Anniversary Saturday

So, the 22nd was Josh & I’s 6th anniversary. It seems funny, but even though this was not a “big” anniversary, just kind of a random number, it felt like a big one. And, since it was on a Saturday, we decided to go all out and celebrate the whole day!

Our girls are obviously an important part of our marriage, so we wanted to do something fun with both of them. We also wanted to do something fun and active and outdoors… so we headed to Rock Bridge State Park! We figured the Devil’s Icebox trail would have cool stuff to look at (the Rock Bridge, the Devil’s Icebox, the creeks) but would be easy to navigate for a two year old and a Daddy with a carrier (gotta love boardwalk trails). So that’s where we headed. Laney was so excited about “going to the creek,” even though she didn’t know what a creek was when we asked her! So, after a big breakfast Saturday morning (we got up and made biscuits and gravy and sausage and eggs- had to get fueled up for our walk!) we headed out! We were blessed with beautiful weather after what feels like weeks of rain… it was sunny and 80- perfect creek weather!

Ready to go! You’ll notice from their matching expressions that both Josh and Laney LOVE to get their picture taken… lucky me! :)

First glimpse of the creek… Laney was pretty excited!

Unfortunately, the trail that used to go underneath the Rock Bridge has been taken down, I think they’re redoing it. Regardless, we couldn’t actually go under the bridge. So, we mostly just looked at the creek, and then headed farther along the trail to see the Devil’s Icebox cave.

Laney and I, headed down the steps into the cave!

So, the cave has a creek running through it, and it has this cool opening where you can look up to the top where you were standing before you headed down the stairs. I was hoping to get Laney to that part so she could look up and see Josh. Unfortunately, with the rushing of the creek (we’ve had a lot of rain) and the dark of the cave, she was NOT interested. So, we just looked at the water and headed back up.

We paused on the way up for a picture… check out how excited she is… oh well, we’ll try again when she’s older and the water isn’t so high!

Daddy & his girls!

After we made it all the way around the Devil’s Icebox trail and were back at the parking lot, we took a brief break to have a snack, and so I could feed Audrey. Then we headed for the creek! There is a second trail that leads to basically the same spot by the Rock Bridge that we had been on earlier, just on the opposite side of the creek. It’s really shallow there, and a great place to play, so we headed that way.

Laney was pretty timid at first about getting her feet wet. She mostly just walked around at the edge.

Pretty soon, though (like after I picked her up and dropped her feet in a deeper/faster part of the creek) she figured out how much fun it was! And there was a rock that was just her size a little ways out into the creek, so she could get on and off of that rock and play. Then she had a blast!

Splashing Daddy is always fun!

And then she discovered the joy of throwing rocks!

Just loved this picture… the weird half shade/half sun lighting annoyed me the rest of the time, but it makes this picture look really cool!

Mommy and Laney, playing in the creek!

Although she lost most of her timidity when it came to the creek, she never did get over the mud issue! Funniest thing was on the way back to the car from the creek- she’s already soaking wet, because she was squatting down to pick up rocks and splashing herself, and just generally playing in the water. But, as we’re headed back to the car she started to run ahead on the trail. This trail was not a boardwalk, just a small footpath, and it has been raining a lot lately, so it was pretty muddy. So, wet flip-flops + muddy trail + uncoordinated 2 year old = recipe for disaster! And, it was… right as I was about to say “Be careful, it’s slippery” poor Laney’s feet went out from underneath her and she went SPLAT right on her bottom. She was not pleased about being muddy, but Josh and I just laughed and helped her up. There was a little stream that crossed the path, too, so we washed her hands off in that, and changed clothes when we got to the car. It was pretty hilarious, though!

Overall, we had a GREAT time at the park… it was something new and different, and both girls handled it really well. We will definitely be doing that again!

