A few more...

A few more photos from the wedding we went to. I love this first picture :)This was how Lauren reacted to each of the speeches given at the head table. When all the guests started clapping, she got SO excited. Too cute :)

Recent pics

Resting with Daddy before bedtime.
Playing on Navy Pier when we went to visit my college roommate, Beth.

Lauren and Beth.

Lauren with her Uncle Matt.

We went to the State Fair with Jason, Jackie and their baby Braeden. Lauren got up next to a police horse which lasted peacefully ONLY until he tried to sniff her. Then she screamed.

Yep, that's Lauren and Mommy mid-slide. She liked it about as much as she liked the horse trying to sniff her. Lauren and Braeden.

Don't they look so much alike?

We went to a wedding in Rice Lake with my mom, my sister and Matt.

At the wedding... One of Lauren's favorite places to rest. Only now when she climbs on, she says "Neighhhhh!!!"

Seriously, how am I supposed to manage her crazy hair???

My new school year begins tomorrow. Back to work :(

Love, M & L

Wow. Just Wow.

So we got ahold of Matt's MacBook and found "Photo Booth!". Not sure whether we should be proud of these. Want a good laugh?...........That's hot, Karlee.

Chad, this one is just for you :)

Ha! Love, Mindy & Aunt Karlee

18 Month Photo Shoot

Enjoy :-) In the above picture, at first glance it looks like she's walking between us but we're actually swinging her. She LOVES this :)
Reading her favorite book. Awwww....

Have a good night. Lauren and I are spending the day tomorrow with my friend Beth in Chicago. Hopefully we'll get to explore Navy Pier. Can't wait!!!
Love,
M & L

More pics....

Here's Lauren trying out her Princess Potty. She enjoys sitting on it and pretending to "do her business". She isn't using it as often as she did at first, but that's okay with us. She's still so little :)

She loves Westin SO much...and I think the feeling is mutual.

Playing with her friend Porter when we went to visit him (and his mom Danielle) in Wausau a few weeks ago.

I love how intently Lauren is watching Porter here. He was watching (and singing) Miley Cyrus videos here. (Or was it Hannah Montana? Can't remember...)

We rode along with our Dinner Club friend Sophie (and her Mommy, Rachel) to Wausau and Sophie got to spend the day with us at Danielle's in-home daycare. Here the kids were all enjoying storytime. Everybody wanted to read to Sophie. Too cute!

Where's that kid's mother anyways?? Who lets their child dance and play in the rain, huh??? Lauren's mommy does!!!!

Just a little wet :)

Watching an Elmo video on the computer with Uncle Matt.

Spending some quality time with Aunt Karlee. She and Matt were here for a weekend a few weeks ago and they'll be back again at the end of the month before Karlee returns to Denver for nursing school and Matt goes to the U of Minnesota for law school.

Mmmmmmm....

Have a nice weekend :)

Love,

M & L

PS...Thanks for the kind words about Allie. We really miss her.

My sweet "Allie cat"...

It breaks my heart to announce that we put our sweet kitty to sleep on Friday evening. She had been having "potty problems" for a month now and despite the very best efforts of our veterinarian, the problem could not be diagnosed and thus could not be cured. Now I try to hide my tears when Lauren looks at me with her hands outstretched in question and asks "Kitty?". I'm having a hard time with this for a few reasons. Allie was my first "baby", as I got her back when I was in college. She's been my kitty for almost 10 years. She was known for having quite the crabby attitude and I was afraid we'd have to get rid of her when Lauren was born. However, much to the surprise of everyone, Allie was wonderful with Lauren. She let her crawl on her and pet her and never lashed out at her like she tended to with everyone else. It's as if she KNEW she had to be gentle with Lauren. The other reason I'm having a hard time with her death is because we didn't get a diagnosis. We did three different urinalyses, took x-rays and did blood tests but nothing was revealed. The vet was left suspecting that Allie may have had a tumor in her bladder that wasn't detected on the x-ray. My poor kitty :(Rest in peace, Allie cat. We'll miss you.
Love,
M, C & L

And another thing....

Since a few of you have asked me...

Lauren is consistently using her "big girl" potty every morning after waking up with a dry diaper each time!! She is pretty inconsistent throughout the rest of the day, which is to be expected for her age. We're proud of her though!!

Her favorite words lately are "Melmo" for Elmo, "bo" for boat, "be" for beach and please, "par" for park, "sweeeeeem" for swing, and "Baby" for her friends Braeden and Sophie. So fun :)

More pics...

Our hotel in Ft. Myers...The resort itself has 5 condo buildings. We were in the one on the left side of this picture.Our condo was in this building. It was really nice! Here's Lauren scoping out the beach view from our patio. We loved that it was completely screened in because it kept bugs away AND prevented Lauren from throwing things off the balcony :-)
Goofing around in the condo.Lauren had quite the view from her Pack-n-Play. She woke up and watched the waves each morning. Now she wakes up at home in her own crib and looks at us while asking "beach?". Sorry, kiddo. It was only temporary.Enjoying her very first Push-Up.

Yum!The hotel's main pool.
That's Chad on the right, trying to decide if he should be scared of the pirates.Can you see Lauren camped out in the shade? We bought this umbrella at a grocery store in Ft. Myers and left it at the Grandmas' condo so that on future visits, we'll have a decent beach umbrella.

Playing at the park by the pier.

We found a fun pizza place right on the beach. We ate dinner outside and Lauren had fun shouting "bo!" everytime she saw a boat.After dinner on our last night at the resort, we decided to go for a walk on the beach. Lauren wanted to run in and out of the waves. Despite the fact that she didn't have a swimsuit or swim diaper on, we encouraged her and she had a blast!! We carried her upstairs for a bath. Chad then wrapped her up in a towel and sent her out to me. This is what I saw...

Too cute!

Spend tons of money to build kid-friendly pools at your resort and they end up preferring the footwashes anyways. Playing under a water sprayer in the toddler pool.Lauren loved the water sprayers on the edge of the toddler pool. She got a little goofy with them, as you'll soon see...

Not sure what she was doing with the water sprayers but this made us laugh.

I think that's it for our Florida pictures until I get some extra copies of the family pics from Chad's dad. I also have tons of pics from a recent trip to the zoo as well as a trip we took to visit our friends Danielle and Porter in Wausau. AND I have pics from when Aunt Karlee and Uncle Matt came for the weekend last week. Agh!!! When am I going to find the time to upload them all?!?! I start teaching half-day summer school tomorrow morning. Hmmm...maybe naptime in the next few days. Stay tuned and enjoy your week!

Love, M& L