June

I have to admit I had almost given up on the blog. I have no idea how I used to have time to post 2 times a week at one point!! And now that life has grown so much busier, I am lucky to post once a month.

But since this is the closest thing to a photo album that I have, I will try to make it a priority again. So here is our June update...

Avery turned 4!!!! It was basically a month long party for our little princess. Between school parties and playgroup celebrations and her birthday party at an indoor playground and a special day at home on her actual birthday, it was a lot of spoiling for one little girl! But she deserves every bit of it! Especially this awesome Cold Stone ice cream cake! I want a slice right now...

After the party, we headed to a carnival. Avery has a Barbi book where she goes to a fair and goes on the ferris wheel and eats cotton candy, and has been begging us to take her to a fair about daily since she got the book. Perfect timing that a fair came to town in honor of Avery's birthday! She loved the ferris wheel...

And the cotton candy even more!!!

They were pretty exhausted by the time we found a ride Collin could go on, but they still had a blast on the carousel too!

April was a blur....

Busy Busy Busy...

Here's a quick update on our kiddos..

Collin and Avery have actually been playing together a bit. Collin loves to sit at Avery's table in her room and play with dinosaurs (or princesses or ponies, he's not too picky yet)....

We had a great Easter. The rec center hosted a egg hunt, and the Easter Bunny even made an appearance....

Then we painted eggs....

We had another Egg Hunt at our playgroup on a bright sunny day. So much fun!

Avery had a fall at school a couple weeks ago - got some pretty nice scratches. She's all healed now...but I love these close up shots of her silly faces....

We also made it to the Tulip Festival in April. Such a pretty place! And the kids loved the bouncy houses, birds, and ice cream....

I miss my kids!!!

These videos on my iphone are the only things getting me through how much I miss my kiddos while I am here in South Africa. Skyping only made me sad because Avery kept asking Jon if she could watch a Taylor Swift video on the computer instead. :(

Enjoy our kids music video debuts...

Bye Bye Bubbles...

The Bus Story song...

I'm sure MTV will be calling to ask for the rights any day now!!

April updates

What a crazy month this has been...and continues to be. This might just be the longest stretch between blog posts I've ever had! Time to catch up on Horne family life... The kids were super excited about St Pattrick's Day. Actually, that is a lie, I took this picture a week later when I realized that we didn't even celebrate, nor did we really get the chance to celebrate that St Pattrick's Day was the 10th year anniversary of Jon and I meeting. 10 Years! To ease the stress, Collin has been practicing lots of yoga. This is one of Avery's photograph's of Collin in downward dog....

But to add to my stress...Avery went to her first sleepover! She's 3!! Ok, it was a 'pretend sleepover', but I still cried after dropping her off. She and her girlfriends got their PJs on and spread out their sleeping bags, then painted their toenails and watched girly movies while eating pizza and ice cream. She was in heaven. Here's a picture of her all packed up and ready to go...

One good thing I realized around out house this week is that because I work at Nike and wear running shoes to work every day, Collin does not run the risk of getting caught in photo's in my high heels! Which is good, because he loves wearing my running shoes!

We've also spent lots of time outdoors, here are a few fav pics from our walks...

And bathtime is a big hit. Collin starts screaming "ba, ba ba" at about 6 every night. He loves his "ba"th!!

March fun...

We got an inch of snow a couple of weeks ago, and I finally downloaded the pictures of the kids playing in it. These were taken at about 6:30 AM (yes, I'm sure our neighbors loved hearing our kids screaming that early). But, considering the snow melted by about 8am, I'm glad we got out there early...



From snow to short sleeves...

We also had Avery's Ballet "recital" this past week. At this age, it's just that the parents are all invited to the last class of the season, but they did work on a bit of choreography. They performed "The Magic Toyshop"...

Avery's solo was doing Leaps. She was so proud!!

One of these princesses is not like the other...

Here is the class with Teacher Katie. Avery has been with her for 7 or 8 classes in a row now. But she is so popular, that when I tried to register for the spring term 6 minutes into the online registration period, all her classes were booked :( So, Avery will be starting a Hip Hop class in April instead. That should be awesome to watch! I'll bring the video camera to the "recital" for sure!! :)

Can't leave Collin out of this post. Although, when he's 16 he'll wish I did not take these pictures. Poor kid is surrounded by pink!! Avery's laptop...

Avery's slippers...

Collin update

For Valentine's day, Collin's teachers gave me a CD of his first few months in his class at school. I finally got around to uploading some of the pics. So cute!!! I love seeing how happy he is there. Up until a few weeks ago he was still crying every time I dropped him off. I always stood outside the doorway for a minute or two after I left to make sure he stopped crying and he always did. And the teachers always assured me he was so happy during the day. But it's good to see it in the pictures. The past couple of weeks have been so different at drop off though...he rushes in to hug his teacher and could not care less when I leave. He's already too busy playing. Such a better way to start my day!





https://picasaweb.google.com/robertahorne1/CollinAtSchoolSeptember2010ToFebruary2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCL60nc-m973IrwE&feat=directlink

Catching up...

It's been a busy couple of weeks, but we haven't been up to anything too big, so I just have a lot of random pictures.

For Valentine's Day, Jon and Avery went to a Daddy/Daughter Dinner Dance. It was so adorable. He even brought her a corsage. She was more than excited. He was too. I so wished I could have been a fly on the wall, just to see all that cuteness...a bunch of sweet little princesses with their daddy's!! Avery's highlights of the night were eating lots of candy hearts and dancing to the Chicken Dance!

Around the house, Avery and Collin have been playing together more often. Actually, Avery just plays and Collin follows her around. Or Avery just pushes him around....

It snowed the other day! A whole 1/4 inch!!! The kids were so excited! Avery and I made a 4 inch snowman, Collin tried to catch snowflakes on his tongue, and Avery made snow angels. Then the snow melted about 20 minutes later...

Avery called me into the family room screaming one day that she was stuck. I came in to find this! Avery and Collin love to wrestle around, but Avery has about 2 more minutes until he's really going to be stronger than her...she better watch out!!

One of my favorite things to see is how Collin gets lost in books already. He will go to the bookshelf, grab a book, take it back to his seat, and "read"...then repeat over and over. So cute!!

Avery has really been using her imagination non-stop lately. Every night we are either a family of penguins or we are teachers and students. Heaven forbid I call her Avery at any point in any day anymore...."I'm not Avery, I'm big sister penguin"... Today she was playing princess ponies, so she decided to build a family of ponies from giant leggos. She's holding baby sister pony...

Collin has been feeding himself really well. He can even drink from a cup without the sippy lid (not that I am that big of a risk taker at home, but that's the only type of cups they use at his school). Of course he still has days where face painting with yogurt is just so much more fun...

Although we've been super busy, I finally got around to putting Collin's 1st year frame together! 10 months cracks me up!!