Visiting Pa and Grandma Tarver in Douglas, GA

Ava's first long road trip was a journey to her grandparents house in South Georgia. The trip which used to take 3 and a half hours now takes us about 5 and a quarter as had to stop to feed and/or change Ava and walk her around in the stroller to break up the monotony. However it was all worth it, because when we arrived we got lots of attention :-)

Grandpa bemoaning the fact that nobody loves her...

Bubba probably planning on when to teach her the finer points of black-smithing.

Grandma Tarver helping out at 6 in the morning :-)

Also a big deal this trip was Ava's first time in the pool. As you can tell from the pic below, she's really cheesing it up. Erin and Mathew Russ invited us to swim in Erin's folks pool, which is only a block away from my folks. The cool thing about this pool was that it wasn't hyper-chlorinated, but rather was a salt water pool! It was awesome, I've never swam in one of those before. We took things slowly at first, letting Mom hold Ava close to the water, then dipping her feet in, and finally her legs and torso.

Pretty quickly she started smiling and cooing, and we put her in a cute little princess float. All the swimming goods were courtesy of Erin's folks, who were super nice and let Gail borrow a swim suit. The little floaty they got for their granddaughter, Matthew and Erin's little girl Isabelle.

Notice in the video how Ava sucks in air excitedly. She did this a lot in the pool and a fair amount on the trip. Mom calls it "hamming it up." It seems to be one way for her to deal with new things.

This post was actually a collaboration.