Archive for November, 2009
Of course, every storm necessitates one or two (or twenty) visits to Lowe’s. Daddy loves it for the big boy toys. Ava loves it for the carts.
Occasionally we’ll let her stand on one of the flatbed type carts while we push it. If she asks nicely first, of course.
She HAS to hold onto the cart AND the hand of whoever is pushing or the cart automatically stops.
Sometimes she gets a little bored so she works in some jungle gym practice.
And I had to post this picture because the boots are just so darn cute.
Speaking of the boots…
They’re a little bit big for her (size 6 – she has a teeny foot) so they have a tendency to fall off if she’s sitting with her legs dangling. This can be majorly annoying if they happen to fall off at dinner while sitting in a booth at Red Lobster* – causing Mama to have to stand Ava on the booth seat whilst I ducked under the table to fish them out since J was in the restroom. Especially since while I was under the table she decided to turn around, reach over the booth divider behind us, and patted the bald headed man** gently on the top of his very shiny head.
Needless to say I was mortified. Especially since we never, and I mean NEVER, allow Ava to be THAT kid who’s peering over and generally just annoying other diners – and she was SOOOOOO good all through dinner. She was quiet, she ate everything she could get her hands on, she was smiley and adorable and the waitress loved her…all for naught apparently since she blew it all by greatly infringing on the gentleman’s personal space and interrupting his dinner. Sigh. I still feel bad about it.
*I really hate Red Lobster and we only go there once every couple of years when my desire for their cheese biscuits outweighs how terrible I think the rest of their food is.
**Thanks for nothing to our follicle challenged neighbor (who Ava absolutely adores) who lets her do this to him. They think it’s an absolutely hilarious game. I no longer agree.
Pretty much just more of the same. Freakouts by me, random traipsing around in the water by J, and Ava in heaven with another full day of Mama and Daddy held captive in the house and who, in her opinion, were clearly placed there solely for Ava’s entertainment.
These photos were taken slightly after high tide on the morning of Day 2.
Note all the stuff (including riding lawn mower) piled up on the side deck.
The final damage total wasn’t too bad – less than our deductible since it didn’t manage to reach the insulation under the house. It flooded our shed and J’s workshop with minimal damage to the latter. We also ended up with some water in the garage but nearly everything had been relocated to higher ground. It did mess up the garage door sensors and a falling branch killed one of the post lights on the fence.
Our neighbors were not so lucky. They ended up with water in their house twice. With Hurricane Isabel the tide only flooded us once and the water was in and out in a flash, but with this Nor’Easter the water stayed for hours thanks to the wind so that made it worse in some ways.
You know, I expected the hurricanes here. I never realized (until I’d experienced a few) that a Nor’Easter is just as bad, if not worse, in some instances.
Here we go again.
As the water continued to rise, my hurricane/flooding PTSD was (somewhat) kept in check with a tea party hosted by Miss Ava and attended by Winnie the Pooh himself. Well, that and the knowledge that our house had been raised substantially since the last major flooding incident.
And the water kept rising.
Fortunately the cars had been moved to higher ground and we had enough forewarning to move as much stuff as we possibly could. The riding lawnmower, thanks to a winch and a whole lot of nagging on my part and muscle on J’s, was resting comfortably on the second level of our side deck along with anything else that would fit.
The evening high tide was the worst, peaking just below the levels of Hurricane Isabel. If we hadn’t raised our house we may have had some water inside – iffy but way too close for my comfort. As it was, our sheds flooded and the garage took about 4 inches of water, helped along by Miss Ava opening the garage door using Daddy’s remote he left on the hall table. Our neighbors were not so lucky and they did indeed end up with several inches inside their house – this doesn’t seem like a lot until you see how much damage a relatively small amount of water can do.
Although I love our little town and our neighborhood sometimes living this close to the coast ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Since I was at work I can only guess at the events of the day but I’ll give my best shot at narration despite my lack of involvement.
Let’s see. From the setting it appears that they went walking/hiking. The leaves and the trail kind of give that away.
Hmmm, geocaching maybe? I spy a GPS. Apparently so does she.
Oooooo, a playground.
But do you wanna know how I really know this was a Daddy day?
Because there is no way on earth I would let my kid out of the house in a Virginia Tech jacket (maroon, orange, and white), a way too-big I (heart) NY t-shirt, a pair of nearly too-short jeans with pink and purple flowers on the ankles, and mauve hiking boots.
He even told me that he knew I would say that when he came to pick me up for a quick surprise lunch with my family. We spent a good 20 minutes at Subway with me explaining to him exactly why all those things didn’t really go together. Surprisingly enough, I don’t think he listened to a bit of it and I expect it’s a conversation we’ll have again at some point in the future.
But my heavens, she sure is gorgeous anyway. Mis-matched clothes and all.
P.S. And I love the last photo. It’s straight out of the camera with no editing AND I can’t see the non-matching parts of her outfit.
Let me introduce you to Ava’s new horse – courtesy of a member of our local freecycle group.
He doesn’t really have a name yet, in part because she’s just not quite sure about him…well, it could be a her, I guess. Thankfully these horses haven’t quite progressed to being anatomically correct – but they have certainly come a long way since I had one back in the early 70′s. Mine was just a plain old plastic horse on 4 huge springs that had an annoying tendency to snap loose at just the right time to cause the maximum amount of head trauma, short of losing an eye, possible.
This one is way sturdier. It’s huge. It’s covered in fur, has a saddle, talks and sings with it’s moveable mouth, and makes these nifty clip-clopping noises when it’s ridden. It also looks as if it’s brand new. The best part, of course, was that it was free. Especially since the internet tells me that it retails around the $119 range.
Remember I said it was huge? Now I know why the people said they didn’t really have room for it.
Imagine this coming at you through the back window:
We had to strap it on to the back of the Xterra since it wouldn’t fit inside with Ava’s car seat in the back.
She approached it cautiously once it was inside the house.
But climbed right up to give it a go.
And then she looked down.
Only to discover just how high up she actually was.
A rapid dismount soon followed.