Nightly Walks...

One of Ansley's new favorite things to do is walk around outside after dinner every night! Here she is in her pjs and chuck taylors...

After doing this for about a week now, she's gone from walking (not holding on to anything) about 30% of the time to about 90% of the time. Every day she walks on her own more and more. She's slow and takes lots of pit stops but I would say within the week, she'll be walking full time!

Happy 1st Birthday to Ansley...(I'm a little late on this one, sorry)

Ansley's 1st birthday cake, made by her daddy!!

We had a little pre-party icing tasting that morning!

Everyone sings "Happy Birthday" as Ansley wonders what is going on!

LOVE HER!!

I totally admit to being a little anal when it comes to cleanliness during mealtime, so here's my little girl trying to not make a mess...

Here daddy, you try it!

Finally digging in!

She got sooo many wonderful gifts from wonderful friends and family!! After opening up everything she decided it was time for a dip in the pool! It was HOT outside!

Here she is with Madeline, Samuel, and Jude...that's really all we could fit!!

I'm sorry for being soo late with this post! I would also like to say THANK YOU to Brent who took a majority of these pictures! I ran around all day in the craziness without my camera handy! Thanks to all of you who came and showered our little lady with many presents and were willing to withstand the heat of the day! Hopefully one day we will live in a house that can hold 40 people!!

When Daddy does a bath....

This is what happens. Not too much cleaning, just a lot of bubbles and play time. It's kind of hard to focus on the task at hand when daddy's girl is having such a good time.

Ansley's newest fascination!

We'll all be playing in the living room and Ansley will crawl all the way to the office, sit and wait for someone to come after her, when we arrive she looks up (Troy's guitars are hanging on the wall)...points...says 'what's that', we'll say 'guitar' and then she does sign language for 'please' until you pick her up and let her touch it. This means she's a musical prodigy...right?!

(notice in the video her favorite new words...'what's that')

Ansley and the kiddie pool (take 2)

I went at the whole process a little different this time and it was more of a success than I imagined it would be!! So here are my steps to helping my little one enjoy one of the most fun things summer has to offer!

Step 1 - put the kiddie pool on nuetral ground, in the middle of all of her toys! Step 2 - add sun, water, and BATH TOYS!

Step 3 - have the dog the dog that actually has a loving relationship with Ansley show her that it's all ok!

Step 4 - encourage splashing!

And within a minute and a half she was in heaven!

I will say that I think being in the bath inspired her to become a hair stylist. She started playing with it and pulling it in different directions...she looked very stylish by the end of her swim!

...her 'do' in the back

Play Date!!

Ansley and I had a fun play date with our friends yesterday. She just loves being around other kids...
Asher and Riley are only a few weeks apart...it was so much fun to watch them interact with each other! I gave myself a nice ab work out from all of the laughing!!

I wish I knew what they were thinking!!

Ansley is only 5 months older than the other two but that makes such a big difference at this age. I can't wait for another few years to go by and watch the 3 of them run around together and play!!

Ansley's early 1st Birthday present!!

We decided to go in with my mom and Jim and buy Ansley a swing set for her first birthday. I know that it's not for another month but we didn't want to wait for half of the summer to go by before she got to use it! Troy helped a friend of his put one together for their son a year ago so I knew this was going to be a serious project that would take all day to complete. We sent Ansley to grandma and grandpa Reeves' house Friday and got to building. I knew when the instruction manual said 'please allow 6-12 hours for construction' we were in for a long day...
As you can see, absolutely no part of this swing set came already put together...even the slide had to be assembled.

Troy's face says it all in this one!

Rain and lack of daylight stopped us from being able to finish up Friday. Troy and his dad had to move the tower part to the yard before we assembled the swing section and added the slide. It would have been too heavy to move it all at one time!

And Ta-Da! We picked back up Saturday morning and Ansley was swinging away Saturday afternoon! Total assembly time...8 hours. AND we found out that Troy and I make a better team than we imagined!

Sampson has made himself a nice little home in the shaded part at the bottom of the tower. I believe he thinks that we did all of this for him.