A New Favorite Toy

Leah seems to have found a new favorite toy and another use for my cookie cutters.
She loves to carry around the entire can, dump them out and then put them back in.  I'm always looking for the educational value in things(that's the teacher in me!), so I occasionally try to show her the shapes and colors, I guess if nothing else it's good practice at putting things in a can.

Guess we can take back all the expensive Christmas presents, she's perfectly happy with a container of cookie cutters (at least they're getting some use!).

Yum!

Can you tell what is Leah's favorite meal?

Spaghetti

I figure every kid has a picture of them eating spaghetti, so Leah needed one too.  One of these day's I'm sure we'll let her get really messy with it, but I thought I'd share these too. 

Some Glowing Pictures

We put up most of our Christmas decorations on the Sunday after Thanksgiving after we got home from Kansas.  I really dread the thought of hauling all the stuff down from the attic, putting it up, and hauling all the stuff back up to the attic, but I'm so glad we decided to put our decorations up that night.  Normally we get them down from the attic and leave them down for a couple of days, but this time we got them down, put them up, and put them back in the attic all in one night, this forced me to make quick decisions as to where I wanted things and didn't allow me to leave them scattered all over the house (which a few still are) for days.  It also made me work on a deadline (I work much better under pressure), because I knew I wanted to eventually go to bed and I couldn't until the boxes were back in the attic.
Anyway, here are our Christmas decorations from this year.  If you're curious to see what they looked like last year, you can go here.  I hope you notice the difference in the pictures and in Leah, I sure did!

 Mantel

 Our "glowing" tree
I can't get over how bright these pictures are, bear with me I'm still learning. :)
If you'd like to take your own "glowing tree" pictures, here's where I learned (via pinterest)

 My little helper

Helping

Leah got to hang her "L" ornament on the tree, of course she had to play with it for a little while first.  

Thank You!

Leah's birthday Thank Yous went out quite a while ago, but while I was working on them I also created this to use as a possible thank you.  I didn't end up using it because I couldn't ever get it to look right, when I printed it as a 5x7 is was too grainy and I couldn't find envelopes or where to write the personal message and when I printed it as a 4x6 it was too small to read the writing.  Considering I have a tendency to put things off until I can get them just right and this was something that I might never get "just right", I just went ahead and sent out regular ol' thank yous, before it was past the point of being too late.  I decided I still wanted to share it, so to those of you who already got thank yous, consider it a second thank you and everyone else consider it your thank you for reading! :)

*I told you my posts were way overdue and out of order, but how's that for 5 posts in 7 days?!?

Merry & Bright

May Your Days Be Merry and Bright!

I've been playing with my camera and photoshop elements.  These pictures and collage aren't perfect by any means, but I thought you might enjoy them all the same!

She Loves 'Em

Graham crackers!
Leah will do just about anything for a graham cracker: need a few extra minutes to shop at Target, give her a graham cracker; need to put her in her car seat, give her a graham cracker; she's getting fussy on the way home, give her a graham cracker. A simple solution to all her problems and she loves them!
If the saying "You are what you eat" is true, Leah is going to turn into a graham cracker!

Having Her Cake...

And eating it too!
(These posts are way overdue and out of order, but hopefully you'll enjoy them just the same!)

When I started planning for Leah's first birthday pictures I knew wanted to do a "cake smash" series of pictures.  My original plan was to go to a studio and have someone else do the pictures, but since I didn't want to pay for someone else to take the pictures (read: I'm cheap) and I have a new camera, I decided to take the pictures myself.  I don't think they turned out quite as cute as they would have if we'd have been in a studio, but I'll take them.

 I got the cake when we took her one year pictures and we ran out of time to take the "cake smash" pictures, so we took these pictures the Sunday after her party.  Since she wasn't too into eating her cake during her party, I thought this would make up for it.  She still wasn't too into it, surprised me. 

 And the leftovers went to Daisy.

A Sea of Red

Assuming you read this post, you know how the Cardinals post-season ended up.  In true Cardinal fan fashion, we couldn't miss the World Series Parade and celebration.
It must be something about the World Series Parades that make us do crazy things.  When the Cardinals won the World Series in 2006, Tim and I were living in Gardner and drove from Gardner to St. Louis just for the parade and celebration and I thought that was a crazy day.  Since we now live in the St. Louis area, you'd think we would be able to make the celebration with no problems, no chance!
After attending game seven on Friday night, we awoke at 4:45 the next morning and headed to Kansas with Tim's parents to watch the Wildcats take on the Sooners (we're true fans!).   After traveling 6 hours to Manhattan to watch the KSU/ OU game and staying at my parents house Saturday night, we hit the road again at 8 am Sunday morning with the hopes that we'd make it to St. Louis in time for the 4:00 parade start.  With a little (or a lot) of help from Sally, Dan, and Trent, we had a great viewing spot for the parade.
I took lots of pictures, but I figure most of you wouldn't care to see all of them, so I'll just share a few and spare you a picture overload.  We ended up having great seats for the parade and at the beginning I was a little worried because we were next to a somewhat obnoxious fan who yelled comments at every player, but he turned out to be really funny and made all of the players look in our direction, so it turned out okay. 

 The parade started the way all great things in St. Louis start, with the Clydesdales with Tony LaRussa at the helm. 

 The World Series Trophy

One of Tim's favorites, Chris Carpenter and his family

 Skip

 The Pujols Family

 The Sea of Red

Look at all those people!

 After the parade, we headed to Busch Stadium for a celebration.

 Leah found herself a nice spot to watch.

 I didn't quite think this would be the last time we'd hear Tony speak, but what a way to go out!

It's Her Party

We celebrated Leah's first birthday on October 22nd and had a great time.

First some decorations:

 This was her garland of monthly pictures.  I found most of my ideas from Pinterest and made friends with my Cricut and the scrapbook paper at Joann's. 

 I thought the garland turned out cute and it was neat to look back at all her pictures and see how she changed. 

 This chair was her present from Tim and me. 

 More decorations and more cricuting. :)

 One of my mom's patients made the cake and I think it turned out so cute.  The ladybug was Leah's cake.

 After her nap we gave her the chair and she loved and still loves it.  I think she likes that it's her size and she can climb up into it and sit.

 

Opening presents, she got lots of fun stuff!

 We originally had her party planned for 5, but ended up moving it up to 3 due to a Cardinal play-off game.  The 3 time would have worked fine, but it ended up throwing off her afternoon nap.  By the time we got to the cake Leah was pretty tired and wasn't too into the whole cake thing, bummer!

 

 I'm not sure what happened here

 After a failed nap attempt, we decided to try out the new toys outside.  Thanks Mawmaw and Papa Jim for the cozy coupe, Leah loves it!

What a fun day!  Thanks to everyone who helped make Leah's 1st Birthday so special!