Leelah's Three!

Hip Hip Hooray- it's Leelah's 3rd Birthday!

Our sweet "snugglebug" turns three today and we thank God for sharing this sweet joy with John and I. She has blessed our hearts with more joy, love and laughs than is humanly possible. As usual I cannot express the love!
Please to enjoy a then to now of our sillyheart.

6 lbs, 14 oz of cute- our "glamour girl diaper diva" sneezed herself into the world July 21, 2006 @ 11:31am! That's right her first order of business was a sneeze!She's my 2 epidurals for one child and I love her so much!!:






First Birthday with her "twin" Rylan (the prince) Larson who was born 3 hrs later to my friend April from high school- we miss you guys!!






2nd Birthday was tutus for 2 yr olds!



3rd Birthday Still in Progress because you know it takes a whole mess of celebrating...
Leelah got her much anticipated gift of her "red fish named Cowgirl" aka a red male betta fish today! Pics of that to come! She had lots of fun swimming this weekend with her friends. Tonight we'll finish the celebration at Rainforest Cafe.






We are also so blessed to have our Chinese Exchange Students: Anne and Maria in town to stay with us for the next 3 weeks! We love having them here and Leelah loves them! I think they enjoy her too:) They've taught us how to speak a little Chinese and we've had so much fun with them. They even cooked for us last night which was delicious! We are so glad you are here Anne and Maria!






This was a long but necessary post. I didn't even include John and I's 5 yr-a-thon trip of madness to San Antonio. Here's a sneak peak- do NOT take a person with little to no depth perception and peripheral vision into a dimly lit slimy cave 180 ft below the surface known as Natural Bridge Caverns... Yeah I ran to the light that day!!!!!
Please pray for my first visit to University of Houston's Low Vision - Sight Enhancement Center on Thursday! I will be evaluated for low vision and hopefully will learn some new tricks to living with low vision and prevent eye weakness that i've been experiencing lately. Thank you!

The Love of my LIfe- 5 years strong!

From then...

To now...

Happy 5 years of marriage! I'm so glad you picked me to be on your crew for Howdy Camp- WHOOP! I can't do this day justice in writing so I'll just say thanks to the Lord for you, my husband. You are my most favorite human of all time. Much like Vesuvius is your favorite volcano, by far. I love you John and through that love have learned to love as Christ does. Pretty much the best complement. Ever. This time I'm not speaking in hyperboles. Here's to San Antonio and the Riverwalk may we take many arm out in front pictures, have lots of laughs, salsa and lover's walks!

Thumbs Up America!

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! What freedom we have in the country. Please, please let us not take that for granted Lord. We are so blessed to be able to celebrate our faith publicly and just go around doing things we want to do. Please Lord, let that fact never fade from our hearts. And THANK YOU for it!
This post will be a random assortment of fun. Please to enjoy how we roll.

Leelah's bday is coming up. So Build-a-Bear seemed a natural fit. She has her freshly awakened from a nap hair so deal with it. But that is her Panda Bear- "Ha-Loo". Did I mention we're hosting exchange students from China!?!?! More to come on this...

Yes this just happened. Red, White and Blue-tiful Waffles. I know, I know. Everyone should have a JOhn Nichols at home. He rules.




These are pics of our attempt at the Jon and Kate plus 8 4th of July cake she made one year. Leelah is a goof. I have tried, but it seems as the destined to be goofy DNA we gave her has fully taken over.

The night of the 4th we went to our church (Second Baptist- West!) and enjoyed an awesome service of songs and patriotism as we honored our Armed Forces. We John's parents in town with us to watch the servicemen carry their flags up on the stage and see all of the branches represented. Thank you servicemen and women for serving our country.

So we thought it would be super great for Leelah to ride in the parade held after the service in her wagon. Apparently, we didn't prep Leelah enough because "Somebody wasn't likin' it!" (Soup fans anyone!?) It started out such a great idea with the streamers and the fun...


Then the slumping and sad face began...



Yeah, we didn't roll around the second time... But who wanted her in that parade? Leelah or me? Totally me. She didn't want to be "paraded around". I must remember the end goal of planning things for her enjoyment. Who am I planning this for? Myself or Leelah. It's all good. Look how it turned out and by the way our church rocks major socks off!


That animal is a llama. Not a centaur in case you were wondering. Our church is cool, but not cool enough to have centaurs running/walking around.
And like I said we are blessed because we ended the night with some pizza at Cici's. Hey- it's a great value.


So in the meantime when there aren't any holidays or vacas. Leelah and I have enjoyed this book:

We purchased it at Mardel in the Home Schooling section. It's for her age and everything and comes complete with a lesson and easy and cheap ingredients.




We've made Ocean Cakes with rice cakes, blue frosting (a can of vanilla frosting with blue coloring) and colored goldfish.

And Penguin cookies - from oreos and candy corn! Leelah has had lots of fun with our cooking times.