesterday- YAY!!!! I'll try to post pictures from that soon. I can't believe she's a year old!!!!

Blayne and I are trying to start working out. We have a couple of workout videos, and we just got this for really cheap (since Blayne doesn't really like doing the videos- hahaha!). It's good as long as the TV is on, otherwise it gets boring, but we like it.

WORST NIGHTMARE!!!!!

OH MY GOSH!!!! So Thursday night Blayne goes in to go to the bathroom, and all the sudden I hear him FREAKING out. This humongous spider was in there!!!! Well, Blayne and I are both TERRIFIED of spiders so we are freaking out, arguing over who has to kill it (of course I use the argument that he's the guy, and it's his job, and eventually it worked). As we're trying to figure out how to kill this beast Ava is crying because we were scaring her with how scared we were. It was HORRIBLE!!!! I came up with the idea to get out our Swiffer and put one of the cleaning pads on it, and then we don't have to get close to it at all, we can just squash it and throw the pad away. So Blayne got all dressed up in his spider-killing gear. He had been in just a t-shirt and shorts, but he decided that he really needed to have his shoes on, and a hooded sweatshirt and a zip up jacket on too. It was so funny!!! So he squashed it with the Swiffer and held it there for seriously like 5 minuted, ya know, to make sure it's really good and dead-hahahaha!!!! So that pretty much finished any thoughts we had about staying here. I mean we wanted to move closer to our families anyway, but that really did it for us. SICK- I HATE SPIDERS!!! Now I keep having scary dreams that spiders are all over me- I HATE IT!!!!

My hero!!!
So we don't have a washer and dryer in our apartment, so we have to go down the hall to do our laundry. Well, it costs $1.25 for each machine, each load, and the machines are NOT very big at all. So this is what our apartment looks like after we do laundry, because it never gets dry, and our loads are not that big. This makes me SO mad!!!

Well, I will post again VERY soon, because I do NOT want to see that yuck spider every time I look at blogs!!!

Random stuff...

Ava and Grandpa on the moving truck before it was all packed.
Ava and daddy.

Going on a stroll around the temple.

We tried something new with Ava's hair, I thought it was really cute, I only had to re-do it about 500 times by the time Blayne was home to see it.
This is downtown Columbus. We went for a walk by the river and it was BEAUTIFUL!!

Ava's funky do after her bath.
If you look close at her chin you can see her battle wound. We went to a young family ward today, and Ava had her first little boyfriend- hahaha. It started out all hugs and kisses and ended in biting and tears :( The little boy was SO cute, he just got a little excited and bit Ava's face!!!!! She was a trooper though.

Our trip to Kirtland

This river is where they did the baptisms in Kirtland. This whole area was beautiful, and we were surprised how green it was all around.
This was Newell K. Whitney's store.
This was their home, also where Joseph Smith and Emma lived for awhile. It was SO neat to be there and stand in the room that Joseph Smith got a lot of the revelations for the Doctrine & Covenants. It was just an incredible place to be. so many things happened in this area.
This is us at the doors of the Kirtland Temple. Also, below is the Temple. It was beautiful, a much different experience, but still really neat.

Our new apartment...

This is Ava's room. She's been sharing a room with us since she's been born so it's cool that she has her own room now, but it's definitely taking some adjusting.

This is our living room.

This is the little bar that separated the living room and the kitchen. Then below is our kitchen, and our new table.
This is Ava in her new Ohio State rocking chair, she's a little tired, this was right when we got here after being on a plane ALL day!!! She loves that chair, it's really cute.

I'll have some more pictures soon from our trip to Kirtland, and of us going around Columbus a little. This is SO weird, I NEVER thought I would live in Ohio. So far we think it'll be fun while Blayne's in school, but we definitely want to move back west.

Sorry guys, I'm TERRIBLE at updates!!!

Ok, so things have been a little crazy since we are getting ready for our big move to Ohio!!! EXCITING!!!! Blayne and his dad leave on Saturday to start driving there, and then Ava, Blayne's mom and I leave August 2nd to fly. I can't believe the time has come, man time has just flown by!!! Anyway, here are some pictures that we have taken over the last couple of months.

Ava sweats REALLY bad when she sleeps, this was her nice hair-do when she woke up.
This was the first time that we took Ava to the park and let her swing, she loved it.
Ava playing with Dutch while she was here, I'm not sure what Dutch was doing, but Ava was loving it. We miss them SO much!!!
Almost all of the grandkids were in one place, we're missing a niece and 2 step nephews. From left to right- Top Row: Dylan, Karlee, Gabby, Hannah- Babies: Ava, Dutch, Adam- Middle Row: Leah, Sammy, Zack, Whitney, Mia Luna- Front: Jackson, Phoebe.
Our little Patriot- I LOVE IT!!!! For whatever reason, I can't type between the next 4 pictures. Below is our little family on the 4th.

We had an early birthday party for Ava/going away party since we won't be here for her birthday. I made her a hideous cake. We opened presents and let her have her own ugly little cake to dig into. She was a little slow to dive in and we had to help her along, but as you can see, she got the hang of it.