The Butterfly House

While we were at my parents over the Holidays, we went to one of my favorite places: The Butterfly House. It is a botanical garden full of all varieties of butterflies. It is great to go in the winter because it is warm, bright and beautiful. The garden is full of tropical plants and flowers, as well as a small waterfall and stream. The butterflies fly all around you, and if you wear a colorful shirt, they land on you. They even have a section where they show you the transformation of the caterpillar to a butterfly. They have a caterpillar in each cycle. When the caterpillar is ready to emerge from the cocoon as a butterfly, one of the staff shakes the cocoon and the butterfly flies out into the garden. It is really cool to watch and have only seen it once when I was there. Laneah had a great time chasing the butterflies. It was fun watching her (as it always is) learn and discover. I know I've put up a lot of slideshows lately, but when there are multiple pictures, it is just easier to do a slideshow. Enjoy the pictures, I hope you also get to enjoy The Butterfly House someday.

1st Birthday

I know, finally! Sorry for the delay, but I finally have it together (sort of:). Anyway, our sweet little princess had two 1st birthday parties this year. We had one here with our friends and Jason's family and we had one at my family's house on her actual birthday.

The birthday party at our house was butterfly themed with white, purple and pink colors. I made a butterfly cake (which I was very proud of btw). It was a hectic day ( I had thrown the ward christmas party the night before and still had to clean, cook and decorate for Laneah's party). I put up her hanging sign that said "Happy 1st Birthday" and didn't really take a good look at it; only to see if it was straight. Later I looked at the sign and noticed the "a" and "i" were in the wrong place so the sign actually said "Hippy 1st Barthday" ! Luckliy I still had to pick up the balloons from the place I had purchased the sign from and was able to exchange it for a correct one. We ordered some yummy pizza from Papa Johns and people started to arrive. About 20 people came so Laneah was very clingy and shy. We ate and then opened presents. Laneah just clung to me so I had to open the presents and she would play with one hand while holding on to me with the rest of her body. Then we put a candle in the cake and sang "Happy Birthday" and she just looked at us like we were nuts:) I gave her a slice of cake and was hoping she would get really messy, but she was as dainty as she could be and really only tasted a little of the frosting and decided that she had had enough. I gave her a bath and after everyone had left, she had a blast playing with all of her new toys.

The birthday party at my parent's house was all pink princessed themed. (So fun, I love girly stuff. ) We bought Laneah a 1st birthday shirt, a pink frilly tutu, pink tights and pink converse shoes. She looked like a little punk princess. (Poor little thing was really sick, she must have caught a bug before we left. I felt awful that she was sick on her birthday and Christmas). We made cupcakes with pink frosting and sprinkles. Laneah was much less inhibited at this party because there were just a few people that she knew really well. She actually attempted to open the presents this time. I am surprised that she didn't care about tearing wrapping paper because is always tearing books, magazines, or anything else that you can tear. I guess she only wants to tear things she isn't supposed too:) She even crawled on top of some of the presents and then tried to open them with her teeth:) She had a great time with her new presents and chasing the kitten. Anyway, I made a slideshow of some of the pictures from her birthday parties. There are a lot of cute ones. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

Hey everyone! I hope that everyone had a great Christmas. We are having a great time at my parent's house. Laneah loves being around grandma, grandpa, her aunt, and all her uncles. My dad got a kitten (named him Jack Bauer) for Christmas, and Laneah has so much fun playing with him. Laneah enjoyed opening presents, but got easily distracted, especially by toys that had already been opened. It was a wonderful day!

We took Laneah to the mall last week to get pictures with Santa. We all thought that she would scream her head off, but she did great! She didn't even pout:) They took about three pictures and she didn't smile. The photograper showed me the ones that she took and asked if they were ok. I asked if we could try one more to see if she would smile. The photographer was so nice, and said that would be fine. I played peek-a-boo with Laneah and she smiled! I was so happy!
Merry Christmas!

One year ago today.....

One year ago today, our lives were changed forever. We were given the most precious gift that one could give; a beautiful baby. After years of heart ache and longing, our hearts were filled with love and joy as we held our precious baby girl in our arms for the first time. This year has been the best year of our lives.

To Laneah's birth mother: We are so grateful to you for your selflessness and love. We think of you often and pray for you daily. We will make sure that Laneah knows what a beautiful and amazing person you are. We hope that this anniversary becomes a joyful memory for you knowing that you made our dreams of a family possible.

