Memorial Day Weekend

We have had an awesome start to a long weekend. The girls are playing quietly, so I have a few moments to write this post. Here are some highlights of yesterday.

We went to Uncle Alyan's and Aunt Jaynie's house. (Matt's brother, Alan and his wife, Jayne.) We decided to go fishing. Alan knows a guy with a farm pond that is stocked...well, probably over-stocked is a better description. Laura brought her Dora the Explorer fishing pole. She held it just over the side of the dock, and before her bobber even hit the water, she had a fish on the hook. She probably caught twenty-five fish. It was truly the way a 3 year old should fish! She could not have had more fun. She did an amazingly good job reeling the fishing in to her. She wasn't afraid to touch them at all. (She even kissed a couple of them. Ewww!) She kept saying, "Daddy I'm a good fisher." We have several good photos from the day.

Next we went home and husked corn and sliced potatoes for dinner. Well Alan sliced potatoes, and Jayne husked corn, to be exact. Hannah was loving the corn. It was her first corn on the cob experience. At dinner time, she even liked it. Laura has had it before, and she loves it. Dinner was delicious! (Ribs, corn, potatoes, and strawberry pie!) Summer has officially begun!

We played cards after dinner, and Laura was sitting on Uncle Alan's lap. She was helping him throw cards out each time it was his turn. Well at one point, he did something she didn't like, and she said, "Don't give me that face!" She is repeating everything these days. I'm sure I have said that at some point.

Hannah also is getting quite the attitude when she doesn't like something these days. She will look at me with a scowl and sometimes hit or push. Or sometimes she just scowls. I will have to try to capture it sometime on camera. She still does the cute scrunchy smile. She is really developing vocally too. She tries to repeat things she hears. For instance yesterday, Alan got her to say, "I love you." And she called for their dog several times, " Joe Joe!" She is walking pretty good these days too. She can easily walk across a room, and she walks outside. She doesn't mind the grass on her feet. I will say the one downfall of this moment in time is that she is still teething, getting her first molars, so she is waking up a lot at night.

A couple of funnier stories from earlier in the week. So Matt and his brother, Alan, are working on remodeling our master bath. It has not been usable since we moved into this house. That's another story. Well we had a leak to fix from that bathroom that was dripping onto the kitchen ceiling. This week, while I was out of town for work, Matt and Alan worked on it. They had to cut a hole in the kitchen ceiling. Laura did not know what to think of this. She asked Alan, "Uncle Alan, did you break our house?" Then Matt and Alan were upstairs working on it, and Laura was watching TV downstairs, and Laura yelled up to them, " I don't want to be by myself with the hole!" So funny. Clearly she does not like construction in her house.

I'm sure there will be more later. I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend.

Here is a recap of our week, with a few stories.

Last week I came home late from work one night to a surprise. As you may recall, Laura got a sweeper like mommy's at a garage sale last weekend. Well she was having a party in the living room. She had torn up several sheets of paper into confetti, and it was scattered all over the living room floor. She said that she was throwing me a party. I think she learned this from the circus last weekend. After a few minutes, she said she was going to clean up the party, and she got out her little dirt devil and started sweeping the carpet. Of course, it's just a toy, so the paper stayed on the floor until the weekend, when I got around to sweeping it. It was worth the mess! She was so happy.

As I was getting ready for work one day this week, I was wearing a suit. Laura asked me, "Mommy, are you wearing a dress?" I said that yes, Mommy had to dress up for work and that I wished I could wear play clothes like her. Laura said, "Well, Mommy you can pretend that your dress is play clothes." I laughed. Well, I suppose I could pretend. It's just not the same.

We had a really fun weekend this past weekend too. Matt had to work on Saturday, so I took the girls to the zoo in the morning. It was our first trip to the zoo this summer. They had a great time! We looked at the flamingos, the elephants, the manatees, the lions, the polar bears, and several others. We had a Canadian goose kind of chase us. I was trying to talk to a friend, and it just kept moving closer to us. I even moved a couple of times, and it would move with us. Laura wanted to pet it, but I was way too nervous to let her. (And they're just gross!) I think it thought we had food. When we were over at the polar bears, Laura said she wanted to go see the monkeys next. Well, if you know the Columbus zoo, the monkeys are far way from the polar bears. I could tell that she was wearing down. So we just headed back towards the exit, and sure enough she was wiped out by the time we got to the car. I think we will go again soon one morning. We were only there about two and half hours, and it was about perfect. After naps, the girls spent a good amount of time playing outside. We just enjoyed the nice weather. I am so happy summer is here! I'm getting tired of the rain.

On Sunday my mom and dad came down to help us put in our flowers and a few other shrubs. Laura loves to help Papa outside. As we dug holes to plant, Laura collected all of the worms in each hole and put them in her Halloween bucket. Eventually, she told my mom, "Papa is getting me too dirty." She has become quite the princess!

I am traveling this week for work, and I was talking to Laura on the phone the first morning. She told me very bluntly, "I don't have any pigtails; Daddy's not good at hair, Mommy." I laughed! Matt put Hannah on speaker, and she got a little upset because she could hear me but couldn't see me. I can't wait to give them a big hug!

