Whirlwind Weekend

This weekend, Logan and I took a crazy whirlwind trip to Tuscaloosa, AL, for my brother, John's graduation and commissioning into the Army. To say I'm tired is the understatement of the year! Two 45 minute layovers in the Atlanta airport with flights leaving from the opposite end of the place is enough to have me sleeping for the next week straight. Whew!

We got in late Friday afternoon and headed to dinner for my grandma's 80th birthday!

They sat us at a table with a nice little corner for Logan to run around in. She found her great grandma's purse and it entertained her for quite a while--she is SUCH a girly-girl, I LOVE it:

We stayed in Aunt Carolyn's dorm on Friday night and helped her clear it out so she could check out and head home. Logan had a blast running up and down the hallway screaming (because she enjoyed the echo of the empty place). I'm sure she was good birth control for every college student left in the building, ha!

She also barricaded herself in Carolyn's room. Here she is saying "bye-bye, mommy, I'm in college now." (I know, this day will come much sooner than I care for it to)

We knew Logan would not sit through a three hour graduation ceremony so she and I stayed at my parents' hotel while they were there. All morning I showed her the pool and explained that we were going to go play in the "wa-wa" while everyone was gone. I also hyped it up as I put her in her swim suit and by the time we got down to the pool she was incredibly excited...until we realized that the pool was still pad-locked and hadn't been opened for the summer season yet. So, she had her juice box in her suit and took a bath instead. Sad day.

Then we headed off to see John be commissioned. Here she is with Carolyn while we waited for the ceremony to start:

She was not to thrilled to be sitting in my lap again (after so many hours on my lap in planes):

She lasted all of...oh...four seconds before I had to take her to the hallway and we spent the rest of the ceremony running around there and watching from the doorway. Such is life with a toddler, right? Any time she heard clapping though, she'd stop, drop anything she had in her hands and clap right along with them. She was VERY happy when it ended and we headed outside for a snack.

My favorite photo of the weekend:

Here are Carolyn and I with John:

Logan ate up all of the attention she got from all of my family.

How perfect are those cowgirl boots with that dress?

And we woke up way too early this morning (since we were an hour behind our normal schedule 5:30am was the wake up call from Logan) to head back home. I broke down about a week ago and got Logan a harness for the airport, just knowing it would be a nightmare by myself without one.

I was VERY glad I had it being that I was so tired and had no energy what so ever to run after a toddler in the airport.

Logan was so excited to see her daddy!

I'll do a separate mother's day post. I had to come home, shower, and become a normal human being again after the day's travels and now can take pictures with my sweet girl and be ok with posting them on the blog. :)

Healthy Appetite For Reading

Logan's absolute favorite activity these days is reading. She loves to go pull books out of the bookshelf, cuddle up in mommy or daddy's lap and listen to us read--sometimes the same book over and over 10 times. It's such a sweet time for us! I've actually taken to putting her books all over the house so that wherever we are, we can stop and read if she wants to. She's been so into it recently that when hooked on phonics had their blowout sale (umm...70% off PLUS an added 50% off coupon I had--amazing), we picked up the toddler reading set for her. Since it came in the mail, I don't think the box has sat still unless Logan's been asleep. She's CONSTANTLY getting into it, pulling out books/flash cards and bringing them to us to read to her.

Looking at the reading chart:

Going through the flash cards:

Exploring the books:

And the onesie? Speaking of wonderful sales, my friend Stephanie over at Faith Baby (our favorite store for all things onesie) sent us an email the other day letting us know that a ton of her onesies are on clearance now -at 5 bucks a piece, I had to stock up with the summer months coming. The look on Mike's face when she walked out of her room wearing this onesie this morning was enough to pay for the thing ten times over (it says, "Jesus loves me and so does my daddy"). Happy Monday AND happy teacher's appreciation week to all of my fellow teachers...even though I'm not in the classroom anymore, I appreciate you and the wonderful job you do!

Here's Your Fix

Every once and a while I take a batch of pictures that makes me take a deep breath and think, "she's not a baby anymore." Here's my most recent of those:

Slides

Here's a video of Logan going down the slides at jumping bean today:

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: