More Halloween Photos

These are just gratuitous extra photos of Lauren at Halloween, in case you needed more. Her teachers had a party for the kids and students, and it was pretty fun to see all of those munchkins waddling around in their costumes. Although there wasn't an "official" contest, we're told Lauren won best costume. These are pictures of us in Lauren's room at school. She's still there now, but should be moving to the next room soon.

Halloween 2010

I need you to prepare yourself before you scroll down. Because you're about to see the cutest baby in the cutest costume you've ever seen. Seriously. Take a deep breath. Get ready. OK, now go.

Pumpkin Patch

On Friday Sean and I cut out of work a little early, picked Lauren up from school, and went to the pumpkin patch. Not shockingly, Lauren liked the petting zoo the best and thought the pumpkins were just "eh." We took a tractor ride out to the pumpkin patch and let Lauren run around a little, but then opted to buy the pumpkins that were by the exit and closer to our car. I think Lauren had a great time, as was demonstrated by the fact that we had to drag her away kicking and screaming.

Out in the pumpkin patch.

In constant motion.

Lauren picked out a gourd to represent new family member Stella.

Another fan favorite: the cornbox. Like a sandbox, but with corn.

Lauren at 16 Months

Please forgive me, it's been so long since I posted. And I started this post back around September and just never got around to writing anything, so now I don't have much fantastic information to report about what was happening four months ago, but rest assured that Lauren was being adorable. I know that most of you are in it for the pictures anyway.


In September we went down to Tulsa to finally clean out the storage unit that we opened after my Mom died. It was actually a fun weekend spent with family, and reliving many (mostly funny) memories of Mom. While we were at the storage unit Lauren spent the day with Grandma Kakee and Kakee's grandkids Dillon and Ryder. She had a BLAST. It's hard not to at Kakee's house. Above she's having a snack at Kakee's kid-sized bistro table.

Ah. Warm weather. I remember warm weather. This is at the playground at the school behind our house, which we visited often in warmer weather, and still visit on occasion all bundled up with our new (getting less new by the month) dog Stella. Lauren moved from the slide to the jungle gym around this time, and you'd be amazed how long she can hang there.

Aunt Arie is a showoff.

I love this photo. I had high expectations for Sean and fatherhood and he has exceeded them over and over. I am a very lucky wife and Lauren is a very lucky daughter.

Dia de los Muertos

One of the many perks of living on the Westside is the annual Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) festival about 20 steps from our yard. If that. We took Lauren to check out the festivities.

Capoeira (Brazilian fight dancing, I believe) performance.

Lauren checking out the performance. OK, she was scoping out a dog.

Lauren had to sit on the edge of the sidewalk just like Sean.

Eventually Lauren's shadow outshone the dancers. At least in her mind.

Sean's big score: street food.

The playground behind our house was in view from the festival. The playground won.

Lauren at 15 Months

Well this is embarrassing. I haven't posted since August. And while this may post as an August entry because I started it back in August, I'm actually typing this in October. This is just a little smattering of 15 month photos for you.

Lauren's still a good eater, depending on the entree. Pasta, applesauce and teething biscuits are her faves. Otherwise, she's just eh. I'm told she eats a lot at school.

Lauren has become very good at opening things. Too good.

She also likes to play the harmonica. Then she wants us to play the harmonica. Trust me, you don't want to play the harmonica after her. It involves a lot of saliva.

Here she is with a maraca. She's a one man band.

Lauren Learns How to Slide

So we've been sick for the last two weeks. All three of us. Coughs, sore throats, congestion, you name it. This morning we woke up, and for the first time felt like maybe we could leave the house for a few hours. You know, a little fresh air, a little vitamin D...so we thought we'd introduce Lauren to swings and slides. She has a tiny little slide at school, which she tries to go down head first, so we thought maybe she'd like something a little bigger. And she did.

We thought that she'd be really cautious. We were wrong.

She acted like she'd been doing this her whole life. No help, please.

This makes it look like she was hesitating. She wasn't. She was just checking out the other kids.

She liked to twist as she was going down and end up on her stomach. Although as you can see in the picture above her eyes were closed, so maybe she was a little scared.

And then, when sliding and twisting wasn't enough, she decided to climb up the slide. And did a pretty good job of it, too. Little daredevil.

Here she is on an even bigger slide, but she wasn't able to climb up to this one on her own because it involved a rope ladder, so we stuck to the yellow slide most of the time.

Lauren was pretty jazzed about the swing at first, but she didn't like swinging high. We'll work on that one. No underdogs for this girl for now.

We had a great day at the park, and then we all got sweaty and headed back for the air conditioning. It was nice to get some fresh air. Besides the slide, Lauren's favorite part was all of the dogs being walked around the park.