The L-Train

Laney’s Surgery

2012-01-31T22:05:00.001-05:00

So, when Laney was about 2, a photographer who took pics for our daycare noticed that Laney’s eyes turned in. It wasn’t very noticeable, and we couldn’t ever pin down which eye it was, so we kind of let it ride for a bit. Then, last spring, the Lions Eye Institute did a screening at school, and they caught some issues with her vision. So we scheduled a follow up with an optometrist, who told us that her vision was actually fine, it was just that her eyes weren’t working together; he called it a roaming lazy eye. At times, only one eye was working, and the other turned in. He said she’d need surgery, but since we were getting ready to move, he said we could wait and find an optometrist in Louisville.

We definitely noticed in the last year that her eyes have been getting worse.

Sometimes the right eye turned in…

…sometimes the left eye turned in…

…and, well, sometimes they both turned in!!

So, obviously they didn’t look like that all of the time, we actually told her to roll her eyes. But she did have a killer “You are the biggest idiot” look, when both of her eyes turned in! Anyway, as much as we loved the faces, we had to get it fixed! So we scheduled her surgery for Friday, January 13th (good thing we’re not superstitious!). We were lucky enough (sarcasm) to get the first appointment, which meant being at the hospital at 0600… an hour drive away! Thankfully, Mom & Dad Looten came to help out, and they stayed home with Audrey, so only Daddy & I had to get there crazily early! And they said Laney was supposed to be in comfy pjs, so no dressing required! :)

Unfortunately, they sent us to the wrong hospital… so we wandered around for awhile, being sent from one surgical unit to another, until they finally figured out that we were supposed to be at a different Jewish Hospital across town… and now we were late!

But Laney didn’t seem to mind- she loved checking out the fish!

Once we got to the right hospital, Daddy ran to get McD’s after he dropped us off… unfortunately, Laney noticed the bag, and since she hadn’t eaten since the night before, she was NOT HAPPY about the fact that she couldn’t have any! We just kept saying “In a little bit!” I don’t think she was buying it…

However, once the happy juice came out, things looked up… let’s just say, I think Laney will be an extrovert when she’s tipsy! (Gee, wonder who she gets that from…)

Unfortunately, the special juice did not make her very compliant… she still didn’t want to put on her hospital gown…

And then they wheeled her out… which was really scary! Talk about feeling helpless! The surgery was supposed to take about an hour, and then she’d have about an hour in recovery before they brought her back to us. The doctor came in after the surgery was over, and told us it went fine, and that they would be bringing her back when she woke up, or coming to get us if they needed us as she was coming out of anesthesia.

Everyone told us that the coming out of anesthesia would be the worst part, and they were right. I think Laney kind of panicked because she couldn’t see, not really because she was blind, but because her eyes hurt, and they put ointment in them, which had to feel weird. Anyway, I guess she just started screaming, so they came and got me out of the room to come back to recovery. That was definitely the hardest part- she wasn’t really herself. Although, she really kind of was- she was unhappy, and very single-minded! She decided she wanted the IV out of her foot, and she wasn’t going to calm down until it was OUT. She screamed and cried and tried to yank it out, so I had to hold her down to keep her from hurting herself. I tried to sing to calm her down, but she was just out of it. They didn’t want to take the IV out until she took some pain meds orally, and they couldn’t give her those until she drank something and kept it down, and she wouldn’t drink anything until they took the IV out… it was a vicious cycle, with no end in sight! Finally they decided to take her back to the room, and see if she’d calm down there.

It did seem to help when she could see her Daddy, and it definitely helped when she got to open the present we brought for her! We figured she’d need a pick me up after surgery, so we got her an Ariel doll! (Funny side story about the Ariel- the doctor said she might have some double vision… after she opened the present, she said “TWO ARIELS?” Clearly that double vision thing was accurate). After seeing Daddy, and opening her present, she at least calmed down enough to stop yanking at her foot, and took a little nap.

Eventually, she calmed down enough to drink some orange slushy, take some oral meds, and put her pjs back on. She was not real happy, she kept saying “I didn’t have a very good doctor’s appointment.”

Poor baby!

We spent the rest of the day (and the weekend, for that matter) relaxing, watching movies, and eating yummy food with Grandma & Grandpa Looten!

And snuggling with Ariel, of course!

The worst part was trying to get the ointment in her eyes!! The first night it took all of us to hold her down, but eventually she got used to it, and as long as she knew there was a treat waiting when it was over, she was pretty good! :)

Anyway, she has healed pretty well, the redness is almost gone by now, and we haven’t noticed her eyes turning in lately. So, we are praising God for a successful surgery, and so thankful that it went so well! Although, we will definitely miss the “You’re such a big idiot” face! :)

Another Project Finished!

2012-01-17T19:40:00.001-05:00

So, apparently I’ve been motivated lately, because I keep finishing projects (highly abnormal for me). Since I actually started this one last year sometime, I’m not sure if I can be too proud of myself, but, hey, finishing is finishing, right?! :)

Anyway, I’ve seen lots of cute canvases with kids’ names on them and fun designs. But at $20 and up, I wasn’t really willing to pay for them (shocker). After seeing posters turned into canvases here, and since I’m fairly familiar with Photoshop and some other photo editing software, I thought I’d give it a try. After much analysis paralysis with making the designs and matching the colors, and much MUCH tweaking, I ended up with two designs I liked. And then I just waited. And waited. I couldn’t really bring myself to fork over the $15 to turn them into a poster at Walmart. I know, I’m cheap. But this fall, I found a Groupon for $17 for $70 worth of merchandise at www.vistaprint.com. They had several things that I thought would make good Christmas presents, so I bought the groupon, and used part of it to order a large poster (18x24 inches) with both of the pictures on them. I had already picked up some 12x12 canvases at Michaels ($4 for a 2-pack, I think) this summer, so I was ready to go. And… I waited. :)

But we had company this past weekend, and that was the motivation I needed to get in gear and finish the project! So, I started out with this:

I probably should have taken the poster to work and used the giant paper cutter, but, well, I wasn’t patient enough- once I decided I wanted to get it done, I was finishing it that night! So, after a couple minutes of cutting, I had these two prints:

Here comes the real bonus… Young House Love, where I first got the whole poster-to-canvas idea, had some trouble finding an adhesive that worked. I lucked out- when we ordered the girls’ foam mattresses, they came a little shorter than we ordered. So the company sent us some pieces to make up the difference, and some adhesive spray to stick the little pieces to the big mattress. See where I’m going with this? Yep, the next step was to break out the upholstery adhesive. It said to spray it on then let it sit for 30 seconds or so.

Once I had both prints attached to the canvases, I used this highly scientific drying method:

And let it sit for awhile (I think it was probably a full day, but mostly because of convenience, not because I really thought it would take that long).

Josh hung them for me, and I think they turned out really well! Not that you can tell because the beds are NEVER made, but the colors actually match the bedding that I got for the girls this summer.

An up-close shot…

Obviously you can tell that they are not really canvases if you get up close to them, but I think they turned out really nice! They certainly look great considering I only spent $10-ish on them!

I think I’m out of projects now, so this can go back to a family blog… but I’ve been having fun doing neat stuff on a budget, so you never know!! :)

Happy New Year & Bike Riding!

2012-01-07T20:50:00.001-05:00

Our New Years was totally low-key… we spent the evening at home, and then celebrated on Sunday morning with donuts and sparkling grape juice! Not much to write about, but it was a perfect way to start a new year for us- with family! And Laney LOVES the sparkling grape juice, so that’s all she needed!

“CHEESE!”

Crash and her sparkling grape juice!

Happy New Year from the Lootens!

On another note… Laney got her first bike for Christmas this year from Grandma & Grandpa Price, and it’s been so beautiful lately, we found a day to take it for a spin. So glad we live on a cul de sac, because we just got out there in the middle of the road, and only had one car drive by!

Laney did really well; she got the pedaling backwards to break down pretty quickly, and did better pedaling forwards than I expected. If she was just a little bit taller, she would have an easier job of it, but she did really well for her first time on a big girl bike! She’s not always the most determined or persistent when it comes to learning new things, so I was proud of how hard she worked to get it down. By next spring, I bet she’s all over the place. Now we just need to get her a helmet!

Just starting out… looking a little rough, but it was a Saturday at home, dressing & hair brushing was not a requirement for the day! :)

Calm and collected on the move!

So big!!

She couldn’t have done it without the loving support of her kangaroo, who had to have a front row seat to everything before she’d even get started!

Not to leave Audrey out, I brought her little riding toy out, too!

My beautiful girls, getting so big!

Etching Project

2012-01-06T15:08:00.000-05:00

So, in the spirit of being frugal this year, we decided to try some new things and make some presents. Ruthie graduated this year, and I decided to try out etching. I’d seen it done here on Young House Love, so I thought I’d give it a try. I wanted to get her something cool and Mizzou, so I went with Mizzou glasses…

I basically did exactly what they did on Young House Love, except I used duct tape instead of painters tape (b/c that’s what I had around). It was a lot harder than I expected…

First, I went to Michaels and found this:

Then, because I have no confidence in being able to follow directions, or in things working out quite right, I did a lot of testing…

First, on this poor candle holder… now it says “Liz,” “M,” and “W” all over it.

After I figured out how the etching cream worked, I wandered around Michaels some more, trying to figure out what to use as the stencil. I was afraid tape wouldn’t hold up well enough, and I was hoping to find something I could reuse. I started with this adhesive foam. I also wasn’t sure what I wanted to put on the glasses, I thought the giant M would be good, so I printed one off, traced around it, and then cut it out with my craft knife (which I actually already had).

And then I started testing with one of our glasses.

On went the stencil,

on went the etching cream, and I waited 5 minutes.

Yeah, not such a success. The M was wonky because the glass wasn’t straight up, so it was impossible to get the stencil straight. And the foam totally didn’t work. So, yeah, I decided to give the duct tape a try. And I decided the M wasn’t going to be the best, so I decided to do MIZZOU up the side of the glass.

I printed the Mizzou on cardstock and cut it out. Then I stuck duct tape to the cutting board, and used masking tape to keep the stencil on top. Then it was back to the craft knife.

The Mizzou up the side was a much better design, and worked way better. So I decided I was ready to try it on some actual glasses. I wanted some that were straight up and down, and that looked cool on their own. I totally scored when I found these glasses at TJ Maxx. I thought they looked really cool, and they were straight, which was AWESOME… makes getting the stencil on much easier!

So, I started cutting out the real stencils. Which took forever, because I was kind of anal about imperfections, and it’s really hard to do that much cutting and not make one mistake, never mind getting it off the cutting board without stretching or tearing any of the little pieces.

But, slowly, I got the stencils made, and on the glasses they went…

…and on went the etching cream.

I ended up only waiting 3 minutes on the last 3, because the edges on the first one got a little fuzzy, and I think it was because the cream was starting to ooze under the tape. The 3 minute ones looked better.

Anyway, the final project looked like this:

Not perfect, but still pretty cool looking. I wouldn’t be embarrassed to have them in my cabinet! And I think Ruthie likes them alright… they were on her shelf the next time I visited her house, anyway! :)

Anyway, it was a lot of effort, but it was totally worth it… and congrats to Ruthie!! Hopefully I’ll have some good graduation pictures soon!

Just Call Me…

2012-01-05T14:22:00.000-05:00

…Mrs. Crafty!

So, yeah, most of you know that I am the OPPOSITE of crafty. But under the influence of Pinterest, I decided that I was going to make a wreath…

Yeah, crazy, I know. But my front door doesn’t have a window or anything. So it looks so plain, I feel like it needs to have something on it. I’ve been making do with a red bow this Christmas, but once the ornaments went on sale, I decided to give it a try.

I used the tutorial on this blog as my guide, and then off I went…

First, I gathered my supplies: ornaments, a glue gun (I had to buy one!), pliers, and, of course, Season 3 of Castle to keep me entertained!

I had way too many ornaments, but that’s mostly because there weren’t any green ones… so I had to buy the giant tub to get any green ones.

Anyway, so I undid the hanger, and straightened it. Which I actually shouldn’t have done… apparently I should have left the hanging part curved… Then I just started stringing ornaments on. The tutorial said to glue the tops on, but I actually had trouble getting some of the ornaments OFF of the tops, so I thought I’d just do that as needed, which ended up working well. Couple minutes in, I had this:

And, a couple of episodes later, I had this!

And, at this point is when I realized that I should NOT have straightened the hook part of the hanger. Because now I had two stiff metal ends, and no way to stick them together… bummer. I ended up making do with some duct tape (maybe I’m not quite Mrs. Crafty), which doesn’t show because I put the ribbon around it.

And the final product turned out something like this:

And my living room looked like this!

And here it is on the front door!

It’s not hanging there anymore, because I’m not really confidant in the ribbon and the way I used it to make a hook. Sooo, I’ll have to figure that out next year! Not bad for my first wreath… and I have enough leftovers to make another one (albeit a little smaller). But, maybe next year…

Christmas 2011: Kentucky Edition!

2012-01-04T13:46:00.000-05:00

Phew, we were worn out by the time we got home on Christmas Eve! We had a pretty good drive home, we left in the afternoon and made it home around 12:30. We pretty much put the girls straight to bed, although Laney insisted on leaving cookies for Santa and Mrs. Claus… and cookies for the reindeer, of course!

Josh and I were up until about 2 doing, well, Santa things! :) It was funny, because usually we can’t sleep on Christmas Eve (yes, we’re that big of kids!), but man, we were out as soon as our heads hit the pillow this year! And we overslept, and didn’t even get out of bed until 8! Which was extra bad this year, since we had to be at church by 9:45… so, yeah, Christmas presents, breakfast, and getting ready, all in an hour and a half!

Stockings for Mommy & Daddy…

…and stockings for the girls!

Laney’s first present…

And Audrey’s… who is clearly in the “Why are we awake” stage…

Unloading stockings!

And, the mass chaos after the combination of unloading tons of presents from family, and speed-unwrapping our own presents! Gotta love Christmas morning!

And, the annual Looten Christmas morning picture! (See more here, here, here, and here!)

Audrey may not have been happy about being up early, but, well, any time is a good time to maul the cat!

After presents and breakfast, we headed to church, and then took some serious NAPS! We spent the evening hanging out with the Veirs, which was a really good time. We played with their new Kinect, which was a blast, and as entertaining to watch as it was to play!

So, that was our first Christmas in Kentucky. It was definitely an interesting one, and a whirlwind, with all of the traveling. But we are so thankful that we got to spend time with both of our families, and still got to be home on Christmas morning. I hope everyone else had a Christmas as wonderful as our’s!

Christmas 2011: Springfield Edition!

2012-01-02T08:02:00.000-05:00

After a fun filled Price family Christmas, we headed south to Springfield for Christmas with the Lootens!

Since we didn’t get to make our normal Christmas shopping trip to Silver Dollar City in November, we headed there on Thursday to enjoy the Christmas lights! Nobody does Christmas like Silver Dollar City! It was pretty chilly, but we bundled up and enjoyed some hot chocolate, hot wassail, and just enjoyed the lights!

Waiting for the first lighting of the Christmas tree!

Once the tree started, though, A was enthralled…

And, who can blame her, because this is pretty amazing!

After the tree lighting, we headed to the World’s Fair part, where the kid rides are, to watch the light parade and ride some rides!

Audrey and Grandpa Looten, hanging out!

My beautiful girls on the merry-go-round!

Audrey made an important discovery while she was at Grandma & Grandpa’s house… smoked trout is delicious! Dad was making a smoked trout cheeseball and gave her a piece. After that, she just stuck her hand out and ate pieces as fast as he could give them to her. Pretty funny!

Friday, the rest of the crowd started arriving! The Columbia Lootens came in that morning, and the Wilsons got there that night… with 9 adults and 5 kids 4 and under, it was a full (and loud!) house… but we sure had fun!!

Leila and Audrey

Grandpa and the newest Wilson, Kerrigan!

The kids were really at the perfect age for Grandma & Grandpa’s new kids table! It was cute to see them all sitting there…

Laney and Leila

Kael and Audrey… very sweet! Audrey actually did a much better job of being NOT in a high chair than I expected she would!

Wrestle time with Uncle Tim!

Since we had everyone together, we had to had to get a family picture… I forgot my tripod, but it turned out not horrible. 9 adults and 5 small children… I’m just glad we can see everyone’s face (mostly)!

So, that was the Looten Christmas… We headed back to Kentucky on Saturday, Christmas Eve. We were sad to go, but loved getting to see everyone! It was fun to hang out with the family, especially since it was Kerri’s first Christmas, and Mal & Tim are engaged… lots to celebrate!

