Pictures

I let Layla run around the house half-naked when it's hot. It makes me wish I were a boy so I could do the same. She LOVES to wear necklaces and bracelets and will find them and put them on all by herself. It cracks me up how girly she is. She is also very affectionate and loves to give hugs and kisses. Sometimes she will walk up to Mitch or I, out of the blue, and give us a hug and/or kiss and pat us on the back. I think it's her little way of saying "I love you!" It melts our hearts! She has such a sweet personality.

We spend time outside almost every day just walking around and pulling out the grass. Excuse her outfit- it's really half of one outfit that got dirty and half of another outfit that got dirty. It was one of those days...

Layla loves to be startled. Sometimes we play a game where Mitch and I each hide behind different corners and Layla walks back and forth between us while we jump out and scare her. Every time we scare her she laughs then gives us a hug. It's awesome.

She loves to read books, especially books about dogs, and will carry a book around the house while looking for someone to read it to her. Then she insists on sitting by you, but preferably in your lap, while you read it to her. It makes me proud; even if it's inconvenient I can't help but to stop whatever I'm doing to read to her. How can you say no to that? Oh, and she even gives kisses and hugs to the dogs in her books. And she says, "mmm!" which is her version of "mwah!" when she gives kisses. So cute.

Layla had her 15 month checkup last week. She was upset the entire time due to those nasty molars making their appearance (she's getting two at the same time!). She weighs 22 lbs (45th percentile) and is 31 inches tall (75th percentile). She's starting to fill out I guess.

She learned to say "water" last week and it's pretty darn adorable. She also learned to fold her arms for the prayer. I didn't even know she knew how ... I always say a prayer out loud to bless our breakfast in the morning, and today when I opened my eyes after the prayer she was sitting so reverently in her high chair with her arms folded. It brought a tear to my eye. But she's not an angel all the time- I've started putting her in "time out" when she plays in the cat's food and water.

Mitch and Kevin took Layla and Oakley out to lunch with them the other day while I was busy. Afterwards they went to an outdoors store (can't remember which one) and pushed the girls around in this cart. Cute!

I brought this box home from Sam's club and can't throw it away because Layla and Harvey both love to sit in it. Sometimes they sit in it together, usually with Layla sitting ON Harvey.

Backing up to sit on Harvey

Harvey is such a good sport ... usually.

And she's still obsessed with her stuffed animals- the kitty, lamb, and Piglet. She usually has at least one of them with her at all times. Even while she's eating. At least she remembers to wave for the camera, right?

Sometimes she tries to carry all three at once. It makes us laugh. She is always giving them hugs and kisses. And she makes Mitch and I give them kisses. The things we do for our kids. (Kinda like the other day when Layla was crying in the car so Mitch and I sang "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" IN A ROUND over and over and over again. Hey, it made her laugh and she clapped for us every time we finished.)

On a side note, Mitch and I finally went and did our Valentine's date: I-Fly. It's a skydiving wind tunnel. Definitely the closest I will ever come to real skydiving due to my intense fear of heights. We had a blast and totally recommend it. If anyone wants to go, we'd like to try it again. The end!

Last Weekend

Nothing too major happened last weekend, but enough happened that I wanted to write about it. The cyst I had removed last year returned and I had it removed again last Thursday. It hurt much worse this time around and I spent a couple of days wearing a ghetto, home-made sling to relieve pressure from my shoulder. Luckily I had Layla to help me feel better by putting her arm around my shoulder while we read books.

On Friday Mitch and I went to the temple. I must say the temple really does bring blessings because the next day I woke up and my shoulder didn't hurt anymore! The constant pain I had for two days before was gone. I kept telling Mitch it was a "temple miracle."

On Saturday Mitch worked like a slave tearing out the rose bushes and planting a Flame Maple in our front yard. I contributed by bringing him water, offering my opinion, and turning on the hose. Layla slept through the whole thing and kept pointing at the new tree when she woke up. I love our new tree, thanks Mitch!


Saturday night we went with Kevin and Nicole to dinner and a movie. Unfortunately we decided to see the third Transformers movie and it sucked. Seriously not worth seeing. Unless you like movies with absolutely no story line, that is. But, we still had fun and enjoyed our date night. Thanks to Katie for watching Layla and putting her to bed even though she wanted to stay up and play with you!

Now we're trying to enjoy the rest of summer before Mitch starts school in 5 weeks! Ahhh! We have some boating trips planned, which I cannot wait for. This might be the summer I finally learn to wakeboard... One thing I have loved doing this summer is taking Layla in the jogging stroller while I run. Here she is before a morning run with Mitch.

