Finally an update!

I love her crooked smile in this picture.

Uh oh. Looks like somebody discovered the joy of girl scout cookies! Check out how determined she was to get to the cookies :)

Tongue out...sheer determination."Mmmmmmm...Peanut Butter Patties. Yum!"

Every night when I bring Lauren home from daycare, we have a little routine. We take our coats off, put our stuff down and feed the pets. I feed the cat while Lauren pushes Westin's food container over to his dish. She knows this routine so well that if I pause to do something else, she'll go to the kitchen pantry door and pound on it until I open it to get the pet food. Here she is pushing Westin's food over to feed him.

"Shhhhh...."

Things are crazy busy around here. We have made a decision to try and buy a new (bigger) house this year and we have set a goal for ourselves to list ours on the market by May 1st. So....we are hammering away (literally) on some projects around the house to spruce it up a little bit. We put all new hardware on the kitchen cabinets and bought stainless steel appliances, although those haven't been delivered yet. We took out the oak grid and flourescent lights in the kitchen ceiling and replaced them with recessed can lighting. Tomorrow we are going to go shopping for a new kitchen countertop. Why is it that we waited to update the kitchen until we were ready to sell the house? Why didn't we do it earlier so we could enjoy it? Oh well. This next picture is just to remind you what the kitchen ceiling looked like before. The second picture shows you what it looks like tonight.

In other news, our dinner club recently added it's second pint-sized member! Our friends Andy and Rachel had a baby girl last Friday and we're so happy for them! Tomorrow I'm going over to their house for a few hours to provide some much-needed relief so they can take a nap. I remember really needing that when Lauren was born so I'm trying to help them get some sleep :)

My parents were going to come this weekend to see us one last time before my dad leaves for spring training. We ended up postponing their visit by a few days because I need a sitter for Lauren Tuesday night. By having them wait and come on Tuesday, they'll watch Lauren for us in the evening. Chad has a dinner meeting that night and I've been asked to speak to the school board as an advocate for implementing 4-year-old kindergarten in our district. I'm actually really nervous about it. It'll be televised and written up in the newspaper, not to mention the fact that I'll be presenting in front of my superintendent, principal, and several other administrators. I just hope I don't cause them to say "um, we hired HER?"

In "Lauren news", she is doing well sleeping at night lately. She goes down for bed around 8:30, gets up briefly between 5 and 6a.m. and usually goes right back to sleep for another hour or two. She's still napping twice a day but I think we may be getting close to cutting down to one nap. We'll see. She has added two new words to her vocabulary. In addition to "Mom? Mom. Mom? Moooommmm? Mom!!" and "Dada and Da" She also now says a modified version of kitty and doggie, although they sound more like "ki-E" and "da-E".

Off to bed. Have a good weekend!

Love,

M & L