Spring Break in Elko, Nevada

Ross had a whole week off from work after Easter for spring break. And it just so happened that this same week his mom and aunt Mary Ann would be in Elko, Nevada taking care of Grandma Mary while her daughter was out of town vacationing with her family. Grandma Mary (who used to live in Fallon, NV) had a pretty bad heart attack about six months ago and has since been living with her daughter and son-in-law, Judy and LaVelle. Her health is still pretty bad, but she's still hanging in there. And even though we've sent pictures, she still hadn't met Leah in person. So we took advantage of the chance to travel out and see her.

There wasn't a whole lot to do in Elko and I'm sure people wondered why we would want to spend our vacation time there. But it was so nice to just get away and have a relaxing time with family. While we were there Ross and I went to see "The Hunger Games." We also watched "The Help" at the house. Ross did a lot of reading and I did some reading and worked a lot on a puzzle that Grandma had out.

And Leah loved being able to spend so much time with her Grandma Leslie. They played outside when the weather was good, went on walks to get the mail, played downstairs coloring and putting together Leah's little puzzles, and Leah's favorite activity - watching the clocks go off each hour. They have a musical clock and a coo-coo clock that go off one right after another. Leah was totally fascinated by them and her Grandma helped make sure she got to see them as much as possible. Right after they went off, she would be ready to watch them again. We had to explain to her that it would be lots of minutes before she could hear them again.

Leah also liked playing with Grandma's dog, Teddy. She was a little nervous around him at first, but by the end of the week, she was throwing his ball for him trying to get him to play fetch with her. Teddy is a poodle and I thought it was kind funny that when she first saw Teddy, Leah called him a sheep instead of a dog.

One day while we were there, Ross and I decided to get out of the house and take Leah to a local park. After searching on the Internet, we found one that looked fun and easy to find. Boy did we hit the jackpot with this park. It was one of those parks that kind of looks like a little town made out of wood. The playground was full of stairs and little nooks and crannies for Leah to explore. Since this girl LOVES stairs, she had a grand time playing there. Here's a couple of pictures of her playing. Check out the huge grins!

Ross found this part of the playground to climb on, so of course Leah thought she needed to climb up it too.

We also tried to fly kites while at the park, but all we could get them to do was spin in circles and dive to the ground before they both broke. Maybe I'll fix them and try to get them flying again another time.

Here's a picture of us we took with Grandma Mary right before we left. (We actually were having such a nice visit, that we stayed one day longer than we had planned.)

This may not have been the most "exciting" way to spend our spring break, but I am SO GLAD we decided to go. We probably won't be able to spend so much quality one-on-one time with Grandma again. In fact, the night before we got there, Grandma had a pretty bad heart/anxiety attack. It took her a while to recover from it. She slept a lot the first couple of days we were there. But when she was feeling better, I enjoyed vising with her and listening to her tell me about her life and family. So to me the time we spent there was priceless. We love you Grandma Mary! Thanks for such a great visit!

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!