Dinosaur Park in Laguna Hills, CA

My Dad told me about Dinosaur Park a few weeks ago. We have gone to this park twice in the last three weeks. It's pretty cool because there is so much for the kids to do. There are caves, fossils, old whale bones, turtle water spouts, toddler jungle gym and a big kids jungle gym.

                                  Ava and her new friend checking out the dinosaur fossils.

Glow Sticks:Fairy Jars, Balloons, Hide-and-Seek & Bath Tub

We purchased three $1.00 containers of glow sticks from Michael's and had a great time being creative with them one hot summer night. We first made a Fairy Jar, then we added several cracked glow sticks to some blown up punch balloons, played hide-and-seek with them, and lastly threw them into the bath tub for some glowing water. The bath tub was the least favorite for Ava, Charlotte seemed to enjoy that though. The kids went to bed using their glow-in-the dark balloons as lanterns. Glow in the dark hide-and-seek in our home was a huge hit. We played this three times and I am sure we will play it again. The kids didn't hide. I actually made glow in the dark necklaces for the kids so that they wouldn't run into each other. We hid the glow sticks and the kids went around the apartment looking for the glow sticks.

                                                    Ryan and Ava preparing the Fairy Jars.

                                                             Homemade Fairy Jar.

The punch balloons with glow sticks inside. They actually lasted about 2-3 nights.Much longer than our fairy jar. Plus, the latex on the punch balloons is so thick that they resisted Charlotte's weight when she sat on them for fun!

Thing 1 and Thing 2. Charlotte and Ava wearing their glow in the dark necklaces during glow in the dark hide-and-seek.

                                              Collecting their glow sticks during our game.

Keeping Cool at the Irvine Spectrum

It got pretty hot around her a few weeks ago so we decided to go to the Irvine Spectrum with Grandma to cool off. They have water spouts for the kids, a large arcade section at Dave & Busters and lots of ice cream choices.

                      Charlotte's favorite part was collecting the tickets and inserting the tokens.

Ava at 3yrs 8 mo Old

Ava is 3 years and 8 mo old now. In the last month she has moved on from carrying her Baby Doggy everywhere and sleeping with him every nap time and bedtime. She has moved on to Baby Kitty. They are both small Beanie Baby type stuffed animals. Ava was attached to Baby Doggy for a year. She just suddenly decided to stop carrying him everywhere. And even though we already have three cats she keeps asking to get a real live kitten from the pet store. During the month of July she participated in four dance class sessions. Although she loves dancing and twirling at home and wearing her twirly dresses she was not too enthused about going to dance class. But once she arrived at class she always had fun. For now we are just continuing gymnastics at National Gymnastics Training center once a week. Ava is definitely in the "why" stage. She is asking "why" something is the way it is and asking what more complicated words mean like "what does damage mean?",  and "what is a fib?" (although she doesn't quite get what this means yet). She still enjoying eating chicken (some protein, thank goodness) and asparagus is always a winner with her. She doesn't like drinking carbonated drinks because she doesn't like bubbles going in her nose she says. Yay! She loves ice cream. And eggs and orange juice are foods she does not like eating. These are pictures of Ava in the last month.

                                                    This is a Play-Do version of Ryan.
                                                                   (sideways picture)

Retiring Baby Doggy and now Baby Kitty is in tow. By the way Baby Kitty is a she per Ava.

                                                          Trying out tap dancing.

                                                        Hugs at the park to her little sister.