Night in Bethlehem

Whew! It is done! I am the activities chairman in our ward and I had to put together our Christmas party. Thanks to my committee, the party was a real success. We decided to do a Night in Bethlehem. If you aren't familiar with this activity, you re-enact the time/night of Christ's birth. We started in the chapel to start out on a spiritual note and then headed to the cultural hall to be taxed (non perishable food item that is donated to a food bank). Each person had to sign the census and then were given a money bag. People were to use their money to buy food and gifts from the different booths. There were seven booths in the room with different kinds of food, drinks, toys and gifts. I had each person on my committee in charge of a different booth to make each booth unique. I was very impressed to see people's creativity at work. We strung white Christmas lights on the ceiling so when it was time for the program to start, we turned off all the lights and it looked like you were sitting under the stars. The program was sweet and spiritual (Basically Luke's account of Christ's birth). People really seemed to enjoy themselves. It turned out great but I am glad it's over:)

Little Miss Attitude

Laneah is all sugar and spice lately; nothing in between. She is either defiant and demanding, or sweet and cuddly. On her defiant side, she sees "no" as a challenge, as in how many times can I do this before mom gives in? On her sweet side, she is giving kisses. I love her sweet, but very slobbery kisses. This video captures her giving me a couple of dirty looks, it is hilarious. I crack up every time I watch it.



Also she took her first steps yesterday. She did 4 steps and then got up and did 3 more. She walked a little today too, but I haven't been able to get a good video of it yet because every time she sees the camera she gets excited and crawls to me as fast as she can to get to the camera:) But I will get a video and post it soon! We leave to visit my parents in a week and we are so excited! Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we were invited to Doug and Lieu's house along with Derrik and Kami, and Jeremy and Jessica. We had a great time and Lieu is such a good hostess.

I made these cupcakes Wed night with my nephew, Anthony (3). He loves to cook and decorate, just not for very long:) While we were pouring the batter into the cupcake tins he sighed and said, "um...when are we going to decorate?" I told him to go play while I finished. When the cupcakes had cooked and cooled he came in and helped me decorate one, ate it, and then left to play:) Oh well, I had fun anyway.
Didn't Lieu do a great job with the ambiance? I loved the decorations. She even made little name cards for our place settings.

Laneah and Dallas weren't really interesting in eating so they left the table to play. All the girls! Laneah, me, Jessica, Kami and Scarlette!
The turkey that Jessica and Kami made. Good job girls, it was delicious!
Jessica and Jeremy munching on some good snacks Lieu had put out.

Lieu had a little push toy shopping cart that Laneah wanted to play with all night. She is really into walking now. She wants us to walk with her or walk using her push toys all the time now. When she uses her push toys, she is getting pretty fast but she can't steer so she is constantly getting stuck or ramming into things, so funny. In this video she rams into the trash can and then falls on her bum:)


For dessert Lieu had made 4 kinds of delicious pies. She put the pumpkin pie outside to cool and put a top over it. When Doug took Laneah and I outside to see their dog, Hank, the pie was gone. Hank ate the entire pumpkin pie! LOL

We had a great Thanksgiving with our friends. Hope you all had a good time too!

11 months (my snuggle bunny)

Laneah turned 11 months on Thursday. I can't believe how fast my baby is growing! Here are some things that our little piglet has been up to:

• Finally! Laneah will snuggle! She was so active, she just wanted to see everything and get into everything, she didn't have time to snuggle:) She still doesn't do it all the time, but she is starting to want to snuggle a lot more. I take every chance I can!

• As soon as she hit 10 months, she became obsessed with books. Before that, she didn't want anything to do with them. Now she is constantly flipping through books. She also wants you to read books to her, which is great. One day, I was reading a book to her that is a touch and feel baby animals book. I was taking her hand and showing her how to feel the different textures, and after doing that a few times, she took my hand and made me feel the animal:)

• The baby in the mirror is her best friend. She loves playing with her friend in the mirror. She loves to give her kisses and head nudges. (For whatever reason, she likes to rub foreheads to show affection).

