SDC Weekend

Well, it's become a tradition on Columbus Day to head to Silver Dollar City to hang out with Josh's family from Texas, because they always drive up for the 3 day weekend. We went last year when Elena was just a tiny baby, only 4 weeks old, and had a great time. This year was even more fun!


Josh and I decided to go ahead and stay until Sunday evening so that we could relax a little more and have a bit of a vacation. The family from Texas is Shawn and Cara, and their boys, Collin and Aaron, plus Stacy and her daughter, Katie.


Friday night we had dinner at Mom & Dad's house, and celebrated Luke's birthday with Jess, Luke, and Leila. It was fun wathing Leila and Elena play together now that they are both old enough to actually interact. Laney did a pretty good job sharing her toys, too, which is nice! I think having her at a daycare definitely has some benefits. But, then again, she's not really to the age where they get really possessive yet, so I'm sure we'll have more trouble in the future! We stayed up late Friday night just telling stories and playing with the girls before we headed to bed to get some sleep before a long day at the park!

Miss Leila eating her dinner...

Playing with the bow from Luke's present... and her laptop! Leila loved the little piano, too. It was fun to watch them play, if not actually together, at least next to each other! :)

We spent all day Saturday at the park. Usually when we head to the park it's all grown ups, other than the babies. This time there were kids, and it's a totally different experience! The boys absolutely love the park, and having them around made us all feel like kids!

Two peas in a pod... the two in the middle AND the two in the front!! We all jammed in our minivan, the boys in the front, the little girls in the middle, and the big girls in the back! It was nice to have a vehicle we could put two car seats and 5 grown ups in!

Laney LOVED the park... because she got to eat and drink LOTS. Thanks to Aunt Jessica for teacher her how to drink out of a straw, now she goes crazy every time she sees a straw. But she was lovin' some peach smoothie in this picture!

And eating something else... lumberjack chips covered in cheese, I think... borrowed from Collin!

There are no words...

After we left the park, we went to this really neat place for dinner. It's called Dana's, and they're known for their burgers and shakes. They even have a burger called the Fat Burger that has a fried egg on it... heart attack on a plate, anyone? Anyway, it was a really fun place to go for dinner, and the burgers and shakes were awesome!!


After dinner on Saturday, we headed back to Springfield to watch the Tigers play OSU. We had Tivo-ed it so that we wouldn't miss any of it... though by the time we were done watching it at midnight, I kind of wished we'd missed it all!


Sunday we headed back to the park for a day of hard-core riding! There's a new part of the park that is full of "family friendly" rides. We spent a lot of time there, and Laney even got to ride on her first ride!! She rode the frog ride, and wasn't quite sure she liked it... I spent a lot of time bent over the seat talking in her ear telling her she was having a good time!

Mommy is clearly having fun... except that I was jammed in there and couldn't even get my knees under the bar, then I had to bend all the way forward to whisper in her ear that she was actually having a good time! She mostly liked it, except for one part that was a pretty big up and down, and she got freaked out every time. Oh well, it'll grow on her!

Now this was much more her style! Grandpa Looten won this basketball, gave it to Josh, and then Laney stole it! She and her cousin Aaron had lots of fun playing with it.

Since it was so nice for October, the water rides were a MUST! Even I rode the Lazy River, which is my favorite water ride. I did opt out of the American Plunge, because I really don't like the straight downhill rides, and the boat was PLENTY full with Grandpa Looten, Josh, Shawn, Katie, Aaron, AND Collin! So I stayed on camera duty and videoed while they rode. The line was so short (it wasn't that warm!) that they just stayed in the boat and rode it twice! They made quite the splash...

And looked like quite the drowned rats afterwards!! But they sure had fun!

While everyone else rode the American Plunge, Laney found her own water ride to play in: the water tree! This "tree" just kind of sprays out water, and she loved it! Notice the totally blurred hand!

Mmmm... water from a tree is delicious!
And, since I was videoing, I figured I might as well catch some adorable giggles!

Well, it was a great weekend, and pretty relaxing all around! It really is fun to go to SDC with kids, I can't wait until Elena is old enough to really ride rides and run around. I hope that she enjoys going there as much as Josh and I do! I guess if she grows up with it, she probably will...

Uncle Tim's Birthday

Well, this year for Uncle Tim's birthday, the city of Columbia and the bank decided they would throw him a big ol' party, so they scheduled the Roots, Blues, and BBQ festival right around his birthday!! Everybody from Springfield came up for the party, and we had a really good time! For those of you not in Columbia, the Roots, Blue and BBQ is a huge festival that's all about, well, Blues and BBQ... and roots, I suppose! It started off last year as a celebration for Boone County National Bank's 150th anniversary. This year, the city and different sponsors took part in it, too, though the bank was still one of the sponsors. They invite all of these blues and bluegrass artists to come in, shut down half of downtown and set up stages, plus gobs of food vendors (mostly BBQ, obviously) and the whole place is just crawling with people. It really is an amazing event!

