avablog » Ava

Moment of cuteness

map — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 14:22:13 +0000

G.G. is in town this week to spend some time with Ava, who has a week off camp. Yesterday, the two of them put together a nice picnic lunch and met L and me in the park next to our office, where we dined on sandwiches, chips and fruit under a cloudy sky. It was very nice. Because I can’t just live in the moment without taking a photo to commemorate each second, I snapped a quickie of the girls.

L, of course, thinks she doesn’t look good here. If this is “not looking good,” I don’t think I could deal with good looking. I mean, really. WTF?

Trot, Willy. Trot!

map — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:40:27 +0000

Ava just had her third horseback riding lesson this past Sunday morning. She seems to enjoy the riding, and she’s good at it, but I think her true passion lies in brushing the horse before and after the lesson and feeding him carrots. For crying out loud, I never thought I’d be the dad who takes his daughter out to riding lessons. What’s next, summers in Nantucket and ski vacations in Aspen every year?

To my relief, Ava hasn’t made any noises about getting her own horse (and she sees other young girls at the stable to have their own horses). I think she probably realizes that’s not going to happen, even if she doesn’t understand the reasons why.

Moment of cuteness

map — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:06:54 +0000

Ava’s trip to her grandmother’s out of town is providing a most unwelcome look into our future. A future in which her parents’ faces aren’t the last things she sees at night nor the first things she sees in the morning. I’m discovering I really don’t like not having her near. I just keep looking at her pictures and missing her….

Overnighter

map — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:54:12 +0000

We miss our little girl! Yesterday I took her to lovely Quasqueton, IA, and dropped her off with G.G., who then took Ava the rest of the way to Decorah for a two-day visit, just the two of them. Ava did experience some trepidation about the whole thing, but the prospect of today’s trip to the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Burr Oak seems to have taken her mind off of how much she misses her mom, dad, and Em Em. I think we’ve talked to Ava on the phone seven or eight times after dropping her off. Our conversation last night just before bed was the worst, as Ava was crying and wanting very much to come home. I quickly fired up the Web site for the LIW museum while Leah tried to calm Ava, and we noticed that the gift shop sells dolls. Thank jeebus! We told Ava to tell G.G. that they have our permission to buy a doll at the museum, which I presume they’ll do sometime this morning.

Ava’s scheduled to stay in Decorah one more night, but it’s going to take some doing to convince her to stick it out, I think. If anyone can do it, G.G. can! There seems to be no bottom to her bag of tricks.

Aforementioned cuteness

map — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:32:25 +0000

I did all the cutting and sewing but got A LOT of help from the owner of Home Ec in Iowa City, who’s great. Go there. Spend money.

In other news, it appears Flickr has changed the way its users can access their photos, so clicking on the image above will take you to the page for this photo at Flickr. Unless, of course, you don’t have access to see it at Flickr. Sounds like another half-baked Flickr change. Joy.