Cookie night at The Laurie's

Can you guess who helped Bailey and I decorate the cookies that we made yesterday?

(Bottom row: The Riddler bunny, The Joker bunny, Poison Ivy bunny and Two-Face bunny)

End of the weekend blog...

There is only so much design work I can do before my brain finally gives out. I should be working but after creating hotel menus, vacations destinations guides and ads, I am now very hungry and desperately wanting a vacation right now. So I'll set that all aside and finish up tomorrow night and upload some photos of this last weekend.

All week James was wanting to take Bailey to the Deanna Rose Farm park here in Overland Park, KS but he either didn't feel well (he's still has some kind of crud he can't get rid of) or weather bad. So when the weekend came it was a wonderful day to take her to the park. So did every other parent in Johnson county and did the same thing as we were doing. The park is a really great trip for young kids but it's best to do on the week days where your kid might actually get a chance to play on the playground and it's free on Monday - Thursday.

Bailey wasn't amused with just standing behind a butterfly for pictures and even though she couldn't go play on the playground due to just too many kids already there, she did have fun with the petting zoo part. First up, feeding some goats...


Bailey loved the little goats and made sure before we left the pen that she petted and hugged them all. James was just happy to see us out of there without Bailey and myself wanting one. After walking around and seeing the rest of the animals we found the pony rides.

Again James was very happy that after the pony ride was over that neither me or Bailey wanted the pony to take home. One ride on daddy's shoulders back to the car and we headed home via the route that takes us past a Sonic for some drinks.

Are you there blog? It's me Jennifer.

According to the peanut gallery in Harrisonville (aka: my father) I've abandon the blog. I'm here to set the record straight, no I haven't abandon the blog but lately I haven't been able to do much posting as before. Freelance work has been booming and has been pretty much taking what little time I have left after Bailey goes to bed. Now that the weather is warming up I'm finding myself more and more outside with Bailey picking every flower out of our yard and having her ask "when are we going to have tomatoes"? I'm also finding more and more ants in my house as the weather warms up. A war to which I haven't been able to win since we moved into this house. I've tried every chemical product out there and every year I'm walking into the bathroom seeing a moving wall. Spring also starts my yearly war with the dandelions and me wishing for hot summer days to come and burn my lawn to a nice brown crisp. So while I'm busy creating ads for hotels, planting tomatoes and destroying ants & weeds, I'll upload some Easter pictures from last weekend.

No Fear

Saturday we (Bailey, my mother and me) drove in the rain to Stover, Mo. for their annual quilt show. By the time we arrived and pulled into the parking lot of the local community center there in Stover, the clouds parted and the sun started to shine directly onto the playground set located right next door to the show. Now normally Bailey is quite the good little shopper and enjoys hunting for fabrics with her Me-Me when attending shows and stores but this was no ordinary playground, it had THREE really big slides. So naturally the second we stepped into the building I heard "Can I go to the playground?", "One more booth and then I go to playground?" and "Is Me-Me done yet? Is she done now?". So I quickly looked through stuff and left Me-Me to continue to shop while Bailey got some much needed slide time in.

Up the playground set, down the slide. Repeat steps till grandma comes out.

Not much happening....

A pretty quiet week and weekend happened around here. I wanted to spend some time outside cleaning up flower beds but the rain and cold temperature pretty much kept us both inside. Some unexpected freelance came my way which kept me busy all weekend. For our anniversary, James and I decided to have the weekend to ourselves thanks to my parents who watched the child for us. No big plans, just used the time to have dinners out and watching movies at home. We will have more to blog about next weekend when we take Bailey to go see Disney on ice.

Last Tuesday we forgot to take something out for dinner so we headed off to one of Bailey's favorite places to eat, Chic-Fli-A. We soon discovered it was Family Night and got to see the cow mascot come out. Bailey wanted nothing to do with the cow even with James going up there with her. I soon discovered she hadn't napped that day and was getting quite grumpy, so we ended up leaving with some free ice cream cards to use at a later date. Here's a picture of James using his new skills from his current class, Conflict Management & Negotiations. Sometimes dealing with a toddler is like doing hostage negotiations & labor bargaining at the same time.