And, the best part about going to Rock Bridge State Park is that Andy’s Frozen Custard is on the way home! :)

After some SERIOUS napping (we were all exhausted), the girls headed out to Grandma & Grandpa’s while Josh and I celebrated our anniversary with a really fun date night. We headed to dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse, went to see Letters to Juliet (good husband! Though, it wasn’t as bad as he was afraid it would be), and then we finished up the night with our favorite special occasion treat- Encore! One of the bakeries in town changes into this upscale dessert place (I think the technical term is “Wine and Dessert Bar”) on the evenings on weekends. They serve coffee and wine, a few appetizers, and then these amazing desserts that you would see on the Food Network- things like a chocolate pyramid and other delicious things! We decided to try their creme brulee (I hadn’t ever had creme brulee before) and their chocolate fondue. Both were absolutely DELICIOUS, and we just had a good time talking and telling stories over awesome desserts and coffee.

Anyway, so that was our anniversary celebration! I couldn’t have imagined a better way to celebrate- a fun time with our girls and then some grown up time at the end! We don’t usually do presents, but, like I said, this year felt like a big anniversary even if it wasn’t according to the numbers. Josh put it best, because he said “Ever since we’ve been married, we’ve been building our family. And this year it feels like we HAVE our family.” I guess that’s probably what it was. Whatever the reason, this year felt special, so Josh and I both got each other gifts, even though we don’t usually. I got Josh a clock for his desk at work that is a clock on one side and a picture frame on the other. He got me another anniversary band to match my wedding band! (He clearly did a better job on the presents, but what does one get a man for an anniversary?!) It’s beautiful, and I think it will match really well. Now I’m just waiting until I can get my wedding band off, so that I can take them all into the store to get sized and sautered together.

It’s been a wonderful 6 years, and I am so proud of the family we have… I love our girls and my husband so much! And, to end it with some humor, a video from our walk! Laney & Daddy had a snack while I was feeding Audrey, and Josh taught her how you’re supposed to eat goldfish! Enjoy! :)

Summer Fun & Laney’s First Prom

I know that title is weird… but I promise it’ll make more sense by the end!  But, first, some fun summer pics from a couple days ago!

Daddy had to mow the front yard one evening, so Laney thought she would help! 

She loves her bubble mower from Aunt Jess.  And she’s coordinated enough this year to walk fast enough to really make some bubbles fly!

Mowing is serious business- she spent a lot of time mimicking Josh and how he turned corners, etc.  Pretty cute!

And when the bubble mower gets old, there’s always regular bubbles!

One really neat thing about that day was that we could really let Laney play outside while Josh was mowing.  She’s big enough to know not to wander off, and to come get me if she needs something.  So we just left the door to the kitchen open and I cleaned(and took pictures) while she played!  The other reason it worked was the recent cleaning out of our garage!  We were going to have a garage sale, but then Dad graciously offered to take the stuff we had arranged for the garage sale to the consignment auction.  So, instead of having to price everything, and then sit in our driveway for two mornings (SO not a morning person), and then still have stuff leftover that we had to haul somewhere, Dad and I just loaded up the trailer one evening, and he brought us a check a week later.  Pretty spectacular trade if you ask me! :) 
     Anyway, side story aside, our garage is emptier and cleaner than it has been since we moved in, which has left lots of room for Laney to actually play in and around the garage.  Which was wonderful!  Best part of the evening, though: As I was cleaning up in the kitchen she came racing inside yelling “Mommy, guess what!”  When I asked what I expected to hear about some worm/bug/bird she had seen outside.  Instead, she yelled “I love you!” and ran back outside.  Absolutely melted my heart!

 

So, now to explain the other half of the title!  HHS and RBHS had prom on two separate weekends.  We usually like to go see the kids all dressed up when they take pictures, so for Hickman’s prom we met two of our girls, Jordyn and Emily, while they were taking pictures.  Laney, needless to say, was IN AWE of the dresses, particularly Jordyn’s because Jordyn’s was a big dress.  Definitely a princess dress!  The week after Hickman’s prom, Jordyn texted Josh because she was going to RB’s prom, too, and wanted Laney to come take a couple of pictures with her.  She even invited Laney to dress up in one of her princess dresses!  Laney was all about it when we asked her if she wanted to, and spent the whole week talking about wearing her Snow White dress to take pictures with Jordyn.  But, the day of, she saw this other dress in her closet and wanted to wear it.  So, here’s Laney’s first prom! :)  No boys, just dresses… which is really the most important part for a girl anyway, isn’t it!?

