Easter Weekend 2012

Just FYI...We had a really fun and busy Easter weekend, so there's going to be a lot of pictures on this post!

The Friday before Easter, we let Leah dye eggs for the first time and she had a ball doing it. Once she figured out what she was supposed to do, she didn't want to stop. It was hard to keep her from putting all the eggs in the cups at once. I wrote on the eggs before we started, but she did all the coloring, which meant that the eggs went back in the dye 2, 3 and 4 times (or more) before we finally made her stop. Here she is in action and with her final product.

On Saturday we went to our Putnam family Easter party. After a yummy lunch, we had games for the kids (and adults) to play - things like "Pin the Tail on the Bunny," Easter eggs on a spoon races, blowing Easter eggs with a straw, and throwing Easter eggs in baskets. But by far the favorite activity was eating a donut on a string without using your hands. When my aunt Kristine and I planned the games, I was imagining this game with those little Hostess Donettes. But Kristine got big glazed donuts with pink & purple frosting. So much more fun! The first round we let the little kids try it. But the second round some of us adults gave it a try. Here are some of the fun pictures we got of this game.

My cousin's little boy Kohen (the one laying on the floor in the next picture) was determined to eat the whole donut without using his hands, even after it fell off the string onto the tarp. He was so funny to watch.

I had printed some Easter pictures that the kids could color when they wanted to. Here's some of my siblings getting in on the coloring action!

Here's some pictures from the adult round!

For those who know my cousin Carter (in the blue shirt on the right), it would be no surprise to hear that he easily won this round! My other cousin, David came in a close second.

No post would be complete without a picture of these two cuties!

Here's a picture of my little family with my WONDERFUL Grandpa and Grandma Putnam.

We spent Saturday night at my parents' house and woke up early to go to church in Magna so we could hear the Turners speak in Sacrament meeting. The Turners are my best friend, Lesley's mom and dad (and thus have been like an adopted set of parents for me). They have accepted a call to serve a 6-month mission at the Nauvoo, Illinois Temple. We are going to miss them while they are gone, but are so excited they have this great opportunity. (I just wish Lesley could have made the trip from California to be here that day too.) Here's a picture we took with them that day.

After a much needed nap for all of us back at my parents' house Leah's Easter basket showed up.

This is not a great picture, but it is the only one I have of Leah with her Easter stuff.

After a yummy Easter dinner, my mom shared an Easter Family Home Evening lesson with my whole family. Then my sister, Lyndsee, had a special treat for the kids. They got to decorate egg-shaped rice crispy treats with colored frosting and sprinkles. They made a mess, but had a ball!

Cameron loved eating the frosting by the handful!

We spent Sunday night at my parents' house again so we could travel the next day to Elko, Nevada (more about this in the next post). Needless to say, we were all ready to go to bed as soon as everyone left. It was an exhausting, but fun Easter weekend!!!

Leah's Antics

Leah is at such a fun age! Her personality is really coming out and she does things everyday that make me laugh. So I thought I'd do a quick post showing some of the funny sides of her personality that Ross and I get to see everyday, but others might not see because she is so reserved when she's around other people.

Leah LOVES Cosmo Cougar. When she sees the BYU logo, she gets all excited and says "Cougars, Rarr!" We've taken her to several games and she loves finding Cosmo. I always wondered what she would do if she actually got close enough to touch him. Well, we recently got to find out.

We went to a BYU men's volleyball game one Friday night and she not only got to give Cosmo a high five, she also got to get a picture taken with him. She was in awe! You can't tell from this picture, but she was so excited. That night she couldn't get enough Cosmo. She even took off to chase after Cosmo after he had come by our section.  

Our funny little girl loves music! She likes singing songs, dancing, watching Sesame Street music videos, and even requests music when we are in the car. But for some reason, during singing time in nursery or during toddler time at the library she just quietly sits and watches rather than joining in the fun. However, take her to a BYU game, and that definitely is not the case! She gets really into the music at the games. She loves to dance, clap her hands and jump up and down. I finally got a video of her at the game. Here's a 30 second or so clip of her dancing in the aisle. And actually she is pretty low key in this video. I've seen her get a lot more into it than this!

We tired to get a video of her clapping along to the Cougar Fight Song too, but we couldn't ever get it to work. Maybe another time.

The rest of these pictures are taken with my phone camera, so the quality is definitely sub par. But when she's doing her funny, random antics during the day, that's all I have to capture them.

Leah loves to climb into her crib and play with her binkies. Yes, this girl still loves her binkies and yes, she can get herself into her crib!

She loves to get ready to go somewhere, even if we aren't actually going anywhere. On this particular night we asked her where she was going and she answered "Cosmos Cougars." Gotta love the sunglasses after dark!

This is her favorite place to hang out in our kitchen.

Trying on some new glasses.