Christmas 2011- Columbia Edition!

2011-12-30T11:51:00.001-05:00

We knew it was going to be difference this year, because it’s our first Christmas far away. But we were lucky enough to be able to take a whole week to celebrate! We started in Columbia, because Ruthie was graduating the weekend of the 16th. Jess even came in from Colorado, and it was great having all 4 of use together! :)

So, obviously we started off the trip with graduation on Saturday. Despite being a December graduation, the weather was beautiful, which made it much less painful to take pictures around campus! I guess it’s because I went to school there, but I think MU’s campus is just beautiful, and I love being there. Lots of good memories, and it just says CoMo to me! :) Anyway, Jess took most of the pictures, so I don’t have many, just a few of the girls on the columns. I’ve been wanting to take pictures of them there, because I think it’d be fun to have pictures of them as kids on the columns to compare with the pictures of them at the columns in their graduation gowns, you know, when they graduate from MU. Hehe… a mommy can hope!

P.S. I’m not really going to be able to use this second picture, because, yes, those are plaid boxers in front of the columns… not our’s. Apparently someone had a little too good of a time at the columns before graduation… hopefully Jess will have some good ones, or I’ll be doing some work in photoshop! :)

And, gratuitous shot of my girls and their daddy on campus… love my family!

After graduation festivities on Saturday, we went to church on Sunday. Then we spent the next couple of days just hanging out in CoMo. We did some last minute Christmas shopping with Jess, went out for dinner with Tim, Mal, & Grandma Jo, and went out for lunch and to see Santa at Bass Pro with Tim & Mal. And, of course, laid around the house, ate too much, and generally had a good time hanging out with our family.

Audrey’s favorite thing to do at Grandma & Grandpa’s… maul Sassy! Sassy is the most tolerant animal I’ve ever seen, she just let A do whatever she wanted. Which included things like Audrey holding up her back legs and doing the wheelbarrow… yikes!

A and her favorite toy! :)

Love the Bass Pro Santa, because they give you a free pic, and it’s not an arm and a leg to buy more. However, I don’t think I’ll be buying more this year. Here’s the picture I took… yeah, not a framer! Pretty hilarious, though. Audrey, not a fan of Santa.

We did manage to get a cute one of the girls in Santa’s sleigh, though!

Audrey got a wicked cold, so she didn’t feel very good for most of the trip. And she was definitely too worn out for shopping!

Of course, it wouldn’t be Christmas without a rip and tear session at Grandma & Grandpa’s house! We all got together on Tuesday night to exchange presents. We started with breakfast for dinner, of course. We were cracking up because when we set the table, all of the food was tan- breakfast casserole, cinnamon rolls, biscuits, pancakes… carbs, anyone? :) And it was all delicious!

Laney got the passing out presents job (although, as it was going to take about 4 1/2 years for her to get it done, Ruthie and Grandma helped).

Before the ripping and tearing, though, Laney had to “open” her big present from Grandma & Grandpa. Dad had brought in a bike and covered it with a blanket. After she passed out all of the presents, Dad told her he was cold, so she pulled the blanket off. She was QUITE excited…

And, of course, she had to take it for a little spin!

Audrey pretty much opened her first present and was done opening. She was totally content to push the shopping cart from Aunt Ruthie around the rest of the night!

Dad won the biggest present award…

But, it was really just a Black and Gold Auctions car magnet, buried in packing materials… good call, Josh! :)

Anyway, we had such a good time hanging with the Price’s in Columbia. It was great to have all of the Price kids together, especially since Jess is pregnant, fun to see her all excited! Can’t wait to see all of the pictures she took, so look forward to more pics… and, of course, Christmas 2011, Springfield and Kentucky editions! :) Hope your Christmas was as fun and filled with family as our’s!

It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas!

2011-12-08T22:08:00.001-05:00

Well, anybody who knows us knows that we LOVE Christmas… so we’re always excited to get the decorating done, and this year was no exception! Last week we set up our tree and even got lights up on the outside of our house one day that Josh and I were off work and it was nice outside!

The actual decorating of the tree I don’t have many pictures of, because, well, I spent most of the time trying to keep Laney and Audrey from dumping the giant tote of ornaments, tearing apart the packaging, and just generally wreaking too much havoc! And, really, it was a good time decorating the tree now that both of them were excited about it. We definitely have some sections at about 4 year old height that are a little ornament heavy, but we’ve never tried to have a perfect tree, and giant patches of ornaments are part of it! :) Audrey didn’t really get the whole hanging up thing, so she would just set the ornaments on the tree branches, which was also pretty funny!

Once we got the tree up, I did manage to wrangle the girls into a picture, and it actually turned out pretty cute!

And then, because I love a Christmas tree and sparkling ornaments, I had some fun with my camera and some of my favorite ornaments. The pictures aren’t all great, because I was messing with the manual settings on the camera, but some of them turned out cool…

One of my absolute favorite ornaments. Love its simplicity. A good reminder when life gets crazy!

If possible, I would probably cover my entire tree in ornaments from the glass blower’s shop at Silver Dollar City. This is one of the first ornaments Josh and I bought on our first Christmas trip there, and I still love it! And, miraculously, the little yellow things in the middle are still attached! :)

Another SDC glass blower ornament… I wasn’t kidding, I’d probably buy one of everything if I had the money! Love the red, love cardinals…

And, when I ran out of glass ornaments to buy, I would buy about a million of these glass icicle ornaments and hang them all over!

But, of course, there has to be room on our tree for lots of ornaments like this one! Wouldn’t be Josh’s tree without them!

Our new family ornament from last year… neat to see this one from 2010 and the one with only 3 stockings from 2007!

Funny story about these… when we got married, I got to keep all of my ornaments from growing up, but Josh didn’t. So there were lots of “Liz” ornaments on the tree, but no “Josh” ornaments. So, we bought these two matching snowmen, and they always hang together.

And here’s the final tree! Complete with presents… I love Christmas!

And our stockings, made by Grandma Judy! Yes, I know mine is way bigger than everyone else’s… it’s had almost 30 years to stretch out! :)

And the house from the outside… I love having the tree in the front window. And, yes, the windows look like they’re crying… so I’m not the best at outside lights, but I wanted to do the windows! :)

So, there you go, the Looten house is ready for Christmas!! Which is good, since Christmas is starting early this year… everything has to be bought, wrapped, and ready to go by next weekend! Merry Christmas to all…

Halloween 2011!

2011-11-07T21:27:00.001-05:00

Well, Halloween has to start our with carving a pumpkin… which we almost didn’t get done this year, but decided at the last minute to do it Saturday night. We just hadn’t had a night to do it! It was Audrey’s first time “helping” carve a pumpkin that she really kind of understood what was going on, so it was quite entertaining to watch her! So we spread out the newspaper, put the girls in comfy clothes, and off we went!

Our rule during pumpkin carving… everyone has to touch the insides at least once! :) Audrey went first…

Happy to reach in…

… and then wondering what the heck we made her do! :)

And then Laney, who knew what she was getting into, and was not interested, so Daddy had to “encourage” her!

Yep, pumpkin guts are still gross!

Audrey also thought she’d try the taste of fresh pumpkin…

Our other favorite part of pumpkin carving is trying to get a picture of the girls together on the porch with the jack o’ lantern… always a challenge!

My favorite this year: they both look like ragamuffins, Laney’s hair is in her face and A’s smile is crooked… but they’re laughing and having fun and it’s real life… definitely the best!

Daddy’s masterpiece… Laney always picks the shapes and number of teeth, and Daddy has to make it happen… oval eyes, a triangle nose, and 5 teeth this year!

Since we don’t do major things for Halloween, that’s about all we did as far as decorating… but we’ve had the girls’ costumes planned for weeks, because as soon as Laney got her dress for her birthday, she wanted to wear it for Halloween! Free costume = awesome! :) Since we didn’t have a million houses to visit, like last year, we weren’t really sure where we should go trick-or-treating. But some friends from church invited us to go with them to a little town south of here that does a big trunk or treat, plus is fun to walk and trick-or-treat. So, we got the girls home, changed them, and headed south!

Audrey was not feeling so hot, and was not happy about being put in a costume! We tried a sucker to make her feel better, but, well, it didn’t really help! Angry Cinderella…

Cranky Audrey made getting a picture of the girls together impossible… this was the best one I got! :)

My favorite picture of Laney from the whole night. She was so excited about her costume. She’s wearing a dress she got from Yaya for her birthday, earrings, and the headpiece the flower girl wore in my wedding. I pulled down the wedding box to see if she wanted to wear my headpiece (she was a princess bride, after all), and she decided she wanted the one with flowers instead. I must admit, it looks pretty adorable!

For some reason it just struck me as funny to see Laney holding her dress up… she just looked so big!

Daddy and his girls!

We were afraid we wouldn’t get much trick or treating done b/c of Miss A not feeling well… but she seemed to perk right up once she figured out there was candy involved!!

So cute!

Also adorable…

So, the Veirs have twin boys, and they decided to go as KISS. It was pretty hilarious to see KISS helping little Miss Cinderella with the trick or treating…

Laney and her friend, Layne! Laney was being a total goof, clearly…

Anyway, so we definitely missed visiting our family, but it was fun to do actual trick or treating with the girls this year. And it was actually really fun to raid the dress up box for our costumes!! Hope everyone else had as much fun on Halloween as we did!! :)

Tim’s Bday!

2011-10-19T22:47:00.001-04:00

Well, as if we needed an excuse for a long weekend in Springfield, it also happened to be Tim’s birthday! It was the last weekend of Fall Break for us, so we got to leave on Thursday and spend all day Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday there. It was nice to not be rushed, and we got to hang out with Grandma De & Grandpa Don while we were there, so it was a good trip all around.

We spent Friday late morning/early afternoon at Grandma De & Grandpa Don’s house. We had lunch, visited a lot, caught up on news, and played outside, of course! You can’t keep our girls inside! Anias was already hibernating, so we didn’t get to visit with the turtle, but the girls found other ways to occupy themselves.

Like picking the flowers with Grandma

And coloring with sidewalk chalk!

Audrey is sooo interested in doing whatever Laney does that she kept coloring right on top of Laney’s picture… which just made Laney scream, of course. They were pretty cute (and quiet) for a minute or two, though…

After a good visit with Grandma & Grandpa (and when the girls were making it clear it was naptime), we headed back to the Looten’s to rest, and wait for the rest of the clan to arrive! When everyone got there, we had Tim’s birthday dinner… some seriously delicious mexican food! And, of course, strawberry cake!

The birthday boy and his cake… for some reason Mom didn’t want to put 32 candles on the cake… weird.

Funniest thing the whole weekend was Audrey and Grandpa’s chair. Every time he got out of it, she raced over and climbed in. She was NOT interested in sharing, either- Grandma tried to sit in it with her, and she said no. Nobody else could get away with stealing Grandpa’s chair, that’s for sure!

Speaking of not being able to keep our girls inside… that is especially true of Miss A. She spent the mornings out on the porch with Grandpa!

Saturday we headed to Silver Sollar Ditty to play for the day. As always, it was a good day, and we had some absolutely BEAUTIFUL weather. Probably would have been warm enough for water rides, but we managed to steer Miss E. away from them! Actually, one of their favorite things to do was to hang onto the fence and watch the boats go by in the Lost River. It entertained them through lunch, which was pretty sweet! :)

Grandma & her girls, watching the boats

Watching the boats meant a few rare moments of stillness for Miss A, and I couldn’t resist getting a couple of pictures…

Then the girls discovered that there was a little puddle where one of the waves from the river splashed over onto the sidewalk. And what did they do? Jumped in with both feet! Water babies…

Of course, it wouldn’t be a trip to SDC without a trip to Geyser Gulch and the ball vacuums. These things could occupy the girls for HOURS. It’s amazing. Wish I had one on my spare room, I think it’d be worth it…

So, funny story about this dog… Laney has really latched onto it lately, and it was actually a gift from Josh to me when we were dating in college. Kinda cool that she’s so fascinated with it.

Great angle on this shot by Josh!

And once they got tired of the ball vacuums, Laney had to try the climbing net. Unfortunately, she was a little short for some of the jumps, so guess who got to join her!! What a good daddy…

Laney also spent a lot of time hitching a ride with Grandma Jo! Love the totally blue lips from rock candy. Laney has discovered the joy of pure sugar on a stick. :)

Yeah, I don’t even know.

Grandma & Miss A.!

We left the City and headed to Mr. G’s Pizza in Branson. They have really good Chicago-style pizza, and we really had a good time visiting. After dinner, we headed back home, and Laney picked Megamind for everyone to enjoy (which, I actually think everyone did enjoy- it’s a pretty good movie!).

Sunday we went to church, and then Tim and Mal & Mom and Dad headed back towards Branson to check out a wedding venue (Yay, Tim & Mal!). Since they were going to be there for awhile, and we wanted to get back at a reasonable hour, we packed up and headed home while they were gone. The trip back was a little rough, but we made it by 11:30 or midnight. And it was worth the late night to get to see all of our Springfield family for a long weekend! However, now we’re glad to be home for a few weekends… it’s been a VERY busy fall. Maybe our schedule will clear up this winter… ha, ha.

MDA Walk

2011-10-13T21:01:00.001-04:00

The week after the Fish Fry, we made the much shorter trip to IL for the MDA Muscle Walk. This is always a good time spent with the extended Price family raising money for MDA, in honor of my cousins, Beau and Gabe. Being in the fall, the weather is often iffy, and this year it rained… a lot! But it was still a great time, and a good way to raise money to find a cure for muscular dystrophy.

Eating is always a highlight… all of the women make desserts, and my uncle, Clint, smokes some pork for bbq sandwiches to sell in the snack bar. Deliciousness!

Uncle Clint, manning the grill…

Daddy & Laney, enjoying some lunch.

There’s always a MASSIVE silent auction (like, 300+ baskets massive) with some great stuff in it. This year we set up the tables and baskets underneath two pavilions because of the rain, and they barely fit. There’s definitely something for EVERYONE in this silent auction!

HALF of the silent auction baskets, seriously- crazy big!

There are always lots of kids… I have no idea who this kid is, but saw him passed out in the swing. Too cute!

Laney and her cousin Ayden had a great time playing. Pretty cute!

Love this little girl… who is definitely NOT a toddler any more!

Audrey… mooching food off of Uncle Charlie!

Dad doing his thing during the live auction!

One of Laney’s favorite games was taking this giant blow-up crayon and “coloring Daddy pink.” It was pretty funny!

She also loved driving this car, just like last year! What is it about little kids and a steering wheel?

Meanwhile, Miss A. discovered the seesaw. She LOVED it… huge grin the whole time!

Audrey also discovered the merry go round, with Uncle Charlie’s help, of course. Coordination would have helped, though…

A little lean…

…and down she goes!

So Aunt Ruthie joined in the fun to help!

Anyway, it was a really great weekend, always good to see our IL family, and a nice chance to see our CoMo family for the second weekend in a row! Can’t wait until next year, we’ll be ready to do it all again!!

Laney’s 4!!

2011-10-02T23:30:00.001-04:00

So, I’m a horrible mother and I haven’t posted Laney’s birthday pics… but, well, it’s been busy around here! Since Laney’s bday, we spent an evening in Narnia, made a trip to CoMo for the MHBC Fish Fry, and a trip to IL for the MDA Walk. So, that’s a lot of going! This has been our first weekend home, and even then Josh spent Saturday afternoon & night at church for a youth lock-in! So, I’m pleading overly busy… and better late than never, right?!

Anyway, on to the post… Laney obviously turned 4 on September 12th… I can’t believe she’s really 4, she seems like such a little girl now, definitely not a toddler anymore! It’s hard to believe that she’s really growing up so fast, and is probably even going to KINDERGARTEN next year. Wow! But, we have a year of being 4 first!

Laney got to choose her birthday dinner, of course, and made her daddy proud- she chose cheeseburgers, french fries, and fruit cocktail! :) Good choices all around!

Here’s the birthday girl, with her crown from Narnia, and her birthday dinner!

So, Laney was VERY specific with her cake choices (again, similar to her Daddy!). She knew she was having two birthday parties (one coming up in CoMo), so she said for her birthday here, she wanted a white cake with pink icing and Snow White on the top. Well, Mommy is cheap, but creative, so here’s what we ended up with:

So, it’s french vanilla cake with strawberry icing, which was kind of a no brainer. But I struggled with the Snow White- I am certainly not artistic enough to draw one at all, much less in icing! And I didn’t really want to pay $10 for a little figurine… so I did a Dollar Tree drive-by, and hit the jackpot- I found a wand with interchangeable gems that had princesses on them. My first thought was to stick the wand in the middle, but it was like 6 inches taller than the cake, so I ended up putting a little dollop of icing on the cake and leaning the gem in the middle. And then, of course, lots of silver sparkles for some bling! I thought it turned out pretty cute, and she seemed pleased with it, so we’ll call it a success!