Laney and Jordyn!
(P.S. Check out the guy on the left who matched his SHOES to his date’s HOT PINK dress… Laney loved that, too!)

Love that you can totally tell she FEELS beautiful and grown up in this dress!

Discussing details of the dresses with Jordyn!

We wandered around the park for awhile, looking at all of the different dresses.  Laney was fascinated that there could be so many!  Definitely a fun evening for Miss Laney!  I can only imagine what her own prom will be like…  Her other highlight of the night was the 4 squirrels playing chase around a big tree… wasn’t fast enough to get that on camera, but it was pretty funny!

So, I kind of realized the other day that I haven’t posted much about Laney, other than just pictures from what we’ve been up to.  So, Laney as a 2 1/2 year old… she’s pretty much totally potty trained now.  We’ve had maybe 1 or 2 accidents in the last 6 months.  And, she decided she no longer wanted to wear pull ups to bed one day, so she’s out of those, too, and we haven’t had an accident in probably  month or two.  So that is a major YAY!  She loves anything Disney Princesses (of course), and love to sing and dance and color.  She is a stubborn little kid, she lost half of her books to the auction because she refused to pick them up.  But a lot of the tantrums and power struggles that we had right around Audrey being born have subsided, so I’m guessing there were some adjustment issues in there.  She is a smart cookie who NEVER stops talking, and NEVER forgets anything (so take that as a warning- don’t say it unless you plan to deliver).  She really does talk all the time, and repeats anything she hears.  Our funniest story lately is we were talking about something gross, and she was trying to say “That’s disgusting” but she kept saying “gisgusting” instead.  So we were trying to get her to say it with a d… she tried twice, and when we kept correcting her, she finally said “That’s REALLY YUCKY.”  Which just cracked us up totally.  She counts to 10, most of the time, and loves to tell stories.  She is a smart, outgoing, independent little girl… God help us!

Anyway, so there’s a Laney update… life moves so fast and she is growing so quickly that I felt like I needed to write some things down so I don’t forget them!  Check back tomorrow for a post from our anniversary Saturday… we had a blast!

Improv Night & Mother’s Day

Last Friday we did an improv night at church.  Our youth improv team, the Holy Rollingwood Players, put on a show to raise money for the World Changers team’s trip to West Memphis, AR this summer.  It was a pretty fun evening, and everyone seemed to have a great time.  The skits were pretty hilarious…

The cooking skit… always funny!  It was even funnier this year because Sean was the “arms” for James, who is so much taller than him… In this pic, Sean is making James eat some chocolate chips (they were making pancakes) that had been covered in egg from when Sean tried to break eggs for the batter.  Like I said, pretty funny all around!

Another good skit is party quirks… James was hosting a party, and each of his 3 guests had funny quirks that he had to try to guess.  Sean was a hyper dog on a leash, and Josh was a break dancer.  I was pretty sure Josh was going to throw his back out, but he managed to escape permanent injury!

  

We finished the show with props, where Charlie just gets random things and the players have to figure out what they could be.  This was the last one, because it was one of the funniest- he used three of the props to make a stick woman… pretty good!

We managed to raise a lot of money for the World Changers, and had a really good time doing.  Best way to raise money! :)

 

Sunday was obviously Mother’s Day, and Josh surprised me with flowers and biscuits and gravy for breakfast Sunday morning.  Then, we had the whole family over for lunch after church.  We usually go out to eat, but it’s so busy on Mother’s Day, and long waits with an infant and a two year old… not so good!  So we put a pork roast in the crock pot and had bbq pork sandwiches and homemade ice cream at home.  Way more relaxing, and we got to hang out and enjoy the weather.  Definitely going to have to make that the new tradition! :)

It was beautiful outside, so when Josh went out to start the ice cream machine, Laney had to follow… love the boots!

She was holding up her skirt like a princess, but I missed the picture.  So, I told her “Hold up your skirt again.” Yeah, well, she did this… not quite the same picture, but close! :)  Ahh, blackmail later…

Laney was fascinated with the ice cream machine… and the ice cream that came out of it later!

