Go Daddy Go

Kevin recently worked a really hot and {crazy} dangerous fire. 

And I just think this photo is awesome!

Distraction

You may feel sorry for Harper after reading this. She is a poor, mistreated little girl. 

Last night, after her bath, she wanted to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the poor thing had to lay on the hard wood floor...even without a pillow! Poor thing, had to make her own pillow with a doll. 

{keep in mind we have plenty of furniture, a carpeted rug, and a comfy chair all her own}

But she is willing to sacrifice comfort for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. It is truly fascinating. 

And the poor thing couldn't even get any food, had to chew on a block!

I distracted her by laying behind her snapping photos. 

But not enough to tear her eyes off the tv.

No, Mickey is too engaging to look away. 

So instead, she decided to lean on my legs. Still hasn't looked at me. 

Then she noticed her books and headed to her book basket. But it was a struggle even for the books to capture her attention. That Mickey Mouse is so addicting!

But in the end....

the books won her attention.

Pretty little one

Why can't you just give me a snack pack?

Harper received her first pudding cup. Now see if you can guess who gave it to her:

Mom OR Dad

If you guessed 'Dad', you are correct!

If you guessed 'Mom', you are outta your mind!!!

Turns out, Harper loves pudding. She loves to eat it, play in it, paint with it, but thankfully no flinging. 

She doesn't {YET} like to fling pudding. 

This is her EEW face. And she really drags out the EEEEE-wuh!

She would be happy to share with you.

And this is her 'say cheese' face.

And although Daddy gave her the pudding, I can't complain, because he also cleaned her up. Maybe his version of cleaning up is a little more dramatic than mine is, but I will take what I can get. 

Some of you might have seen this photo with Instagram or Facebook, now you know the reason why my child was in the sink. It makes sense now, doesn't it?

~

4th

Harper celebrated this Independence Day by drinking lots of water...

Eating lots of cupcakes....

And waving the flag proudly. 

Did I say "waving"? Excuse what I meant to say was "eating". 

Or "chewing".

Or "gnawing".

Happy {Belated} Birthday America!

Reader

I've said before how much Harper likes to read. She really loves books, I am not just saying that because I am a teacher and I badly want our children to be readers. She really does. They are her preferred "toy". She carries them all over the house and we have to stop what we are doing (all the time) so we can sit down and read one. And then read it again. And then a third time. 

I read somewhere that you should have books available to your kids wherever they are. Not just in one place in the house. I took that advice to heart. Not only do we have books in the diaper bag, my purse, and the car, we have them.....

In the living room...

In the playroom....

Again, in the playroom....

And in her room.

But is that enough for Harper? Nope. She would also like them to be

on the ottoman....

In the kitchen....

And in the hallway.....

And after I put my camera down, I found two more in our closet, and one in the laundry room. 

So you know the verse "Where ever thou goest, I will follow"? It's a beautiful verse. I love it. 

However at our house, it is "Where ever Harper goest, books will follow". 

And here she is, transporting another book across the house. 

"Oh hey! There's a book on the floor."

~

Baby, it's HOT outside!

Harper and I have had to stay indoors much more than we would like to lately. It's just been so stinking hot in the afternoons! And even though that little one would play until she drops out in the heat, I have to be the responsible (and boring) one and keep her in. Although we try to do a lot in the morning or go somewhere air conditioned, the truth is, those indoor afternoons can get old!

So it's up to mama to change the pace every now and then. So last week, we went tent camping in the kitchen. Harper wasn't too sure about the blanket fort, she knew those things didn't belong there. 

But it didn't take her long to realize that it's really fun to read in the dark.

We kicked back and read to our hearts content. 

She even stayed in there while I cooked dinner. It was quite cozy.

A great camping trip, at a lovely 72 degrees!

Here we go again!

 Our family had the yearly goose job last week. For those of you who may not have read the posts from previous years, here's the condensed explanation:

My dad (and Kevin) are licensed Nuisance Wildlife Control Operators. My dad has a trapping business that does "goose-relocation". This might be when a neighborhood association or golf course wants to get rid of their geese problem. So my dad (and all his recruits) catch the geese and he transplants them to whatever land the wildlife dept. assigns the geese to. 

