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!