The New English Dictionary (Lauren Version)

Da! = tada!

Tee = tree

Jo = George

Mo = Elmo

Daaa = Dad

Mommommmommm = Mom

Ma? = Mom where are you?

mPa = Grandpa

Ju = juice

Chee = cheese

Mo' = more

uh dtis = what's this?

ee-uh ee-uh = clean up, clean up

bu = bum

Whaow! = wow!

ah di-id! = I did it!

ees = please

sho = show

No-uh-o = I'm saying no but I really mean yes.

No! = I really mean no!

Immodesty

I had an interesting day yesterday: writing it down makes me feel less embarrassed about it so here's the story.

I got a coupon for a free dress from Old Navy. Never been a fan of their dresses but figured it was worth a shot. Since I'm pretty short I didn't think the length would be an issue. I put it on yesterday, checked in the mirror and sat down to make sure it was long enough before heading to church.

Well sometime between walking to church, sitting through sacrament meeting and taking Lauren to nursery, the dress shortened by at least 3 inches I swear. A kind lady in the ward quietly came behind me and told me my slip was showing ALOT. Great. Thankfully the bathroom was a few steps away. And there I discovered that even when wearing a slip, the dress was quite thin as well as shortening by the second even with a slip. Oh geez.Thoroughly embarrassed and mortified, I ran home to change hoping nobody was looking.

So just so you know, Old Navy dresses magically shorten themselves while wearing and become translucent in different lighting. This dress needs some serious doctoring before wearing again, if I do ever wear it again.

Free dress? Fail. I think I'll stick to making my own.

18 Month Pictures (2 months late!)

I may be biased, but we absolutely have the prettiest little girl in the whole world. She's talking a whole bunch... at least she thinks she is... there's still not very many discernible words in amongst all her jabber. She's such a cute little stinker!

Noe!

Or snow, as it is more commonly called. Lauren quite enjoyed it!

Lucky

Today's trip to the grocery store was... interesting, shall we say. Lauren does pretty good most of the time, but today for some reason she was starving and couldn't wait to eat the food we still needed to pay for.

She got a chunk out of the bread AND the bagels.

She smooshed a banana.

And then... she tipped over the whole carton of eggs. Not just a dozen, but an 18 count carton.

But I was so lucky, because even though they wiggled and rolled through every nook and cranny of the jammed cart, not one of those 18 eggs was cracked. Phew.

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On another lucky note... Institute today was really good. I'm not a political person, but I had special interest in this election. After hearing the results I felt a little unnerved, I guess I still do. I feel like this event is another "sign of the times"; it's going to get much worse before it gets better. And that's how it's supposed to be. As frightening as it may be, in the end, everything is going to be glorious.

The lesson today was about the "Trial of our Faith" from Elder Anderson's talk from this last conference. Sister Whitesides made the comment that this election might be the beginning of the trial of our faith for continuing to stand up for morals and righteousness when everything else is crumbling.

The message I got today was that in all trials, we could feel empowered because we have the Gospel and the Lord on our side. And with that we can do and endure ANYTHING, because He has promised it.

And for that, I feel lucky.

What I DON'T Want to Be

I've noticed a few different scenarios in the last few days with mothers and their kids. I don't mean to be judgmental, and I probably don't know the whole story, but I hope that I can take a lesson from what I observed.

We went to the heritage farm last week and were riding the train. There was a group of moms and kids who got on the train after us. There was one mom who was so concerned about getting the perfect picture of her kids riding in the caboose. One of the kids was crying because they wanted to get out and the mom was getting more frustrated because she couldn't get a good picture. I wanted to run and let that poor girl out who was crying because she was scared. That perfect picture just wasn't worth it.

At the library today, I was sitting at a table in the kid's area with Lauren. There was a little girl, about 4, sitting at the table next to us. After awhile she started talking to us and asking if we knew when her mom was going to come out of the story-time room and take her home. She had been sitting there for almost an hour, all by herself and almost in tears because she didn't know when her mom was going to open the door. I told her she could probably go look in the window and see her mom. She did and her mom got after her and motioned for her to sit back down.

I hope that I never get caught up in capturing EVENTS with my kids that I forget the whole reason for the events are the kids themselves.

Little Butterfly

Our butterfly princess! She caught on to the whole idea of Halloween pretty quick. we showed her a few times how to take a piece of candy from the bucket and put it in her bag, after that, she was good to go!

It was funny that every house we went to said to take a few, "because she's just so cute!"

I was excited to actually have trick-or-treaters this year. I like answering the door and seeing everyone. The glow sticks we handed out seemed to be a hit.

Lauren liked all the suckers best. I think she had four different ones open through the course of the night.