Beautiful Weather

Well, if you live in Mid-MO, you know that we've had a few days of truly beautiful weather sprinkled in the last few weeks. 70 degrees, sunny, and windy, they were absolutely wonderful! To celebrate, we spent a lot of time outside!!

It's been really fun learning to play outside with Elena, and there is a fun park less than 5 minutes from our house that we discovered Elena LOVES! It's just the big playground equipment at Cosmo Park, which I thought was too big for her. But it's actually really well designed, with little tiny slides mixed in with the big kid slides. So, one day Laney and I went to the park with just the two of us, and one day Josh took the day off work to get some stuff down around the house, and we all went together that afternoon.

Tryin' out the Cozy Coupe... she's not so good at this yet, she doesn't really know how to peddle with her legs, and if I tried to push her, she got her feet stuck underneath because she didn't hold them up. But she did like sitting in it, and she could make it go backwards until it crashed into something! :)

And Laney learned that being short is definitely a disadvantage in basketball! It's also a little tough when the ball is bigger than your HEAD! But, she got it in there! :)
After much grunting and hard work!




And, on to Cosmo! She sure loved these little spring mounted things... of course, she stayed on each one for about .3 seconds, and then wanted "Down" and "Up" again! So glad she's learned THOSE words! :)


She loves, loves, LOVES slides. She just grins like a maniac as she goes down them. It's awful fun to watch! However, she's a little nerve-wracking because sometimes she doesn't really feel the need to SIT DOWN before going down the slide... so I made several mad dashes to grab her before she went down head first!

One of the sets of equipment had this little tube to crawl through with little peep holes. She loved that she could look out and see me, so we played peekaboo for a long time! I thought this was an especially cute smile!

Big girl, climbing up the steps all by herself!

It was much more fun with Daddy there! Then, at least, there was someone to help her sit down, AND someone to catch her, rather than me making the mad dash to the bottom of the slide after getting her ready to go down!

She loved sitting on this thing. I'm not sure why, other than Daddy played on it for awhile. She just sat and bounced up and down. It was pretty cute, though!

I couldn't BELIEVE that she wanted to go down this slide. It was really long, but she LOVED it. Grinned and giggled like a madwoman all the way down! Of course, after Mommy & Daddy went up and down the stairs to the top of the slide 47 times, she was still ready to go, and we needed a nap!

This picture is from the first day, but it kind of makes me sad... she looks so big! She just took off by herself over to this other equipment, wasn't really worried about whether or not I was following. Definitely not a little baby anymore!

Anyway, we have really been enjoying those days of good weather, especially for the break they give us from the craziness of daily life. I get the feeling we will be spending many more days at Cosmo Park by the time summer rolls around!

Fun Times!

Ok, hang on to your hats, because I'm cramming a month's worth of blogging into a day or two! I'm tired of feeling like I'm behind! I just took 200 pictures off of my camera, so here we go!! This first post is going to be an interesting mix of some fun events we've gotten to go to in the last couple of weeks!

The first event was a wedding with the Looten family! One of Josh's cousins (second cousin, I think) was getting married, so we met the Springfield Lootens there as well! The theme of the wedding was an old Hollywood theme, so all of the guests were asked to dress in black and white, they had the wedding in a theater, there were movie quotes on all of the favors, etc, etc. They really did a good job carrying the theme throughout the wedding; there were some really neat touches (like they offered jujubees and candy as you went into the theater for the ceremony- which was great to keep Laney quiet!!). Anyway, we had a good time visiting with family, and Leila and Laney both looked pretty cute in their black and white dresses!

On the trip down, we discovered something about Elena- she LOVES fruit snacks. I picked up a bag just to snack on during the drive, yeah, she ate the WHOLE BAG before we hit Jeff City!

We spent most of the time at the reception hanging out with Mom & Dad Looten, Aunt Shell, Grandma Looten, Tim, Jess & Leila. Dad & Aunt Shell obviously loved the soup! :)

Laney wasn't crazy about the soup... but she was happy to dip carrots in ranch and suck the ranch off all night long! I figure, she's got to be scraping off some of the carrot! :)
Uncle Tim & Leila, hanging out!

Grandma Looten and Laney were buds- mostly 'cause Grandma Looten kept feeding Elena the sweet mints from the cake table! :) Our little girl sure has a sweet tooth!

The two girls together in their black and white. It was hard to get a good picture of the two of them, because every time they got close Leila wanted to grab and Elena, and Elena wanted nothing to do with it! It was pretty funny.

So this obviously isn't from the wedding, this is from the next day. But Laney absolutely LOVES this huge box we have at church to collect things for missions. Anyway, most of the time, it just has Elena in it, dancing like a wild woman. Here's a picture...

But, it's better in live action!

The day after the wedding was Super Bowl Sunday, so we had out normal youth party at the Scott's house. We always have a good time with that party, lots of food, and two big tvs- so the youth spend most of the evening downstairs, and the adults spend most of the time upstairs, visiting and watching! Although we were all quite bummed when the Cardinals lost, at least they made it a close game. And, as usual, there were some pretty good commercials!