She calls this her "Abby wand" (she thinks it's like Abby Cadabby's from Sesame Street).

Passed out on the couch after a BYU basketball game. She was so tired she didn't even wake up when we got her out of her car seat and packed her into the house, which is unusual for her.

Listening to Mommy's iPod.

She loves to "play games." Which to her actually just means getting all the games out and making a mess with them.

She loves to put on her swim suit. She found it one day when I was folding laundry so I helped her put it on.

Leah gets some crazy bed hair. This is one of her craziest bed hair days. And actually by the time I took the picture, it had calmed down some.

She's really into going to check the mail lately. One day she was sure she needed her boots on. After I helped her with her boots, she found her jacket and put her beanie on and asked to go check the mail. How could I resist someone so cute. By the way, this picture was taken on April 2nd. We've had almost no snow this past winter so why she would think she needed snow boots and a beanie is beyond me, but too funny not to take a picture!

This is how I found her one day during her nap. I thought it was funny. She loves her pillow pet.

So there's a bunch of randomness about Leah. Hope you enjoyed it!

A Visit From Kaye and Nathan

Ross's sister, Kaye, and her family (husband, Chris and son, Nathan) live in Louisiana. So needless to say, we rarely see them. In fact, we haven't seen them since before Leah was born. But Kaye and Nathan recently came out for a visit while Nathan was on spring break. (Chris couldn't come because he was very busy back at his base preparing for an air show. He is a pilot in the Air Force and is the director of this year's show.) We were very excited for their visit. We even worked with Leah to make sure she knew their names when she saw them. So she was pretty excited when the time came to go see Kaye and Nathan at Grandma's house.

The day before they flew here was Nathan's 13th birthday. So Ross's mom wanted to throw a family birthday party for him to make sure he felt special while he was here. So after church on that Sunday we all gathered at her house for a yummy dinner and birthday celebration. She also got out all her plastic eggs so the kids could have an Easter egg hunt out in the yard. We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day at the end of March. It was so warm and the kids loved playing out in the yard together.

Here's some pictures from the egg hunt. Leah was still a little unsure how this whole egg hunting thing worked, so Nathan helped her gather eggs. Leah mostly just followed the kids around holding her bag.

 Here's Leah and her buddy, Gavin. Gavin loves to play with and dote on Leah when he sees her. And Leah loves it too!

 After the egg hunting, we had some delicious cake and ice cream. Nate is really into soccer, so his Grandma made sure she got him a soccer cake. Kaye said Nate has never had so many family members at any of his birthday celebrations before. It was fun to be able to celebrate with him.

 During the week days while Kaye and Nathan were here, they had a lot of fun things planned including visiting each of Kaye's siblings' houses for dinner. We got to have them for dinner on Thursday (the night before they left to fly back home). Leah was so excited to see Kaye and Nathan again. She loved Kaye and absolutely adored Nathan. He was so sweet with her. She loved having him take her outside to play and having him play with and tickle her on the floor. She was really sad when it was time for them to leave. Here's a picture of them with Leah before they left our house that night.

We were so glad that Kaye and Nate got to come out for a visit. Leah still talks about "Kaye Nathan." (She almost always says their names together like that.) In fact, when we went to Ross's mom's a couple of days ago, she thought we were going to get to see them again. I had to remind her that Kaye and Nathan weren't there anymore because they went home on an airplane.

But she's already gearing up for the next big family visit in July when Kyle, Amy and Jackson come to Grandma's house! When I was telling someone tonight that Kyle and Amy were coming in July, without any prompting Leah said, "Jackson!"

We've got a great Leslie family and I'm so glad that Leah loves them all so much!

Temple Square

Leah is in a phase where she really likes temples. And she has always loved our picture of the Christus and other pictures of Jesus. So when Ross had a Friday off of work, we decided to take a trip up to Temple Square so we could show Leah all the beautiful things they there. And since my parents would only have my niece, Makynlee that day, we invited them to come along too.

As usual, Leah and Kynnie were very excited to see each other and had a blast exploring Temple Square together. Here they are checking out the Temple steps.

They loved throwing pennies in the fountain and would have thrown pennies in all day if we would have had enough. We took them inside to show them some of the displays. They loved running around to check things out...and I literally mean RUNNING. These two girls ran all over any chance we let them! (We did have a stroller for each of them, but they didn't spend much time in them unless we were walking outside.) Here they are pausing with Grandma and Grandpa to play with the touch screens.

They both were fascinated with the escalators and couldn't wait to go on them. Once they did go on them, we had a hard time keeping them away from them. They weren't as excited about looking at the displays. So for a while my parents just took them off to a corner where they could just run and play. Those silly girls just chased each other around and around and around a pillar. They probably got themselves pretty dizzy.