Bailey & Alex meet the big red dog, sort of...

Pulling a trick from my childhood memories of watching The Rocky & Bullwinkle show the title of this blog should really be...

"Bailey & Alex see the big red dog butt from a distance." or.... "What in the [BEEP] were we thinking when this sounded like a good idea??"

First of all both kids were great and well behaved during the entire day (wish I could have said that about some of the other kids there) they had a blast. If anyone was grumpy, whinny and crying it was James and I.

Our little adventure begins with...

From 10 am to 2 pm bring your kid down and they'll get to skate with Clifford the Big Red Dog for free down at the Crown Center. It sounded like a fun thing to do so we invited Bailey's friend Alex to come along. It was a little chilly on Saturday but the sun was out and for once this year, it wasn't snowing. So we start off our little adventure with breakfast for the kids at Chick-Fil-A and after a few minutes of play time we're off to go skating.

We arrived at 10:30 and got into line to rent skates. We waited and waited. We could see the ice rink in the distance with tons of people skating around but no big red dog in sight.

45 minutes in line and Bailey & Alex are still smiling for the camera...James, not so much smiling happening.

An hour in line and we hadn't moved since we first arrived.

After waiting for an hour and half we finally got into the skate rental area only to find out we had to be put on a waiting list for kid skates. Something that was suppose to be $12 ending up costing us $24 for ice skates rental for the 4 of us plus a skating charge for James and I. This locker room/rental area was insanely packed full of parents and kids trying to put on ice skates along with people returning the wet skates so seating was hard to find as you walked around in your socks on wet floors. Alex and I got our skates on and were waiting for James (poor Bailey was on the list for shoes) to finish getting his skates on. I'm not sure if the person behind the counter didn't hear James shoe size correctly or didn't tell him that ice skates came in whole sizes but he ended up with skates that didn't fit. As he was trying to take the skates off the hook on the boot caught his finger and left a big gash in it. Bleeding and in pain his last button had been pushed from this poorly planned skating event. I could tell James had enough of Clifford's Ice Skating party. In the television show The Incredible Hulk, at the breaking point of pure frustration and filled with rage...something was muttered "not liking me when I'm angry" a guy would turn green, rip off his shirt and start smashing stuff. Well James didn't turn green and start screaming "James...SMASH!!..stomp, stomp, stomp..." but I could tell he wasn't going to last much longer so I offered to take both kids on the ice rink and allowed him to take pictures of me falling on my butt.

At this point in the story, I should mention that neither James or myself have ever ice skated before. We both have memories of roller skating in our younger days and thought we should be able to handle it. No difference between the two forms of skating, right? Well it's Sunday night and my knees have finally stopped hurting. By the time we managed to walked our way up to the rink my feet, ankles and knees were hurting so bad that I wouldn't have cared one bit if I had to walk back down to the rental area in just my socks. First up was Alex on the ice although he wasn't to thrilled with the idea of being on it and I couldn't blame him at this point. With wobbly ankles and knees I grabbed a hold of him and the railing thinking I could just drag myself and the child along down to the next door opening. It worked, or it would have worked if I was the only person out there on the ice that didn't trust their legs to do what they're suppose to do. Needless to say I was in the slow lane on the ice rink and that was just fine for Alex. Bailey on the other hand dragged me out away from safety of the railing telling me "Go faster Mommy!!!".

I managed to grab the railing to gain whatever balance I had as Bailey's feet went out from underneath her as she started to pull me down. She got herself back up and yanked me away from the railing once again before heading off the ice. As we were leaving she wanted to go again and I promptly said "No" and wobbled back into the rental area.

