Playing in the Snow

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!

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

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

Ok, so this is one of my favorite 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! :)

Happy New Year!

Look at me go, so many posts so close together!  I’ll really count myself successful if I can get Audrey’s weekly post done tomorrow… I should have time, but “life” (aka, 2 adorable daughters) tends to alter my plans occasionally! :)

Anyway, on to the subject of this post… New Year’s Eve!  As we have in several recent years (although not last year, because we were at Stacey’s wedding) we had a party with the youth group and went roller skating!  Our church always celebrates the New Year by having a Lord’s Supper Service at 11:30 that spans into the new year.  What a cool way to start the year off!  Anyway, we usually have a youth party beforehand, and this year we decided to go for it!  There is a local place, Empire Roller Rink, that does a New Year’s party, but since we leave before the “main event,” they give us a discount- just $5 to skate for a couple of hours.  Admittedly, roller skating is not my thing (kinda like coordination is not my thing… or maybe because coordination is not really my thing!), but I was excited to take Laney, and see how she’d do (although coordination is not really her thing either).

The rink had these cute fisher price-ish kid skates that just went on over her shoes.  At first, it was NOT a hit… she made it about 10 feet before she started crying and tried to turn around and go back.  We had to explain to her that she couldn’t go backwards, she had to go all the way around, and she was not real happy, but she did eventually make it all the way around the rink.  Partway through she figured out that if she stuck her skates forward and locked her knees, she could just slide instead of actually skate.  Unfortunately, that was a little hard on Mommy & Daddy!  But, after one trip around, definitely NOT a fan!

(yes, that’s Ariel hanging by her hair… she did that a lot that night)

So, after that first trip around, Laney spent a lot of time doing this:

Standing on the bench, talking to whoever stopped, and never failing to wave and yell “HI, DADDY!” every time Josh zipped by.  Every time we asked her if she wanted to go again, she flat refused.  Finally, we must have worn her down, because she said “Fine, I don’t care, whatever!” and put her skates back on. 

This time she headed out with Daddy & Uncle Charlie:

The result was, well, much the same.  She was fine if she just locked her knees and let them propel her along, but did a lot of stumbling and wasn’t very happy about it if they tried to actually make her skate.  I was definitely thinking that skating was not going to happen often! 

Then, the workers at Empire came to the rescue… she brought us this little contraption:

I was a little skeptical at first, because how big a difference could it really make?  But, wow, Laney was in heaven!  She loved it… she grabbed ahold of it, set off, and absolutely would not stop skating the rest of the night.  We had some serious trouble getting her off when it was time for them to play games! 

So skating turned out to be a big success for Miss Laney, thanks to the observant workers at Empire! 

On to some of the other events from the night…

Yes, we brought Audrey… she spent a lot of time hanging out with Grandma Price, who doesn’t really skate… wonder where I got it from?! :)

The rink did Minute to Win It games as part of the New Year’s party, and we were still there for the first one- sit on a skate and use your arms to do two laps around some cones in 1 minute.  Of course, the guys had to try it…

Corey almost made it around twice… he was seriously hampered by the fact that he had inline skates- the brakes are on the back!

James made it with like 20 seconds to spare…

Josh would probably have really liked to give it a try, but he thought that might be a bit much for his shoulder… the whole roller skating itself was probably not the best idea (but since they didn’t have to do any repair work to the tendon, he couldn’t really reinjure it, he would just hurt REALLY BAD if he fell… which he didn’t, thankfully). 

And, who doesn’t love a roller skating action shot?!  Corey & Andrea…

So, anyway, that was our New Year’s Eve… Josh and the rest of the crew went on to church after we were done skating, but the girls and I headed home, since if we went to church I’d just have to sit in the nursery with them anyway… I was hoping they’d fall asleep in the car, then I could just carry them in and lay them down asleep, and still do the Lord’s Supper.  No dice, though, so we headed home, I put them to bed, and watched the ball drop on TV…

We did celebrate the next morning with a yummy breakfast: toad-in-the-hole (or egg-in-toast, depending on your upbringing), bacon, and some sparkling grape juice, which Laney thought was awesome.  We gave her a fancy cup, poured some for her, and told her it was grape juice.  She took a drink, and then said “IT HAS SODIE IN IT!!”  It was pretty cute! 

So a fun, relaxing New Year’s for us… we are enjoying our time together before Josh’s big move on the 22nd.  We will sure miss our Daddy!  But 2011 is definitely going to bring some big adventures to the Looten family, and we can’t wait!

More Christmases!

Well, our Christmas adventure was not even close to over after we opened presents at our house!  We packed up the girls and headed off to Grandma & Grandpa Price’s for breakfast and, of course, more presents! :)

By the time we got there, Grandma was still working on breakfast, so the girls curled up in a chair to warm up.  Well, or Laney curled up in the chair, and Audrey, who had finally really woken up, mostly just tortured her.  This is not a look of love…

Grandma outdid herself on breakfast, and it was delicious (as usual!).  And then the present opening commenced!  Laney had a lot of fun passing out presents (that was pretty much her job at all of our Christmas celebrations), and then it was time to rip and tear! :)

One of Josh’s favorite presents, from Ruth.  Pretty studly! :)

The boys all got headlamps as a fun little gift.  So, naturally, they all had to model them.  And, since they were modeling, I thought I should get a picture.  However, it was several shots like this:

…before I got one even resembling a posed picture.  Boys!

