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!

An Oops Kind of Day

Laurel and I are both sick today. She is at the end of her illness and is feeling a lot better. I'm at the beginning of my sickness and I am feeling tired and weak. Therefore all day all I have heard is Laurel yelling and running around like a little nut. I've also heard a lot of, "Mommy PLAY with me" in the whiniest voice possible. So I've been trying to play with her while I'm laying on the couch which is NOT easy.

This morning she wanted to play so I suggested that she sing me a song. She usually sings stuff like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" when I ask her to sing a song. Today she busts out with "I Need You Now" by Lady Antebellum. She has heard this song in the car a few times and that is it. Regardless to say I was half mortified, half cracking up when she sings, "It's a quarter after one, I'm a little drunk and I need you now." You can guess what came next, "What's drunk mean Mommy?" Um, okay let's play something else (and make a mental note to be more careful what we sing along to in the car).

Later today she wanted to play with her little Princess dolls. Then she wanted to draw. I look up to see that she has taken the skirt off Snow White and has her dancing on the pencil she had been using to draw a picture. She says, "Mommy are dolls supposed to dance on pencils?" I start cracking up (inappropriately again) and she then says, "What? Should she dance on the table instead?"

Here is a picture. You can't see because of her hand, but Snow White is in red underwear and red high heels, nice.

I have some days where I feel like a really good mom. On those days we do lots of fun, age appropriate activities. Today is not one of those days, but I can laugh about it at least.

A Very Un-Happy Birthday

Laurel turned three years old today. We had decided not to do a big party like last year, mostly because Laurel is in the prime of her terrible twos. When she is sweet, she is very sweet, but when she is bad, she is VERY bad. I could just see her throwing a huge fit right in the middle of her party. She brings new meaning to the phrase, "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to!"

So we just decided to do a small celebration. That quickly turned into a couple small celebrations. I would bring treats and favor bags to her school on Wednesday. On Friday we would go to the aquarium with her best friend Emily and her mom. On Saturday we would take her to ride a horse, which is what she asked to do for her birthday. Then on Monday, her actual birthday, we would have our good friends over for pizza, cupcakes, and presents.

We were all very excited about these plans. Laurel has been talking about turning three since before Christmas. So Wednesday rolls around and I take the treats and favor bags (which I had spent two hours the night before putting together) to school. Laurel goes into her class, walks up to the first kid she sees and says, "Those are my presents for my birthday. You can't touch them!" See what I mean about the terrible twos? So I explain to Laurel that, yes, she will get a bag, but so will all the other kids. She looks at me like I am crazy and says, "But it's MY birthday!" I leave and she is upset about the bags and I'm thinking, "Why did I even waste my time on those things?" When I go to pick her up from school, the teacher tells me that she has been acting grouchy and might be getting sick. I chalk it up to her being mad about the bags, but later that afternoon I notice she is a little hot. By evening she has a fever of 103 and I feel terrible for sending her to school when she was sick and probably infecting other kids in the process. She is still sick Thursday with a fever so we cancel Friday's aquarium. She is still sick Friday so we cancel horse back riding for Saturday. But by Saturday she is feeling better so we keep Monday's plans.

But today rolls around and now Matt is sick with a fever so we have to cancel those birthday plans too. I told Laurel that her friend's would not be coming over after she woke up from her nap and she burst into tears. I felt like crying with her. She was pretty upset for about 30 minutes, but some presents and cupcakes made it a little better.

I know in the grand scheme of things, this is not very important, but I hate that Laurel's whole birthday has been postponed/ canceled. We managed to have a little fun tonight with a sick Matt and a disappointed Laurel, but I was sad that she didn't get to have a great birthday like the last two years. We have moved everything to this weekend and I really hope it works out. But tonight as I rocked her to sleep I kept thinking about this day three years ago and how much our lives have changed since then. Laurel brings so much joy and energy into everyday life. She reminds me how to have fun and take it all in and I'm so blessed to have her in my life.

Happy Birthday Laurel!! I love you!!

Funnies

Laurel has been cracking me up lately. I'm trying to keep a list of the funny things she says so I don't forget. Here are a few of her latest funnies:

We were taking a walk one day and Laurel turned to me and said so seriously, "Mommy do you know that girls pee pee and boys poo poo?" I tried a few times to explain that this was not correct, but she was NOT having it. I finally just left it alone and let her be right.

Another day we were just hanging out and she asked me, "Mommy do you know what gracefully means? It means when I dance beautifully!"

Laurel takes gymnastics and a week few weeks ago her teacher had her nails painted a pretty color. Laurel made sure to tell Miss Amanda that she liked her nails and then asked, "Did your Mommy paint them for you?"

The other day I was talking on the phone and Laurel wanted me to get off and play with her. After a few times of asking me she suddenly yelled, "You're not being gorgeous to me!" Lately whenever I do something that she does not like (like brush her hair) she tells me that I'm not gorgeous. Nice.

Matt had to take a big test at the end of October for his Professional Engineering License and we had prayed for him to do well the night before. When he got home from the test I asked him if he did okay and Laurel piped up and said, "Did you get first place? Did they give you a ribbon?"

Laurel was being crazy a few days ago and crawling "like when I was a little baby" and she hit her lip. We had just talked about how Heavenly Father and Jesus made our bodies and how our bodies can heal themselves. The next morning she drank some OJ and it hurt her lip. She yelled out, "Awww, man! Jesus didn't heal my lip yet!"

I hope these made you laugh! And here is a picture of my funny little girl just cause she is so stinking cute!

Goodbye Summer!

At the end of September we went on a vacation to Tybee Island. It was such fun just having a few days of family time. Laurel loved everything, but her favorites (according to her) were the waves at the beach, swimming in the pool (especially at night), staying up late, playing with Daddy "all day and in the night" and getting ice cream whenever she wanted. Here are just a few pictures of our vacation; I took over 800 pictures and these are a *few* of my favorites.

Laurel loved playing with her Daddy on the beach. They enjoyed jumping over the waves, floating in the ocean, and building sandcastles to name a few. Laurel kept telling me to go sit on the beach chair; no problem sweetie! A lot of these picture were taken from the comfort of my beach chair. It was great for me to watch her have so much fun with Matt since he is usually working and she is with me mostly.

I had to get a few traditional beach shots. Laurel wasn't big on the posing, but let me take a few.

Once I let her run free she had a great time. I LOVE this shot. It shows what a blast she was having at the beach.

A picture with my sweet baby; we had just finished doing "noses" (from Toy Story 3 in case you don't watch kid's movies).

Matt and Laurel watching the sun set on the pier. I love how relaxed she looks in this picture (that is rare for Laurel!).

Laurel swimming on our last morning. She always makes me hold her in the water, but she was swimming like a little fish (if fish wore floaties) with her Daddy.

We had such a great time and we are happy for Fall (even if it still feels like summer!)