She at least managed to listen to happy birthday without covering her face, like last year! Love that smile!!

Josh and I got her a Jesse (from Toy Story) doll, which she’d been asking about for forever, so she was quite excited. And we really enjoyed our simple birthday party at home!

And then we had a big ol’ party in CoMo! We headed there for the Fish Fry at MHBC, which I totally forgot to take my camera to, so I have zero pictures from it. But we decided to have a party for Laney’s birthday on Sunday after church. We went for a quick-fix lunch of hot dog city. The cool thing was that the Lootens decided to come up from Springfield to join us, so it was QUITE the party!

There were so many of us, we ended up pulling the breakfast room table into the living room, and then we accidentally split up and put all the Prices in the dining room and the Lootens in the living room… it was kind of like the Hatfield and McCoys! Only without the killing and the hard feelings, of course…

The Lootens…

And the Prices…

Audrey and Yaya…

The smile didn’t last too long, though, because it was late by the time we got the lunch done, and poor Miss A didn’t even have it in her to make it through the lunch! Not much keeps Miss A from eating, so she must have been WIPED! :)

And, again, Laney was very specific about what she wanted for her cake. For her cake at Grandma’s house, she wanted chocolate with pink icing (of course) and Cinderella on it! During my same Dollar Tree run, I found a package of princess frisbees… so this cake ended up looking like this:

The bonus of the frisbee cake toppers was there was a spare! And, since we were celebrating Dad’s birthday at the same time, I just KNEW he wanted a Belle cake!!

Birthday boy and girl!

Laney refused to blow out her candles… I guess she got stage fright or something, but she wouldn’t do it until Grandma Price volunteered to help!

But she was more than happy to help Grandpa blow out his!

Anyway, so quite the celebration for Miss Laney, but we just happened to be making the trip home. The whole trip was really fun, if a little short! We got to hang out with my parents on Friday night, and stayed up way too late telling stories and laughing. And then Saturday we ran some errands, and went to the Fish Fry. It was actually really fun to go to the Fish Fry and not be totally stressed about working, and baking, and being there all day. We had a great time, though! I really wish I hadn’t forgotten my camera!! They filled a wading pool with birdseed as a sensory thing for the kids to play with, and Audrey could have stayed there forever. She was totally entertained. Laney spent the whole time just running amok, like she’d never left. It was such a good time hanging out with our families and our friends from Columbia (and Springfield!).

Just as a kind of 4 year old update, here are a few random things about Laney…

She still LOVES to read. She has started to notice words, and even sounded out her first word a couple weeks ago (it was Mole, randomly… we were reading a book about animals).
She is also learning to write, she can write her first and last name, and actually can write Josh, too. Pretty cool watching her learn!
She is still petite, although she’s getting taller. All her 3T pants are kind of short on her, but the 4T pants just about have to have the adjustable waistband!
She is TOTALLY into princess (shocker)…
Her new favorite thing to do is play Wii games. She got hooked on Wii Sports Resort, and did LOTS of sword fighting! Then she got started with Mario Party 8, which is like a board game. She’s actually pretty good on that one. And then Grandma & Grandpa Looten got her a Disney Princess game, which she also loves (shocker), but she can’t play for very long on her own- it takes a little bit too much coordination! So there’s a lot of me moving the princess while Laney wields the wand! :)
She is VERY independent. We are having lots of fits and butting heads about what she can and can’t do. We just keep telling ourselves that this independence will be good in the long run! She’s definitely a leader!
She still has some trouble with her eyes. We noticed it first when she was about two, and then last spring they did a screening at school and flagged her. So, anyway, we have an appointment with a pediatric ophthalmologist in Louisville in a couple of weeks.
She is very imaginative, and has a great memory. She can tell some serious stories, and it’s pretty entertaining.

Anyway, so, that’s about it… a really long update that was really overdue! Hopefully I’ll have time to update again with pics from the MDA Walk this week… it’s Fall Break here this week!

Journey to Narnia!

2011-09-14T11:21:00.000-04:00

SBTS has a fall festival every year that is a pretty big deal, and is for families of students, staff, etc at the school. This year, the theme was Narnia, and they went ALL OUT. Everyone said it was going to be pretty amazing, so we didn’t want to miss it. Best part- it was all free- the food, the activities, admission, everything. Pretty sweet, huh?!

Anyway, Josh worked until 5, so we left Etown about 5:30, and got to the shindig at about 6:30. When we got there, it was pretty amazing- tons of bounce houses, tents all over the main grassy area, food everywhere, and tons of people. This picture doesn’t really even begin show how crazy it was!

We started off with dinner (provided by Chick Fil A, of course), which had a ridiculously huge line. So we had the bright idea for Josh and the girls to go play in the bounce houses for awhile while I waited in line. Which was a good idea, until it was time for the girls to leave the bounce house… apparently, instead of coming with Daddy, Miss E. decided it was a better idea to start bolting in the opposite direction with no shoes on. Yeah, Daddy wasn’t happy, and this is what I saw walking towards me:

I guess every time he set her down, she ran off again, so he just picked her up and took her to me, and then went back for the shoes and the stroller. It was pretty funny, and entertaining to the family behind us in line, too! :)

Mostly, we chalk the issues up to low blood sugar and over excitement, b/c she was fine and happy to eat once we got the food! Can’t let a Looten (or a Price) get hungry!

After we ate we stopped at the White Witch’s sleigh for a quick photo op:

And then headed to the coronation platform, where they could decorate their own crowns, and then they could be part of a coronation ceremony, where the girls got little wands and the boys got swords. Here are my beautiful girls in their crowns:

We didn’t actually do the coronation ceremony, b/c the line was long, the show was about to start, and, let’s be honest, the girls didn’t really care anyway. Laney just wanted her wand! And, because SOMEONE ELSE in the family (not naming names cough*daddy*cough) wanted a sword, we got Audrey a sword. Which, to be honest, she was totally happy about and thoroughly enjoyed. And then I had the bright idea to take a sibling picture with crowns and wands/swords. Yeah, two girls, two crowns, a sword and a wand… like that was going to happen! But we gave it the old college try, and actually ended up with this good one: (although I wish I had taken the time to clean the ketchup off of Laney’s face!)

But, lets be honest, most of the shots looked more like this:

Just thought this was a cute shot of Laney… sometimes I forget what a big girl she’s getting to be!

And maybe this is why Audrey enjoyed her sword so much… everything is a teething toy!

After we decorated crowns and got wands/swords, it was time for the show to start! It was a pretty neat show, it was set up like a joust with guys really on horseback and throwing spears (at hay bales) and such. Laney watched it from Daddy’s shoulders, and Audrey and I mostly listened from a little farther back!

All a girl needs: a wand, a crown, some cotton candy, and a good seat on Daddy’s shoulders!

Audrey and I had our own cotton candy, of course…

The show was a little long for the girls, so when Laney’s attention span and Daddy’s shoulders were about to give out, we headed off to see what else we could find. We found funnel cakes (DELICIOUS) and face painting. Laney hadn’t ever had a face painting done, and she was a little hesitant. They were painting most people all over their faces to look like tigers or other animals, but Laney wasn’t all about that. She decided on a blue flower and a pink flower instead. She was nervous in line and while they were doing it, but happy as a clam afterwards! Love watching my girls try new things…

And she looked pretty cute with them done!

After face painting, we ended up back by the bounce houses. Although, they really can’t be called bounce houses since there were slides and games and rock walls and cliff hangers, just about everything you could think of! We played for a little bit in the little kid ones, and then took Laney to see the bigger ones. What is it about a kid and a bounce house, they both just LOVED them. Especially the slides, where you had to climb up this rock wall/ladder part, and then go down a huge slide. Laney and Audrey both loved it… fearless!

Audrey goofing with Daddy in the toddler bounce house

Laney on the giant slide. Going up…

…and coming down, with a huge grin!!

Audrey and I made a few trips down the slides, too!

Headed back to the car after the party was over, tired and happy, with crowns, face paint, sodie, and a big smile… oh, and giant Tiana socks! She didn’t want to put her shoes back on after the bounce house!

And the sure sign of a good family outing? Passed out kiddos by the time you make it home! I’m gonna have a million of these pictures by the time these kids grow up!

After putting the girls to bed, Josh and I made the brilliant discovery that we can stream ESPN on our computer because of our internet provider, so we got to watch the MU game, which didn’t START until 10:30… so we were up until 2, and totally exhausted the next morning! But, definitely a fun day all around!

Just as a quick update on life in general, I do have a full time job. It’s not exactly what I wanted; it’s basically a computer tech position at an elementary school. I actually like the work, and the people, and I am learning tons, which is always fun. But it is only 25 hours a week, and the pay is not great. So I was hoping to be able to have a position like that for the next couple of years, but it looks like I will have to be applying to go back in the classroom next summer again. Hopefully some experience in a local school will help me get a job this time! In the meantime, things will be a little tight, but God will make the ends meet, and I’ll learn lots in this job, which will be good experience. With our house fixed, school started, jobs started, and the girls in full time daycare, we are finally starting to feel settled. Incredibly busy (especially Josh, with school and two part time jobs), but settled, which has done wonders for us! So, we’re settled in for this adventure! No telling what God has planned for us…

Josh’s Ordination

2011-09-10T10:08:00.001-04:00

Obviously this post is a little past due, since it happened in mid-August… but life is still crazy around here, and since I didn’t take any of these pictures, it kind of slipped my mind to post them!

Anyway, one of the first things that THBC did when Josh started serving was ask if he wanted to be officially ordained. And, of course, he did. So they set up his ordination service for August 13th. Josh’s Mom, Dad, and Grandma came for the service, as did Brother Dave and Nancy from MHBC, which was really cool. It was a quick and busy trip for his parents, but we had fun showing them a little of Etown, and they got to see our house all (finally) fixed up and put back together! Which I still owe you pictures of, but, well, it has to be clean to take pictures, so it might be a bit…

But back to the ordination… church that morning was pretty normal, and then Josh had to head back to church for the ordination council, which is basically where any ordained man can come and ask him questions to judge whether he is suited for ordination and ministry. Since Dave was there, he got to be a part of it, too. They weren’t too rough on Josh, and they had no trouble seeing that he is definitely called to ministry. After the ordination council, everyone was invited to his ordination service. He got to pick out all of the songs, Pastor Nathan spoke, as did the head of missions for the Kentucky Baptist Convention, and then all of the men who had been a part of the ordination council laid their hands on him and prayed for him. It was a very cool ceremony, very solemn, and very meaningful. The church historian took pictures, so these are his pictures… he got some good ones!

All off the ordained men, during the laying on of hands. They all kneeled down and prayed with Josh one at a time. It was very cool.

Pastor Nathan praying with Josh.

And, of course, my favorite- Bro. Dave praying with Josh. Dave has been such a huge part of Josh’s spiritual growth that I was thrilled he could come and be a part of the ordination service. Watching him just wrap Josh in a bear hug and pray with him totally made me cry, though…

And after the ceremony, the party began! We had an ice cream social to celebrate! Lots of people, and lots of the youth, came, which was really neat. We had a good time just hanging out and talking and laughing with everyone. And it was a good chance for Josh’s family to get to meet some of our new church family.

Josh’s certificate, signed by all of the men who were a part of the ordination council, and the Bible they got for him, with Rev. Joshua Lloyd Looten on it. Pretty cool!

Grandma Jo & Audrey, enjoying some ice cream

Laney, mooching cookies & ice cream off of Grandma & Grandpa Looten… who were more than happy to share! :)

Audrey and Paige, one of the youth, who has taken a real liking to our girls!

After the ordination service and ice cream, we headed back to Mom & Dad Looten’s hotel, which had a pool. True to form, our girls were absolutely water babies, despite the fact that the water was pretty cold! We got Laney a noodle, and she realized she could kind of lay on it and kick her feet and swim around, and she did about a million laps. Audrey just wouldn’t keep her face out of the water- she’d duck it under, then pull it back up, gasping and grinning like a maniac, and then do it all over again. She is so crazy when it comes to water. When it looked like it was going to rain (and the grown ups were pretty much done swimming), we headed inside and ordered pizza from Snappy Tomato, which Josh and I had been wanting to try. They have a GIANT pizza, which was really good.

Josh’s Mom, Dad, & Grandma headed back to Missouri Monday morning, so it really was a quick trip for them. We are excited for them to come back and stay for a more relaxed visit, but are thrilled that they could make it for Josh’s ordination service. It’s pretty cool that Josh is officially The Reverend Joshua Lloyd Looten! I’m so proud of him, and I know that God is going to do great things through him. I’m just along for the ride! :)

Whirlwind STL Trip

2011-08-22T21:20:00.000-04:00

Slowly but surely, I’m catching up! :) The week after our trip to Holiday World, we went on a whirlwind trip to St. Louis. My aunt, Kim, was getting married there, and we wanted to go. Since St. Louis is about a 5 hour drive from Etown, we decided to make a day of it. We got up and out the door early, and headed to St. Louis to meet Charlie & Ruth at the Science Center! None of us had been to the Science Center since we were in school, so we were kind of excited to see what had changed. The answer is… well, not much! But it was fun revisiting the old classics, like the giant T Rex, the bridge over the highway (where you can see how fast the cars are going), and the build-an-arch activity! And, of course, it was the girls’ first time, so it was all new to them (although the reading about the eras of the world… not so interesting for them. Weird.)

Anyway… onto our adventures at the Science Center…

Of course, one of the major things to remember from the Science Center is the giant T Rex that moves and roars! When we first got there, Josh was looking at the map and trying to decide where to go, so I took Laney over to the railing to show her the dinosaur. Right as we got to the railing, it looked over at us (seriously, it really did look like it was looking right at us, and I knew it wasn’t, but Laney sure didn’t!), opened its mouth, and roared. I thought Laney was going to climb me! It was pretty hilarious. She was quite interested in NOT going anywhere near the dino for awhile.

But, eventually we got a good pic of her and her daddy with it!

Like I said before, everyone remembers the build-an-arch activity, so we had to give it a shot…

Laney was actually a help- she could find the numbers for Josh and Charlie. Audrey… well, she mostly sat on the blocks! :)

Daddy and Charlie, dropping in the last “stone.”

And then, disaster struck: the arch still wouldn’t stay up! Engineer Charlie had to keep adjusting to figure out why, of course. Meanwhile, I was trying to get a picture of the three of them underneath it, whether it would stand up or not.

Laney and Daddy, ready for a picture. Charlie… still fidgeting with the arch!

And finally I just gave up and settled for a picture of Josh and Laney… note Charlie in the background, STILL trying to fix the arch!

The other crowd pleaser was, of course, the bridge over the road. Laney thought it was way cool that you could look down and see the cars going by underneath. She was a little small to do the speed thing (or to understand what it meant) but just looking at the highway seemed to entertain her.

No fear whatsoever! My brave girl…

No fear for Miss A., either!

And then there’s the gift shop… where Josh just had to be Josh! :)

While we were at the gift shop, we had to pick up a bag of astronaut ice cream, because it’s not a trip to the Science Center without it (at least not for me- I bought some EVERY TIME I went when I was a kid). Good news is, it’s still delicious!

After the Science Center we went to Ted Drewes, a St. Louis ice cream place that Josh had heard was really good. We are seriously lacking in frozen custard around Etown, we pretty much just have DQ and Baskin Robbins (not the same as Andy’s or Randy’s or that kind of thing…). So we were excited to get to eat some good frozen custard… and it was good!

The girls… yeah, they TOTALLY passed out on the way there, so they didn’t get to try it. Trust me, they needed the naps way more than they needed the ice cream!

So, after Ted Drewes we headed off to the main event of the trip, which was the wedding, of course! It was held at Kim’s new sister-in-law’s house in an old neighborhood in Kirkwood. It was a beautiful neighborhood and house, and a great place for a wedding. It even stopped raining for the wedding (although it was a touch on the warm side!). I’ll admit, though, that I was a little fried (and a lot warm), so I didn’t take too many pictures. Plus, at weddings I kind of like to let the photographer take the pictures! Just a few I took…

Audrey and Grandma Price… check out the hair on Audrey, we made the mistake of pouring a little water on her head to cool her off and then she wouldn’t let us stop! Water baby extraordinaire!

Since the only nap she got that day was the 30 minutes she slept in the car at Ted Drewes, Laney was a bit of a monster… so she spent a lot of time at the wedding under the table. Oh, well!