Okay, now that you are caught up to speed, we always do a goose job at Rogers State University in Claremore each year. We're like a well oiled machine at this point. Well....maybe we're a little rusty. 

Harper is ready for the action! But she quickly decided it would be more fun to be OUT of the stroller.

Kevin is ready to escort them across the water.

Hannah is trying to get ahead of the geese. When they come out of the water, we want to slowly push them towards the pen. Usually they cooperate...when they stick together. 

It's when one or two get separated, that throws us off our game.

Jordan! Eyes on the goose. 

Jordan's girlfriend Kassidy gets initiated into the group: her first time to carry a goose. She was a good sport!

Taylor had just DOVE for that goose. This was maybe his third time to dive for a goose. He's was fully committed to the cause. 

Speaking of being fully committed to the cause, Hannah (or pukey as I call her) threw up three times and just kept on going. I was impressed.

Harper was quite intrigued with the whole thing. But really, she just wanted in that boat. 

And I am so sad to say that I failed as the resident photographer. I didn't get a group picture! I know, I know, it's a shame. So I'll give credit where credit is due. The goose chasers this year were:

Papa

Nana

Kevin

Taylor

Jordan

Hannah

Anna

Kassidy

Cara

Harper

And imagine if you will, these people were sweaty, smelly, hot & sunburned, possibly dehydrated (you know, the vomiting and all), covered in feathers, grass, mud, and poop. 

So even though I failed to take a photo of the group, hopefully I was able to capture our essense in words so that you can imagine how we looked. If you haven't figured out yet....it wasn't pretty!

My Eye Opener

I heard this today and it stuck with me, so I thought I would share:

The word integrity comes from the root word integer, which is a whole number or a number without fractions. When someone has integrity they are a whole person, a person undivdied, a person who is the same no matter where they are. They don't fraction themselves up depending on who they are with or what they are doing, They are the same at work as they are at home, the same with kids, or without, at church or alone. They aren't one person when a crowd is watching and another person when only their spouse or kids are watching. They don't have to remember how to be, or what to say, or which mask to wear at what times. They just are. They are who they are, no matter where they are.

Another definition of integer is "A thing complete in itself". So I'm going to take that definiton and twist it a bit. To me, integrity is "A thing complete in God". If I am complete in Him, if I find my missing pieces in Him, he will take away the fractions of myself. He will make me the same no matter who I am with. When we find our integrity in Him, we can forget about remembering what we said to which person, forget about hiding this behavior from this group of people, forget about being nervous if someone overhears our conversation. We know that anyone can see us at anytime and see the real us. When our integrity comes from God, the whole person is the person HE intended us to be.

Hope you liked this as much as me.

Closing Argument: Don't fraction yourself up. Let God make you a person of consistency.

Friends

Our next door neighbors stopped by the other night....

Today's Harper

It's been a while since I wrote much about Harper, I've gotten in the habit of talking about her through pictures, because it is generally quicker. But it's about time for a good old fashion update.

Harper currently likes animals, no LOVES animals: animal books, animal flashcards, animals sounds, animal videos, you name it! Oh, well unless you name actually touching animals...she's not too sure about that yet. As a rule of thumb, if the animal is smaller than her, she's okay with it. If the animal is bigger than her, forget about it!

She likes Michey Mouse, or "Mou-" as she says. She has a pair of Minnie and Mickey dolls that we bought her at the disney store. She likes for them to travel with her. She watches Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on tv and dances with the music.

She likes books; loves them. Looks at them by herself all day long. And is just in the past week or so, letting us read an entire book to her. Granted I have to act out the book as I read, talk in various voices, add sound effects, and generally make a fool of myself to get her to sit still. But nonetheless, she's sitting and that counts. Right?

She's really an independent kid when it comes to playtime. She checks in every so often by coming to give us a hug or say our names and sometimes she wants our attention. But for the most part, she likes to play alone. We play with her in her playroom and in the living room, but when she goes back to her room, she likes to shut the door and doesn't come out for a while. When I peak on her, she usually has her quilt off the bed and a few baby dolls and she is telling them "night night" and covering them with the blanket. For example, right now, we are in the playroom and she is going up and down her indoor slide, saying "Wee", every once in a while she looks at me and I tell her "Good job Harper!", but other than that, she has tuned me out for the moment.