• Laneah loves to flip our bottom lips, except her motor skills aren't that great, so she rakes your whole face until she gets to your lip and flips it. She thinks it is so funny and does it over and over again.
• She is fascinated with anything that she can pull up and down. Ex-lids (she loves the lid to her wipes) , rugs, etc.
• We were working with her for over a month to get her to clap. She loved when we clapped, but when we would try to get her to do it, she would just take our hands and make us clap instead of doing it herself. A couple of weeks ago, Jason had to help his Grandpa in the morning so he left and Laneah was sad that he left. When he came back, Laneah saw him come in the door, got really excited and started clapping!!! Cutest story ever. Ever since then, she claps all the time. But she seemed to really make the connection that you clap when you are excited or happy, which is great that she can pick up on that social cue. (Pardon the mess in this video, Laneah got into the laundry basket and spread clothes everywhere:)

• She likes eating table food a lot. She is very independent and now she only wants to feed herself, so she gets really upset if we try to feed her anything:) This is what she looks like after she feeds herself.
  

• She likes to sing. She sings to herself sometimes, but mostly she likes to sing along with mommy. She has a very soft and sweet voice and gets really excited when we sing in church. Her favorite song is still Old McDonald.
• Laneah likes to help us unload the dishwasher:)

• Laneah has a great vocabulary for her age. Her favorite word is "baby". She also says "mommy", "mama", "dada", "ke ka" (kitty kat), "mimi" (grandma), "ball", "bee" (her favorite book is Hello Bee), "hi" and "bye bye"
• She is starting to dance, but won't do it for the camera. It is really cute, I will post a video once I can get one.
• She likes to turn light switches on and off, especially the pull down ones that are attached to the fans.
  
• Laneah loves to walk using her push toys, chairs and holding onto furniture.
• She has 6 teeth now, 4 top and two bottom, and is still teething, although I am not sure which teeth are coming in right now.
• Laneah likes to climb. Right now she keeps thinking that she can climb up onto the coffee table and she sure tries. She can make it up onto the couch if you put a throw pillow on the floor for her to step up on. This picture is of her after she climbed up onto on of our end tables.

• Our little girly girl loves shoes and jewelry. She is constantly playing with our shoes, although she never keeps her shoes on:) And she is always pulling at my jewelry. I don't wear much anymore because she has broken so many necklaces. She also loves pulling everything out of my purse and playing with my purse.

• Most babies have a special blankie or stuffed animal, but Laneah loves her burp clothes. Not one in particular, any one works. She likes to snuggle with them, rub them on her cheek, or lay on it like she is using it as a pillow. It is really cute.
  

Some things that aren't so cute (advice please!)

• She loves to gag herself. She sticks her fingers down her throat and gags herself all the time. She will do it with one hand and then when I take that hand away, she uses her other hand!!! I have no idea why she does this.
  
• She loves to drink bath water. I have tried bringing her sippy cup to the bath, leaving the water running and fill up a cup from it and let her drink from that...nothing works so far.
• She is testing boundaries. Ex- she loves the trash can in the kitchen. As soon as we are in the kitchen, she goes straight for the trash can. I tell her "you can't touch the trash can, it is dirty" and then I take her to the fridge to let her play with her magnets. And then she sits down and crawls right back to the trash can. And we do this all day, every day, with everything that she is not supposed to touch/do.
  
• It is nearly impossible to change her diaper. She will not stay still for a half of a second unless she is trying to grab her poo! So much fun.
• Will she ever stop pulling my hair????
• She will not keep her shoes, socks, or hats on and it is freezing outside.
• She thinks mommy is a jungle gym and a drum set

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Laneah is the sweetest baby. She loves to laugh, play and entertain. We love her so much!

A Bewitching Halloween

Laneah and I dressed up as witches for Halloween this year. We met up with cousins Anthony (dressed as a vampire) and Blake (dressed as Frankenstein) to go Trick or Treating. Laneah looked so adorable in her witch costume, but she didn't like her hat very much, so she kept pulling it off. Jason took her door to door while I took picture after picture:) Jason had a good time picking out what candy he wanted to eat since Laneah doesn't get to eat any of her goodies this year. When we got home, we piled all of the candy around her (I wanted a picture of it) and she went crazy. She started kicking the candy all around, laughing, throwing candy in the air and rolling around it! It was hilarious! It was a fun Halloween and I can't wait for next year!

"Nana Dos"

So my mom is in town, which has been lots of fun. She has been playing with Laneah's hair and calling the styles "Nana Dos", which cracks me up. She had to sit Laneah in the sink to do her hair because Laneah can't get enough of her "friend" in the mirror. My mom managed to get Laneah's hair to do two different styles: a Pebble's type hairdo and little pigtails, both of which are adorable. But don't take my word for it, just check out the pictures:)