Ice Cream Face

Owen has inherited my terrible sweet tooth. This kid would eat candy/cake/etc all day. He can even sense that something is sweet, even if he has never seen it before. Why isn't he that enthusiastic about veggies??

This is his face when he is begging for ice cream...he goes, "AWWWWWWWWWW!" until you give him a bite. Lol.

"Awwwwwww!"

He even uses his jungle gym as his soap box. Sorry about the diaper...we let him not wear pants at night, lol.


This is O's Kangaroo Climber. He is so active, and such a monkey. He used to spend his entire evening trying to climb on the fireplace, and we finally gated it off because it was such a pain to remove him from the fireplace landing every .43 seconds. But then we felt bad because he didn't have anything to climb on, so we got him this. He LOVES it. I do wish that he would use it correctly, you know, go down the slide, and not climb over the sides and do body-slams on the couch, but oh well.

Peek-a-boo!

And, let's go up the slide! When he does go down the slide he goes, "WEEEEEEEEEE!" I haven't done a development update in a while, so here goes. He eats with a fork and spoon now (messily, but that is okay!), he does not do well with an open cup yet though. He will get a sip, and then get excited and shakes the cup and the water/milk goes all over. We're working on it! He runs all over the place, and still loves to read. He is FINALLY sleeping 12 hours at night....in our bed. But we are moving him next week to his room. Heis obsessed with balls, and loves to play catch. His other favorite activities are reading books and going swimming. (His swim lessons start next week!) He says the following...Mama, Daddy, kitty, peanut butter (pee-bur), fruit (froo), more, drink, book, ball, bubble, cheese, this, night-night, banana (nana), birdy, bear, dog, balloon (boon), read book, hi daddy, that, pool, and I know there a few more that I am forgetting! He is a regular chatterbox!

The countdown is on!

We are moving Owen to his own room next week! We got him new bedding (Safari Animals) to celebrate the occasion. He likes his new bedding, but methinks that he isn't going to be thrilled with sleeping in a toddler-sized bed when he is used to a king size. Hmm.

We got him a tv for his room. Now, believe me, he doesn't sit around and watch tv all day...that is not the case. He is just SO ACTIVE that the only way he will relax for naps and night-night is to lay down and watch a Baby Einstein animal movie. He falls asleep to those every night. So, we are hoping that this helps! (And please excuse the old paintings on the wall...we are still looking for animal ones!)

O's sweet new lion rug, and Cody. :o)

Fun giraffe beanbag that I got on clearance at Target! Woot!

My son, the daredevil.

Owen and Cody, watching the neighbor across the street mow the lawn!

Owen loves the kitties so much. We aren't totally sure that the love is reciprocated, though!

What a happy boy!

Reading "Brown Bear" to Cody.

See what I mean about Daredevil??? He is such a monkey. We have a fun week planned. In addition to our normal pool outings, we are going to Izzy and Hudson (and Kristen and Beckie) to the Coiterie Theatre to see a puppet show this week! Should be fun! Have a great week!

Our trip to Wyoming and South Dakota!

We just got back from our trip to Wyoming and South Dakota! It was super fun. I took over 500 pictures, so I will be posting a little bit at a time. The above pic is of Owen and his cousin Dylan. I need to photoshop it some...I took it when it was dark!! Dylan is such a funny kid, and he LOVED Owen!

Here is the cabin that we stayed in when we were in South Dakota. We bunked with Corey, Gina, Brittany and Savannah. They were wonderful roommates who put up with Owen waking up several times a night!!

Here are some of the things that we did...again, I will go back and make day-to-day posts, but I just wanted to give a preview of sorts. The above pic is from when we went to Bear Country USA. It was SO neat! You drive through this park, and they have wolves, bears, mountain lions, etc that literally come right up to your cars! You are supposed to leave your window up, but Chris's cousin Ryann loves bears so much that she kept her window down! Ha! When we were driving through the bears, Owen kept saying "bear, bear, bear, bear" over and over.

We also rode on the 1880 train in Hill City...and our train car was even robbed by Black Bill-something-or-other...who may be one of the worst actors ever to live. :o)

Here is when Chris, Owen and I took a drive on Needles Highway, and stopped to take pictures and feed the chipmunks! Uncle Jerry took the kids past the partition, and let them climb on the rocks...how fun! Here you can see Aubrey, Cameron, Caden, some of Dylan and Jerry.

We also went to Sylvan Lake, which was amazing. Corey, Gina and the girls rode on the paddle boats! The adults were quite sore the next day...haha.