Anyway, like I said, I didn’t take too many pictures. But we really had a good time at the wedding, just visiting with family. We got to see lots of people that we don’t see very often, and it was fun catching up, since lots has happened in the last year or so!! We headed back that night, so it was definitely a long day, but totally worth it to see family and wish Kim & Charlie well on their marriage!! Congratulations, you guys!

Holiday World

2011-08-20T15:59:00.001-04:00

Yeah, so I’m running about a month behind in the blogging world… it’s been a little nuts around here lately, with trips to STL, new carpet, ordination services, new jobs, etc… and I have a wicked cold (or my allergies are acting up), so it’s been hard to get motivated to get caught up on my posting. But I am crazy behind now, so I’m gonna do my best! :)

Towards the end of July, our church went to Holiday World. It was really kind of a nice set up, we could caravan or drive on our own, and head up whenever we wanted. Then we had a meal together as a church while we were there, and could stay as long as we wanted. So it was some good time together, but there was also a lot of freedom. Which I guess is what you can do when you're taking the whole church, and not just youth! :) Anyway, we’d never been to Holiday World, and we’re always up for a theme park, so we packed the car and the girls and headed towards Santa Claus, IN!

This park (as the name suggests) is broken up into sections based on holidays- 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. It also has a water park section, called Splashin’ Safari, kind of like Six Flags in St. Louis. Probably the coolest thing about how Holiday World is run, is they don’t charge for drinks. There are all of these buildings with “Pepsi Oasis” signs, and you can just walk in, grab a cup, and fill it up with whatever you want to drink. So that certainly saved some money!

Since it had a water park, we had the girls wear clothes and packed swim suits. Knowing our girls, we should have just put them in the swim suits, because we should have known they’d find water wherever it was… and they did! We started the day off in a section called Holidog World, which was designed for kids. It was like a giant jungle gym/play place, with a big water mat/sprinkler in the middle. Yeah, guess where our girls were… the sprinkler! They went straight in, clothes and all…

We left this area for a little while, and went off to see what kinds of rides Laney could ride. We found this bird ride first, and she was all about it. So, she and Daddy hopped in. I thought it was hilarious that she made him sit in the Jayhawk colored bird…

While we were at the birds, we ended up running into Pastor Nathan, his wife, daughter, and granddaughter, Angel. Angel is about the same age as Laney, so they are, of course, immediate best friends. Cara (Angel’s mom) wanted to do some big kid rides, as did Josh and I, so we passed the kids off to Nathan and Tammy, and Cara, Josh, and I hit all of the roller coasters. And, let me tell you, there are some roller coasters at Holiday World! They are all wooden, and they are really long. The Voyage, in the Thanksgiving section, was the first we rode, and was my favorite. It just kept going and going, underground, up huge hills, around corners… it was crazy. Anyway, after some grown up time, we went back to relieve Nathan and Tammy, and found our girls absolutely soaking wet. So we just gave in and changed them into their swimsuits. Next time, just swimsuits and shorts! :)

We stayed around Holidog World until it was about time to eat, and I think the girls could have stayed there forever…

MUCH happier to be in a suit!

There was no off/on with these sprinklers… it was just on all the time!

Every half hour or so these characters would come out and do a dance for all the kids… Laney LOVED it, and by the 3rd or 4th time she saw it, she worked up the courage to go talk to them. Of course, she liked the girl in the sparkly dress the best!

Loved that my girls played together and had a blast!

We stayed in this part of the park until it was time to go to our church meal, which was actually really good. After the meal, we headed off to Splashin’ Safari to enjoy the water park. I didn’t take a single picture, seeing as how there was water everywhere, but OH MY GOSH did the girls have fun!! They had a kids area with probably 6 or 7 little slides, and both girls just went crazy for it. Audrey made the lifeguards nervous because she just kept sticking her head under water, coming up sputtering and spitting, and doing it again! It was a walk-in pool, with the water under the slides still only 2 or 3 feet deep, so Laney just paddled around to her heart’s content. It was an awesome time, and I’m going to have to make sure I keep my camera closer next time (it was in the stroller, which we parked near the front, before finding the slide pool all the way in the back of the park). Our kids are such water babies…

Anyway, by the time we all played on the slides and in the water for another couple of hours, we were wiped and ready to head home! We stopped on the way out for a treat (Laney chose a chocolate covered apple, with sprinkles, of course) and to let Laney ride a few more of the kid rides, which were all in one place by the exit, and had no lines.

Meanwhile, Audrey worked on Laney’s apple…

Further proof that Laney is Josh’s daughter (as if there was any doubt by now)… this little girl was standing next to her in line, and Laney just decided that they were going to ride together… and promptly started “helping” (aka, bossing) her!

Instant best friends! :)

P.S. Chocolate apples are delicious!

Our last ride, the seahorses (that is one tired and happy kid).

And we were headed home, exhausted, a little sunburnt, and happy! It’s a bout a 2 hour drive home, so by the time we got there, our little girls looked like this:

And NOBODY MOVED when we unloaded them and put them to bed. They were totally worn out! So, overall, Holiday World was a lot of fun, and definitely worth a return trip!!

Trip to MO: Columbia Edition

2011-08-01T21:04:00.002-04:00

Well, after our trip to Springfield, we headed north to Columbia to hang out with the Price side of the family. One of our youth girls was getting married on that Saturday, so we went up for the end of the week so we could go to the wedding. One of the coolest things was that Jess actually knew the groom, so she and Mike came in from CO to visit at the same time. We so rarely have the whole family together at the same time, it was pretty awesome! Other than the wedding, we didn’t plan too much. Mostly just hanging out at Mom and Dad’s, doing some of our favorite things (or the girls favorite things, since they’re way more opinionated!).

So, some of the girls favorite things…

Wrestling (or beating up on) Uncle Charlie!

Pedis with Aunt Jess! (Audrey’s first)

Watching movies and hanging out with Aunt Ruthie!

And four-wheeler rides and hanging out on hay bales with Uncle Charlie! Yes, even Miss A got a few four wheeler rides, albeit very SLOW ones!

Jess & Mike brought the girls a slip and slide, so we broke that out one afternoon (it was certainly hot enough for it!). The girls are such water babies, that even the colder-than-a-well-digger well water didn’t faze them. Their lips were blue and their teeth were chattering, and they just kept playing. They weren’t actually so good at the sliding, so they had to be pushed down the slide (which means mommy got just as wet… too bad I wasn’t dressed for swimming!). Although Audrey mostly wanted to just stand there and get sprayed by (and drink) the sprinklers coming from the side. However they played, it was an absolute blast, and they loved every second of it!

Just a couple of random pictures…

Audrey’s first ponytail… pretty sad-looking! :)

Sticker-face Laney!

Like I said, Saturday we went to the wedding. It was the 4th wedding we’d been to since March, so Laney has learned all about weddings, and LOVES them (of course). She was so excited to get to go. And it was fun to get all dressed up as the whole family and go. And it’s always cool to see our youth kids grow up and start their own lives. Not quite like it will be when it’s our girls, but something like that… Anyway, on with the pictures!

The Looten family! :)

Laney and Jess… check out the veil on Laney!

We were having some trouble keeping Laney entertained (and off the dance floor) after she was done with dinner. The reception was pretty formal, so there was a full dinner, and Laney was done well before everyone else. To distract her, I grabbed a baggie of mints off of the favor table, and when she had eaten them all, we made the netting into a veil. She was quite thrilled! It’s the simple things in life!

Audrey… not as interested in dancing, much more interested in cake!

Lucky for Laney, the dance floor did eventually open, and she could make her presence known…

Including by dancing with the groom, who didn’t even know her… hilarious. Totally outgoing… which is totally NOT ME! :)

She also danced with her Aunt Jess, though. We didn’t get to do too much dancing, because it was after 10 before the dancing started, and that’s getting towards little girl bedtimes!!

Sunday we went to church, and then went out to Shakespeare’s (yes, please, I miss that pizza!) for lunch. Always a good time… and then it was time for good byes. Which are harder with this side of the family, because we’re not used to living far apart yet.

But, before goodbyes, we had to take a sibling picture, of course… always a good time, as evidenced by this, this, and this previous attempt to get a family picture when Charlie’s involved! (Oh, look, here's another sibling mauling...er, picture)

This time it was my turn to take an elbow to the face (better than when Ruth got keys to the face, I guess).

And then once we were all sufficiently mangled, he finally cooperated for one good picture…

Like I said, the good byes are still pretty hard with my family, but thankfully Charlie always knows how to break the emotional tension…

Anyway, it was a great visit, so nice to see all of our families… and so awesome to have a week to make it a nice long visit. Can’t wait to see everyone again!!

Off to Springfield!

2011-07-26T13:09:00.005-04:00

We decided to take advantage of me not having a job, and Josh being a student with no summer classes to take a vacation to MO to visit our families. And, well, seeing as how our house was filled with poo because of the main sewer line backed up into our house, it seemed like a good time to NOT be there. So, off we went… We started off the week in Springfield, hanging out with Josh’s parents and my grandparents!

Of course, since we were in Springfield, SDC was a must! We were there during the week, so we were mostly on our own Monday while Josh’s mom & dad worked, so Josh and I decided to take the girls down to just spend a day doing whatever they wanted. It was about a million degrees, but we managed to have fun anyway!

The heat didn’t really seem to bother Audrey…

But that could be because she spent most of her time totally SOAKED from any water she could find. She loved the water mats, loved the random sprinklers… if there was water involved, she was IN!

Laney, modeling a blow up wig… it was Kids Fest, so there were lots of fun toys and things for the girls to play with, even inside.

This was Daddy’s first trip to SDC this year (the girls and I went for YCW in April), so we had to take him to play on the new kids’ play area. It was pretty fun, and Miss A actually really liked these net parts, which the guy who worked there said most kids her age got to the nets and freaked. Guess our girls know they’re safe with Daddy around!

Also a hit in the new kids’ area: the carousel. Both of my beautiful girls!

Because it was so hot, SDC had put out just random garden sprinklers that ran all of the time. Like I said before, if there was water involved, A was in, and she was quite excited to find this sprinkler in Half Dollar Holler!

Laney got in on the sprinkler action, too!

Because it was so blasted hot, we decided to take advantage of one of the sit-down, indoor restaurants at the park. So we headed to Reunion Hall for ayce pizza. The pizza was ok, but the refills were free, the a/c was on, and we had a chance to sit down!

And, lucky for Audrey, there was chocolate pudding! :)

I don’t have many pictures from the girls actually riding rides, mostly because in the kids’ ride area Josh and I were both typically riding the rides! A did absolutely LOVE the froggie ride; she spent the whole time going “Wheee, whee, wheee” as it went around.

And, again, with the sprinkler. She just walked to the middle of this one and stood, for probably 5-10 minutes while Josh & Laney got measured, waited in line, and road the kiddie roller coaster. Kid loves water! :)

We headed home late afternoon, after a stop at the candy store for rock candy for both girls. Audrey started to enjoy her’s… and then just passed out. Guess we wore her out!

So, that was Monday. Tuesday we just kind of ran around. We got Krispy Kremes for breakfast (Josh owed me a dozen b/c he bet that Isa wouldn’t jump the fence with the pvc pipe on it… yeah, he lost), and then decided to hit up CPO (still cool, but not as cool now that Josh works at the Lifeway here). We also took the girls to Bass Pro, which they thought was quite awesome… loved the turtles and the fish. Did not like being stuck in the glass elevator for a couple of minutes, though!

Tuesday after naps we headed to see my grandparents to hang out and have dinner. Both girls had grown a lot since the last time they’d seen them, especially Audrey, so we had lots of fun just running around and playing. Laney and Grandpa went briefly to find Anias (the turtle that lives in their backyard) but it was too hot for anyone (including Anias) to stay out and play!

Audrey and Grandma

Laney found this stylish hat… and looked a little crazy in it!

Grandma, reading to Laney…

Really had a good time visiting with Grandma & Grandpa, so we stayed until the time bombs (aka our children) started letting us know that it was bedtime! :)

Wednesday we headed back to SDC for more fun! Mom came with us this time, and Dad met us down there in the afternoon.

Since there was someone else to man the camera, we decided to pause for a family photo op at the front!

It wasn’t as hot as it had been on Monday, which was good, but the reason it was cooler was because it rained most of the morning. Not poured, but just steady rain. Luckily, we’re not allergic to rain, and there were things to do out of the rain, too!

Laney playing checkers with Daddy… she’s starting to really be interested in playing games. What she’s not interested in is losing games… we’re still working on losing (and winning, for that matter) gracefully! Apparently she’s competitive. Not sure where she got that from…

They also had a whole lot of legos set up under that tent, too, so Laney and I entertained ourselves while we were waiting on Grandma & Daddy to get lunch.

By the time we were done eating lunch (inside, of course), it was pretty much done raining, just sprinkling a little bit. And the rest of the day was beautiful, because the rain had brought the temp down so much.

There were still lots of puddles to jump in, though! (REALLY wish this picture wasn’t so blown out… she was so cute jumping in the puddles with that umbrella… gotta love cell phone cameras)

Just an adorable picture… found this outfit in her closet, and it was so light and cute, it just screamed theme park outfit!

With Grandma along, there was someone else to ride the rides, so I could take some pictures!

Everybody on the frogs!

Grandma & her girls, riding the butterfly. Laney was NOT happy with the idea of Audrey riding in the front seat with her… for a second I thought we were going to have a full scale meltdown on the ride. Ahh, sisters…

But all was right with the world when she got to ride the teacups with Mommy and Daddy!

And, of course, no day at SDC would be complete without a trip to Geyser Gulch to play on the water mats!

My water babies!

Daddy and Audrey…

I laughed at Josh for getting wet here, which means it just served me right when I got absolutely drenched later! I looked up to see Laney bent over, DRINKING from one of the sprays. I stepped in to get her to stop, and two went off at once- one straight up my front, the other straight up my back. Awesome!

Audrey provided the entertainment for anyone around the water mats. She would bend over a hole, it would totally spray her in the face, she would jerk up, gasp and spit, laugh hysterically, and then do it again. Crazed.

And, like the summers of 2008, 2009, and 2010 (E and A), we had to pose for pictures of the girls with the measuring stick on the Lost River!

I’m always amazed at what a difference a year makes. We kind of started this tradition on a whim, but I hope we can keep it up. It’s always fun to look back!

We also rode the Lost River, of course (Audrey and Grandma decided to sit that one out), and all of us got SOAKED. But, apparently I neglected to take a picture of us afterwards, so just let me assure you that, with a totally full boat including Josh, me, Grandpa Looten, and two more adults, yeah, we were drenched!! Laney still loved it, although she was a little unsure when it came to the cave part!

And, if 20-some pictures wasn't enough... here's a video of Audrey and the water mat! It was pretty funny to watch! The video is long, but I wanted to make sure I recorded what she did when she got hit in the face, so no one thinks I'm an abusive parent for forcing her to play there... she just keeps going back for more!!

So, that’s about it… Wednesday night we went out for a pizza buffet (Godfathers in Nixa… it was awesome, and they had the BEST chocolate chip cookies), then just laid around at the house. We got up and left early Thursday morning to head to Columbia! Sure had a good time with our family in Springfield, though!

House Tour

2011-07-04T19:32:00.001-04:00

Hope you’ve got a couple of minutes, because here comes a house tour in 27 pictures! :) Who would have thought a house this small could merit that many pictures? There might be too many, but I thought that our family and friends who won’t be visiting, or won’t be visiting soon, would like to see our new digs. So, here we go…

View from the street…

And a little closer to the front porch. Found that wreath at a Black and Gold Auction, and thought it helped make the door more cheerful. There’s also a huge hanging plant on the left of the porch, but you can’t see it for the branch!

The door opens up into the living room, which holds our furniture… barely! :)

From the other side of the living room.

Turn around from where the picture above was taken, and you’re looking down this hallway.

First door on the left (with the cat toy hanging from it above) is the pantry/linen closet. Mostly pantry, but the basket at the bottom holds all of the spare towels! In a house this size, everything must multitask! :)

Second door on the left is the spare room, or the “blue” room, as we’ve called it since we lived in the duplex, and the spare room was actually blue!

Other side of the blue room. Sorry about the angle, I was holding the camera up above my head because of the TV in the corner. It’s a little cramped in the blue room, but it all fits. And there will be more room when my classroom books are out of the closet

First door on the right is the bathroom. This is probably the biggest downsize for us. Not only is there only one bathroom, but it is T-I-N-Y!

