Grandparent Shoot

Logan's grandparent's came in town this weekend to visit her and we thought since it was such a beautiful afternoon that we'd head out and get some good grandparent pictures at a few locations I haven't tried out yet.

Mike had to warm her up a bit before she was ready for pictures with other people. I love, love, love this shot of the two of them, it shows SO well how much fun she has with him!

Here are a couple of my favorites from the seminary portion of the shoot:

And I was so excited to have an excuse to take some railroad track pictures! The lighting was a little off but I did my best to edit them so they don't look too dark/bright (though, I know some came out a little funny):

Sweet girl.

I've Been Published!

If you're up for some light reading, I've written an article that was published on a cloth diapering blog here. I found a couple of little editorial errors but really wanted to make sure that if you want to do the calculations on your own about how much you'd save cloth diapering the link that's supposed to be there is this. Just do it, it's astonishing! (I know a lot of you don't cloth diaper so if you just want to use my numbers in the calculations it might be easier-- I have 23 fitteds--I've added to my stash since I wrote the article--each one cost $17.95 and the cost of energy/laundry is just about the same-within pennies and you can change the disposables to fit what you buy.)

In other news, Logan's friend Kate turned two this weekend and this morning I took our little sickie to the party. Mike and I have both been battling colds, mine turned into an upper respiratory infection and I'm on some meds for it, Mike lost his voice and then poor Logan came down with it. She's been running a fever, had the snots, cough, the load of it. :( BUT she was in good spirits today despite the fact that she felt so yucky when she woke up (motrin does WONDERS).

(she's getting a little more adventurous now...as soon as she gets a little quicker that's going to be t-r-o-u-b-l-e)

Little Sneak

Out of the corner of my eye this morning, I saw Logan grab the remote control while I was making coffee. I tried to keep track of where her movement was so as to not lose the thing (again..last time it took 3 months to find it) but lost sight of her after a minute. Mike and I looked for it but couldn't find it so we halted our search for a while. Before going on our morning outing today, I went to put Logan on her potty and look at what I found:

And to top it off, the potty lid was CLOSED so that little sneak was TRYING to hide the remote! I remember hiding remotes when I was younger to keep them from my siblings but Logan's siblings aren't even in existence yet...she'll have good practice I guess. I had strong and direct orders from Mike to disinfect the thing before it resurfaces in our living room. :)

After our little mystery was solved, we headed back to jumping beans to play. It was really nice this time because we had the whole place to ourselves for almost an hour!

See that giant slides behind Logan's shoulder(s)?

Oh yes, we went down them (about 25 times...huff huff):

After about 10 times, I took her up, held her hands and then let her go and she went by herself:

Moving On Up

I've been meaning to post about this for several weeks now but since we rarely eat out, I haven't had a chance to get some good pictures (and I know most of you skip past my writing for the pictures, anyway). Logan has been eating table food for a while now, and when she first started Mike and I easily could cut food off of our own plates when we were out and share with her...however, that doesn't seem to be enough for her anymore and so she's been ordering off of the kids menu now for a while. I don't know why this has me so excited...but it does. :)

Logan has quite an affinity for fruits and veggies, and pretty much nothing else. We have a really hard time getting her to eat meat of any kind. In all of my years of babysitting/interning in a children's ministry/teaching, I've never met a child that I've had to say, "Eat some more of your super fried and greasy yummy chicken nuggets and then you can have some more from your fruit cup" to...but I seem to have birthed that crazy kid. Could be worse, right? I secretly love having a child who loves all things healthy. It's a lot of fun to go out in public and see the shock on peoples' faces when she refuses the fries and goes for the broccoli.

Onto the pictures!

(there is a point to this little story and it does relate to the pictures, so it's ok to read it) We seem to have acquired a pet mouse (and by acquired, I mean he snuck in and ravaged through my bags of flour and has left me absolutely petrified). I had been hearing scratching/biting noises at night when Mike is working (because that's the only time those alarming sounds happen--when my manly husband isn't around to take care of it) and he had convinced me that I was nuts and it was only because he was gone that I was "hearing" things.

When I found a bag of flour chewed through in our pantry, though, we knew we had an issue. So, I went about life normally and just ignored the nagging thought that there was something sharing my space until this morning when the guys came to put traps in the kitchen and now I'm having a hard time stepping foot in there in fear that I'll see something other than peanut butter stuck in the trap. Yuck. So, we don't usually eat out, especially not when Mike isn't around to enjoy it, too...but I'm a fraidy cat and so instead of tip-toeing around the traps to fix lunch, we went and got some Christian Chicken. So sue me. :)

Fridge Phonics

Being someone who has taught in the primary grade levels and therefore has had the daunting task of teaching 6 year olds to read, I truly believe it is never to young to start teaching your babes to read. Obviously the most basic block in the reading tower is teaching your child the alphabet! Now that Logan has become a little more vocal and is more perceptive (and learning things like crazy), we wanted to start using the alphabet in our daily routines and also start teaching her some of those letter sounds (because if they can get the letters AND the letter sounds down at an early age then the reading becomes a lot less daunting of a task).

I did a lot of research and this toy seemed to be at the top of everyone's list...I actually wish I had had one when I was teaching--it would have made for a great learning center (hint, hint)! Really, anything from LeapFrog is wonderful, we have several videos we watch, as well. This toy is particularly wonderful because we can stick it to the door or move it to the kitchen when I'm cooking and she really will spend quite a while playing with the magnets. She's just now getting the hang of sticking the letters into the console (she mostly likes to just push buttons over and over to hear the sounds start and restart as you'll see), but it's been fun to sit with her and play with a toy that I know is building into her educational future. (It's especially fun to watch her dancing when the music starts)

Making Good Use of Daddy's Old T-Shirts

I've been going through Logan's closet again this week to put her winter clothes in storage and was sad to find several good onesies that either had snaps missing on the bottom, had nasty stains on the bottoms or just didn't fit around the bottom. Mike also went through his closet a few days ago and pulled out all of his old t-shirts that either need to be tossed or donated, so, I pulled a few of those from the bag and took some of her old onesies and put them to good use furthering L's spring/summer wardrobe!

Before:

In the process of conversion:

All done!

Here's the one I made for her last night:

It had a funny/ugly little bear embroidered on the front so I just covered it with the L and then added the flower to tie the whole thing together:

(we were at daddy's volleyball game in these pictures...don't think I'll go to another one since I spent 98% of the time trying to put peoples' belongings back after Logan picked them up and moved them....watch out for our little toddler!)

Jumping Beans

Mike was working today and so was Kate's daddy, so we loaded up the kids and took them to Jumping Beans. It was so much fun! Logan was a little unsure at first, but after realizing that it didn't hurt to fall, she jumped away for almost 2 hours. We got home and Logan pointed to the back room and then to her bed and was asleep within 5 minutes. Now I need to convince that we need a daily budget for Jumping Beans so that she'll sleep like that everyday! ha! Here are some pictures (it was hard to capture because you had to catch her in between jumps):