Joni's Dedication

On March 27th, we had Joni dedicated at our church here in Louisville. Dedication is an opportunity for us as parents to commit to raise Joni in obedience to Jesus' commands and for our church family to come alongside us and keep us accountable in that commitment.

As you can see, Joni wasn't the only baby up there. We had 8 kiddos dedicated that morning. Everyone was all dressed up and looking fancy.

Here is the dress I got for Joni at Once Upon a Child for $3. She looked so sweet.

She's our happy girl, there is no denying it!

This is the best family picture we got with everyone all pretty. One of Hadley's friends is trying to make them smile so that's why they are both looking down. We are planning (very soon, Mom) to get some professional family pictures taken. We haven't had any professional ones taken of Joni since she was born. Must be that second child thing....bless her little cotton socks.

Listening to some tunes....not really, she just likes to play with these.

I have been trying to get a good picture of both girls standing next to each other so you can see that Jo is going to be taller than Hadley before we all know it. There is only a 5-pound difference in their weight (Hadley is still heavier, surprisingly), and Hadley can still fit into some of Joni's 18 month clothes. I have a feeling they are going to be sharing clothes until they leave for college.

Hadley saw I was taking pictures of her and quickly struck this pose. So sweet.

This was an early Easter gift from Oma and Opa. Hadley colored, glued, and glittered much to her enjoyment. We wanted to show Oma the final product....it is now hanging on our living room wall!

And I know you have all been waiting for the Easter tree so here it is! Sad to think that it will come down the day after Easter.

Well as far as we know, we are headed back to Wyoming this summer! Yay and *sniff*. We are excited again to be close to family and friends but sad to be leaving everyone here again. Andy is thinking that we have a year and half left in Louisville (will be done in Dec 2012) and so this may be the last time we have the opportunity to do this. It's Spring Break this week so Andy is working even more than usual and faithfully taking care of us. Hope everyone is well and enjoying spring (or the middle of winter for you Wyoming folks :)) Love to you all!

Green eggs and ...... mac and cheese

Hadley enjoyed her special St. Patrick's Day dinner. She had green eggs and green mac and cheese and green lettuce (which she actually likes) with green ranch. It looked awful but it must have tasted good because she ate it all and wanted more. Maybe I'll think of some other fun St. Patty's traditions for next year. It has been a week since we had that meal and on the way home from running errands our conversation went like this....

Me: We are going home to eat dinner.

Her: A special dinner?

Me: No, not really. Just dinner.

Her: Colored dinner? Green dinner?

Me: No, no colors tonight.

Her: No colors? Mama, I want a blue dinner.

Maybe for her birthday she can have blue eggs and blue mac and cheese and blue blueberries with blue fruit dip.

This was taken by Hadley...pretty good if you ask me.

Joni likes to be where the action is. When we eat dinner she is either standing next to one of us or here...

Sweet girls. Hadley wanted me to take this picture. So I did.

This is another outfit from my mom that we wore to the zoo last weekend. She just looks so cozy in it.

The seals and sea lions are relatively new to the zoo. The bear exhibit (polar and grizzly) opens at the end of April and we can't wait!

We tried to get a good picture of Joni and "Baby Jaguar" as Hadley calls it (from Diego) but it is hard to see him sleeping in the back. I guess we'll have to try again a different day.

We hope everything is well in your neighborhood! Love to you all.

Happy St. Patricks Day!

You know St. Patrick's Day really isn't THAT big a deal, except the fun game you get to play by wearing green that day. You don't get it off, lots of people don't know the exact day (the 17th), and as long as you have that green on your person somewhere, the day may be pretty uneventful. However, since Andy and I went on our Honeymoon in Ireland, we feel a special connection. In fact, when we have a house, with an extra couple of rooms here and there, we have enough stuff (from Ireland) to have an Ireland room. St. Patrick's Day usually just reminds me of Ireland and the fun times we had there, but I am trying to think of fun traditions we can start doing as a family to make the day more fun. So far though I but can only think of eating only green things that day and kissing something upside-down.....any suggestions?

