Missouri 2009

Missouri was amazing this year. It's pretty awesome every year, but for many reasons this year was my most memorable. Go figure because the boat was broke, the fireworks were confiscated, it rained more than usual, and Oden was a complete wild child. Perhaps I am beginning to appreciate all the elements of Missouri more and more. Every year just seems to get better. This was Oden's first year swimming in the bay, and he liked it. I was too scared of the water to try it last year. We brought some friends with us this time around, it's nice to be able to bring a piece of home with you! Everyone was so helpful with Oden this year considering he sped around like a bullet. He was up and down and wanted to run EVERYWHERE the whole trip. Thank goodness everyone did their best to help keep us sane and help with the chasing. He was definitely a hand full and a half, but I know every year will get easier. Special thanks to the 3 Grandma's up there who took such great care of everyone. As always, we would fall apart without you. I will be thinking about this year's memories until next year when we can all make some more. (P.S. I am already reserving a s'more for next year since I missed them this year!)

Oh those breathtaking Missouri views......

The number one reason we love Missouri.....GRANDMA MARY!!!

This year we brought our friends Paul, Kerri, and Laney. This is Laney :)

They are best buddies!Oden looks like a true Missouri native!

If you have a freeze pop, you are Oden's best friend!Can I just borrow those glasses for a second cousin Matt??
Baby cousins on the Forth of July! So sweet!

This picture describes their personalities so well. Oden looks sneaky like he's planning a break for it, and Chaela is happy as an elf! Chaela rubbing Oden's head for good luck!

I miss you Laney, WAKE UP!!! LOL!

Our family out on the dock

This is the yard and the dock at the house that is rented. Amazing.

Oden learned how to pick flowers and loved giving them to everyone!

Baby Hawk is back!!

That's right! We re-hawked Oden's hair yesterday and.....it looks amazing! Just in time for Missouri. Here are some new pictures for ya! He hasn't been doing anything new and exciting lately. We are trying so hard to get him to start talking. When he first started sounding things out about 3 months ago I was so certain he would be talking shortly thereafter. Now here we are, patiently waiting. He will be exactly 18 months on Tuesday and he can say Mama, Dada, Uh-oh, Kittie (kind of), cheese, and he can sound out hot and cold. He has started shaking his head no, which is not fun at all. He's able to differentiate when he wants to say yes by nodding his head or say no but shaking his head. Since he isn't able to communicate with us through words, he is still doing a lot of whining. Like I said, we are patiently waiting with hope he will break through this communication barrier sooner than later!! Other than that, we are leaving for Missouri on Wednesday morning. We are very excited and we will have tons of cute pictures to post when we get back!

First picture after the haircut, you can't really see it that good.

These next three pictures were from when my family was in town a couple of weeks ago. My cousin Daphne took these, she is a dang good photographer!

Typical Oden, running with no destination.

Blowing kisses!!

New family pic!! Thanks Daphne!!

This is just Oden hanging out with his friend Rileigh. Yay for play dates!!

Laughing Baby Dude

I just took this video today. It was so cute that I had to upload it right away!

I love laughing babies.

A little of this.....a little of that.

This is my attempt to catch-up on sharing pictures of all the fun we've been having lately. He is crazy and keeps us going non-stop, but he is the cutest boy ever! ENJOY!

Feeling sleepy.....

This is his 'cheeeese' face. He will pretty much do it whenever

you ask him, when there's a camera around.

Playing with his girlfriend, Laney.

I might have posted this one already, but it's cute so....no harm done :)

Check out the graphics on this t-shirt! So cute!

We get comments on it all the time. Thanks Grammy!

Papa Joe and Grandma Laura came over with a new toy!! He loves it!!

Now we just have to work on getting the weather to cooperate.

YAY for new toys!! THANK YOU!!

Memorial Day.....jumping with Auntie Heather

No photo is complete without his drooled on clothes!!

GOOFY BABY!

Laney pushing Odee on her swing, this lasted for about .02 seconds.