I was surprised actually when we went up to see the Christus statue. I thought it would be Leah's favorite part since she loves the picture so much. Her and Kynnie ran up the ramp ahead of the rest of us and she got to the top she got one glimpse of the statue, stopped dead in her tracks, turned right around and immediately insisted that someone hold her. I took her up close to the statue, but she was still pretty unsure of the whole thing. I even tried to get her to touch the foot of the statue, but she adamantly refused. And even when I tried to put her hand on it for her, she still did everything her her power NOT to touch it. I'm pretty sure it was the size of the statue that intimidated her. It is so much bigger than what she is used to seeing on our wall. Needless to say, I didn't get any pictures of her with the Christus statue.

Before going back to the cars, we did let them play in the reflection pool. They were a little unsure at first, but after I showed them how to splash their hands in the water, they loved it. And it didn't take long at all before they were both pretty wet!

It will be nice to go back again with Leah is a little older and can appreciate more of the great things that Temple Square has to offer. But in the meantime, we had fun just enjoying this fun stage that she's in now.

Free Zoo Day

About a month ago my neighbor posted on her blog about taking her son to the zoo explaining that they have a free day the last Wednesday of December, January and February. We've had such a mild winter that I figured if the weather was good enough that I would take Leah at the end of February to check it out. How can you beat free admission to the zoo?

Well the morning we planned to go it was snowing at our house. But I know how the weather can be around here (in 30 minutes or so, the climate could be completely different), so I checked the weather reports and it said a storm was supposed to come, but not until in the afternoon and evening. By the time I got out of the shower, the snow at let up and it seemed to be getting better. So I decided to just make sure we were bundled up plenty and go for it. If it rained or snowed while we were there, it would just make it more of an adventure.

As it turned out, the weather was hardly a concern. The worst problem was the fierce wind while we were driving there and back. While we were actually at the zoo, the weather was as good as you could ask for a late February day. The sun was even shining most of the time. And since the zoo is tucked in next to the mountain, the wind wasn't even a problem.

I had called my parents the day before to let them know I was going in case they wanted to bring up my niece, Makynlee, and meet us there. And when my sister found out we were going, she decided to get off work early so she could come too. I didn't tell Leah they were coming in case they decided not to, so she was pretty surprised when they showed up while we were eating our lunch in one of the monkey buildings! It took her a minute to realize it was them. It was kind of funny because she just looked at them like "What are you doing here?" But then she was really happy they were there.

My sister brought up her wagon, so we put both girls in it and their Grandpa pulled them all over the zoo!

While we were watching these elephants, some geese flew into their water. Well the baby elephant decided she didn't want these unwelcome guests there. So she took off running towards the water, slipped on the mud and tumbled forward onto her face and trunk. It was like watching a toddler when they get going faster than their legs can carry them and they face-plant on the floor. It was so funny! But she just got up and kind of shook herself off and continued to run after the geese, trumpeting at them until they flew away. It was quite entertaining and we couldn't help laughing at the whole scene.

I'd like to say that Leah was saying "giraffe" while she was pointing at it. But the truth is that she was more concerned about eating her goldfish crackers. This kid loves to eat!

(By the way, my sister, Melyssa, made the girls the cute white beanies they are wearing. But Leah's is starting to get too small.)

We also enjoyed watching the gorillas. We saw some people looking in the window at the outside cage, so we went over to check it out. But we couldn't see anything except for a sheet that was covering something in the corner by the window. So my dad said jokingly, "Well there's nothing in there unless it's hiding under that sheet." But then I looked closer at the sheet and said, "It IS under the sheet!" Upon looking closer we could see just a corner of it's foot sticking out from under the sheet. Then we noticed that the sheet was moving just slightly when it breathed. Funny! Leah is really into hiding under blankets right not, so I thought this was a particularly funny behavior.

Then while we were inside, we were entertained by a younger gorilla who was teasing the older one. He would use a sheet to hit the older one and get him to charge at him. And then he would chase him all over the cage with a cardboard tube. You could tell that they young one was thoroughly enjoying this play session, but that the older one was definitely NOT amused.

Leah wanted to play on this gorilla when we got outside. So we used it as a photo op. But Kynnie was not too sure about climbing on the gorilla.

The girls also enjoyed the duck pond. Grandpa found a couple of quarters so they could feed the ducks. Neither of them could throw the pellets very far. Leah just kept feeding the same swan over and over again. But they had a great time. Leah still likes to talk about giving the ducks "shood" (she can't say her f's yet).

Before we left, we let the girls get out the last of their energy playing on the playground. They both would have played much longer if we had let them. But the clouds had covered the sky again and you could tell that the storm would soon be arriving. So we packed up and left.

I'm so glad Holly shared about free zoo day. I wouldn't have known about it otherwise and I am so glad we decided to go. Leah had a great time and still likes to talk about going to the zoo. And it was even better that some of our family was able to enjoy it with us! Plus it was FREE!!