We did have one UGLY event! Apparently it was time for Laney's nap and she couldn't relax in the huge crowd, so she SCREAMED for like 10 minutes straight. We strapped her into the stroller and tried to walk to make her stop, but that didn't work. Eventually Josh rocked her and sang to her until she fell asleep and she napped for a long time. She was happy as a clam when she woke up, but, wow, was she ticked! Liz H., I'm feeling your pain!

Laney, pre-meltdown. Poor Aunt Ruthie was taking care of her when the meltdown started... she definitely wished she was wearing her "I'm the Aunt, NOT the Mom" shirt!

And post meltdown... passed totally out! We discovered that her umbrella stroller is not good for napping because of the metal pole on the side... so we had to make a pillow of sorts for her because she kept waking up and screaming again. Man, was that not fun! :)

Uncle Luke, Leila, and Grandma Looten...

Josh and Danny hanging out and listening to the music. Danny just started going to MU this fall, and it's a lot of fun to have him around (he moved here from Quincy, IL).

I wish the sun wasn't so bright in this picture, but it's still an awful cute one of Laney with her Uncle Tim!
Doesn't get much cuter than this!
Hanging out with Grandma Looten... she's kind of a goofball!

A cute picture of Leila... she's a very smiley baby now!

Sunday everyone came to church with us because Josh was preaching. After church, we went to TGIFridays for lunch, then headed back to Grandma Looten's house for strawberry cake and homemade ice cream. It was awesome! Here's the birthday boy, blowing out the candles!
Happy birthday, Uncle Tim!! We had a blast!

5th Quarter

I know it seems like a 5th quarter isn't a possiblity, but it there's been one at MHBC for the last several years! Every fall, Hickman plays Rock Bridge in the Providence Bowl, and our youth group celebrates by hosting a "5th Quarter" lock-in after the game. It's a great event, that started as a reward for selling raffle tickets for the Fish Fry one year, and immediately became a required event for every year! It really is fun... or at least it would be if I wasn't an old lady! I'm not so good at staying up all night anymore!

It sure was fun to go to the game, though! Last year, Elena looked like this:

We joked because she was totally covered in green, right down to her stroller! This year, we made sure we showed our Kewpie pride in lots of purple!!

Once we were back at the church, we played some games-- like egg in a tube, which I don't have any pictures of, but which is quite entertaining. Basically, you take a 7 or 8 foot piece of 1 1/4 clear tubing. You crack an egg inside the tube, then two people stand at either end of the tube and blow. Whoever runs out of air first gets egg in the face... or mouth!! It is quite the game, and fun... TO WATCH!

We also played Romans and Christians (a run around in the dark, chase each other kind of game) outside the church, which was really fun. After we wore everyone out, we set up the video games!! We had two projectors, one with our Wii, and one with an XBox and Guitar Hero! James and Missy had to make sure the Wii was working by going a few rounds of boxing! I'm telling you, it's good for the relationship!! :)

By about 4:00 in the morning, this is about what it looked like... people crashed out watching the video games, eating lots of food... it's what a lock-in is all about!!

People did find the most interesting places to sleep...

As I'm transitioning into not having the baby blog, I'm trying to figure out how to get the cute pictures that I take of Elena NOT at any special time on this blog... so I'm just going to post them! For Sunday night youth, I've started staying through the game and music, and then Elena and I go into the old nursery, which is right off of the youth room. She plays quietly, and I can still hear Josh's message. It's worked out really well, and it's a really nice quiet time with no distractions (no tv, no computer, etc.), I can just watch her play. She has really taken to a doll that is in the nursery, and it's so cute to watch her play with it!!


She even likes to feed it with this little bottle...
But taking care of a baby is hard work, sometimes a girl has to get a little snack for herself!!
In other news... Elena has decided that licking the spoon after Mom makes brownies is GREAT!
So that's the update about the 5th quarter lock-in. Check out the Youth Blog for more pictures... including Josh playing the egg-tube game! Stay tuned, I'm going to try to get an update about this past weekend, when we celebrated Uncle Tim's birthday at the Roots, Blues, and BBQ Festival!

Exciting Happenings!

Well, as usual, it's been a VERY busy week around the Looten household! We didn't rest much after the big first birthday party last week (yes, I know, I need to post pictures... I will... eventually) because we went straight into the FISH FRY this past weekend!