Tiny as it is, there are two doors! Here’s the view from the other door…

At the end of the hallway is the girls’ room. This room is one that needs the most work. Straight in the door:

Angled from the door. The bunkbeds still don’t have mattresses (those are supposed to be here on Wednesday), and there aren’t any pictures hung, because I want to do some changing up of the decorations, and I’m waiting on their bedding to coordinate.

From above the rocking chair. The whole room will feel better when the pack and play is gone!

On the left as you come out of the girls’ room is our room. Also still needs a lot of work…

View from the doorway… nice, bare walls! :)
(PS, only a youth pastor has a giant tube of water balloons on his dresser)

The other side, with the door to the bathroom on the right and the door to my closet on the left.

That’s a mirror leaning up against my dresser, which was going to be hung above my dresser so I could get ready there, instead of in the bathroom, b/c getting ready in the bathroom could only lead to dropping my make up down the sink and a little too much family togetherness, if you know what I mean! :) Unfortunately, before we could get the hardware to hang the mirror, our own personal Stay Puft Marshmallow Man knocked the mirror over and broke the top off. Thankfully, she wasn’t hurt, and she didn’t break the actual mirror, she just broke all of the frame, and I’m not sure we’ll be able to put it back together well enough for me to feel safe hanging it up. So, maybe a small makeup mirror that just sits on my dresser instead…

That’s my closet door on the left… Josh definitely took a big hit in the closet department, because I claimed the walk in! :) Of course, being a large amount of space, it’s been filled with lots of random junk! Overflow from the girls’ room (their closet is too small to even step into) and the bathroom, and the rest of my “get ready” things… but, at least there’s still room for all of my clothes!

Back down the hallway to the kitchen!

Here’s the view from the doorway. Probably wouldn’t have picked the color, but it’s kind of growing on me…

So that door to the right leads out into the carport. Which means that we are sort of locked out of our backyard… we have to go into the carport, and then open the gate. It’s not something I really thought about, but it is causing some problems with the dog! Someday, we’d like to turn that big window into a door, and build a deck in the backyard. Someday! :) Things I definitely miss about a garage- somewhere to put the recycling! That’s it lined up next to the fridge- a trash can, a recycling can, and a box for paper stuff. I also miss curbside recycling- here we have to take it to the drop off! I also definitely miss having the kitty litter and food in the garage! Right now, they’re in the corner behind the table, which works fine, but sure isn’t ideal!

Speaking of the table, isn’t it beautiful?! Another Black and Gold Auction find! I really like it, and it fits the space better than our round table would have. Thanks, Mom!!

The kitchen part of our kitchen/dining room. Small, but pretty functional. It is pretty dark, so I’m thinking I will replace the fixture with something that doesn’t have a yellow globe! And maybe some under cabinet lighting… but, it works! Notice that our bar cabinet has become a coffee bar cabinet! Josh brought home his espresso machine from the bank… pretty sweet!

The laundry nook, just to the left of the kitchen cabinets (obviously). Clearly needs some work (shelves are in the future), but I’m pretty thankful just to have a laundry nook. Most of the houses we looked at the washer/dryer hook ups were just randomly in the kitchen. The builder who flipped this house enclosed them, which I very much appreciate! :)

One last shot of the kitchen from the door into the carport. Notice the red buffet! The red has definitely grown on me, so I imagine it will stay that color. And it is a lifesaver!

Now, out the door and into the carport (although this is obviously taken closer to the front of the carport, since you can see the steps and door!).

(Yes, that is giant pvc pipe along the top of our fence. It was an attempt to keep the dog from jumping the fence. It was an epic fail and looks pretty whiskey tango. It will be gone soon!)

Our yard, from just inside the gate (and said dog… now tied up because she is apparently half kangaroo and insists on jumping the fence we specifically built to keep her in…). It’s really a pretty good sized yard!

Turned a little to the left…

Those two trees in the picture above…

yep, those are apples!! We’re quite excited about those… now we just have to learn how to take care of them!

And what was peeking through those two apples trees? Taj MaShed!

Just to the right of Taj MaShed, is what I like to call the pit of pointlessness! It’s this whole area that some previous owner killed all of the grass in, covered with the black paper, and filled with ivy. Yeah, and guess what grew in with the regular ivy… yep, POISON ivy. Not cool. So, we’ve pretty much hosed the entire area with roundup, and plan on just starting from scratch!

So, there’s the house tour… it’s small, but it’s serving us well, so far. Can’t wait to really get the girls’ room set up, and a million other projects, like paint the shed, stain the fence, put a ceiling fan in our room, change the hall fixture… the list goes on!

But, for now, I’m off to enjoy our Fourth with some grilling, some strawberry shortcake, and a few fireworks!!

My Big Girl!

2011-06-30T16:35:00.000-04:00

So, this is probably way too many pictures of a simple bunk bed… but, what can I say, my big girl is growing up!

Since this house is considerably smaller than our old one, the bedrooms are smaller, too (duh). To save space, we decided to borrow the bunk beds my brother and sister used, which also happen to be the bunk beds my grandma’s dad made for my aunts and uncles to sleep in when they were young! How cool is that?

Anyway, so we finally got them put together, and they don’t have mattresses yet (they are not a standard size, so we just ordered foam mattresses, which will be fine for the girls when they’re so little), but we put Laney’s air mattress on the top bunk so she could start sleeping in her bed.

So, here’s her first night on the top bunk!

Learning to climb up by herself.

We really wanted her to do it on her own so she was comfortable. She was scared at first, but in a day or two, she was getting in and out on her own. It helps that the bunks are not too tall, so it’s not a long way to the ground.

Listening to her bedtime story! (See, the top bunk is only 4 feet off the ground or so, perfect for two little girls)

She was SOOO excited to be sleeping on the top bunk!

All tucked in and ready for sleep!

She has been doing remarkably well… sleeping on the floor was getting harder, because she was eye level with all of her toys, and that’s a lot of temptation for a little girl who doesn’t like to take naps!! Josh and I were a little (or a lot) nervous the first few nights, worried that she’d fall off, but we haven’t even had any near misses. And the first couple of nights that she woke up to go to the bathroom and wasn’t comfortable climbing down were a little rough (believe it or not, we hadn’t missed the screaming “I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM!” in the middle of the night). But, since then, she’s learned to climb down, so she gets herself up in the middle of the night, and it’s all good!

Now we just have to get the real mattresses, and some new bedding for them (I’m looking at this set, or this set). I like the flowers, but Laney and Josh both like the polka dots. So, we’ll see what is left and on sale towards the end of the summer!! :) Not sure when we’ll move A from the pack and play onto the bottom bunk… probably going to give her another month or two. But, for now, Laney is thrilled!

Father’s Day Present

2011-06-29T14:02:00.000-04:00

I promise this isn’t turning into a diy/project blog… mostly ‘cause Josh would kill me if I kept doing projects! :) But I’ve had a lot of free time, so I’ve been making myself useful! And, one of those ways, was by making a Father’s Day present for my dad.

See, when Josh & I came to look at houses in April, we saw these shelves in our realtor’s office, and I thought my dad would like them. They were simple, just dark wood with some reader’s digest condensed books attached to them. So, we thought we’d try making some for Father’s Day…

I started with two 2 1/2 ft 1x6’s and some red mahogany stain that I already had. I stained both boards, and learned that staining is not my strong suit! And that we need some sawhorses…

See the giant white spot on the one on the left… yeah, like I said, stain not my strong suit.

While I stained, Josh and the girls enjoyed the beautiful weather! :)

Once the board were stained, I gave them awhile to dry, and then got the rest of the stuff together.

A stack of 8 Reader’s Digest books (totally worthless as books, but neat looking… thus perfect for making into a bookshelf!). I went for a blue scheme, shocking, I know!

I found mine at an antique store in Glendale. One booth had a giant tub of them for $1 each… except that when I went to get them they were half off, score! I messed up, though, and accidentally got one with red on the spine instead of blue. It looked totally out of place, so I set off to find a replacement. That involved about an hour going through the biggest antique mall I’ve ever seen (Peddler’s Mall here in Etown), which was NOT a sacrifice- look at tons of random stuff during a kid-free hour? Yes, please! Anyway, these books are fairly common, and not really worth much, so they’re not expensive!

You’ll also four 6 inch L brackets. We got our’s at Lowes, and then I spray painted them oil rubbed bronze (almost as shocking as the blue theme), because I figured they’d stand out less against the dark wood. And I forgot a picture, but not too interesting- four L brackets, lay them out, spray paint them, let them dry.

We also used screws (obviously), which we had leftover from the fence project. And, I highly recommend a doting husband to do the muscle work! :)

So, the first two books were pretty simple. I held the book down, while Josh put the screws through. We repeated for the second side of the first shelf, flipped it upside down, and the books fell off. Yeah… not cool.

Turns out, the first two books we grabbed were the thinnest, so the screw went through both and into the wood. All of the rest of them, not so much. So we improvised- we used shorter screws to attach the first book, and then used the longer screws to attach the second. We put the shorter screws perpendicular to where the L bracket would go so we wouldn’t run into each other.

Repeat, times 2, and we were done. The finished product ended up looking like this:

And, what was Miss E. doing while we were working? She was making friends with the little boy next door. She’s definitely her father’s daughter!! :)

So, there was another attempt of mine at being crafty and DIYing something… I learned I’m not very good at staining, but I think they turned out alright. They’re not really made for holding heavy things, but they look cool. We sent them back to MO with James and Ruth after their visit this week, and Dad seems to like them, so we’ll call that a success!

A Update

2011-06-28T14:19:00.006-04:00

And by A, I mean Audrey... :) I realized with Laney, at about this age, that once I stopped doing the weekly posts on the baby blog, I missed having a record of what she was doing. So, I thought I'd do a quick update on Miss A., with a few extras thrown in...

She is about 15 months now, and walking really well, and into EVERYTHING! She's starting to talk, and I get the feeling that she will just explode with words in the next few months. She says Dada, Hi, Mama (sometimes), Thank you (which is adorable) and, my personal favorite- Mine! She's learned it from Laney, b/c every time Audrey has something of Laney's, Laney grabs it and says "MINE!" So, now, whenever A wants something, she says "Mine, Mine, Mine." She sounds like the gulls from Finding Nemo (only cuter). The Thank You is pretty adorable, too. I'm not sure where she picked that up, but she says it whenever someone gives something to her. Pretty cute as well!

A is still pretty much a beast, she loves to eat. Her favorite is bananas, but she'll pretty much eat anything I put in front of her, as long as there's a lot of it! She also loves to read, and be read to (as long as the book is short). She absolutely TORTURES Truman. He is her absolute favorite, and it is the funniest thing to see her walk across the living room and throw herself on top of him. I think it's funny... I'm not sure Truman agrees. She is really lovable, she loves to snuggle and will run all out across the room and just fling herself onto my legs to give me a hug. She's also started kissing, which is mostly putting her face against something and making a big "MWAH" sound. And she loves to play with dolls- carries them around, kisses them, puts them in chairs, wraps them up in blankets. Amazing how little girls will just do that naturally.

Audrey's other favorite things include climbing everything, sitting in chairs, and loving on any animal she can find! We look down the hallway a lot to see her sitting in the big rocking chair in their room, rocking back and forth, totally proud of herself. She even climbed up on the table the other day. It does tend to get her in trouble, since getting up is a lot easier than getting down! :) She's getting better, though... and it's still funny to see her with a big ol' grin on her face! A few pictures of her escapades:

Totally proud of herself for climbing into the rocking chair!

Reading a book on Laney's air mattress... A loved when it was on the floor!

Two of her favorite things: A chair to climb in and out of, and a puppy dog to love on!

A's other new trick is animal noises... Check these out...

(So, she makes that funny face at the beginning b/c my camera has an orange light right after you push the shutter button, and usually it's followed by a flash! Guess she was preparing for it...)

So, we were trying to get her to learn the cat noise, because she was already doing the "woof, woof" for a dog. She kept not doing it, and then once when I was trying Truman walked through the room and meowed (and, if you know Truman, you know how he "talks"). Well, she just up and imitated him, and ended up with a cat noise that sounds a lot more like a cat! Now she just walks around doing that, and it never gets old. It's pretty realistic!!

And there's the A update... I can't wait until her talking really takes off. Of course, then I'll have two little girls who never stop talking!! :)

P.S. I forgot to add that the other big news for Audrey is that we have broken the binky habit. We were hopeful that not having a binky all the time would help her ears, because there is some research that links binkies and ear infections. So at the end of May/beginning of June we took her binkies away. She only has them now for nap and bedtime... I think we both miss them, but she really does pretty well without them. And maybe that's why she's suddenly so much more verbal!!

Mirror Redo

2011-06-20T18:16:00.001-04:00

Well, we continue to survive and settle in here in KY! Unpacking is going pretty well, we are really down to just figuring out what to do with our bathroom stuff (hello, going from 2 bathrooms to 1 is quite the challenge!) and everything will have a place. With Josh back this week, we are working on hanging pictures and making the place really feel like a home. So, I promise, as soon as the house looks presentable, I will post some pictures. Well, and as soon as we have internet at home… which we still don’t have, which is not cool at all and making me a little crazy! Right now we are all at the church office, the girls are running amok and Josh and I are using the wireless!

Anyway, so, I don’t have finished house pictures. But I did do one fun project this week while Josh was gone, and I thought I’d share.

See, I went to Dad’s auction the day before we moved (which was not a good plan, definitely ended up having to pack a lot more to bring here that night!). Anyway, I saw this mirror that I thought would look good in the girls’ room.

Well, when it came time to bid on the mirrors, the white one got paired up with a gold one I wasn’t a huge fan of, but both of them sold for $2, so I bought it anyway, and ended up with this mirror as well:

One of the things I loved about my old kitchen, was that standing at the sink you could look out of a window. Made doing the dishes (not my favorite) a little less painful. But this house didn’t have that, because that wall goes to the bathroom! So, you’re just staring at this blank wall. Not so interesting.

I thought it would be a good place for a mirror, to kind of bounce some light around. I mean, it wouldn’t be looking at the backyard, but at least it wouldn’t be staring at a blank wall, either! So I covered the mirror inside the frame (thus the cardboard and painters tape in the first picture) and busted out the oil rubbed bronze spray paint! A couple of minutes in the carport during the girls’ nap, and I had this:

It took several touch ups to get all of the edges and corners, and I left it outside to dry for a day or two because I really hate the smell of spray paint, but pretty soon I pulled out the cardboard, and it was ready to hang!

A little measuring and a nail later, and at least there was some light bouncing around the kitchen!

It’s not perfect, it’s a little small for the space, but for a $1 mirror and some leftover spray paint, it’s not too bad!

And, just for a few updates on how everyone else is handling the move, they seem to be settling right in!

Laney is already busting out the princess dresses,

And Isa is already busting out of the fence!

We think she pushed the corner of the gate out enough to squeeze through. It was storming pretty heavily, so I imagine she was highly motivated by fear! Judging from the muddy paw prints all over the back door, she definitely was interested in getting IN the house, not running away! Thankfully, there is a gate on the other end of the carport from the previous owners, so she couldn’t get anywhere. Looks like we’ll be buying a latch for the bottom of the gate, too! :)

Sunday we ran about half an hour south to a town called Glendale to take Daddy to lunch at a good restaurant there, and to pick something up an antique mall next door. The restaurant was closed (major bummer), but the girls got to play on the wooden train at the antique store, so they were happy!

We really are settling in pretty well, we got to go to church as a family again, and that was really nice. Except for the part where Laney stuck cheerios up her nose during morning worship… but, oh well! I’m excited to have most of the unpacking done, and to get to hang pictures and really make our house feel like our home! I will be sure to share pictures when it’s closer to done and when we have internet again!

Made It

2011-06-16T19:13:00.003-04:00

Well, the girls and I officially live in Kentucky now! This is going to be a very brief update, and there aren't a lot of pictures, but just wanted to let everyone know that we were alive! :)

We left Sunday after church and lunch with the family. I'm not even going to say that leaving wasn't hard, b/c it really was. It's still hard to know/believe that I'm really not going to be going "home" to Columbia, because home is now Elizabethtown!

Anyway, as far as the trip, it went pretty well. This was what I imagined the girls would do all the way here:

(Please ignore the precariously perched junk in the back of the van... we needed Charlie the Packer to help us! But, isn't that a cute basket?! Found it for like $7 at Hobby Lobby to put in the new buffet to keep my tablecloths and napkins confined)

And it looked like they might, but both were awake before we hit St. Louis. Not part of the plan! I was worried it was going to be a horrible trip, but really they were both pretty good. Laney watched movies, A fell back asleep a couple of times, and with a stop or two at rest areas so they could run for a minute or two, they were really pretty happy. And, man, was Daddy happy to see us!!