Laney wasn't too interested in pizzas, but she was pretty excited about the "nanas"

Grandma Price was happy to miss some of the football action to read Laney her FAVORITE book about farm animals!! :)

Aunt Ruthie did what every good aunt does, and shoved Laney full of sugar! Elena even learned a new word- "Nerts"

And, Elena enjoyed torturing the poor barn kitties who just wanted inside!

Last, but not least, in the list of fun events, was a dual birthday part for Mom & Sam. This party happily coincided with Kate's "rock star" trip to Columbia! She flew in on Saturday, so Kate, Ruth and I went to see "He's Just Not That Into You" at the theaters. The movie was actually really funny, though probably not a movie that Josh would have wanted to go to with me, so I was happy to get to go with a couple of girls, even if it was ABSOLUTELY PACKED in the theater. We spent most of the previews begging these people to scoot over one seat so we could sit together! They eventually did, and we all enjoyed the movie!

Saturday evening we had birthday dinner for Mom & Sam- meatloaf muffins and mac & cheese, a classic meal! We brought games to play, too, but somehow we had too much fun talking and laughing, and never got to the games. On Sunday, we went to church, went out to eat, and then Kate hung out at our house for an hour or so until it was time for her MO-X trip back to the airport. It was definitely a flying trip, but we had a great time hanging out with her!

We may never have played the games, but Kate and Elena had a great time playing with the pieces of Whoonu!

And the lid to the cake pan!

Elena has started trying to use a spoon. It doesn't always go so well... but it's a work in process!

The birthday boy... (yay for lemon cake!)

and the birthday girl! Sorry, Mom, it was the only picture I had of you!

Poor Bob, this is how I feel after the last few weeks, too!

Ok, well there was the first major post... stay tuned for a new post, with pics of the fun we've had in the beautiful weather we've been blessed with the last few weeks!

Christmas in January

Well, I'll be honest, I have no good reason for not posting this sooner. Except that things have been rather stressful around the house, and I just haven't felt much like doing anything. BUT, blog posts must go on!

So here's a post about Jessica's trip to MO to celebrate Christmas in January! Most of you have probably read about it on her blog, so I won't bore you with details. Needless to say, we ate a lot, surfed the web a lot, hung out, watched a chick flick, opened presents, and generally had a great time. And, as usual, there were MANY MANY pictures taken! So, here are just a few of my favs...

Jessica learned during this trip that it was no longer QUITE as easy to hold Elena as it used to be! More like wrestling a wild animal...

Laney's new favorite hobby: emptying the tupperware drawer. Which is funny, because when we moved to the house when I was pregnant, and we were arranging my kitchen stuff, my mom said "Oh, yeah, you have to have the tupperware in the bottom drawer so Elena can empty it out." And she certainly does! Luckily, she likes to put it away almost as much as she likes to empty it.

And, yes, Laney still likes Tigger! :) (Keep in mind this was from several weeks ago: NO, I do not still have my tree up!)

Laney LOVES to read... she will hand a book to you, then turn around and back into your lap. It's pretty hilarious, and hard to resist!

Aunt Jessica taught Laney the joy of purses... and painted toenails!

This is one of the funnier things Laney has done. This is actually a cat "house" that we bought for Truman a long time ago. He NEVER uses it, so it mostly became a storage bin for his toys. When Laney came along, she would dig in there for the toys, so we turned it around so the opening faced the wall (why we didn't just take it to the garage, I don't know). Well, then she sat on it, and turned it into this little chair of sorts. She loves to sit in it and hold her baby. Whatever floats her boat, I guess! :)

Giving her baby a hug. To the untrained eye, it might look like she's talking on her baby as if it was a cell phone. But I assure you, it's a hug.

Modeling the cute little hat that Ellen made for her. And the nice fat lip the dog gave her! It happened the evening that the girls went to a movie, and Josh was taking care of Elena. She went into the kitchen and was laying on the dogs rug. Josh's back was turned, so we don't really know exactly what happened. But, from the look of the scratches, it looks like Isabelle just pawed at her- it's a trick she does for us to get a treat, so it would make sense. Anyway, the scratch started on her forehead and went down her nose and gave her a bit of a bloody lip. Thank God it missed her eye, etc, and she was over it pretty quick. Poor Daddy had a rough time of it, though!

Laney learned pretty quick that Aunt Jess had a really cool cell phone!

After opening presents, Laney found her favorite: another annoying card from Aunt Jess! I don't know who these characters are, but NEVER get me their cartoons! Although, Daddy likes them even less- he has threatened to throw the card away multiple times!

Grandma Price got Laney a box to play in at Grandma's house (it doubles nicely as a block for the stairs!). They even cut a door in it, so Laney spent lots of time going in and out of the box. Aunt Ruthie even climbed in with her!

So there are the best pics from Aunt Jessica's visit! We really loved having her, and we can't wait for the next time we see her: in March when we head to COLORADO!