BBQing!

Again with this cheese face, and the drool.

FREE PRESENTS TO THE FIRST FIVE!!

I stole this from Mrs. Hair.......

Here's the deal. The first 5 people to leave a comment here will get a homemade gift from me. It doesn't matter if I don't know you. If you're just randomly blog stalking (c'mon, we all do it) and you come across this post and want to be one of the first 5 to leave a comment, go for it! The only catch is that you have to pay the gift forward by reposting this on your blog/Facebook/Myspace. I will check to make sure you've done so. I don't know what the gift will be, but it will be homemade. I'll get it to you sometime this year (but probably sooner than later so I don't have it looming over my head). I don't promise you'll love it, but I'm not going to make you something I think you'll hate, either, because that would be like an un-gift and defeat the entire purpose.

I'm going to adjust it slightly and say it will be a gift made by ODEN AND I!! It will be cute, I promise.

Besides that, I have a lot of really cute pictures to post. It's just finding the time to do so that it going to be the hard part. I will try to do them later this week.

BABY BUDDY

This baby dude is growing up so fast! He is not talking yet. His expressions and actions speak so loud right now, he is practically yelling at me all the time! Sometimes I forget that he is a baby, most of the time I treat him like my little friend. He is just so much fun to be around. Oden continues to monkey around daily. I think he might be a professional climber of some sort when he grows up. He is constantly climbing on tables and couches, my heart has skipped quite a few beats because of these antics. He has completely mastered the stairs, which surprises a lot of people. I would say he could go both directions when he was about a year old. We just continued to use gates a barriers to limit his freedom and the chance of an accident. We leave the gate down now and he is awesome by himself. He still loves them, and will go up them all day long if I let him. He also likes to climb around and play IN our cars. We are outside a lot and when he gets bored with his toys he will go to one of the car doors (usually Jess's because he can reach the handle) and make us open the door so he can play inside. Jess will sometimes recline the seats for him, which makes for a baby jungle gym! We have been exploring a lot of the local parks lately, and have found some really neat ones. Being outside is awesome. Here are some new pics from a BBQ we had with Grammy Mary and Grandpa Scott. Oden loved playing with Scott's old, metal Tonka trucks. It was so cute (see the captions below).

He had no interest in playing in the beautiful yard....

Oden was obsessed with these trucks!
He would place them on the deck, knock them into the rocks.....
step down into the rocks to retrieve them, place them in a line on the deck.....then knock them down again. He repeated this game for a long time!

Bright, sunshiny days :)

It has been an absolutely beautiful weekend here!! Here are just a few pics I was able to take while we were out playing.

This is a new favorite of mine :)This is not the most sanitary thing he could be doing. But....Boys will be boys!

Action shot!! He loves running in the grass bare-footed.

We're hiding out in the Missouri tent from last year.

So innocent in the morning.......

Laney's 2nd birthday and Oden's 16 month check up!

This past weekend we had another birthday party. This one was for Oden's girlfriend Alayna, who turned 2 (He likes older women). It was a lot of fun and it is getting so awesome to watch the little one interact. Oden was pretty much obsessed with Laney's kitchen playsets. It was cute.

Yesterday Oden had his 15/16 month check up! He is 34 inches long and 25 pounds. He is in the 85 percentile for height and 50 percentile for weight. He's nearly half as long as I am already!! It must be funny watching me carry him. My doctor told me yesterday that I look more like a teenager than a mom! He has passed all of his developmental tests. He is pretty much perfect. Except for the fact that he has been the pickiest eater lately. It's driving me nuts. This kid could live off of fruit if I let him! Fruit and pickles of course! LOL! I have to find a creative way of getting him his protein. Any ideas anybody?

He does like to eat his socks!!

This is Oden's new couch. He LOVES it. It was a great buy!
Playing with Dad's hat!

Here's the b-day girl, LANEY!!
The now traditional screaming baby picture. Sorry this was taken with my old camera while the other one was in the shop.