After opening presents, we played with our new toys for awhile, then loaded the car up again and headed on to Springfield for two more Christmases! 

We started at the Looten’s, where we opened presents with Josh’s Mom & Dad, Tim, Mally, and Grandma Jo.  The Wilson clan wasn’t there, since they just moved to Tennessee, so we definitely missed having them around.  But we still had a good time visiting, opening presents, and trading cookies with the Lootens!

Laney, passing out presents!  (Note she’s still in her pjs… that’s the way Christmas is supposed to be!)

Laney showing me her Tiana doll.  Funny story about this present, is that last time we were in Springfield, we were talking about Christmas as we drove around.  Suddenly, Laney piped up from the backseat “Daddy, say Tiana.” And Josh, being a good daddy, played along “Tiana.”  “Daddy, say doll.” “Doll.” “Daddy, say Tiana doll” “Tiana doll.”  “That’s what I’m getting for Christmas.”  So, of course, Grandma & Grandpa Looten had to oblige!  Obviously, she was QUITE excited about it…

After presents and lunch at the Looten’s, and some time to chill, we headed over to Grandma De & Grandpa Don’s house for one more round of visiting with family, eating, and opening presents!  This time it was with my mom’s family, who we really only get to see altogether during Christmas.  So it’s always fun to visit with them. 

Laney spent a lot of time with my cousin, Marra, playing games, and just having fun.  They were pretty cute together!   

A happy and tired Laney, all dressed up in a new outfit from Grandma Jo.  Perfect for Christmas, huh?!

We spent the rest of the weekend just hanging out with the Lootens.  Laney caught a nasty cold (as did Tim & Mally), so we didn’t go to church on Sunday.  We just spent a lot of time in our pjs, eating cookies and playing games.  Laney has started really liking to play games, as long as she is winning!  We were playing Cootie at Grandma & Grandpa Looten’s, and she really liked it.  A great game for a kid her age.  She is definitely competitive, though.  If she’s winning, it’s all happiness and smiles.  But if she’s losing (or just loses) you get this face: Which is the face Josh got on Christmas Eve, when he accidentally won a game of Chutes and Ladders!  I’m thinking that she got that competitive streak honestly, from BOTH sides.  It’ll be a good trait, as long as she learns to lose gracefully… it’s a learning process! :) 

So that was a crazy Looten Christmas!  It will be interesting to see how next year is different, since we’ll be living 8 hours away from most of our family.  Definitely still hoping to get to spend time with everyone, it may just not always be on Christmas anymore.  As far as our move goes, we are on track… Josh’s shoulder surgery went really well, so he can leave anytime.  The bank asked him to stay through the week of MLK, Jr. day, so he is planning to move on Jan 21st.  Our house is still on the market, we’ve had 4 showings so far, and we had another open house this weekend.  The house is definitely our biggest fear/worry right now, so we are hoping and praying for the right buyer.  When he moves, Josh will be living with the pastor and his wife until we can sell the house here, and buy a new one there.  So that’s the KY update… and a Christmas update, too!  Hope you all had a Christmas as filled with fun and family as we did!

Christmas at Home!

Well, it was definitely fun to have another first Christmas this year!  Audrey was a fan of the lights and all of that, but she was mostly a fan of ripping bows off of the presents!  So, many of the presents under our tree had the wrong bows, bows that had to be taped back on (many times), or were just flat out missing bows.  Oh well, at least she didn’t manage to pull over the tree! :)

Grandma Judy made Audrey her stocking, which is nice since they still all match!  It was fun to plan for presents for two, and the girls got one big joint present (we’ll take advantage of that for as long as we can!).  It is so hard with the girls, because there’s so much stuff that we know they’d love- so we just keep buying “one more thing.”  So, by the time Christmas rolled around, our tree (with the Santa presents) looked like this:

Audrey’s stocking & pile of presents from Santa

And Laney’s…

We were up waaayy too early (especially considering we had the whole family over for Christmas Eve dinner)!  And we have definitely created a monster in Miss Laney- we put her to bed at a reasonable time, but she was still awake looonng after we turned the lights off.  Kinda like us- we just laid there torturing each other, and NOT sleeping.  Our house gets excited for Christmas!!  Somehow, though, once the presents started coming out, Laney was pretty excited!Opening presents was definitely fun for her!

One of the “Oh, that is so cute, she’d love it, just one more thing” presents: A Superman shirt to match Daddy’s!

Laney may have loved it, but Audrey had some trouble figuring out why we were awake and what the heck was going on!  Maybe next year… :)

Laney’s gift with the funniest story: this was a broom we bought her in SDC.  We hid it in the closet, but she unfortunately found it one day, took it out of the closet, and yelled “I’m the Wicked Witch!”  We totally had to pry it out of her hands and hide it again.  So, this broom had to be from Mommy & Daddy, just in case she remembered it!  I don’t know if she did or not, but she’s sure enjoyed it!

The girls, trying out their new ride!  Love this adorable, Radio Flyer wagon!  I see some walks in our future!

  And, it wouldn’t be Christmas without a Looten family in their pjs picture!  Only took one, but it came out alright.  Everyone is at least looking towards the camera! :) 

Hope everyone else had a Christmas that was as joyful as our’s!  Up next… Christmas continues at the Price house & in Springfield!