So, we spent Monday and Tuesday kind of getting settled and, of course, unpacking. And trying to find our stuff, b/c it was everywhere! Actually, Monday I also had a job interview, with Woodland Elementary School. It was a really interesting interview, because it was done like speed dating- there were 7 of us, and we spent 5-10 minutes with a person, and then moved to the next. It was actually a pretty relaxing way to interview because there wasn't this whole group of people staring at me, just one other person to talk to. Anyway, I think I would like the school; I liked everyone I met, it seemed like a nice school, and it was only about 10 minutes from home. BUT, there were 87 applicants (not all interviewed, though, so I guess I made it through the first round), so obviously there's a lot of interest in teaching jobs. But, God's taken care of everything else in this move, so there's no reason to think He won't take care of this, too.

Anyway, we also had to make some trips to Walmart, b/c the girls and I needed more than a bachelor's pantry (hello, we cannot survive on chili and hot dogs alone!). Oh, the joys of a family trip to Walmart...

A, being a goof in the WM checkout line.

Laney had already been carried screaming from the store by her daddy b/c of a massive fit when told she was not getting a treat b/c of the SEVERAL massive fits she'd thrown throughout the store. Not sure Daddy was as excited to see us by the time this trip was over... not sure where she gets that crazy fit throwing at Walmart thing... (hush, Ellen)

Speaking of not so happy to see us... Truman has informed me that he was a lot happier when the children were not living in the house. Can't imagine why...

So, that's about it. We're settling in, although Josh has abandoned us already... he left Wednesday morning for Ichthus, a giant Christian concert in Lousiville. He won't be back until Sunday morning at church, so it's just the girls and I for now, trying to figure out how to get all of our stuff to fit in our new house! I am starting to feel confident that most of the rooms will fit... except the bathroom. Going from two full sized vanities to a vanity that is barely wider than the sink... yeah, I'm going to have to be really creative! And it does sometimes feel like the girls and I are sitting on top of each other... makes me rethink all those years of living in a house this size with SIX people growing up... but we'll settle in. I do like our house, and I think it will be a good house for us. The new privacy fence looks great (thanks, Charlie & Corey), and there are some little projects that we can do that will help the whole place look better. And I've already had a few chances to bust out the oil-rubbed bronze spray paint, so I'm pretty happy about that! :)

I promise to post more pictures when I have something to take pictures of, and when I have wireless to use to post them (I'm at Panera right now while the girls are at VBS... which has been a lifesaver. Never thought I'd enjoy 2.5 childless hours so much). Just wanted to let everyone know that we made it, that we're settling in, and that we appreciate all of the prayers headed our way!

Kenny & Angela’s Wedding: The Big Day!

2011-06-10T14:13:00.001-04:00

Typically, early June is a good time for an outdoor wedding… it’s usually pretty nice weather, no rain, not too hot… Kenny said that, last year on the first weekend of June, it was 70 degrees outside. This year, just in time for their wedding, MO decided to inflict 95+ degree heat and a zillion cicadas on poor Kenny & Angela! It was so hot at the rehearsal that I told Josh we were going to have to go buy me a dress, because I couldn’t handle the thought of wearing my black pants and heels to the wedding! And it takes a lot to get me in a dress, so you know it must have been bad! :)

But, heat and cicadas aside, it was still a beautiful wedding, and better sunny than raining! :)

Laney, pre-ceremony.

I highly recommend some form of bribery for young flower girls… although, not Nerds, because they were much too loud during the ceremony! She also got to pick on “extra-special” treat for after the wedding… she picked Strawberry Whoppers (my girl), and they proved to be quite the motivator!

Kenny and his dad, all dressed up and getting the video camera all set up.

They were definitely thinking ahead- they provided bottled water along with the programs, which Angela made into fans using free paint sticks from Home Depot painted white (genius!)

Some of the ushers, and Josh. Kenny & the best man wore tuxes, but the ushers wore just simple black pants, white shirt, black tie. It looked nice without being so expensive for them!

Laney was thrilled when she actually got her flower girl basket. She was officially ready to go then!

Always have to get a shot of the hair when a girl’s all dressed up! I just threw her hair up in a bun and clipped the flower on… thought it turned out pretty good, actually!

Daddy, walking with Laney to line up. We figured since he was dressed to match the wedding party, he should be the one to help Laney.

They looked awful sweet together!

As expected, though Laney did really well practicing, once it came time to actually walk down the aisle with all of those people staring at her, she wasn’t ok with Josh leaving her. But she did a great job of walking down the aisle with Daddy holding her hand. And it was quite sweet. I can’t wait to see the actual photographer’s pictures, since I was on the other side and couldn’t really see them.

Once the wedding was over, it was party time! We all headed back to Kenny’s parents’ house for the reception. Still really hot, but we had fun anyway!

Hot and sweaty flower girl… but she seemed relieved to be able to relax!

Of course, Miss A was there, too, also sporting a dress made by Ellen!

Their cake topper was so cool, I meant to take a picture of it and forgot. They took a picture of Kenny proposing to Angie, and cut out just the two of them and somehow mounted or printed it on plastic, and that was the cake topper. Sounds a little strange, I know, but it looked really neat, and was a sweet, personal touch. They had a small cake, and then lots of cupcakes!

Miss A was a fan of the cupcakes!

They did all of the traditional reception things- cut the cake (they went the smashing route, and she got it good and up his nose- I imagine he’ll be smelling icing for weeks), did the daughter/son dances, the first dance, the bouquet toss, etc. I try really hard at weddings to not get in the way of the actual photographer, so I didn’t take too many pictures of the festivities. The funniest thing, was Laney during the bouquet toss and the garter toss… when Angela got up on the dance floor, she absolutely INSISTED that she had to stand right next to her. She wouldn’t go stand with everyone else to try to catch the bouquet and, when I tried to get her to, she looked at me and said “I’m the FLOWER GIRL, I’m supposed to stand by the BRIDE!” Guess maybe we did a little too much verbal rehearsing of her flower girl job… :)

Standing by the BRIDE during the bouquet toss… notice the sweaty red face! She’d been playing hard, even in a fancy dress!

I did take a picture of the garter toss, mostly because it was hilarious. Before he went after the garter, Kenny shoved his shirt sleeve full of random things (a brush, a screwdriver, a carabiner, etc.) and kept pulling those from her skirt instead of the garter. It was pretty funny!

After the wedding reception traditions were out of the way, it was time to dance and have a good time. And, everyone did!

Laney spent a lot of time playing with these two cute little boys… probably an indicator of the years to come!

Daddy and A busted a move!

Although she played some, and ate a little, mostly Laney DANCED! She was impossible to keep off of the dance floor.

She flew…

She boogied with a friend…

She twirled, of course!

And she always remembered to hold up her princess dress when she was done dancing! :)

But the most fun, of course, was dancing with Daddy… absolutely precious!

So, see, that’s why I had to do separate posts for the rehearsal and the wedding! Too many great pictures to share!

Really, we had a great time… we got to visit with some people we hadn’t seen since high school, and reconnect with old friends. And it was so awesome and so much fun to see Laney running amok in her dress, feeling like such a grown up princess, but still totally willing to be a kid and run off into the woods and play with kids she didn’t know and dance like a crazy person. I often wish for her complete and total lack of self-consciousness!

Beautiful wedding, beautiful bride, beautiful flower girl… now for a beautiful marriage! Congratulations, Kenny & Angela! So glad we got to be a part of your day!

Kenny & Angela’s Wedding: Rehearsal

2011-06-08T13:15:00.001-04:00

So, Laney had an exciting first this weekend… being a flower girl in a wedding! I guess, technically, it wasn’t her first, because she was in Josh’s sister’s wedding, but she was only 6 weeks old at the time, so I’m pretty sure she didn’t get the whole excitement of the event! In fact, she was mostly just a cranky monster that day, and we were all very grateful that she fell asleep before the wedding and slept through the whole thing. But, that’s a different story! For this wedding, Laney was very excited, and we’d be talking for weeks about how she was going to walk down the aisle, stand with Angela, smile for the pictures, etc. etc. I figured the more prepared she was, the less chance of a crazy mid-aisle meltdown!

Let me back up a bit, though… Laney was the flower girl for Kenny & Angela… Kenny and Josh have been friends for YEARS (since 1987, according to the engraved glass that Kenny gave Josh at the rehearsal). I was a little worried that Laney wouldn’t cooperate, since she didn’t really know Kenny that well, but we went to a bridal shower for Angela, and since Angela got to wear a veil at the shower, Laney was hooked! :) Ellen made her dress, so that helped, too- Laney was absolutely thrilled at all of the dress fittings. So, things were looking up as far as the whole tantrum-less flower girl was concerned!

Friday we headed to the rehearsal. They got married at the Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial on the trail. It was a beautiful spot, but, man, was it hot!

The bride and groom… ready for rehearsal!

Maybe it was the heat, or the excessive cicada noises, or maybe it was all of the strangers, but the rehearsal did not start off so well for the flower girl!

She was not happy about anything!

And got about 2 feet down the aisle before throwing herself to the ground (and whacking her sister when A came to “play”). Awesome. I never knew how stressful it was to be the Mother of the Flower Girl!

The minister said it was really important to NOT force her to do anything, and whatever she chose to do would be fine. So we let her stand with Angela in the “line up,” instead of by the maid of honor. And, I thought I would capitalize on her love of picking flowers- I picked a bloom off a bush and let her carry it down the aisle (note to self: next time make sure to bring a practice basket to rehersal!). That worked MUCH better. She walked down the aisle by herself, and even stood there through the whole rehearsal. Success!

Daddy and A after the rehearsal was over!

After the rehearsal, we went to Kenny’s parents’ house for the rehearsal dinner (Shakespeare’s, awesome.), and then the whole group pitched in to help get the place ready for the reception the next night. Kenny & Angela kept everything about the wedding and the reception very simple, which I loved. They didn’t want to go into a lot of debt for it, so they did a lot themselves (with help from friends and family, of course), worked with what they had, and kept it simple. Love that it was way more about the MARRIAGE than the WEDDING! I think that is something that a lot of couples forget as they face the craziness that is wedding planning- the wedding lasts for a day, the marriage lasts MUCH longer!

One major job: putting up paper globes. They strung these along the white lights that went back and forth across the carport the tables were in. The lanterns and the lights both really dressed up the carport!

They even diy-ed their own dance floor, and painted it to match the wedding colors. That paint tray was an absolute magnet for the kids running around! :)

As was the dance floor once it was finished!

So, there’s the rehearsal… I would put the wedding on the same post, but then it’d be like 25 pictures, and no one has that kind of time! :) But I’ll put up another post with those. For now, my advice to future Mothers of the 3 yo Flower Girl: bring a basket to rehearsal, and expect a fit the first time down the aisle! :)

The Big Day

2011-05-27T17:36:00.001-04:00

So, we moved all of our stuff this past weekend. Closing on the house on Jonquil went smoothly on Friday, after a really late night on Thursday “just finishing up” the last few things to do at Jonquil. I never expected it to take so long to “finish up” before we could leave. But we ended up with two absolutely packed cars, some short tempers, and a very late bedtime (it was about 10:30 before we made it to Mom & Dad’s on Thursday). Plus one very cranky cat and one very confused dog. It wasn’t all that pretty, I’ll be honest! But it was done, and the closing went fine.

Saturday we just stayed at Mom & Dad’s, and went to the wedding, and that was about it. Well, and tried to keep our dog from killing their dogs, and Truman from escaping and hiding forever in the basement. But totally uneventful, besides that! :)

Sunday we headed out with one seriously packed trailer, and one seriously packed Subaru. I wish I’d taken a picture of it, because we had Josh, the girls, and me, plus the dog in her crate in the back, and Truman in his pet taxi jammed in between the girls’ car seats (literally jammed- we had to put him in, then put the car seat in next to him for it to fit.

We got to Grandma’s house in So. IL on Sunday, and mostly just chilled for the afternoon/evening. We locked Truman in a room downstairs, and kept Isa caged most of the time (but we did take her on a long walk in the evening).

Monday morning, Josh and the girls (and the dog and cat, of course) jammed ourselves back into the Subaru and headed out around 5:00. We headed straight to the new house so we could do the final walkthrough, and then to the closing at the realtor’s office. The closing went alright, except that we forgot to bring a certified check. So, we had to set up a wire transfer, instead. We got out of there and headed back to the house to meet Mom, Dad, & Charlie with the truck and trailer, and the church members who were coming to help. Only problem: the truck and trailer (along with Mom, Dad & Charlie) were stuck on the side of the road in Indiana because of a busted wheel bearing. So, we went to the house anyway, and the girls and I just played in the empty house while Josh ran some errands to get utilities switched over. We also let all of the church members who showed up know that we’d call them again in a couple of hours! It actually was kind of nice to have some just chill out time after so long in the car and then at the realtor’s office. Audrey napped, Laney watched movies (our portable dvd player MORE than earned it’s price tag during this move!), and I read. Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours, really!

Once the trailer got there, it didn’t take long for the group that came to help to get the whole thing unloaded. We were just in time, too, because almost as soon as we were done, it started really storming. While Mom & I tried to uncover enough floor space to sleep all 7 of us, Dad, Josh & Charlie made plans for the shed and headed to Lowes to buy supplies (the first of MANY trips to Lowes).

Tuesday Mom & I spent the day unpacking, and the guys spent the day building the shed. It was soaking wet outside, so it was pretty nasty, mucky work. And unpacking, well, it’s always nasty work! We focused on the kitchen and living room, and actually made pretty good progress. The shed didn’t go quite as quickly (it was so wet the concrete took forever to set), and we pretty quickly realized we weren’t going to be able to drive back on Tuesday. We ended up staying until early afternoon on Wednesday, which meant Mom and I got a lot done in the kitchen and living room, and the shed was at least watertight (it still needed shingles, some trim, and to be painted- all stuff Josh could do himself).

The trip back was blessedly uneventful, which was amazing considering the crazy weather that went through Southern IL that day. We only made one stop (amazing with the two girls), and we were home by 9:00 (and in bed by 10:00!).

And now that you’ve suffered through 773 words on moving, here are a few pictures to reward you for your time! Although, not much of a reward since I managed to forget both my cameras, so these are just cell phone pics…

From the hellacious last day at the house on Jonquil. Note to self (and anyone about to move with small children): FIND SOMEONE TO WATCH THE KIDS THE LAST DAY! Just trust me!

A, having a snack in her seat on the floor… the best thing she did, ‘cause she was CONTAINED!

Laney was not so bad, she mostly watched movies… again, the portable dvd player to the rescue!

And, we’re off to KY!! Wouldn’t be right without a few traveling pictures of my girls:

Elena, the Jedi knight…

Audrey says: M&Ms are DELICIOUS! So much for melt in your mouth… more like melt ON your mouth…

And, we MADE IT!

First, and most important, the new house:

(actually totally forgot to take a picture of the house and had to have Josh send me one… such a crazy couple of days!)

It’s a cute little ranch, clearly, and it’s all brick, which is fantastic. I love the green shutters and door, and it’s got great, mature trees. Despite the 1 bathroom and lack of a garage, I really like our house.

Laney supervised the unloading once the trailer got there:

Monday evening, while Mom & I were working on finding spots for everyone to sleep, Laney and A were just playing around. Then Mom realized that Audrey was sitting next to Laney, playing with her Belle doll, and there was no screaming or fighting (a rare occurrence for my girls). So Mom complimented Laney on playing so nicely… and got no response. She said it a little louder, and still no response. So she really looked at Laney, and realized she was TOTALLY ASLEEP, crouched on the floor next to the dvd player. Poor thing had no nap, and she was just exhausted. Had to take a picture before I moved her to our bed!

Tuesday: Unpacking like crazy, and shed building!

Laney alternated between watching movies on the portable dvd player (are you sensing a theme?!) and picking every dandelion in our new yard. Not a bad way to spend a couple of days! And she was totally thrilled that I let her watch several movies in one day (usually a no-no).. and Mom & I were thrilled that she was occupied!Meanwhile, Audrey helped with the unpacking!

Truman skulked… (he’s actually doing amazingly well, considering the craziness of his last week!)

And the boys built the shed…

While unpacking the kitchen, Mom & I quickly ran out of space, b/c this kitchen does not have nearly the counter/cabinet space that our old one did. We knew that when we bought it, so we figured we’d buy a buffet. So, of course, Mom and I did some online buffet shopping when we ran out of room to put stuff in the kitchen, but we couldn’t find anything that I liked, that would work, and that was in our price range. So I decided to try Craig’s list, which I’m not usually very successful with, but thought was worth a shot. And, eureka!, I found the PERFECT buffet, and it was in Etown, AND it was only $150! So we picked it up Tuesday evening, brought it in the kitchen, and immediately filled it with stuff! I LOVE it!