As most of you know, our church has this major fundraiser every year. It's an all-you-can eat fish & chicken fry, with all the fixins, a silent auction, a raffle, a petting zoo, kids games, etc. etc. The proceeds all go towards our building fund. Our church is trying to build debt-free, meaning we will raise the money first, then build the building. Anyway, this is our single biggest fundraiser (though we do other things throughout the year). It is a ton of work, but SO MUCH fun! Last year I missed the fish fry because I came home from the hospital that day, so I was excited to get to go again this year. As usual, it was a blast... the youth are in charge of the kids' games, so I worked there for awhile. I also spent a lot of time at the Silent Auction, which went from 60 or so baskets last year to 150 baskets this year! So that was a much bigger undertaking. By the end of the day, we were all exhausted, but we had a great time...

The Silent Auction baskets... it was AMAZING to see all of these donations!

The whole church crew doing a devotion under the tent just before we started serving people.

Laney in the bounce house with her cousin... she LOVED it!

Ruthie helped provide the entertainment for the evening. Elena LOVED listening to Aunt Ruthie sing. She kept shrieking and laughing. It was pretty funny... and the singers did a GREAT job!

Because of the Fish Fry, Grandma & Grandpa Price were in town this past weekend, too. So, Sunday we went out to Mom & Dad's for lunch. Laney had a great time hanging out with her Grandpa Price, chasing poor Joy around the car- she was fascinated with Joy, and Joy wanted nothing to do with Elena! Just thought these pictures were pretty cute...

And, last in the line of exciting news... Josh and I bought a new car! Well, not new new, obviously, but new to us! We actually put the money down on it last week, but we got to go pick it up today!

It is a 2001 Subaru Forester, and it has 92,000 miles on it. It will be Josh's car, primarily, and it will be our car to drive around town. It gets better gas mileage than the van, so it'll be cheaper to drive around town. Josh is absolutely thrilled, because this is one of the cars he really wanted, and we got it at a price that we could afford- without car payments. We've made the committment to buy cars we can afford to pay cash for, which has ended up with us driving some not-so-nice cars (i.e. the '91 Tempo Josh has been driving for the last 4 years). It's such a blessing to have found this car that meets our needs so well, and was within our price range.

Anyway, I promise my next post will be on the baby blog, and will be first birthday pics, but I just had to catch you up on the other things going on in our lives! Never a dull moment...

Cool Site

So, I found this cool site on one of the edtech blogs that I watch for work. You can take photos and turn them into color sketches, or just black and white sketches, or you can make an avatar, it's pretty cool. They are working on taking videos and doing the same kinds of things. Anyway, so I had to use pictures I had on me, since I'm at work (shhh). But here's what I did...

The original: Laney and Daddy napping at Grandma & Grandpa Price's:

The remix:
The original of this was obviously the birthday invite, but cropped... I think it looks sweet.
Anyway, as you can tell from the pictures, the website is www.befunky.com. Just thought my friends in blog world would find this fun! :)

Just for Fun!

Just in case there was any doubt that our cat is the biggest idiot ever...

He always climbs into our suitcases when we're packing... this was just a little funnier than normal, so I thought I'd share! :)

Camp Windermere

I know, I know, too long since I've posted... but I've been better about keeping up with the baby blog! :) Nothing too exciting has happened that didn't involve Miss Elena, so I haven't had much to put on here! Or, let's face it, I actually just haven't had the TIME, because we have done some cool stuff (went to SDC, had Josh's parents visit, etc.).

BUT, this weekend we have a whole day with nothing to do, and last weekend we went to Camp Windermere with the youth group, so I've got some cool pictures! We did the same thing last year, but it wasn't quite the same for me since I was about 8 months pregnant at the time- not a lot of rock wall climbing/zip lining for me last year! :) The Edge is such a cool experience, though. For a quick review, you start off with the "low ropes," which are some team building, trust activities. Then you have lunch, and come back for The Rescue, which involves putting one of your group members in a gurney and then the rest of the group has to get the gurney (and themselves) across this obstacle course of round logs and platforms without touching the ground, and then from a tall platform across 15 feet of open space into the "helicopter landing pad," again without touching the ground. Last year our group worked for a very frustrating 2 hours, and didn't make it. This year went MUCH better, though! They actually made it all the way, and with only 3 "blind" people (if something went wrong or someone fell off, they had to put a blindfold on and be led the rest of the way. Anyway, after The Rescue, you have a break for a couple of hours (we went swimming), then you come back for the high ropes course: rock walls, tightropes, zip lines, leap of faith, and the giant swing. It's an EXHAUSTING day, but it is so much fun, and really helps develop the relationships and the trust between members of our youth group. Although, this year, we had several new kids along on the trip, so it was more a great opportunity to get to know them! And they jumped right in, so, all in all, it was a great experience! And, now for the pics...