Clifford did make his appearance when we were up at the rink but it was impossible to even get near him. Whoever was in the costume didn't know how to skate either. They had to be led out there on the ice and was pretty much mobbed by parents wanting a picture of their kid with the dog. James managed to snap a picture of the dog's butt before we left the ice rink but this is as close as we could get.

When we left the rink we decided to take both the kids to Fritz's over in the Crown Center since both kids love trains and this place is a train theme restaurant. The place over in the mall had another line that went and disappeared behind a corner. Neither James or myself wanted anything to do with lines that disappear behind corners so we packed up both the kids and took them over to the Fritz's restaurant that just opened up in Shawnee. No line there but we did have a 25 minute wait just to be seated. It's a cute restaurant where a train will run above your head and deliver food to your table. It was cute. The food sucked, but Bailey & Alex both loved it and that is all that matters.

Happy Belated Valentines day from the Laurie's

Holy Crap Batman!! There's tread on them!!

Our Valentine gifts to each other...4 new tires to the Bat-Jeep (that's Bailey's nickname for the Jeep, I wonder who she got that from??). The 3 day weekend was great except for Bailey being sick, whiny and me chasing her around the house with a Kleenex tissue. At least I got some exercise in even though it snowed again on Sunday...ugh. I'm REALLY looking forward to spring.

I heart 3 day weekends!

Some reason whenever I have 3 day weekends I get nothing done and then rush doing everything around the house starting at 9 pm on the night before I head back to work. This weekend will be no different, laundry still needs to be done, dishes still need to get into the dishwasher and I will be seeing them all tomorrow night. Until then I will enjoy what empty time I do have with my family.

On Saturday James and I watch Bailey's friend Alex while his mother was at work. Those two kids played with every toy in the house and managed to bring all of them out of Bailey's room. Back around Halloween my sister Theresa picked up a bunch of kid's Halloween costumes for a $1 at Walmart. Pretty neat idea my sister had about getting them for Bailey to use for dress up play, way to use the noggin Tre! Bailey's favorite costume right now is the wedding dress which she promptly put on over her duckie pj's and dragged Alex around dancing in the dinning room.



My parents hadn't seen Bailey since Christmas so we headed off to see them on Sunday driving through some very thick fog. Watching football usually keeps us entertained but Bailey wants to make cookies with Me-Me.





Mmmmm.....cookies!

I also spent a little time digging up my old Strawberry Shortcake dolls at my parents to give to Bailey. They still had their fruit smell considering most seemed to be missing some hair.

Is it Spring yet?

It's official folks, the Laurie's are tired of winter.

Outside the kitchen window looking into the backyard

The snow lump is still there just bigger with the snowfall from the week.

Another weekend of cold kept us indoors for the weekend and wondering what to do. Bailey on the other hand is happy playing with her Barbie's and watching anything related to "Princesses" on TV over and over again. James watched football (when a princess movie wasn't on) and I manged to finish a belated Christmas gift to Bailey's friend Alex. I'll talk more about the knitted fish hat on my other blog, Anything but socks. One would think with all the time indoors we would get a lot of housework done, sadly no...some chores got done but we took it easy and watched some good old movies we hadn't seen in a while.

Tiny dancer

Our daycare provider recently found this video of Bailey taken last March.

Needless to say James is quite pleased with Bailey's choice of music.

3 inches of snow and more to come?

Another 3 inches of snow from last night kept us inside today cleaning up the house but we managed to go outside yesterday for a little fun in the snow.

By the time we started working on the snowman James and I were getting tired of being cold but Bailey wanted more. The snowman ended up looking like a big pile of snow so we told her it was giant cupcake, stuck a stick in it and called it done.

Then on to the snow angel...

At first she couldn't quite get the hang of it but eventually she figured it out. By that time James and I were very cold and both of us said it was time to go inside. Let the drama and water works begin. Someone didn't want to stop playing no matter how cold it was but we insisted and she came in to a pair of snowflake pj's and a cup of hot tea.