March 4th is also our anniversary and this year we celebrated 5 YEARS! Where does the time go?!?! We didn't do anything too exciting (if you don't count eating) :) (We are going to an Easter Play put on by the giant church here in Louisville later in the month....supposed to be AMAZING!) I made this cheesecake for Andy (his favorite)....

and he made me......his other favorite, Prime Rib. His Grandpa Blair sends us one for Christmas and we save it for our Anniversary and it was SOOOOO good (thank you again GGP). Pre-seasoned and cooked to perfection....mmmmmm (we took a break from Weight Watchers that night).

Not sure if it's all 10 month olds or just mine but both girls loved pulling all the movies they can reach off these shelves. I was thinking about putting duct tape across the front of each shelf but may find I don't enjoy that idea when Andy and I want to watch a movie. For now I guess I'll have to continue with the "correct and redirect."

Cute girls in more cute clothes for my mom (from my mom :) )

Getting ready to go for a walk.

Another zoo day.

My little book-worms.

Joni turned 10 months yesterday. Where did my baby go? Hadley weights exactly 5 pounds more than her and Joni is wearing clothes that Hadley just outgrew. I'm guessing that Joni is going to be taller than her pretty soon too. She isn't standing or walking on her own yet, but she's close. Andy is about half-way through the semester and gearing up for spring break (yay!) Our cups runneth over yet again! God is good....all the time. Oh, don't forget to wear green on Thursday! :) Love to you all!

Children's Museum

Here are LOTS of pictures (mostly of Hadley running around playing) at the Children's Museum in Indianapolis. We had a blast and would love to go back someday (maybe when it's free again!) I thought the outside was cool with the dinosaurs.

more dinosaurs.....

We got there really early because we knew it was going to be crazy packed. Here are the babies waiting to go in.

This is what they call the water clock. I didn't really get it (all the blue parts are water) but it looked neat.

So, we didn't know it at the time but 2 weeks prior to us going, the Dora exhibit opened. I thought Hadley was going to die when we told her. She loves Dora and this was her face (little nervous, little excited, little "why won't she talk to me")....I don't think she knew what to think....she was in awe.....it's Dora!

Steering the boat that the Pirate Pigs have.

Here is Diego and Baby Jaguar. I think Hadley actually likes them better and was all about crawling on them like the kid in front of us was doing.

The rest of these are her playing in the Dora section. They had all kinds of fun things to do and play with.

For those of you who know nothing about Dora, she has friends (Diego is her cousin and has his own show). Isa always has a garden....so this is Isa's garden (fenced in and cushiony for the little folk).

Joni liked playing here.....I think mostly she was just excited about being out of the stroller.

More flowers.....

A beautiful butterfly....

The next section was all about Egypt. It was really neat....they had houses to go into (the one below is a village house and the next one is an apartment in the city), what it was like to go shopping, animals they have, etc.

at the marketplace....

This area was pretty much one big fun playground and so it was packed with kiddos.....and I mean packed. She would have stayed here all day (and you really could have with all the stuff they had to do). This is the sand pit (they also had a water one).

Lots of things to crawl on....

....and things to pretend with.

This section was giant and we went to it at the end of the day so there were lots and lots and lots of people in it. In fact, it was really hard to get a stroller around in it. We didn't stay long because it was about dinosaurs and Hadley is a girl but she had fun pretending to be a Archaeologist and digging up dinosaur bones.

Note the inscription on this bone. We thought it appropriate to take a picture.

The train section....she likes trains too....who knew?

This was a cool glass sculpture they had in the middle of the ramp going up to all the floors. Here we are under the whole thing and can look up and see the colors.

They even have this chair you sit on and it rotates so you can take it all in :)

This is what it looks like from the top.

The rest of these are just some other random ones we took. What a fun place (we call it the fun, fun, fun, fun, place since it is like our fun fun place, only bigger).

Yay.....good day!

If you looked through all those pictures then you deserve to not to have to read a bunch more! More to come! Love to you all!