My Disney Princess

I love Disney. And I love my little Lacey. So, what could possibly be better than combining the two? I dream of someday taking her to the Magic Kingdom, but I want to wait until she is a little older and really "gets it." In the meantime, I was thrilled to find out that Disney on Ice was coming to town! I grew up going to Disney on Ice. I remember my parents taking us several times and I have wonderful memories of it. Dave had class and it was too late for T, so my wonderful Mother-in-law watched T so that Lacey and I could have a Mommy/Daughter date. We had a great time!

Here is Lacey observing the kiss.....

And here she is participating in the kiss! It was so fun to see her face light up as she saw the characters that were familiar to her come to life on the ice. Hopefully in another 3-4 years, you'll see the Magic Kingdon Post :)

A Few of my Favorite Things....

1.) My HB roommate, Lisa. Love this girl! Lisa was my roommate during the 2 1/2 years I lived in Huntington Beach, California. We had a ton in common right from the start. For starters, we are the exact same age (within a month of each other) and secondly, we both have a passion for travel. Once we discovered this, we crammed in as much as our full-time jobs would allow. I've been to Bangkok, Chaing Mai, Koh Samui, the Caribbean and more with this girl. Great travel partner! We were roommates when she met her husband and I met mine. We got married 4 weeks apart from each other. She flew to Chicago for mine and I flew to Seattle for hers. But she now lives in Seattle and I live in Maryland and the last time we saw each other was in June of 2006. However, lucky for me, she flew to DC for the weekend and I was able to spend all afternoon with her yesterday. And loved every second of it!

And another of my favorite things is.......

watching my little girl jumping into big piles of leaves with pure exhilaration! I'm sure I would enjoy watching my little boy do it too, but unfortunately, he had no desire to do it! Yesterday, as we were driving home from church and admiring the absolutely gorgeous trees with all their changing colors, Dave commented to me that what he loves about living on the East Coast is that we don't have to go anywhere to see the Fall foliage. It's here. So true.....

Tanner's 16 Month Update

I haven't been faithful about documenting T's month-marks, but I'm just using this as an excuse to give an update on T in general. It's been a while since I've done that. As you can see, it's been an eventful week for my little T (and for me, for that matter)! This is a public blog, so I'm not going to go into the details here, but my little T had to have surgery this past week. Dave was able to be with him until the anesthesiologist administered the anesthesia. Tanner was in surgery for a little over an hour. All went well. But T was NOT in a good mood afterward! (These pictures were taken before surgery). He was screaming at the top of his lungs, thrashing his body everywhere. It was horrible. They told me that they put ointment in his eyes to keep them moist during surgery, so they sometimes can't see very well when they wake up and they feel "drugged" and don't know why, so the way Tanner was acting was "normal."
I'm just grateful the experience is behind us and that T is now home and doing well. We were only in the hospital for part of one day, but because this, thankfully, has been my only experience of having a child in a hospital, it was emotionally draining for me. I found myself reflecting on how very grateful I am to have 2 healthy children. And my heart truly goes out to those wonderful parents who have sick children in and out of hospitals on a regular basis.

On a much lighter note...... here are some of T's milestones:

• TALKING!!! He has just taken off with this one. Whenever he wakes up, he calls out for "Mama." The other day, I opened his door after he called out my name and he just looked at me and said, "Mama, I'm poopy." Sure enough, he was!
• He started walking around 13/14 months, but now he just RUN everywhere non-stop. Goes up and down the stairs as fast as lightning, down the "big slide" at the park by himself and anything else that he sees his big sister doing.
• Still loves to eat. At his 15 month appt., he was 29#, 8 ounces (95%ile) and 33 inches (off the charts.)
• Loves to be outside (almost as much as eating!), has a killer smile and a sweet disposition. As much as he loves to run around, his favorite place to be is still in my arms (where he is right now as I attempt to type this.) I love my T.
  
  

Fall Festival - Revised

Okay, now that I have pictures to go with this post, I'm trying again! On Saturday, we went to the Kinder Farm Fall Festival. It's an annual event, but this was our first time attending. We brought our niece, Becky, with us and had fun face painting (that's an ice cream cone, if you can't tell).

And we had a great time at the park. They have a fabulous park there with all kinds of fun equipment. It normally costs money to go to this park (and therefore we never go since there are other, not quite as fun but good enough, free parks), but it was included in the festival, so the kids spent quite a bit of time here.

And what Fall Festival is complete without a hay-ride? Well, it was advertised as a hay ride, but it really ended up being a tractor-pull sans hay. Either way, it was fun!
Cousin Becky was nice enough to share her yummy funnel cake with us! I hate to say good-bye to the summer, but I'm looking forward to all the fun activities that accomany the beautiful Fall season.