A Few Steps

In the past week, Keely has been working hard at trying to walk.  She really wants to do it, but she's having a little trouble keeping her balance.  Her main struggle is that she wants to get from point A to point B as fast walking as she does crawling.  This usually results in her taking 2 or 3 wild steps and then falling and resorting to crawling for the rest of the distance.  She took her first couple consecutive steps on Saturday night (the 23rd), and since then has been trying more and more.  Here are a few pictures of her trying...if she'd just slow down and stay balanced with each step instead of trying to run, she might just have it figured out by now!  It sure is cute to watch though!

Spring Teaser

Last weekend before it got cold again, we had a couple of really nice days! It was such a tease before we got a couple more snow storms! Thursday was especially nice and we were able to enjoy some fun outside time.  Lane, Katy, and Scarlett came over and it was so nice to be able to play outside for once again!

 Keely has never really been able to play outside, and I think she loved it.  Now we just wait for her to learn to walk so she doesn't have to scrape up her knees and hands crawling around on cement! I also learned already that she is completely different than her brother.  I had to stop her more than once from sucking on a rock, or a stick, or a leaf.  Brooks never dared put things like that in his mouth!

 Lane did a good job setting up the cones for Brooks, Katy, and Keely to knock down.

 Katy and Brooks were wearing their same "Plays well with Otters" shirts that they got from Grandma Jost from their trip to California.  They thought it was pretty funny they had the same shirt on!

 I think this picture sums up Brooks' and Katy's relationship pretty well...Katy says, I like you Brooks, and Brooks says, I don't trust you yet Katy! She's told him 'no' too often over the past year when he plays with her (he's really had a hard time with her telling him he can't play with something!) that he's still not totally sure she won't do it again! Katy has always just been too aggressive for him! But after they left this time he told me right away that, "Katy didn't say no!"  They are both getting older, and it's fun to watch!

Tent

Brooks has really been obsessed with the PBS show Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood lately.  It's actually been really great for him because he wants to copy things he sees Daniel or others do in the show.  He LOVES strawberries now because one of the episodes is about strawberry picking.  He also really likes the idea of camping after watching Daniel and Owl camp on the show.  I'm hoping the one about potty training will set in with him soon!

Earlier today I asked Brooks if he would like to try camping in a tent with Daddy sometime, maybe at Grandma and Grandpa's farm.  He said yes, but then said Daniel has a friend with him camping.  So I told him maybe Lane would want to do it too sometime and he liked that idea! Tonight Brooks was pretending to make a tent out of a brown blanket and Keely's baby activity mat.  Blake got the idea to get the real tent out and set it up in the basement, and we had one very excited little boy about that idea!

 He could hardly wait for Blake to open the door!

 checking everything out...

 Something just wasn't quite right with the tent...we needed sleeping bags! Brooks was so excited that we had a red one like Daniel Tiger and a blue one like Owl used. 

 Bundled up for 'bed'

It was fun for the evening to pretend and see Brooks want to act out what he sees on tv.  I love seeing his imagination grow! I'm just hoping we won't have a fight over when it is time to take it down! It takes up quite a bit of room!

Keely's Dedication

The first Sunday in March, we had Keely dedicated at our church.  Surprisingly in our little church, there were 4 families that had a child to dedicate that morning.  Here are some pictures from the morning. 
Keely getting ready for church with Grandma Burgess

 Keely making faces at Grandma Jost during church

 Here are the four families with children being dedicated.  Tiffani and Jon with Noah, Eric and Shelly with Melody, us with Keely, and Austin and Danielle with Bria.

Our church gives a kids Bible story book to the child being dedicated.  Keely will love it one day I'm sure (when she learns not to rip pages of paper books!)

 Brooks being silly and taking his shoes off after church

 Keely was happy when the service was over...she just wanted to crawl and mess around!

 Our first family photo together since Keely was probably 2 months old...whoops! maybe we should do that more often!

 With my parents

 with Blake's parents

Ace Show New Orleans

Last week Ace Hardware had their Spring show in New Orleans.  Call me crazy, but I wanted to go to the Ace Show one more time with kids.  I thought Brooks would have a great time and figured this might be the last chance he could get to go for awhile.  So I booked our tickets several months ago and convinced my parents to drive down to help watch kids while Blake and I had training and other meetings.  Before we left I was so nervous about how Keely would do on the airplanes.  I knew Brooks would do fine cause he could play his iPod or Blake's iPad.  Turns out all my worrying was for nothing...each plane ride was timed perfectly for Keely needing a nap, and she slept from takeoff until landing on all 4 planes! Hooray! Brooks was a little scared when the plane would take off and land since it was bumpy and felt funny to him, but by the last plane ride, it didn't bother him one bit!
We had a several hour layover in St. Louis each time.  The kids did pretty well, Keely wanted to crawl everywhere, which I cringed at each time because I'm sure the floors were not clean, but it's hard to keep a crawler couped up for so many hours! Keely and Brooks both loved watching the planes.

 And Brooks got to try out headphones for the iPad...he didn't leave them on long, but he looks so cute!

The kids did pretty well at the Ace Show, they loved walking around and looking at everything.  Brooks found a basketball the first half hour we were at the show at one of the toy vendors and could not talk about anything else! When I told him he needed to give it back to the vendor so we could keep walking, he said, "Maybe we can buy it?"  Not right now buddy.  Finally the next day, after hearing nothing but talk about the basketball, we told him we would buy it from the vendor at the end of the show if we was a good boy the rest of the time.  Luckily he got his basketball :)

 Walking with Daddy...

 Testing products

 Brooks loved the M&M candy holders...

 One thing is for sure, hotel rooms are not designed for a crawler and an active 2 year old.  We struggled with keeping them entertained, but luckily Grandma and Grandpa were there to help! Keely spent more time in the pack n play than she wanted.  She wanted to crawl on the beds, but it is so hard to keep her from falling off!
Clapping at a basketball game...

 Playing with Grandma

 Cheering for the basketball game..we were lucky there were games on for something to watch and that Brooks loves watching basketball so much!

I was really nervous at what Brooks would find to eat down in New Orleans because he has become super picky.  One would think he would be better at trying new things by now, but he's worse! ugh! anyway, he ate decently, and even had fun at the places we found to eat.  One place we went, Mulate's (or something like that) had a live band that started playing when we were just finished eating, and Brooks and Keely thought that was great! They danced along in their chairs to the Cajun music.

 Brooks found plenty of freebies too (not as much as other years, but that was ok!)  He liked the free freezer pop...

 And free hat...

Keely did great riding in the stroller...she held her bottle well for herself and was pretty happy to just ride and look at things!

 Brooks loved all the Ace signs

 This was a pretty common sight...Brooks playing the iPhone, and Grandpa talking on his phone!

We had a fun time, but it was exhausting!  Needless to say, this will probably be the last Ace Show we take the kids to for quite some time, but I am glad we went this time.  However, New Orleans is just not that great of a place to take young kids! We didn't do much but go to the convention hall all day, find someplace to eat that was kid friendly (which was a little difficult a couple times!), then go back to the hotel to hang out in the room until bedtime! We didn't get to see a whole lot of New Orleans, but oh well, we still had fun!