The Best Show on Earth

We had a great week, capped off by a fantastic weekend. I will start with some short funnies.

We played outside one night last week, when it wasn't raining, and of course Laura was swinging on her swing set. For the first time, she attempted to get off the swing before it was completely stopped, and she fell. Laura is always very dramatic when she gets "boo boo's". With big tears coming down her face, she said to me, "I'm going to have to tell Daddy about this!" I was trying hard not to laugh. When Daddy got home, she had already forgotten about it. Later that night, as we were getting ready for bed, Laura said, "We have to brush our teeth, since we played outside." Well, at least she got the action right; maybe not the reason for it! Also, I swear that she does brush her teeth everyday, not just when she plays outside! (Because I know some of you were thinking that :))

Another thing Laura has been obsessed about this past week is her princess cell phone. She got this phone a while back when we were in Bucyrus one weekend. It was one of those impulsive, check-out aisle buys. I guess this one was well worth the $2 I spent since she loves it! She is constantly having "conversations" with friends at school or grammy or papa or some other make-believe friend. She couldn't find it when we got back from Bucyrus. I happened to be looking through the diaper bag and found it in the back pocket. Laura told Matt that I was the best mom ever for finding her phone. Score one for Mom! She took it to school one day last week, walked in the door to the classroom, and just stood there and held it out in front of her. Matt said that her friends circled her and looked at it; Laura beamed with pride. We accidentally, we, being Mommy, left it at school that night. Laura promptly scolded me at home. Lose the point I earned. I remembered to get it from her cubby the next day though. She talked on it half way to school this morning. She was talking to mommy's friend, Stephanie, whom she has only met twice. But we saw her in the grocery store this weekend, so she must have been fresh in Laura's head.

Another funny thing Laura has started. I think funny should be in quotes. Whenever she is not getting something she wants, she says, "Fine Mommy!" I think the little attitude has begun!

As you may have seen on Facebook, we finally got the infant swing for the swing set this week. So Hannah gets to play on the swing set too. She loves to swing! The first time we did it, she kicked her feet and smiled the whole time. She did get a huge mosquito bite from being outside this week though. I was not happy about that! I am going to have to slather them with bug spray every time we go outside, which I am not excited about doing.

The weekend was awesome! We started by shopping for Tammra's birthday present on Friday night. I knew that Laura would like this activity, and she did. She bargained the whole time about what she could get for herself. She ended up with a plastic outdoor golf set. She played with it yesterday in the drizzle. It was cute. Matt says that she golfs like him; not sure if that's good. Next Laura and I went garage saleing Saturday morning. Hannah came too in the stroller. Laura had a great time! She was carrying her little pink purse and perusing the stuff. We found one particularly good garage sale, and Laura bought a sweeper, "like mommy's". It is currently standing up right next to mommy's in the living room. The only garage sale that Hannah was interested in was selling cookies and lemonade. She ate her cookie and part of Laura's - such a little cookie monster!

Next we went to Tammra's birthday party in Logan. The kids had a blast. It was at a park, so they of course swung on the swing set. Laura could have just stayed on the swing set the whole time. But we did peel her away long enough to watch Tammra open presents and eat some cake. The other hit of the party was Bryce and Caitlin's present, a bubble machine. That kept the kids entertained for a long time, chasing bubbles. Even Hannah took part in the grass. She loves bubbles. What kids don't?

The evening was topped off with a night at the Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey circus. I was unsure of how much the kids would really enjoy it, especially after a full day of activities. I was particularly concerned about Hannah. She usually is pretty cranky by then, so any plans at that time are a crap shoot. Well, I was completely wrong. The kids LOVED every minute of it, even Hannah. It was so neat to see Josh and Chelsea holding Laura and Hannah and showing their little cousins different things that were going on during the show. Hannah could not quit pointing at things and saying, "that. that." Hannah loved Uncle Alan's lemonade too. Laura was literally speechless. She just stared and smiled. On the way home, she had a light-up want that required her to hold her finger on the button to keep the light working. She did not take her thumb off the button the whole way home. In the morning, she asked me if we could go to the circus again. It was a great night of memories.

Wedding Weekend

What a weekend! It was a whirlwind of fun and celebration. We spent the weekend in Bucyrus and the surrounding area. My cousin, Joe, got married this weekend. Let me back up for a second. I may have mentioned or you may have seen on Matt's FB page that Laura was enthralled by the royal wedding. Even a few days after it, she wanted to see the highlights on the news. She was glued to the TV. I told her that we would be going to a wedding this weekend for Joe and Anne. So all week, Laura told me that she wanted to dance with Anne. She is very into the dancing aspect of princesses and weddings. I'm not sure why that is. Anyway, the church where they were married was small and intimate, which was perfect. Laura watched wide-eyed during the processional, as Anne came down the aisle. She loved every minute of it. I think we better start saving our money! The reception was equally awesome for Laura. I had to hold her back through the formal dances, bride/groom first dance and father/bride and groom/mother dance. Once they were finished, Laura was literally on the dance floor until she dropped. She danced and jumped and twirled the night away. We were all quite surprised at how long she lasted. I'm not even sure that she ate anything.