See… tickle fights and reading books with Grandpa- WAY better than waiting for a table for an hour! :)

Yay for fun weekends filled with friends & family! :)

Birthday and Random Fun

Alrighty, so I have just some random pictures from the last week or so, and I thought I’d share!  It’s so much easier to blog now, since I’m home (naptime is wonderful) and using Windows Live Writer… It makes me want to take more pictures, plus I have my fabulous new camera to play with (thanks, Jess & Mike!)… so be ready for lots of pics this summer! 

Anyway… these pics are pretty standard for our life!  First up, a day at the park with Laney!  We’ve kind of gotten into the routine of going to the park on Friday mornings if it’s nice and we’re not busy with other things.  It’s a great way to wear Laney out, and she never gets tired of it.  This trip was no different!

This little guy ran down the sidewalk in front of us for awhile before heading up this tree.  Laney thought it was awesome!

The best part of this trip was that the big slides were open.  Or, as Laney calls them, the “pickle” slides.  We have no idea where she got that name.  My best guess is that Josh or I called them the “Big ol’ slides” and she heard pickle slides.  Wherever it came from, these are now the pickle slides, and she LOVES them!

Total “Mom, why are you taking my picture AGAIN?!” attitude in this picture…

She just looks like such a big girl running to all of the different equipment!

“Cheese!” while sliding…

I was trying to get a picture of some pretty buds, and she came over to see what I was doing.  Didn’t get a good pic of the buds, but it made for a good lesson on how flowers bloom!

The funniest part of this trip to the park was the major mistake I made- I didn’t bring a snack!  We’d been there a little over half an hour when she said “Mom, I want some food.”  So I told her we could head home and get a snack, and she said she wanted food from the park.  I tried to explain that there wasn’t any food at the park, but she was INSISTENT that there was (I’m not really sure where she gets this stubbornness from!).  So I told her to show me where the food was, and she took me over to one of the picnic tables and said “Right there.”  Apparently when Tamra took her to the park she always brought snacks and they ate them at the table.  Try explaining THAT to a two year old… instead, we ended up at McDonald’s, eating apple slices and playing in the playplace.  Note to self: ALWAYS bring snacks to the park…

 

Friday afternoon we went back out to Mom & Dad’s to celebrate my birthday with everyone.  We had a really good time just hanging out, enjoying the weather and spending time together.  We also spent awhile playing Mario Kart on Mom & Dad’s Wii, which is ALWAYS a good time! :)  On the menu were some DELICIOUS grilled pork steaks (way to go, Josh), Mom’s parmesan potatoes, and (of course) lemon cake with lemon icing.  It was all delicious!  (Did I mention I love not being diabetic?!)

Laney had to help Grandma cook dinner!  She’s always curious about what we’re doing.  Luckily Mom keeps this stool handy! Laney helping me blow out the candles… 28… that’s a lot of candles! 

Speaking of hanging out and enjoying each other and the weather, Josh, Laney, Audrey, and I finally got a chance to do that all at the same time last night.  We have been seriously hurting for some family time that’s relaxing.  Thankfully, God watches out for us, and provided last night for us to do just that.  We grilled burgers and brats, played in the backyard, ate dinner together, and even headed to Andy’s for some ice cream afterwards.  It was an awesome and refreshing evening!

Isa LOVES playing football! Audrey… well, Audrey mostly slept.  But at least she was sleeping outside with the rest of the family! :)

Laney went to the grocery store at least 10 times in her car!

Daddy & his little girl, eating ice cream!  There’s just something about Andys… it’s really just that good!

