Emma Jackson - A new bundle of joy

My Brother Nathan and his wife Amy had their baby on July 28th. Kaiya, Ella and I were able to go and meet her when she was in the hospital. She is such a cute little baby and we are excited to have the new addition in our family!

What have we been up to?

Cirdan -
Cirdan has been busy booking jobs and running the Moving Company. They have had a busy couple of months which has been wonderful! Last weekend they had 11 guys out on moves!!!

Cirdan and his friend, Greg Mattson, have gone to 2 Seahawks practices in the past week and will be going 2 more times before training camp is over. They are in their new practice facility on Lake Washington. Staci (Greg's wife) and I will be going with them this next Tuesday.

Kaiya-

Kai has been busy with dance class (she's in hip hop right now), piano and swim lessons. Swim started this past week and its every morning for 2 weeks. She has really enjoyed learning how to swim and I think I will have her continue to the next level. There are 5 kids in the class and all of them go to her school so she was pretty excited about that.

Bailee (2nd cousin) came over and stayed the night. They had fun playing and all I heard all day was little girls giggles.

Kaiya has been such a big help this summer and I am sad to see it ending soon. She keeps her room clean and makes her bed every morning without me even having to remind her. Kaiya is great with Ella and Ella has enjoyed playing with her big sister.

Ella -

Busy body little girl. She has been playing, chasing Cheeto (Kaylee's Chihuahua) around the house, pulling Kaiya's hair, getting into the cereal cupboard, making messes and falling down.

She has been making the funniest faces lately. Here is her most recent silly serious face...I have caught myself making that face when she gets into something so I wonder if that is where she picked it up.

Me -

I have been driving Kaiya around to her activities, trying to keep the house clean (after Ella makes her messes) and helping with Puget Sound Moving. I have started to wake up early every morning again to walk/run with my mom. Its funny how I feel like 7:00 is SOOO early now that I don't work.

All of us -

We LOVED the hot days we had here in Western Washington. The girls liked playing on the slip n slide, and running through the sprinkler. Stacey and Casey came over a few days to get out of the heat and relax in our air conditioned house. It was fun to have them over.

We went to Lake Wilderness last Monday with some families from our ward. Kaiya had fun playing with her friends and Ella loved putting her feet in the water.

The Wednesday before Ava moved to Milwaukee we drove to Tacoma and took her out to dinner. We went to TGI Friday's (the slowest service on the planet) and then went and got a cone from DQ. It was sad to say goodbye to her but we know we will see her in a few weeks when she comes for a visit! Cirdan has been able to talk to her on the phone a couple of times.

Kaiya and Ava were in the back of the car talking on their pretend phones. Kaiya would pretend that she was booking jobs for PS Moving and Ava followed her lead and did the same. Their facial expressions were so funny.

Here are some cute pictures of Ava...

We bought Ava a bag full of activities for her road trip to Wisconsin. One of the things that Kaiya wanted to Ava and here were Big Sister/Little Sister necklaces. They were showing their necklaces off in this picture...

Friday morning I was talking to my dad who mentioned that he wanted to go watch the Blue Angeles practice. I got off the phone and mentioned it to Cirdan and we decided to pack up the kids and go to Seattle. I cant even remember the last time I watched them fly and Cirdan hadn't been for years. Kaiya had fun and loved how loud they were.

Court and Ava's 2nd and 3rd visits

Court was last Thursday to see whether or not Ava and Sarah could move to Milwaukee to be with Sarah's new fiance. The court decided to let them move since Sarah has been her primary caretaker and Ava has had no contact with Cirdan the last few years. Cirdan is okay with Ava moving...he is just really excited that Ava knows him and that she will be able to spend time with us during the year. The only thing that irritated Cirdan was the judge making it seem like Cirdan just now wanted to be in her life and made a comment that she was glad that Cirdan had a renewed commitment to be in his daughters life. That was a BIG joke since he has always wanted to- and he was the one to pursue the relationship in the beginning but Sarah has stonewalled all his efforts. Here in the State of Washington they don't seem to understand how important fathers are.
So the plan is that Ava was able to come over last Saturday 10-6 and Sunday 10-8 (yesterday) and then on Wednesday we will go to Tacoma and pick up Ava to take her to dinner. They will move to Milwaukee the end of this week. Ava and Sarah will fly to Washington the 3rd week in August for a 3 day visit with us. Then in September Cirdan flies to Milwaukee to spend 3 days with Ava and to check out where she now will live. In October Ava and Sarah will fly back up to Washington for another 3 day visit (possible an overnight one) and then they will go to trial the week of the 12th to figure out the rest of the parenting plan. Sarah's original plan was proposing they fly here for Ava to only spend 24 hours with us... so this is wonderful that the judge ordered 3 days with us. There will be a lot of back and forth. Cirdan also is going to try and get some holidays.
The visit on Saturday was fun. We started the day with going to the mall to try and find matching outfits for the girls so we could take them to get pictures on Sunday. Kaiya and Ava both came out of Kaiya's room with their sunglasses, purses and stuffed animal dogs ready to go.

When we got to the mall we went to about 6 stores and after about 20 outfits they finally found ones that worked. Ava is really picky...just like her daddy. It was a long but fun experience. Every couple stores the girls would have to trade purses...this included taking everything out of their purse to make the swap. After the mall we got some food and headed home. The girls ate their late lunch outside and then the rest of the afternoon they went from playing outside on the trampoline, swings, slip and slide and sprinkler to inside to play with dolls and in Kaiya's room to back outside to do it all over again.

On Sunday Ava got here at 10 and the girls played inside until they had to get ready for their pictures. There was a little wait at the picture place and Ella hadn't had her nap yet...not a good combo. The first few pictures went well then they took some pictures of just Kai and Ava so that Ella could take a little break. It was funny to see Ava watch Kaiya and do what she does. If Kaiya likes something Ava will like it...if Kaiya doesn't like it Ava wont. Kaiya loved getting her picture and so Ava fed off of her. We told the girls that whoever was good got to get a toy when we were done. I think I walked up and down the toy aisle at least 10 times trying to find the perfect toy under $10 (there isn't many toys under 10 bucks these days). We then came home, made some lunch and played outside and inside (same as the day before). At the end of the night Cirdan, Kaiya and Ava played the Wii. Ava had never played so they did Wii sports and bowled. Ava loved it!! Sarah came to pick her up and she didnt want to leave again. Sarah ended up staying for about 40 minutes while Ava played some more. It was sad when she was leaving she wanted to come back tomorrow...Sarah had to tell her that she would see us on on Wednesday but it was great to hear that she wanted to come back and that she had fun. I am going to blog the pictures from Sunday on a new posting...there is a lot!