Poor little Hannah has been fighting a cold again, so she is all congested and not sleeping well. She was a trooper this weekend. She made it through all the running around and the wedding, which was loud and a late night. She practiced her walking a lot this weekend. She likes to hold onto the chair and wall and walk around. She has been doing that for a while, but she is venturing much further away and doing it with more confidence these days. She will stand up in the middle of the room and take a few steps once in a while too. She so desperately wants to keep up with Laura. Whenever Laura left the room this weekend, she would drop down to her knees and crawl as fast as she could. Of course, she couldn't keep up, so then she got frustrated and fussed. She just doesn't want to be left behind!

Some other cute things that Hannah says: she will hit you and if you say "ouch," she repeats, "ouch." It's adorable. She often says, "uh, oh" when she drops her pacifier or anything else she wants. I think I have mentioned before that she yells for Matt a lot. She says, "Dahh!!" And she will continue yelling for him until he responds to her. It was particularly funny one day last week, when he was outside mowing. She was standing at the back door, looking out the window, yelling for him. She is getting very impatient. For instance, when she wants her sippy of milk or her dinner, she wants it now and will scream until you put food on her tray. Fun fun! That means mommy needs to move with lightning speed - to preserve our sanity! :)

Laura had a grand time the rest of the weekend too at PaPa's house. She carried, or rather dragged, Bailey, the cat around the yard. She collected a worm, which we brought home. It is in a plastic bowl with dirt on our counter. I'm afraid that it might be short-lived. She played outside with PaPa on Sunday for about three hours, while the rest of the family napped.

And she didn't slow down when we went home. In fact on the way home, which was about 5:00pm, she told Matt that now she could do all the things that she wanted to do. And she started listing them. She wanted to swing on her swing set, drive her car, ride her bike and play in her sandbox. I think she only played on the swing set that night. Then we rounded her up for a bath. She has more energy than I could ever hope to have!

Another funny thing...last night I noticed that she has a hidden stash of M&M's in our freezer. She hides them from Hannah. Hannah absolutely LOVES M&M's. Whenever Laura grabs one, which we still have them around from Easter, Hannah freaks out and wants one. Well, Laura apparently does not want to share every time. So she has put some in a plastic container and is hiding them in the freezer. Hilarious!

I don't have any pictures on my phone from the weekend. I will post some from Matt's phone later.

Too Much Fun

We just had too much fun last weekend. It warrants another post. On Saturday, the Childresses came over for a visit. I told Laura on Wednesday or Thursday that Avery was coming over on Saturday, and she could not have been more excited. She asked me at least once a day if Avery was coming that day. On Saturday morning, she asked me about a dozen times, "Is Avery coming yet?" Well she had an absolute ball with her friend, Avery that day. They played on her swing set, of course. They played babies and with her puppies (stuffed animals). Two of the cuter things they did together were play doctor and pick all of the dandelions in daddy's yard. For the dr. game, they each took turns being the patient. The patient laid on the pillow with a blanket covering her, while the Dr. took her temperature, administered shots, and listened to her breathing with the stethoscope. Laura's and Avery's conversations were hilarious. They often commented on the shots, naturally the most traumatic part of seeing the doctor. It was great. We only about half listened since we were talking amongst ourselves. But what I caught of it was adorable. The other game was one which daddy greatly appreciated. Rachel and I were sitting on the patio, and the girls were playing in the sandbox initially. At some point, the fun expanded to Avery and Laura running to the yard and picking dandelions and putting them in the sandbox. Then when the flowers were gone, they resorted to picking grass (helping daddy with the mowing) and putting the grass in the sandbox. So now the sandbox has tons of flowers and grass in it. But in Matt's mind, it's all worth it if the yard is free of dandelions! Another added benefit is that they both got plenty of exercise, which of course adds value to the sleepiness factor at night! Most importantly, the girls had fun while Mommy got to visit with her friend.

A funny conversation at the beginning of the visit:
Rachel: "Avery, when is your birthday?"
Avery: "August"
Marie: "Laura, do you know when your birthday is?"
Laura: "Well....it's tricky."

She's a good staller!

Peyton and Hannah had fun too. They crawled around and stole each other's pacifiers, a good day for babies. And of course Matt and Steve grilled us a yummy dinner. The first grilling of the season for us.

Another exciting event happened in our household this past weekend. On Sunday Hannah took her first steps!!! YAY!! This is completely credited to Matt. Hannah has gotten very good at standing independently, without holding on to anything for support. She usually will stand and dance in place (shake her hips). Well, Matt marched in place and said, "step, step, step." And Hannah repeated him and took three steps forward. We couldn't get her to do it again that day, but she tried several times. She kept saying "step, step, step" too. I think she is well on her way to walking. We're so proud!

Here is a cute picture of Laura and Hannah on Sunday. I didn't take pictures of the kids on Saturday. I wish I would have. Next time.