She loves to be outside. Which the current heat wave is totally ruining. We can sometimes get out right after breakfast, but once it warms up, unless there is water involved, we are indoors. Bummer!

She has about 11 teeth, which she enjoys brushing at night. Or should I say, "she enjoys sucking the grapefruit flavored toothpaste off of the toothbrush at night"?

She will brush her hair if we ask her to. Which always looks worse once she is finished. Her bangs are always in her eyes and I am always trying to get them out of her eyes. So I have started putting hair ties and clips in her hair for my own peace of mind. She wore bows and headbands as a little baby, but as soon as she knew better, she ripped those suckers out! Now, I have to distract her and hope she doesn't notice that I've put anything in her H-A-I-R. And yes, we spell it, or that little hand of hers shoots up and yanks those clips right out!

She sleeps from 7:00 pm until 7:00 or 8:00 am. Yes, we know we are lucky. Yes, we know that our next child will not do this. No, we do not take this for granted. Trust me, we've heard it all.

She also naps for a few hours each day. Usually just one nap, ranging from an hour and a half to 3 hours. During some of this time, we hear her talking to herself, but she's usually content and falls back to sleep.

She talks all day long. A lot of this is adorable gibberish, some of it is very clear, and other things only we can understand.

Here are few words that everyone could recognize:

hi

bye bye

mom

mama

dad-eee

dog

baby

night night

book

goat

turkey

door

turtle

chick chick

ball

She has also said a few two-word phrases. She said "Bye Bye Dog" and she said "Mama go?" as in 'Where'd Mama go?"

And the cutest thing she says is "doe-no" and holds up her arms, she is saying "I don't know" and she does that when we ask her where something is. It's very cute. 

She hates when the dryer door is open, when we make her come inside, this one particular page of the book "Guess How Much I Love You", when she crawls under the table and then stands up and hits her head, and when one of us goes outside and we don't take her. Some of the things she hates make total sense, others like the dryer and the book page, do not make sense at all. 

She had her 15 month check up recently, she is in the 80th percentile for weight and 96th percentile for height. 

She LOVES her shoes. And your shoes. And we should all be wearing them at all times. She makes sure of it!

Well, I feel that this has been a suitable update on Harper. But as I re-read to check for mistakes, I noticed that I may have lead you astray. It may seem like Harper sleeps all the time and then when she is awake, she doesn't need us and keeps to herself. Well here's the reality, when I told you earlier about her playing on her slide, that was the last paragraph I typed for 3 hours....It went like this: 

she slid, she started rolling around the floor yelling, obviously needing my attention, we came into the kitchen and had a snack, then I changed the sheets on her mattress. And can you imagine how fun it was to jump on her mattress when it was out of the bed?!?! Then she had to run around inside the fitted sheet. If you haven't run around with your head in a fitted sheet, Harper recommends that you do. Then she wanted me to read her a book. In which she was bound and determined to turn the pages, whether I was finished reading or not. Then I found the assortment of collectables she had placed in my laundry basket: picture frames, my hair roller, a sippy cup, a ball, a dish towel. Next we had to unsnap her onesie because she couldn't touch her belly button. And that is just a miserable feeling!! Soon after that, it was naptime. Whew!

So yes, Harper is a good sleeper. And she is a well behaved and easy little girl. But she is also a 15 month old toddler. And yes, she keeps us on our toes. 

~

You can find me in St Louie

Kevin & I took a short anniversary trip a few weeks ago. We left Harper (FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER) with my folks for two nights and headed to St. Louis.

If you don't already know this, our family loves to go to the zoo. Any zoo, any city, we're all in!

The St. Louis  zoo may be the best one yet!

An example of the architecture

Look how close he is to that puffin!

My absolute favorite exhibit

They were soooo close, it was amazing.

Now onto Kevin's favorite part of the trip and the reason we went to St. Louis in the first place. 

The Cardinals game

And or course, we had to visit the arch. We walked over after the game, because as you can see, it's right there!

This cracks me up...Notice Kevin looking down the vents, 

and then he makes the "I'm impressed. That's pretty deep." face. We then had to look down the vents for 5 minutes, examining how far down they went. Men!

We had a great time, ate some seriously good food, and enjoyed celebrating 5 special years together.

~