At first I was going to paint it, ‘cause the red doesn’t really go with anything else in my kitchen, but it’s kind of grown on me… Just for reference, here’s a shot of the kitchen, with the buffet there:

See what I mean about the no counter/cabinet space actually in the kitchen?! At least it’s really nice, though. The house was bought in foreclosure by a builder, who flipped it. So everything inside has been redone, which is awesome- new fixtures, new appliances, new paint, new floor, etc. Such a good deal!

There was some time for fun while we were there, although not a ton, we were so busy!

We discovered a VERY FULL nest in one of the apple trees in the backyard (yes, we have TWO apple trees in our yard… awesome!)

We set up the girls’ slide in the backyard, and A tried it out:

Grandma, reading her girls some books:

And, then, Wednesday, we headed out. By then, the shed looked like this:

Like I said, pretty easy trip, other then some serious wind and awhile with some pretty strong rain, too. But, the storm did provide us with this beautiful double rainbow:

It was one of the clearest, brightest rainbows I’ve ever seen. I mean, holy cow, look how bright it is on a cell phone camera held out of the window of a truck going 70 mph!

So, now Josh is finishing up the shed, and working on unpacking. Charlie and Corey are headed to Etown the week of June 6th to help Josh build a privacy fence for Isa (she has already escaped once, clearly the chain link there is not dog-proof!) who is spending most of her time now on her tie-out. And, two weeks from today is my last day at work, and we’ll be headed out for good that weekend. I expected to be more sad as I say goodbye to a lot of the teachers I’ve worked with and to be more sad about the idea of leaving. But, maybe it’s because this transition has been drug out for so long, I’m just ready for it to be over so we can be settled, which makes me look forward to moving.

And there’s a ridiculous amount of writing and pictures about a simple move… but we really are excited to get this new phase in life started. It’s going to be quite the adventure!!

Now

2011-05-17T15:34:00.002-04:00

This is what it looks like at my house right now… sorry for poor quality, all of these were taking with my cell phone b/c I don’t really know where my camera is right now…

Truman, helping me pack up the stuff in the desk…

Sad, bare cabinets with just enough dishes to get us through the next few days.

Audrey, helping Daddy go through cds.

It’s kind of sad… and exciting… I will miss this house; I really love it. There are a lot of memories in it, from college and since we bought it a couple of years ago. I’m sad to be leaving a place with so many good memories… early in dating Josh (from the second time around), lots of time spent with good friends, learning to live on my own, and then coming back and buying it as a married couple, raising kids, growing into the house.

But, the good news is, the memories aren’t limited to the location, and the most important parts of those memories are moving with me!

And, speaking of memories, some of the really interesting things about moving and packing are the hidden gems that are unearthed while sorting through old papers and pictures. Gems such as these:

Ahh, brothers… Let’s just say that we will have quite the arsenal of pictures for Charlie’s wedding montage! :)

And, just to show that I’m equal opportunity, one of me, too…

Nice glasses, huh? Those glasses (or at least glasses that size) plagued me all through junior high. ‘Cause I needed help being not cool in junior high… and, Jess, nice skirt and purse combo! :)

So, things are obviously rolling right along. We are making good progress packing, and everything seems smooth as far as the closings on Friday and Monday. We have gathered in all of our “resoruces,” and we’re trusting God that it will be enough to cover costs on Monday. The plan is still to drive to IL on Sunday, and then on to KY on Monday morning. We are working to figure out how to get a privacy fence up, since the Bella will jump a chain link without even trying. I think Dad and Charlie are going to build us a shed while we’re moving (Tunnel Hill is planning to help unload, so that should leave Charlie and Dad free to work on the shed all day Monday and Tuesday). So awesome to have family to help! Still both sad and excited for this to actually be happening…

Daddy Visits!

2011-05-06T20:43:00.002-04:00

Daddy got to come home for a long weekend for my birthday weekend, and we had a great time! But first, a few catch up pictures I found as I was looking through the camera…

Poor Laney, so abused… one day as we were going into or out of the house she started throwing a fit on the front porch. I don’t think she appreciated it when I started taking pictures…

Laney’s new favorite thing to do: pick flowers! We don’t go anywhere without her wiping out the entire dandelion population!

Miss A is fascinated with Isa… and the feeling appears to be mutual!

And a few Easter shots I missed… these are from Uncle Tim’s house the Saturday before Easter.

Grandpa and his girls!

Laney & Mal dyeing eggs. Laney doesn’t quite have finesse down yet, so she’d drop the eggs from about six inches above the cup… good thing the table was covered!

All done dyeing!

One of Audrey’s new favorite past times- sitting on Laney’s bed reading. She loves books… my kid! :)

And now onto our weekend with Daddy! Before he got here on Thursday evening, the girls and I headed to the ball fields to watch “the boys” play softball (Charlie, Corey, James and Dad all play on a league sponsored by Black and Gold Auctions and our church). It wasn’t Audrey’s first foray onto the fields, but it was the first that she was alert enough to know where she was! She was pretty intrigued by what was going on for a little while…

We did manage to enjoy a few days of good weather while Josh was here (which was quite refreshing, since it’s pretty much rained nonstop for the past month). So we took the opportunity to spend lots of time outside! (And Josh got to mow the yard that hadn’t been mowed since he was home last 3 weeks ago… he needed a machete- lucky him!)

Audrey has discovered the little cozy coupe and she loves it! She hops in, and then pushes it backwards until it runs into something, grinning like a maniac the whole time. Pretty cute!

Let’s go, Mom!

We busted out Laney’s t-ball set, too, which is what Mommy likes to see!! :)

Look at that determination!

Even Audrey got in on the t-ball action!

We also got out the giant bubble wands Grandma & Grandpa Price got for the girls for Easter. Laney loves to pop bubbles!

And we had to cool off with a popsicle, of course. A’s first freeze pop, and she seemed to be a fan!

On Saturday we headed out to my folks’ house to celebrate my birthday with our typical grilled food and lemon cake with lemon icing! And, because I do it to everyone else on their birthday, a picture of me with the cake…

Audrey was a FAN of the lemon cake… of course, I haven’t really found much Audrey isn’t a fan of, particularly in the sweets department…

Laney was more a fan of the present bags…

Love that smile!

And one last shot of the night… Charlie, Sam, and Josh watching Anastasia with Laney! :) Those boys would put up with anything for their girls!

So that’s about it from our weekend with Josh home. We had fun, but we sure are looking forward to being settled as a family again! It’s coming up pretty quick- Josh’s next trip home will be to help pack, close on our house here, drive to KY, and close on our house there. Then, the next time he comes home will be to drive me and the girls there for good. Kind of scary to think about!

Things are moving along pretty well with the double closings. We close on our house in Columbia on Friday, May 20th. Then, we’re going to stay in town for the weekend to go to a wedding on the 21st. We’ll probably drive to Grandma Judy’s house on Sunday and spend the night. Then we’ll get up and leave early Monday morning to close on our house in Elizabethtown, unload the trailer, then Mom, Dad, the girls, and I will be headed back to Columbia.

We are pretty excited about our house in Etown. It’s the only house that we looked at that I really walked in and thought “I could live here, this house would really work for us.” It’s downsizing, about 1000 square feet, but we expected that. It’s a house that was bought by a builder and he’s gone through and updated it (painted, closed off the washer and dryer so they’re not just out in the kitchen, put in overhead lighting, central air, a heat pump, all new counters and appliances in the kitchen, etc.). There was a little scariness in the making an offer, because we thought we were approved for pretty much exactly what it was listed for. But part of that approval included a $5000 grant, and when Josh went back to look at the house one more time before putting in an offer, we found out the grant was gone. And, since we now didn’t have the grant to count as our down payment, there was actually a $7000 swing in what we were approved for. I was pretty bummed. But our realtor convinced us to go ahead and put in the offer, and just see what the builder did. So, we put in an offer for $77,000 on an $85,000 house, not expecting much. But, God is good, and the guy took the offer! He did not, however, agree to pay any of our closing costs, so now we are going to have to come up with about $5000 by our closing date. Some of it will come from the sale of our house here, and the rest, well, we’re counting on God to provide. He has worked everything else out so far, we don’t expect this to be any different. We probably have enough in savings (although, I wasn’t counting on an $800 van repair this week), we just won’t have much of a safety net left. But, well, Matthew 6:25-34 is still true! And now we’ve gotten a fantastic deal on a solid little house (here it is, if you’re curious). So, if we have to move again after Josh finishes school, we’ll be in good shape to sell it…

In other news, I actually had a job interview this week! It is an information specialist (librarian) position at the DOD schools in Ft. Knox. So, it would be about 30 minutes north of Etown, but it would have fantastic benefits. I think the interview went pretty well, but, since it’s the army, there won’t be any news for at least 2 weeks. I would love to know before our closing, because then we wouldn’t have to worry so much about being approved for our loan… but, again, God will provide.

So, there’s the long update! Lots of pictures and lots of news… will try to keep everyone updated between packing stints! :)

Easter 2011

2011-04-26T17:24:00.000-04:00

Well, it was a little sad to celebrate Easter without Daddy around, but as the girls ended up with 5 Easter baskets apiece, we survived! We spent the day with all of our families (church, the Lootens, and the Prices), but we still missed our Daddy!

The Easter Bunny left some treats for the girls on Saturday night!

(the Easter Bunny was apparently too effective with spring cleaning last year, ‘cause all of the Easter baskets were gone! Good thing Laney didn’t notice that the baskets were the shoe basket from the closet and the bib basket from her room!)

Aunt Ruthie stayed over on Saturday night to help me get the girls up and ready on Sunday morning (since we had to be at church at 7:00).

Audrey definitely showed her non-morning person genes when it was wake up time on Sunday morning, but she still loves her Truman!

Laney, on the other hand, has never jumped out of bed and gotten dressed as fast as she did when we said she had to get up and dressed before she could go see her basket! She was moving at warp speed!

Love the Peeps on a stick!

Audrey… still not sure why we’re awake! But she did like the balls the Easter Bunny left her…

After Sunrise Service, breakfast, Sunday School, and church, the girls and I headed to Uncle Tim’s house to have lunch with the Lootens. Grandma & Grandpa Looten came up from Springfield, and of course Mallorye and Tim and Grandma Jo were there. We had a delicious lunch and a little indoor egg hunt for Laney, who just about exploded while we were making her wait to start “finding” the eggs. She could see them, of course, so she just ran around yelling “I SEE ONE! But I can’t get them until Grandma Jo gets here. I SEE A BLUE ONE! But I can’t get them until Grandma Jo gets here.” It was pretty funny, actually, when it wasn’t really annoying! :)

Although we didn’t get a whole family picture this year, I did manage to get both girls to sit down and take a picture… they were kind of looking at the camera! :)

When Grandma Jo got there, Laney & A finally got to pick up those eggs that had been taunting them (or at least Laney).

Audrey did kind of get into putting eggs in the basket…

…but not nearly as much as Laney, who didn’t stop smiling or shrieking the entire time!

Since she had about half an hour of looking time before the “hunt” began, she really found them all pretty quick, even the ones that were pretty hidden!

Happy with her pile of candy and eggs!

Notice the second Peep stick in Laney’s basket… yeah, she said she “only likes the PINK ones!” Good thing Miss A. doesn’t have the same preferences…

So, after eating way too much at Uncle Tim’s, we headed out to the Price Farm, for more Easter baskets, Easter egg hunting, and, of course, eating! The bad news was that Laney and A did NOT take naps. They slept for about 20 minutes in the car, and I was thinking I would be able to get them in the house without waking them up, but the both were totally perky (ok, not perky, but definitely awake) by the time I got them to a bed. It’s like they’d had a sugar overdose or something… sooo, it was a cranky Laney that did the egg hunting!

I know, hard to believe this could be cranky… but, trust me!

Even Audrey got into the hunting… a little! Then she pretty much wanted to be held…

For Laney there was much yelling, laughing, running (and,therefore, falling), and several fits while she hunted for eggs!

She did look awful cute, though!

After two rounds of hunting eggs, we were all pretty tired, and cold (would have thought that it would have been warm, as late as Easter was this year, but no, thanks loads, MO). We played with some bubbles, which was hilarious, but I have to wait to tell that story until I have the video version… So, anyway, we headed inside for dinner, and had some delicious bbq pork sandwiches (not that the girls and I were the slightest bit hungry after a late lunch). After lunch, we watched Anastasia (Laney’s favorite movie to watch at Grandma & Grandpa Price’s, since she doesn’t have it at home). It was nice just to chill and watch the movie (and that didn’t invite too many fits from the non-napped 3 year old).

After the movie, it was about time to get my sleepy girls (and my sleepy self) home and to bed! We had such a good Easter, though… the only thing missing was Daddy!

Daddy Visits!

2011-04-25T21:07:00.001-04:00

Well, these pictures are actually from a couple weeks ago when Josh last visited, but as I went to do an Easter post, I found these pictures and they were too fun to pass up… so, look for an Easter post tomorrow instead! :)

Josh got to come home for his spring break, so he was here for a nice, long time! We got some stuff done around the house, went to my mom & dad’s house to hang out and shoot the boys’ guns, and just generally got to spend a week of normalcy again! It was a much needed time of rest, that’s for sure!

Part of the reason to go out to Mom & Dad’s was to meet the newest member of the family, Sassy! Mom & Dad got a new puppy, a miniature rat terrier… she is adorable, and looks just like a cross between their other two dogs, Bob & Joy.

We actually hadn’t been out to the “farm” since Christmas, so Audrey was much bigger now! She was so excited to have dogs that were her size, they were like much more active cats! She spent most of the time hanging out with the puppies!

She loved being eye level with them…

The boys, shooting their guns. Tell you what, if wild, rampaging, Cheer bottles ever try to attack the farm, these guys will have things UNDER CONTROL! :)

Laney spent most of her time picking flowers. That’s pretty much all she does now, pick any flowers she can find! We spend most days with a glass full of dandelions and clover on the counter (and in the trash as soon as she goes to bed!). But, hey, she’s having a good time! :)

One of the most exciting things to happen that week was… WE GOT AN OFFER ON THE HOUSE!! We did a few days of counter-offers back and forth, but eventually came to an agreement (thanks to our realtor, Ryan Cunningham, giving up some of his commission to help us meet in the middle). What awesome timing to have it the same week Josh was here, so we could just sign all of the papers and get things rolling!

We celebrated the next night with a fondue picnic night! Swiss cheese fondue with hot dogs, ham, broccoli, carrots, etc. And we followed up with some chocolate fondue with strawberries, marshmallows, and oreos for dessert! We spread out our picnic blanket and watched a movie during dinner… it was the perfect way to celebrate!

Ready for our picnic!!

Audrey loves oreos!

So, that was Daddy’s visit… too short, but I ended up going to Etown the next weekend to do some house shopping! We found one we liked quite a bit, and are thinking about making an offer on later this week. And things are rolling right along with out house… we’ve had the house inspection done, and very few things showed up. The roof has been replaced (part of her original deal), but the insurance is covering it because it had hail damage, along with replacing all of the gutters. So, at the end of the day, all we had to do is put in 3 smoke detectors. Not too bad at all!

It’s amazing how things work in God’s timing… if only I could remember that more! :) Things are getting very real, with all the talk of closings and packing and trucks and trailers… we’re really moving now! Laney is so excited to move to Huckentucky, she can hardly stand it. Almost there… now we are waiting on a job for me. But, as with all things, in God’s timing…

YCW 2011

2011-04-09T22:10:00.001-04:00

Well, lots of people called me crazy last year for going to Young Christians’ Weekend at Silver Dollar City two weeks before I was due with Audrey. And this year, they called me crazy again for going with the two girls and no Josh! And, perhaps they were right… it was definitely a little stressful of a weekend, and I’m not sure I was much help on the whole supervising youth front. But I think they wanted someone along who had been several times before, since Josh obviously wasn’t coming, and Mom couldn’t go, either. So, along I went, with both girls in tow! And, really, we had a good time. The concerts were great, Tenth Avenue North was a band I really wanted to see, and Caleb Rowden led worship Sunday morning, which was cool since he’s a Columbia boy. For the most part, the girls and I hung by ourselves, with Aunt Ruthie, or with Laney’s friend Clara, and her parents, Betsie and Matt. It was fun just to get to play, without trying to juggle any grown up rides or anything. So we ended up having a really good time…

What trip to SDC would be complete without a trip to the “ball place” (aka Geyser Gulch). It really was fun to have A along on this trip, because she was big enough to play and have fun.