The first "low rope" activity- The Skateboard. You have to stand everyone on this board, then reorder yourselves without anyone stepping off. All of the low rope activities push you to get out of your comfort zone by putting you "up close and personal" with the rest of the group- like Heather and Jordan, here! Our leader threw an extra wrench in this one- no one could talk!

Waiting to finish directions on the second activity- the spider web. Gotta love my siblings (and James, who typically acts like a brother anyway), there was this really great shot of the 3 of them sitting on the bench and looking at the guy giving directions, so when I tried to get the picture, they started making a game of turning and staring at me right when I was taking the picture. So I have about 6 pictures where one or the other of them is staring right at me. This is my favorite, though... totally Charlie!
On Mountain Tops- you have to move the whole group from one platform to another without touching the ground, with only these two boards. In this case, the guy blindfolded 3 of us right away and gave us "helpers" (mine was Sean, the guy who is leading me across). Then he made it so only 3 or 4 people could talk, and even when they did talk they had to sing... some pretty horrible singing as a result of that! :) The best part of this activity was that Josh had to make an animal noise every time anyone said the word "board" (they were supposed to call them skiis). Well, this wasn't much of a handicap- they said (or, rather, sang) "board" all the time just so Josh had to make some kind of animal noise! We got the activity done pretty quick, though!
Now, on to The Rescue! This is everyone at the very end, trying to get from the platform to the landing pad with the two boards. The landing pad was about 15 feet away, and the boards were about 10 feet long. So they stuck one board out, then they were using the rope to guide the second one to be on top of it. When they got it there, they tied the rope to the landing pad and the pole in the middle of the platform. Then they slid the gurney across using clips and straps. Pretty good solution, I thought!
Sliding the gurney in!
Ruth did NOT trust the boards to hold... not that I can blame her, I don't know if I would have either! But, she made it across!
Charlie, James, Josh and I didn't take part in The Rescue, so Charlie found a good place to rest and watch!
After The Rescue and a swimming break, we came back for the high ropes. I don't have many good pictures because I was doing the course, but here's one of Josh and some of the youth on top of the tower, waiting to zip line down.

Since I didn't get to do it last year, I really wanted to make it to the top and zip line down this year. I did make it to the top, but not like I wanted to. I wanted to climb the rock wall, but I got about halfway up and my hands wouldn't hold up anymore. Ever since I had that lupus when Josh and I were dating, my hands have not been very strong. So, that was a bummer. Next time, I'm going to try the tight rope instead.

Anyway, it was a great trip, until the trip home! We got pizza and ate at the ropes course before we headed back to Columbia. Well, at about Eldon, the bus broke down... RIGHT (and I mean, right) in front of the 'gentleman's club' that's in Eldon... neat. So, here we sit on the side of the road, with "Earth Angelz" next to us, neon flames in the window, spotlight on the roof, the whole nine yards. We had to wait about 2 hours until someone could come rescue us, so we didn't make it back to Columbia until about 1:30. But, other than that, we had a great time! And we'll definitely always remember it now! :)

How to Take a Good Sibling Picture

1. Get everyone together.

2. Arrange girls appropriately.

3. Attempt to beat little brother (who is not so little) into submission.

4. Repeat step 3.

5. Win... and take two pictures as fast as humanly possible.

6. Resume beating

Everybody loves family pictures!! :)

Obviously Jess was here for a visit, which included a trip to a Cards game. I'm still sorting through the 952 pictures we took throughout the week, so I'm sure there will be more posts, just not all at once!

Enjoy! :)

DADDY'S HOME!

Well, I guess not everyone knew, but Josh has been gone all week on a mission trip with World Changers. They went to the exciting metropolis of Trenton, MO, population 6,216. They got to do a lot of really neat stuff; working on houses and things like that, and it seems like they had a great time. I don't know all of the stories, so I'm going to try to get Josh to do a post in the next couple of days... but, until then, here's the video we're going to show in church tomorrow! :)

As for Laney and I, we spent the whole week home, and we missed the Daddy TERRIBLY! I made the mistake of going to the library early in the week, so I spent a lot of the time with my nose in a book (when I wasn't taking care of Elena, obviously). Apparently, I'm like my father, though- without my spouse around, there's no one to tell me to go to bed. So I stayed up reading (because when I start a book I have trouble putting it down and/or being rational) until 1:00 or 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning! But we survived our week home alone, and we were VERY happy to have Daddy back today!

Stay tuned for some stories/pictures from Josh, but enjoy the video until then!

A Man of Many Talents

Check out my multi-talented husband!

http://youthmhbc.blogspot.com/2008/06/something-to-keep-you-entertained.html

I mean, I don't see him quitting his day job, but I thought it was pretty darn good for a 27 year-old white guy! :)