Merry Christmas!!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, we sure did!!

Ice Skating

We have a local ice skating rink for the holiday season and I've been able to take Laurel twice. I'm hoping to be able to go one more time before it closes. Laurel took to it right away. She likes to skate all by herself, NOT holding my hand. She also loves to do turns, go in circles, and do little jumps. She thinks she is a pro.

Sometimes she even likes to make snow angels!

Fall

This Fall has really flown by. I feel like it should still be October and here it is almost January. I'm not sure if it is because Laurel is in school, but the time seems to go so fast. It feels like every year just goes faster than the one before. Laurel is growing up and I just want a pause button every now and then!

We had a lot of fun this Fall. Besides school, Laurel is doing gymnastics and we go to story time at the library every week. If the weather is nice we like to have lunch at the park after preschool. I ran a 5K on Labor Day and Laurel had fun cheering me on. My Moms Club is always having awesome activities one of our events was to go swimming at a indoor pool. That was so fun! We even hosted a Halloween party at our house with a hay ride. The kids LOVED the hay ride! No wonder time has gone by so fast, we are having lots of fun!

Laurel waiting for gymnastics to start.

Swimming!

Sometimes Daddy even meets us for lunch after preschool!

Laurel was a Fairy Princess for Halloween, her idea of course.

Preschool

Laurel started "real" preschool this Fall and it has been a huge success. Last year she went to a Mother's Morning Out program one day a week and I was a little worried about her going three days a week for three hours a day. As usual, I had nothing to worry about. Laurel loved it from day one. She walked in and couldn't even be bothered to hug Matt and I goodbye. She was too busy playing and never looked back. Matt and I stood outside by the one way mirror for a little while and watched her and she was having a grand old time. She is growing up so fast; it is sad and exciting at the same time.

She loves going to school everyday. They are always doing something fun. Besides having a real PE class in a real gym and a music class once a week they also have special color days once a month, they have gone on field trips, put on programs, etc. Everyday is something new and fun.

Laurel's school is through a local Baptist church and they learn bible verses every month and have chapel once a month. Laurel loves to memorize her bible verses.

I'm so happy she enjoys school and loves her teachers and friends and I hope it stays that way throughout her school days!

Here is a picture of Laurel on the first day of school hanging up her bag.

Laurel before "Fun with Apples" day at school.

Laurel having a ball at the school Fall Festival.

First field trip!! So much fun.

Laurel helping her Grandma with a special story time after she was chosen to take Mr. Bubbles (the class mascot) home for the weekend.

Laurel's first program was a huge hit. Matt and I loved hearing the bible verse, songs, poems, and cute little voices of a bunch of three year olds.

The school year is halfway over which I can't believe. I hope the second half is just as much fun as the first!

Bye, bye, Summer!!

I can't believe I did not blog all summer! Just a warning, I'm going to put our ENTIRE summer in this one post, so it will be long and contain a LOT of pictures. Just so you are warned... ;)

We had a really fun and busy summer. It actually started out pretty rough. Laurel was waking up at the crack of dawn everyday, which would be fine, except she was acting tired and grouchy ALL day long. It was not fun. I racked my brain trying to figure out why she was suddenly waking up so early when she was obviously still tired. Finally after a few weeks I realized our dogs had decided to start sleeping on the front porch and were waking her up at the first hint of light each morning. It is a long and boring story about how I figured it out so I won't go into detail. The important thing was as soon as we blocked off the front steps from the dogs, Laurel began sleeping to her normal 7:30am again. Thank goodness!! We were all having a hard time there for awhile!

We did so many fun things this summer.

We swam and did a lot water play of course. It was so hot there wasn't much else we could do outside for long.

My friend took this picture at a birthday party and it is one of my favorites from this summer.

Laurel did summer gymnastics which she loved.

We went to story time at the library every week and Laurel completed all of her summer reading.
We did a BUNCH of fun activities with my Moms Club.

Like dress up like a cow for free food at Chick-fil-a!

Like meet the tooth fairy and learn about brushing out teeth!

Like reading and sharing books (Laurel was my helper)!
Like getting to tour a fire station and sit in a real firetruck!

4th of July was really fun this year and we did a lot of baking projects and crafts in the week leading up to Independence Day.
Little cutie waiting on fireworks

First sparkler!
Playing after church in red, white, and blue. :)

The best part of the summer was our vacation to Florida to visit family. We spent most of our time at the beach or swimming in the pool. We even spent one day at Disney World! It was really fun and Laurel has been obsessed with going back to the "Magical Kingdom" ever since. Thanks to my wonderful Aunt Cathy and Uncle Danny for letting us crash their house!