Yay for summer!

Coldplay

While Coldplay's new song is quite different from their original style (e.g., "Parachutes" album), it is growing on me. Especially when Layla dances to it. I think it will make an excellent addition to the running playlist on my Ipod. It would totally pump me up. Coldplay is still my all-time favorite band. I hope they make it back to Utah soon!

Races

I ran in the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay last month. It was awesome! Ragnar is a relay race run with a team of 12 people- 6 people in each van. You run all day, all night, and then all day again. Some teams are really creative and think of the best team names like this one:

My other favorite name was Rapid Thigh Movement. It made me laugh every time we saw their van. We were team Dude Where's My Van? (because everyone drives mini vans during the race.)

We got very little sleep and what sleep we did get consisted of sleeping bags on the wet grass in a park in 38 degree weather. I kept asking myself if I was crazy.

The answer was usually yes, but that I was also having so much fun that it didn't matter.

I can see why people run this race again and again. Thanks girls, for making it such a fun experience!

Mitch and I ran a half marathon on the 4th of July. Let's just say we don't recommend this particular half. The course was really difficult with lots of steep uphills and not enough downhills. (Their website totally lied about the elevation gain!) I hurt my knee and didn't make my goal. Mitch did make his goal and did awesome though! Now we're both hobbling around like a pair of 80 year olds. We actually had this conversation last night:

Lacey: Wow Mitch, seeing you hobble around just gave me a vision of what you'll look like at age 80!

Mitch: Ugh, I feel like I'm 80 right now.

Lacey: Me too. Only when we're 80 we'll be visiting grandchildren and stuff.

Mitch, in an old man's voice: No, I don't want to go visit them. I don't want to get out of my chair! Make them come over here.

Lacey, in an old woman's voice: No, because I don't want to make them dinner! Can you believe we used to run half marathons?

Mitch, still in an old man's voice: I know! That was stupid!

Ha, ha. I wonder if it will really be like that? Hopefully not.

I didn't take any pics of the race. I may have been slightly disappointed when it was over. We spent the rest of the holiday hobbling around and complaining about how sore we are. It'll probably take a day or two to recover. We also spent the weekend travelling around to see the Parade of Homes. It was great! Mitch and I are addicted to HGTV and loved seeing the new home ideas. We did light off some fireworks with Katie to make it feel like the 4th of July weekend. And we got together with both of our fams to eat and visit. Overall it was a low key and fun holiday.

Wild Animal

Today I dressed Layla up in her zebra shirt and giraffe print sunglasses. We picked up our friends Shelly and Parker (Parker was wearing leopard print pants) and we headed to the zoo.

It was both of the little ones' first time at the zoo and ... they didn't love it as much as we thought they would. They liked it, but they didn't love it. I thought Layla would laugh and talk to the animals. She didn't. But she did point, bark, and meow at the animals.

The weather was nice and cool and it was a pretty day. I thought the leopard was pretty too! Layla kept calling him "kitty" and meowing at him. It made me laugh because he looked like he wanted to eat her for lunch.

This is how the ape was sleeping. Totally made me laugh. Layla thought it was her uncle Dudin because he was so hairy.

What do you think? Did we evolve from apes?

Layla got lots of compliments on her giraffe print sunglasses.

The baby elephant was absolutely adorable.

I think Layla had fun. She was definitely tired and slept the whole way home, which surprised me considering the whole way there she and Parker sat in their car seats and laughed at each other. It was fun going with our friends. We'll have to go again this summer.

And just for fun, here's a video of my wild animal at dinner tonight. One perk of being Layla's mommy is that she thinks I am the funniest person in the whole world. I love it. Oh, and don't mind her crazy Einstein hair- she had just pulled out her piggy tails.

Stuff

I feel like we do so much around here and I hardly ever write about it. I need to blog more often so I don't end up with ridiculously long posts like this one.

Mitch went to Chicago last week for work and was able to attend a Cubs game. He hates baseball because it's too slow, but I think he had fun anyways. He also was able to check out the Sears Tower (the tallest building in the US) and said it was awesome.

Layla is walking all over the place. She still falls down and crawls here and there, but she's definitely getting better at walking.

For Family Home Evening the other night we ate dinner outside and let Layla "swim" in her wade pool.

I ran in the Wasatch Back Relay and had a blast. I'll post more on that later. One week later, last Saturday, Mitch and I decided to run 10 miles to train for our half marathon on the 4th. It was 80 degrees outside and I thought I was going to pass out while running. (I have Cardiogenic Syncope, which causes me to dehydrate and overheat really fast.) Stupid idea to run that far in the heat. Mitch saved me from passing out by running to Maverik and buying me a Gatorade. My hero! He ended up running 11.3 miles total. He's definitely ready for the race. Let's hope I am!

I made a scrapbook of Layla's 1st year of life. She loves it. Almost daily she'll pull it off the shelf, flip the pages, and point at people in the pics.

Here's a few things I want to remember about Bug at this age (14 months):

1. She walks around the house saying, "dada, mama, KID-TEE!" (She pronounces "kitty" almost like it's two words.)
2. She learned meow like a cat this week.
3. She signs "more" and is now also using it when she wants to read another book. It makes me happy that she loves to read so much. For some reason the other signs are not catching on. Oh wait, that's because I'm totally not consistent. I really need to be better about that.
4. She can show you where her belly is when you ask her. She lifts up her shirt every time and her belly is always bulging out.
5. She goes up and down the stairs like a champ. She can also get off the couch by herself, but needs help getting on.
6. She will finally keep her sunglasses on! And if you show her her reflection in the car window with her glasses on, she laughs and claps.
7. She is close to mastering utensils. Tonight I helped her eat her veggies with her spork. Every time she'd get them in her mouth she would hand me the spork to hold so she could clap for herself. The girl thrives on praise. Even self praise. Super funny.
8. She won't eat anything else for dinner until she's had her fair share of veggies. It's wonderful! She loves peas and carrots the most, but will also eat corn. She still refuses to eat the green beans and puts them in her cup holder. Once she's had enough veggies, she will usually eat whatever else we offer her.
9. For the last three days she's been telling us when she goes poo. She'll say, "doo doo" and we check her diaper and it's poopy! I don't think Mitch believed me at first, but this morning I came back from running and Mitch said Layla had told him "doo doo" and he checked and she had pooped! Maybe we'll be potty training her sooner than I thought??
10. She learned to "give kisses." Melts my heart. Especially when she is playing and comes over to me just to give me a kiss and then goes off and plays again. She's such a sweet girl. She also loves to give her kitty and lamb kisses. And she makes them kiss each other, which I think is super funny.

I am still waiting to hear back on the job I really want. I check in about once a week, only to be told that it's taking longer than normal, she sends me her most sincere apologies, and says, "hopefully next Monday." Hmmm. Well, at least that's better than a no.

My new aunt, "Auntie Laura" was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints last week by my Uncle Kent. She is so happy. He is so happy. We are so happy for them! What can I say? The Gospel is happiness!

What else? We put in three new windows upstairs. And by "we" I of course mean Mitch and my dad. Thanks again, Dad, for helping out and bringing your tools! And thanks to my brother Brock for getting us the sweet deal on the windows! They look awesome. Because we had crappy blinds for two of the new windows, I decided to be crafty and make a roman shade for the smaller window. I love the way roman shades look and would love to make them for our whole house (eventually).

My biggest mistake was buying fabric that is too light. As a result, the pleats don't fold quite the way I wanted them to. It's not exactly what I was going for, but I still really like it. And now I know to buy heavier fabric next time. On the other hand, the whole thing cost me less than 20 bucks!

I also joined Pinterest. Have you heard of it? It's basically a way to save ideas you find online. I love it. I've found all sorts of ideas, projects, etc. In fact, I learned how to make the roman shade from Pinterest. I also made these oreo-filled chocolate chip cookies, thanks to Pinterest. They ended up being HUGE and way too rich for my liking. I don't think I recommend them. I sent them to scout camp with Mitch.

And, I made a 4th of July wreath based on Pinterest inspiration. I'm pretty proud considering I am not the crafty type.

Caio!

She Toddles!

We officially have a toddler now. So bittersweet. She doesn't even look like a baby anymore; she looks like a little girl. It makes me want to cry. On the other hand, I am so excited for and proud of her! And now we can take her camping (I didn't want to go and have her crawling all over the campground.)

Here's a video of our toddler toddling. You also get the privilege of hearing her say, "Wahoo!" and seeing her attack the camera, forcing the end of the video. Enjoy.

*Update: I just called my parents' house to tell them to watch this video. I was telling my dad some of the funny things Layla has done lately. He said, "You have a little angel. She's just like you were ... so sweet and easy going. You were just like her at that age." Wow, can I just say how happy that made me?! All I ever hear is how much she looks like Mitch, which I agree and it's a good thing because she's cute, but it was nice to actually hear that she got some of my genes too. (She also got my mom's slight dimple in her left cheek. Face, not bum. And my eyelashes.) So, while she might look just like Mitch, I am convinced that she has my temperament. Wahoo! Something for all my hard work.