So, that was our nice, relaxing evening.  We were planning on ending it by going to bed early (we’re so OLD), but as we headed to bed we realized that we hadn’t seen Truman in awhile.  So we stuck our heads in the backyard to see if he was out there, since he’d been out while we were making dinner.  We didn’t find him, but we did find a loose board in the back corner!!  He’d gone out that board before, and we’d fixed it, but apparently it came un-fixed, and he was GONE!  So I headed for the front of the house, and walked up and down the block calling for him, in case he’d gone around.  Poor Josh got the bad end of the bargain, and got to hop the fence and thrash around in the woods looking for him with a flashlight.  We looked for 30-45 minutes, and I was pretty convinced that he was gone, and getting very sad.  Then, Josh found him in the woods, but Truman wouldn’t come anywhere near him!  I was standing in the backyard talking to Josh, and then all of a sudden I see this white and orange streak come through the loose board!  He ran from Josh and back into our yard.  We were so happy to have him back… and, since we knew he was safe, we both wanted to kill him! :)  Needless to say, he is grounded from going outside for awhile, at least until we fix that board again!  What a stinker…

Anyway, so that’s the exciting life around here in the last week!  Never a dull moment…

Out to the Country

I’m a week behind, but had so many good pictures that I couldn’t resist posting these before the events of this weekend! :)  Last weekend we headed to Mom & Dad’s to hang out with Clint and Cullen, who came into town to pick up a truck and do some turkey hunting!  We ended up being out there both Friday & Saturday night.  Friday the girls and I went out in the afternoon to just hang out for awhile with Grandma, since Josh was on a World Changers trip to West Memphis, AR. 

It was a beautiful day, so I took out my camera and played for awhile, while Grandma & the girls watched several movies! :) 

Bob: always a willing subject… or at least a curious one!

Joy, on high alert!

Since it was late April, I knew that the may apples would be out! 

I’ve always associated them with my birthday.  The funny thing is, this year I saw my very first may apple, barely out of the ground, when Josh and I went on a walk in IL… the day I had Audrey!  So now may apples mean my birthday AND Audrey’s!

They’re kind of hard to see because they’re under the leaves and face the ground, but the flowers are actually pretty…

Just a pretty flower next to the house!

Once I got done goofing off, I headed back to the house and found that the girls (or at least Laney) had gotten tired of the movie and were enjoying the weather outside.  We drug out the old wagon, and went for a ride! 

It’s hard to beat dandelions!

When Ruth got home, she and I went for a walk.  They are in the midst of remodeling the old house where I grew up, and we wanted to go check on the progress.  It looks pretty different!  They are really totally redoing everything on the inside. 

While down there we met the two kitties that live next door.  They’re pretty cute!

However, they were not so happy to see the dogs who tagged along on our walk!  Made for some great shots of “Halloween kitties!”

The funny thing is, I was not very good about taking pictures while we were actually hanging out with people!  I was having too much fun telling stories and talking with everyone… and trying to juggle two girls!  So I don’t have any pics of Clint & Cullen.  We sure had fun hanging out with them, though, and they each got a turkey when they went hunting, so it was a successful trip!  Always good to see family!

 

On another note, Laney started swimming lessons at Macher’s last week.  She’s going with her daycare, but since they are on Wednesday mornings, we’ve just decided that she’ll stay home with me until it’s time for lessons (10), and then I’ll take her there.  I like watching the lessons, and seeing what they do so I can help her “practice” her monkey lips and pancake hands and gliding arms (all their terms).  The teachers were really great with them, this lesson was double-booked so they had the 6 kids from Cannery Row along with 10 or so kids from another daycare.  That’s a lot of 2/3 year olds in one pool!  They split them, since it was our first week, and one teacher took the six kids from Cannery Row.  She was very patient with them, helping them “swim” out to a table in the middle one at a time, and somehow managing to keep the other 5 kids sitting on a step along the side of the pool.  One little girl kept not staying on the step, and the teacher just watched her constantly.  Once she let her walk off to where she couldn’t touch anymore, let her head go below water, and then just scooped her up and said “I told you to stay on the red step.”  Anyway, overall I was very impressed.  I didn’t get many pictures because my camera battery was dying, and because the light was not great.  But here are a couple:

Although they’re not supposed to splash when they’re waiting to swim, it’s very hard to resist!

Swimming out to the center with her teacher.

Anyway, so there’s the update from last week!  For more pictures, see the Baby Loo Two blog!  I update it every Thursday (so far)!