Disney!!
Laurel loved having a pool "right in the backyard" and spent most of her time wet.
She even started jumping in and having her head go under, something she would NOT do last year.

Laurel also got to meet her Great Grandpa Fred who is in his 90s.

Laurel really enjoyed her first putt putt gold experience.

Another of her favorite parts of vacation was walking "Carlie" (really named Harlie but Laurel re-named her) every night.

At the very end of the summer my brother and his wife and their two kids came to visit. Laurel loved having her cousins stay at our house. She had someone to play with every minute of the day and she loved it. She really liked having her three year old cousin sleep in her room and they did way better than I expected and actually slept pretty well. I really enjoyed spending time with my little brother and sister-in-law. I was sad on the way home from dropping them off at the airport. We hope to see them again soon!

Laurel and Ari were fast friends. They had a lot of fun together.

They put on the cutest puppet show.

The Doss Family, one of my favorite families!!

Once my family left I had a week to clean up, organize, and get Laurel ready for her first day of "real" preschool. Even though it is still in the high 90s, summer is over. Laurel is in her second week of preschool and loving it. She goes three days a week for three hours each day. Don't worry, her first day of school will have a post all its own.

I must say I am really looking forward to Fall. Summer is not my favorite season. I used to love it when I was a teacher (since I didn't have to work!), but I'm not really a fan now. It is so hot all the time and some times I feel trapped indoors. I can't wait for the cool Fall weather and all the fun holidays and events that will soon be here. I can't wait to spend most of our time outside without feeling like we are melting!!

Goodbye summer, till next year.

Hello Summer!!

Laurel finished school last week and we are ready to have a fun filled summer. Lots of swimming (it is already so HOT), gymnastics, $3 kids movies, story time at the library, and lots of time with friends.

Speaking of school it seems like Laurel just started her first year and now she is all done.

Here she is on her first day of school last August in front of the doors to her school

And here she is on her last day in roughly the same spot. What a difference! She is such a big girl now!

I'm really looking forward to this summer and I'm praying we don't have any broken bones like last summer!

Mountain Vacation

Would you believe my new year's resolution was to be better about updating my blog? Yeah, I claim an epic fail on that goal! I AM going to be better about it though, starting now!

If you have read one of the two posts I did this year then you know that Laurel was sick on her birthday in January. Matt came down with the flu really bad on her birthday and was down and out for a whole week. He has never been sick more than a day since I've known him! Then Laurel got sick again and she was sick on my birthday in February. Then I got sick. Then Laurel got sick. You get the picture. It was a LONG winter. We were finally all well by the end of March. We decided to go on a little vacation to celebrate mine and Laurel's birthdays and Matt and my 8th wedding anniversary. We went to the mountains on our honeymoon so we decided to go up to Helen since it is a pretty short drive (Laurel does not do well for car long trips!).

We had a really good time and did lots of fun stuff.

No vacation would be complete without:

A visit to the Cabbage Patch General Hospital.
I used to go all the time when I was a kid and I was so excited to take Laurel. She loved it and did NOT want to leave.

She loved watching the baby being born and even got to give "her" a middle name. She named it Laurel. :)

A visit to the bear reserve.
The bear pictured here ate Laurel's bow. It fell off into his cage and he ate it right up. Laurel was very upset and was screaming and crying. It was quite the scene we made!

Once she calmed down she fed them some treats.

A visit to the reptile house.
Laurel loved the turtle and fed it lots of lettuce.

Matt liked the snake and Laurel also petted it. I took pictures and kept my hands to myself!

Pink lemonade!

Santa Claus!
Laurel wanted to know why he was not at the North pole.

Trains!
This was an amazing model train display!

A visit to see the beautiful river flowing through Helen

A little hotel bed jumping!

A horse and carriage ride!

Laurel LOVED it!

Ice cream!
Even when it is cold no vacation is complete without a little strawberry ice cream.

Lots of goodies!
We got some fudge and it was so yummy!

Making wishes!

Pictures that we can use to blackmail Laurel in high school!

Dinner on the River!

Breakfast in bed!

Swimming!

And...one more stop to see the Cabbage Patch kids!

It may look like we go on vacation a lot (since there are two vacation posts on the front page of my blog) but that really just shows how bad I am about blogging. This is only the third vacation we have gone on since we had Laurel. The first one was to FL when she was seven months old and between the seven hour car ride and Laurel not sleeping or napping, it was a rough few days. We took a long break and have recently gone on two vacations with Laurel. She is at such a fun age and even though she didn't sleep as well this vacation as she did our beach trip, she did great. She still talks about how much fun she had and will list all the cool stuff we did. She asks all the time to go back, but does not want to see the bears again!