Owen and Daddy on Father's day! Owen's shirt says, "My Dad Is Rad." :o)

More pics from Needles Highway...




Me and Owen at Mount Rushmore! We study American Symbols in 1st grade, so I am stoked to show my class this picture next year!

Owen and Grandma Barb walking toward Mount Rushmore...I am pretty sure that Owen was pointing at one of his cousins and NOT the monument!

Here is Owen doing one of his favorite activities...throwing rocks!

Looking off of Casper Mountain in Wyoming. I wasn't okay with the height of the mountains at this point in the trip, so I was taking this from the car! More pics/stories to come!

Owen's buddies

As I posted on my photography blog, we went to the square this evening to celebrate Sam's birthday! Here are some of the outtakes from our mini-session...

Owen definitely loves Izzy. He will even say her name...so cute! And he tries to feed her snacks, lol. We live 2 houses away from Izzy's family...we may be in for some trouble when they get older!

I didn't get any with all 3 kiddos unfortunately, but I had to post this one of Hudson! This photo completely sums up Hudson's personality! LOVE IT! Earlier today Beckie, Kristen and I took the kids to the pool, and they played in the kiddie pool for about 1 1/2 hours! They were exhausted. Each of the kiddos managed to go under the water a few times...they are not used to walking through water and I think that the resistance kind of throws them for a loop! I have pics to post from our trip that we all took to the Omaha Zoo back in May. I need to get those posted!

Life with a toddler.

Life with a toddler is full of drama. Owen is no exception. Today, we were playing on the deck, and then he decided to go inside and play in the living room. No big deal, let's go. He was very happy, rolling his cars down his slide (ya, the slide will be a whole 'other post...), until I closed the deck door. Oh, heavens, that set him off. He threw a huge tantrum. I figured that it was because he wanted to play outside, so I opened the door so we could go out. He went and started playing with his cars again. He just wanted the door hanging open, letting all of the bought-air out. Well, a bigger tantrum ensued when I closed the door for good. So, like any good mother would, I took a picture.

Once he was past that, and Daddy was home, we went outside to play! I received my new lens today, so of course we had to test it out! Love it! Owen was mowing the sidewalk with his bubble-mower. He feels just like daddy when he mows!

Gotta check to make sure the bubbles are working....check out those feet! They are huge. 6 1/2 double-wide, baby!

Woah, bright pic!! He isn't impressed with the new lens. What do you do? We leave for Wyoming next week, so that is awesome although I am quite nervous that Owen will not eat. As I have blogged before, he is super picky and apparently there is not a Mcdonald's close to where we will be. AAAH! Guess he will be eating lots of peanut-butter quesadillas and snack foods. We finally found a brand of store-bought chicken nuggets that he will eat. We literally tried every.single.brand. He likes Heidi's Chicken Ring-O's. But they come frozen so I can't take those with us to Wyoming! Dang!

What's that saying?

What is that old saying...."too smart for your own good"? Well, that is what Owen is. Case in point. Chris installed these super great "tot locks" on our cabinets to keep Owen out. They are magentic from the inside, and you need a magnet key to unlock them. Well, above, you can see O eying the cabinet, and really wishing that he could get in there and drag out all of the pots and pans. Unfortunately, he can't open it, because it is LOCKED! Bwahahaha. Right? Oh, wait. That's right...my child is...

TOO SMART FOR HIS OWN GOOD! As you can see, he has taken the magnetic key from the fridge, and is attempting to open the cabinet. Sigh. Thankfully, he isn't able to unlock it...yet. He is really trying to get around all of our baby-proofing efforts. We had to replace the outlet covers because he was taking the old ones out, he ripped down the gate that kept him out of the trashcan, he moves his little toddler ottoman over to Chris's closet (in the playroom), stands on it and tries to open the closet door, and he is currently trying to figure out exactly how to finagle the door in the steel gate at the top of the stairs. He keeps us on our toes, that is for sure! Oh yes! On Friday we were getting ready to go to Zona Rosa with Kristen and Hudson. I was in the laundy room getting dressed (hey! you do what you have to do when you have a maniac toddler!) and I noticed that it was pretty quiet. So, I look into the kitchen, and I see my child ON TOP OF THE KITCHEN TABLE. Correction, I see my child on top of our PUB HEIGHT kitchen table! He had climbed on a chair and then onto the table. After my heart started beating again, I swiftly removed my child and we left the house in hopes that he would forget about his new accomplishment.

Also, I have created a blog for J. Nichole Photography!! www.jnicholephotography.blogspot.com Head on over and check it out!