She looked so big playing with the balls… too bad she kept trying to put them in her mouth! Purell, anyone?! :)

We also had to check out SDC’s new area for kids, which has a carousel and a tree house. It’s nice, because the tree house only has two exits, so you can send the kids up there, and not worry about them, because there are workers in the tree house, and they have to come out at a certain spot. Pretty neat, and Laney seemed to like it.

Laney loved the carousel!

And so did Audrey! So much so that she wouldn’t sit still long enough for me to take a good picture of her! :)

The new part also had a set of swings just for littler kids… Laney and Clara tried them out right away!

We had absolutely beautiful weather for this YCW, which was nice, since we’ve had not so beautiful weather the last few years! By afternoon it had really warmed up, enough that the girls and I headed back to Geyser Gulch to play in the water. It was Audrey’s first introduction to the water mats, and well, she was a FAN! I felt kind of bad, I was a little worried that she’d get sprayed in the face and be totally unhappy! But, well, she definitely wasn’t unhappy! She would crouch down over a hole until it sprayed her (usually in the face) and then she would laugh and grin and head to another hole to repeat the process. She was absolutely SOAKED in pretty short order! Good thing I’d brought a change of clothes…

At the beginning, just a little wet on the jeans…

And totally soaked by the end.

Big sis got in on the action, too… she’s always loved the water mats!

My girls… playing together happily. A moment to savor!

While Laney was napping, we spent a lot of time hanging out in this little area next to Geyser Gulch that is just for toddlers. It doesn’t have much, just a couple of animals to ride on and a slide. But all A needs is a slide; she LOVES playing on slides.

She also loved us rolling a ball down the slide to her, which is what she’s cracking up about in this picture:

Laney even tried a new ride- the little roller coaster in the World’s Fair area. She was not a fan- we got off and she said “That was NOT very much fun!” It was pretty funny. I’m inclined to agree with her, though, because it was awful jerky…

Really, it was a good trip… I am very thankful for Ruthie for spending so much time hanging out with us and helping me get the girls in and out of the van, the park, corralled at the concerts, etc. But we all had a great time, and we managed to get 30ish kids and 10ish adults to and from SDC without major incident… I’ll call that a successful Young Christians’ Weekend! :)

Speaking of successful… we finally had a successful showing, an offer, and we’re now UNDER CONTRACT on our house!!! We are so excited, although still really only cautiously optimistic until the home inspector comes and goes! But if God can bring us the buyer, He can make the home inspection work for us. We are so thankful for our realtor, Ryan Cunningham, who definitely treated us right this whole time. And, in the end, it was the realtors who made the deal work- we were kind of at a stand still, and they both offered to give up $1200 of their commission to help us meet in the middle. Our closing date right now is May 20th, which gives us about 6 weeks to figure out where we’re moving TO! :) I’m headed to Etown next weekend so we can do some house shopping. Hopefully the right house will fall in our laps!

Anyway, so a fun trip and an exciting new development on the whole move-to-KY front! I am still looking for a job, I’ve applied at several districts around Etown, and I’m sure God will provide the job just as He has everything else in this crazy journey!

Grandma’s Auction

2011-03-23T23:39:00.001-04:00

This past weekend we all headed to IL because Grandma was going to have an auction of some of Grandpa’s farm equipment and random things around house and barn that she didn’t need anymore. I was mostly excited because Josh was meeting us there, and it was fun to get to go see everyone.

It was a little (or a lot) sad to see this on Saturday morning:

Grandpa was such a John Deere man, it was hard to see so many of his tractors all lined up down the driveway, waiting to be sold… but there’s no sense having all those tractors just sitting around; Grandpa wouldn’t have wanted them rusting in the barn anyway… So, after a bit of nostalgia and sadness, we got down to the business at hand: organizing a major auction! Dad came down to do the auction, as the owner of a new auction company, Black and Gold Auctions. It is definitely a “family affair” anytime Black and Gold Auctions has an auction, because Ruth clerks, Mom’s the cashier, and Dad is obviously the auctioneers. This trip, it was even more of a family affair… everyone helped out! Ellen and I ended up doing most of the checking-in/checking-out of bidders, because Mom & Susan had to go to somewhere with better wireless (ahh, the joys of So. Illinois) to take care of the proxibid (online) part of the auction. Then my uncles, Clint & Cullen spent a lot of time being ringmen for Dad, my girl cousins all ran the snack bar (and did a fantastic job- they made $72 each after paying back everyone who bought supplies), Charlie helped with the proxibid by relaying the bids Mom & Susan were getting… it was pretty crazy! But, overall it went really well, and while it was hard to see so much of “Grandpa” get sold, at the end of the day it was still just stuff. Grandpa wasn’t in those John Deere tractors. Perhaps Laney said it best- He’s in Heaven, and we miss him, but he’s happy there. And even if it’s not his tractor, I never will see a John Deere without thinking of Grandpa Price, sitting tall on the top of one, with a ball cap on and a big grin.

Anyway, enough sadness and nostalgia, on to the pictures… some of these are mine, some are Ellen’s, because I was too busy during the auction to even get my camera out!

Dad & Grandma, looking over some quilting frames.

The snack bar girls, before the craziness started! They were pretty much busy the rest of the day…

Laney and Aunt Jenny, inside the auction trailer (where I stayed pretty much the whole time). Susan & Ruthie, up on a tractor

My youngest cousin, Max, who is 5. And, man, is he ALL BOY or what?! He spent awhile in the corn field, picking up corn cobs, then came racing in the trailer and dumped them on the desk, proclaiming “I HAVE CORNCOBS!” He was so proud…

Max & another of my cousins, Gabe. These two are quite the pair! They spent a lot of time racing around the trailer, banging on different sides, and jumping down the ramp, making the whole trailer shake.

After the auction, everyone hung around for awhile, helping people get stuff loaded up (it’s not like you can just pack a tractor or a combine into your trunk!). It was such a beautiful day, it was awesome to just be hanging out outside.

Max & Audrey… he was fascinated with her. Suppose Rachel (the dog) has any idea what’s coming? :)

Cullen, helping someone load something heavy on a trailer… Gratuitous shot of a tractor as I was playing with my prime lens, trying to figure out how it works… came out pretty good, I thought.

Sunday we all headed back to Grandma’s house to help clean up and pack up after the auction (after a trip to Thompsonville Cafe for breakfast, of course). It was beautiful outside, so we spent lots of time hanging by the trailer or the barn (partly because of the weather, and partly because Grandma sold most of her living room furniture/recliners, so there wasn’t much to sit on!). And, of course, no trip to IL would be complete without a mule ride to visit all of the animals! Ruth, Ellen, Laney, Audrey and I loaded up in the mule, and Charlie followed us (or sometimes circled us) on the four-wheeler.

Yaya and Laney, ready to go!

Charlie and his girl, calling the cows!

They may live in Columbia, but I’m raising farm girls! :) My girls, hanging on the cow gate… or, in the case of Audrey, licking the cow gate… gross! But at least it looks cute from a distance!

So, that was about it… it was good to see everyone there, and hard to watch the stuff get sold, but comforting knowing that, no matter how much got sold, Grandpa wasn’t really in the stuff. And the auction did really well, so that will be good for Grandma. And Dad got lots of compliments on how the auction went/was handled, so maybe we’ll be headed back to So. Illinois to do some more auctions! :)

In KY news, well, there isn’t really much news. We are still waiting on our house to sell. We’ve had a lot of showings, and one set of serious lookers, but no real bites yet. We’re praying, and trusting, that it will happen in God’s time. As for a job for me, well, no news there, either. But school districts are just now starting to really decide where there are going to be openings, so I’m not too worried about it. Again, God’s timing and plan…

I did take Laney to the eye doctor last week, and have mixed news from that. She does not have to have glasses; actually her prescription is pretty good. BUT, she does have to have surgery. It wasn’t a weaker eye that was causing the lazy eye, instead she has what is called a roaming lazy eye, which means that the eye muscles don’t work together, so only one eye is ever really focused at a time. So, they will do some kind of surgery to correct it. Basically, I took her to an optometrist, and he referred us to a pediatric ophthalmologist. But, he did say that we could wait until we’d moved, which means we’ll be able to be settled. So, planning to cross that bridge when we come to it…

I think that’s about it… gearing up for another busy weekend, friends getting married on Saturday (which means Daddy’s home… yay!!), Audrey’s first birthday party on Sunday, and lots of family in town. Thankfully, next week is Spring Break for me, so I can catch up on some rest!! :) I will try not to wait a month before I update again, but, well, life is a little crazy ‘round here right now!

Playing in the Snow

2011-02-10T18:55:00.000-05:00

Ok, so is it sad that I have 3 different posts dedicated to the “snowpocalypse” (or, snowmaggedon, if you prefer)? It was a pretty crazy event, and since I was taking pictures of the back porch every couple of hours, the camera was pretty much always handy!

So, on to some pictures that are of people (and pets), not just snow.

Isa spent lots of time inside, but was never happy about when she was outside. Nothing like seeing your puppy covered in snow to make you feel guilty! Never mind that she had a very warm (filled with cedar chips and with a towel over the door to block the wind) doghouse 2 feet away!

Tuesday, when I went out to shovel her a path to said doghouse. We played for awhile, and she was definitely just as full of energy as any other day!

Seriously, look how hard it’s snowing?!

Wednesday morning I went on a little walk around the backyard, just around the perimeter of the fence so Isa had a little path (just what I plowed with my feet, no shoveling) to run around in on Wednesday. She went with me the whole time, and was totally worn out when we got back to the top! For that matter, so was I! Quite the work out!

Isa pretty quickly figured out that the snow wasn’t nearly as deep underneath the trees!

This one has no people or pets, but thought it was a cool pic of the designs the wind was making in the snow…

Of course, we had to take Laney outside to enjoy the snow. We decided against taking Audrey out, mostly because she was sleeping, but also because it was just too darn cold. And it’s not like she could play in the snow anyway.

Laney and Mommy, bundled up and ready to go!

Laney, standing in the path I made for Isa to get to the fence, with her horse, Jonny, of course. She was pretty amazed by al the snow.

She was amazed, but not nearly as happy, when I picked her up and dropped her in it! It would be a little claustrophobic if the snow came up to your hips!

Laney and Ruthie… couldn’t get Laney to look at the camera because she was too busy licking all of the snow off of her gloves!

This was quite the fun pastime- just flopping backwards off of the “path” around the fence and into the snow. And Isa pretty much did this every time… she was so excited that her people came out to play!

Even Laney got in on the flopping action!

And, Ruthie’s turn!

After all of the flopping, we put the camera back inside because it was just a little too much to try to keep it out of the snow! But we continued on around the yard, and it was pretty fun. Laney was too busy trying to eat all of the snow off of her gloves to pay attention to where she was going, which meant she stumbled or walked into drifts a lot, usually leading to her yelling “I CAN’T DO IT!” in a panicked voice. Ruthie and I were both so understanding- we typically said “Get ahold of yourself, you’re fine. Stop licking your gloves and watch where you’re going.” And she would (at least the walking part, not so much the not licking her gloves part). We made lots of snow angels, though Isa ran through most of them, and did a little snow wrestling (with the dog). When we made it all the way around, we were all so exhausted, it was time to go inside!

So we were stuck in our house from Monday afternoon until Thursday afternoon. We ate a lot of food (we made all kinds of cookies and yummy meals, what else was there to do?), surfed the web, watched a lot of movies (Shrek 4, anyone? Pretty sure I can quote it line by line, and we had to limit Laney to watching it twice a day) and some HGTV & TLC, read, played Wii… just anything to pass the time! We were all a little stir crazy by the time it was over, but, for being a rare blizzard in MO, it was not a bad week! I am so thankful that we had lots of advance warning, and had time to prepare and stock up on food and entertainment! We never lost power, and we were warm, fed, and (mostly) entertained. Couldn’t ask for much more! I am also thankful that Ruthie snowed herself in with us… I think it would have been a little harder on me without a second adult! Nothing like 3 year old conversation for 3 straight days! Also amazing was having Corey come shovel our driveway on Wednesday, because I would have been seriously hurting to do that myself!

And, you may ask, how did Truman handle the snow? Well, Truman says “What snow? All I see is a sunbeam…”

Ahh, to be a cat! :) Again, I am so thankful that we made it through a pretty rare and severe weather event with nothing more than a little stir craziness! And now I’m ready for all of the snow to go away and spring to come!

Progression of a Blizzard!

2011-02-08T18:08:00.000-05:00

Of course, everyone knows that there was a blizzard in MO last week, with some crazy amounts of snow (for us) in a very short amount of time!

So, from Monday night until Tuesday evening I tried to take pictures of my back porch every 2 hours or so. It was VERY cool to see the snow pile up, and crazy how fast it happened.

Monday night… just a little leftover from the last snow, plus some ice/freezing rain from Monday.

Just as the snow started- about 8 or 9 am on Tuesday.

And throughout the day, watching it pile up…

By Tuesday night… it was still snowing some, though not as hard.

The next morning; beautiful and bright, and absolutely BURIED in snow:

And, a couple more “Oh, my gosh, look how deep it is!” pictures…

I had to go out to clear a path for Isa Tuesday afternoon/evening so she could get to and from her house, and off the porch a bit. It was already pretty deep, and look how hard it’s still snowing!

Ruth, checking on Horatio (her car), and how deep it was in the sheltered area by our front door!

Our front bushes. Yes, bushES- there are supposed to be two there!

Isa and I had a little walk around the yard Wednesday morning. She’s definitely not as fast with all this snow on the ground!

Thought this evergreen just looked cool… plus, it’s lowest branches are actually about 2 feet off the ground!

And, poor Horatio, on Wednesday morning. I actually managed to get the van in the garage, for which I am very thankful!

Anyway, I have lots of fun playing in the snow pictures to put up still, but I thought this progression of pictures was pretty cool, and the pictures that show just how deep it really was! Pretty crazy stuff! Coming, someday, the pictures of us actually enjoying the snow and the snow days! :)

Snow Day Fun

2011-02-04T11:08:00.003-05:00

Unless you've been living in a news-free cave for the last week, you know about the blizzard (yes, that's right a blizzard) that hit Central MO on Tuesday. 18 inches of snow later, plus 20+ mph winds, and we were stuck in the house A LOT for the last few days. We actually had a good time, and I managed to capture a few minutes of Laney-Audrey happy time... that is, the time when they actually play together without Laney getting mad and whacking Audrey for touching her toy, or Audrey jamming a finger in Laney's eye/mouth/nose, or pulling Laney's hair. I treasure the time they spend playing together, and can only hope that happy-time increases as Audrey gets older, and better able to really play, instead of just pester! :) She does think her big sister is the coolest thing EVER, though...

Anyway, without further ado... the videos
(Please don't judge me on the state of my living room floor... again, 2 grown ups and 2 small children, locked inside for a good 72 hours)

The pack and play was a lifesaver... it served as a baby gate, to keep Audrey out of the kitchen when we had the dog in, and to keep Audrey away from Laney for 5 minutes so Ruth or I could do something else. Of course, Laney had to get in it, too, much to Audrey's delight...

So, this is the comforter that Jess & Mike got Laney for Christmas. For some reason, Audrey LOVES it, she can't get enough of it and will just bury her face in it. Anyway, Laney decided to join in on the fun...

I have lots of pictures of the snow (like everyone else!) and I will post them soon, just thought I'd throw in these three videos first. We had fun... we are sure glad to be out now!

Encore

2011-01-28T23:24:00.003-05:00

Ok, so this is one of my f avorite videos of Laney EVER (the second one, although they're both good)... Well, tonight she gave me an encore, and it was quite good, so I thought I'd share! :)

Definitely got this side of her personality from her Daddy!

Notice that trying to take something away from Audrey didn't even slow her down... I tell you what, a 3 year old and a 10 month old by myself is downright exhausting. Between keeping Audrey out of things she's not supposed to be into and keeping Laney entertained, I'm about to go crazy without Daddy around. I know it will get better, it's just exhausting keeping up with the two of them without anyone to pass them off to so I can do something else... anything else! I've been trying to clean the house for 3 days and it just won't stay clean, or even get clean, really. I work on a room for a little bit (as long as I can before Audrey is into something she's not supposed to be!) and in that time another room has been destroyed! I'm definitely gaining a whole new level of respect for single moms!

But, really, I think we will get into a routine pretty quick, it's only been a week without Daddy. We do video chat with him every night over Skype, and that has helped. Both girls like to see him on the computer screen. And today we had a mostly fit-free day from Laney, so I think she's adjusting, too. We'll make it...

Anyway, really just wanted to share these two videos for everyone's enjoyment... certainly is going to be interesting to see who this little girl turns into! :)