Christmas Wishes DO Come True

Bailey has been really getting into the spirit of Christmas this year and has held up her end of the deal by being a good girl (as usual). When she went to visit the fat man in the red suit, she was very clear in what she wanted for Christmas... She wanted a Barbie RV camper and cowboy boots. A few days before Christmas, she also stated that she wanted snow, too.

From the pictures below, you can see that she got all three of her wishes.



If she didn't believe that Santa Claus was real before, I'm pretty sure she does now.

Bailey meets the fat man in the red suit!

After turkey day ramblings...

Thanksgiving has come and gone. Now we are left with the age old question of "how much longer are we going to eat turkey???" Not much longer since I didn't take too much home in a doggy bag when we left my parents house on Friday. I did leave with some cookies baked by Bailey and Me-Me, which promptly got eaten up once at home.

Waiting patiently for Me-Me to get started on mixing the cookie dough.

Mmmmm......everything taste better with sprinkles!

On the many trips to Monroe, La., James always has layovers in Dallas, Tx. so he picked up a small gift for Bailey on his last trip in November for being such a good girl while away. For Christmas Santa will be bringing her matching cowboy boots.

After baking and playing with her new hat, it was time for a nap. It was hard getting to sleep but eventually she crashed while the turkey was baking.

One holiday down and the next one is coming up. I'm not ready one bit since it means going shopping and hearing all the Christmas music playing in the stores. I pretty much hate Christmas music, especially when it's a classic song being butchered by some pop artist.

This year I'm thankful for Netflix. I know, I know that seems a bit shallow but it's true. Yes, I'm thankful for my family and that everyone seems to be doing fine health wise but I can't denied it anymore, I'm thankful for signing up for Netflix this year. Netflix is freakin' awesome. They have pretty much anything you can think of and the best part is all of the children shows that we can watch instantly on our PS3 that's hooked up to the big TV in the living. No more buying DVDs at $10 each or trying to remember what channel is Noggin for a child that is wanting Max & Ruby when Max & Ruby may not even be on. Now with that said, I shall be remembering part of my childhood after this blog entry with the DVD we got in the mail today, Season 1 of The Muppet Show. Check out the YouTube video of the Muppets doing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcEpdxsWZLA.

A haiku for the seasons

Sycamore must die

Very slow and fiery death

Cupcakes are yummy

Trick or Treat and my husband's amazing ability to get a free dinner!

Trick or treat, just give me CANDY!!! Well Bailey wasn't that bad but she did have quite the haul at my office's Halloween party for the employees and families this year. This year she decided to be a fairy princess but she didn't want a crown, she wanted a hat. So off to the store in search of supplies for making a princess hat, it turned out good although it wouldn't stay on her head very well.
Friday morning I was greeted by James and Bailey singing "Happy Birthday" to me. Bailey was managing to sing every other word to me while James did his impersonation of Marylin Monroe's singing happy birthday to JFK. As I tried not to laugh so hard that I would wet the bed, I thanked both of them and told James to keep his day job. After work we were both tired so my birthday dinner was scheduled for Saturday at Red Robin. He's a picky eater so he usually has items removed or added so by the time the waitress has taken his order, they are usually on the next piece of paper for my order. Even though the waitress has written every little change down it usually comes out wrong. Food gets sent back, comes back right with the manager saying "so sorry, we've taken this meal off your ticket". James never makes a scene, never gets angry or loud, never goes out expecting them to do anything but bring him what he order but for some reason, every time it happens he gets a free meal. The one time I go out to eat with my co-workers and I get my glass of ice tea dumped in my lap by the waitress, I still ended up paying for my meal. Saturday was to be no different, I knew the minute the burger went back because there was cheese & mayo on it, it wouldn't be on the ticket. Most of us would be just eaten the burger but James's point is valid, he order it without cheese & mayo for a reason and at the prices you have to pay now a days, might as well get what you asked for. We are probably the only family of 3 that can go out to eat and walk away under $20 for the night.