Grandma and Grandpa's House

Jason has been out of town for most of June for work. I was feeling very lonely and decided it would be a good time to go spend some time with my mom and dad.

Allary spent quite a bit of time in Grandma's wading pool.



Grandma bought sparklers at the store and Allary thought that was pretty cool to get to do that with Grandma and Grandpa. Here she is marching in the sparkler parade with Grandpa.









I also got to see some of my two best friends, Katie and Mandi. Mandi was chaperoning a youth dance at the church and so Katie and I went to visit her and crash the youth dance. Oh man, did that bring back memories of our youth dances. Good times. I love these girls.



My mom and I did the usual shopping and eating out. This was one particular day Allary literally shopped 'til she dropped.


Thanks again Mom and Dad for letting us come. We had a great time.

Look at my Little Swimmer!

Yesterday, I took Allary swimming over at Kevin and Leslee's pool.



Look at her go!!!

Once Upon a Time...

I get frustrated a lot of the time with Allary because I have such a hard time trying to get her to sing songs like the alphabet or twinkle twinkle little star or anything really. She gets mad at me and tells me, "No, Mom, that's not how it goes." And she goes off into her own rendition of some made-up song. It's cute and I try to put aside the frustration by realizing what a creative thinker she is. She's been really into pretending the past little while. Again, she is super creative and imaginative, but there is a part of me that is a little weirded out by her imaginary friends. I can't tell you how many times she has freaked out because I sat or stepped on one of her "friends." I wonder, are these imaginary friends a result of a healthy active imagination... or a by-product of moving to a place where she has no friends or other children her age around? (sigh) Sometimes I think the isolation is getting to us both.
Lately, she loves to make up her own stories. Most of her stories include a princess, a monster, and a prince. Here is a video of my little creative story-teller:

Enough talk, here are some photos!

I've been writing a lot on here lately and I decided it's time to post some photos. So, here are some photos of what we've been doing around here.

Some cute bath pictures. Check out that crazy hair.




I was trying to put together our photo collage for our adoption profile and I realized we don't have any pictures that do not include Allary. So, we took some.


Here I am with my guitar. The sad thing is, I don't remember the last time I pulled it out to just play it. I am way too protective of it to let Allary anywhere near it.


Allary and me playing dress-up.



A nice sunny day in the backyard. Allary loves her wading pool and we love having a yard! I just signed her up yesterday for swimming lessons. It's difficult to find any fun activities for her this summer because all classes start them at 3 yrs old and she won't be 3 until September. Every class I can find that is for 2 and under is a Mom and Me class. I think she is ready for more independence than that so I searched and searched. I did find a class that would take her and I am excited. I think she will love it.


The weather here drives me nuts sometimes. One day it's nice and warm and we're outside playing in the water, and the next day.... this. It may look like a little bit of snow on the ground, but it was hail. It was a crazy storm; wind, hail, lightning, thunder. We went out and Allary was so mad that I made her put on long pants and a shirt under her tank top. I'm with her though, you should be able to wear a tank top and shorts in June!!!


Jason had a day off over Memorial Day and so we went to the zoo. We live so close to the zoo now that we bought a membership for the year. I am excited because now I can go anytime I want and just spend as much or as little time as we want. I may just go to let Allary ride the train, which is by far her favorite thing there.
Jason snapped this nice shot at the bird show.