MESSY KID

She cleans up pretty cute though :) 

A turtle named Sleeping Beauty

In the back roads of Oklahoma, turtles are a dime a dozen.  Travis asked his dad to find a turtle for Savannah to bring home.  I guess he figured it was time for her to start the whole picking up stray animals thing.  

On the way home the dumb thing escaped from it's box 4 times!  It's a fast and driven little guy!

Savannah finally named it, Sleeping Beauty.  Travis hates the name.  He also hates the fact that we painted it today with glittery finger nail polish :)  Guess it doesn't live up to the Ninja reputation he was hoping for.

Savannah loves having it around.  We'll probably keep it for as long as we can.  She shows everyone that comes by.  My sister in law said that turtles are the number one source of Salmonella in children - Yaaay!  I'm soo excited!

An Oklahoma Adventure

This weekend we headed back down to the rough country, Travis' old stomping grounds, and the home of a music festival called "ROCKLAHOMA".  Yeah - you read it right.  :)

The trip down used to take us 6 1/2 hours when it was just Travis and I, but with the lovely Savannah it now takes us closer to 9.  It's okay - having her around is worth it I guess.  She's a pretty good traveler.  She pretty much watches movies the entire trip.  One time I tried to be a good momma, like my sister in law, and play games and sing and talk to her - that lasted about a half hour and we were both bored.  So we just do brain dead movie watching for the 9 hours.

This trip was a little different than the last trips because the purpose of this trip was to spend one last hurrah with Travis' twin brother Greg and his family before they head off to another country for the next 4 years.  Greg and Shannon got married 3 months before we did, so except for the one year they lived in India before (which was pre-children) we have spent a lot of time on holidays and family visits with them.  They have 2 daughters (2 and 4 years) that Savannah loves.  We love them, and we will really miss getting to be with them!

We got to take everyone to the Tulsa Zoo this time.  The Zoo in Des Moines is ... well.... L.A.M.E.  It's all we have though.  We really like the Tulsa Zoo.  The Omaha Zoo is probably the best Zoo I've been to, but  it is REALLY big - the Tulsa Zoo isn't as cool, but it's a little more manageable with small kiddos.

 Okay, so obviously the animals we're as cool to the kids as all the stuff to crawl on and jump off of....

Saturday night all the kids went home to Pryor with Grammy and Poppy and Aunt Sis, while we stayed in Tulsa with Greg and Shannon.  We all took showers, then went out to eat dinner at a cool burger bar down town.  Then we walked the streets of Tulsa...for about 30 minutes.  Shannon was dieing to go to a night club, I wanted to check out this bocce ball bar, but the boys opted for going back to the house and smoking pipes in the yard while Shannon and I competed for who can do the best cartwheel.

Sunday we went to Pryor for what I call Gann Fest - Travis' Aunt, Uncle, Cousins, and kids came over for some good old Oklahoma KFC, beans, coleslaw and pie.  After lunch we took the girls out to run in the sprinkler, which turned into water fight, we turned into car wash.  It was super fun to hang outside with my sister in law and the girls.  Did I mention that we'll miss them?

Here's a couple funny things from Oklahoma:
- Travis " Hey mom, remember when that turtle bit my finger at the turtle races at the Library?"
- We saw a Walker sale in some people's yard - over 100 walkers, like for old people, out in the yard.
- FOUND TWO PLAY GROUNDS IN KANSAS CITY! This is a huge deal because usually by KC Savannah is just about finished with being in the car.  We usually stop and let her run around a McDonalds for about an hour, but this time we spotted 1. a Sonic with an outdoor play ground and 2. a Chick-fa-la with an indoor play ground!  Woop it up!  :)

Three is the new best!

Here's the Savannah Birthday update that all you cross-country readers have been waiting for! 

Yes, on Saturday my little baby turned 3!  Yes, it was awesome. 

We got up bright and early at 7am.  Travis and I had to actually talk Savannah into being excited about her birthday.  She was kind of nervous about turning three I think since we'd been building it up for a while. But when she saw the pink Birthday dress Travis had gotten her, that all changed. 

We headed down stairs for the moment we'd been talking about for almost 2 years - having gum!  At some point I told Savannah she couldn't have it until she was 3 just to put it off a while, and here we are. She was SO excited.  We prepped her to spit it out and not swallow it, but still she swallowed the first and third pieces she had. Takes some getting used to I guess. 

I had a friend of mine help me make her owl Birthday cake last year, so I got brave this year and went for it alone!  A pink princess castle cake.  I just googled "simple castle cakes" and looked at some pictures - then I took all the best and easiest ideas and made this cake.  It was actually pretty easy.  There's at least 7 sticks of butter and at least 8 cups of powdered sugar on this puppy!

We decided to have just a little girl's party so that we could make it princessy and not have to worry about boys - this turned out to be a really fun thing.  Most of Savannah's friends have brothers so she doesn't too often get to play with a bunch of girls in dresses.  We played a new version of an old game.  The old game (my dad made up for my 5th Birthday) was "Throw water balloons at the dad" (self explanatory) - the new game : Silly String the dad!!!  Rules: Dad has to stand still while kids spray him.

Here's Travis with all the little girls.  They want to know just as much as we do - what is he doing?

Here's the kiddos getting into the cake.  Savannah could not wait to blow out the candles and finally eat it.

You can see her excitement as we sang to her in this one.

Nattie Larson has baby sat Savannah since Sav was born pretty much.  And she's attended all 3 of her Birthday parties.  Here she is showing her favorite page in a book Savannah got.  Wouldnt be a Birthday with out Nattie.

Savannah had to immediately try on all the new clothes she got.  This shirt was kinda complicated though.  Took my dad, then Travis, then Jasey to finally get it on her.  Cute though!

Savannah: "I'm sooo excited!" Me: "What is it?" Sav: "I dont know!!!" (It was a movie)

After presents and cake we paraded everyone to my parent's house - about 4 blocks away - to play on the new fort/play ground thing my dad built.  It was actually really fun to walk them all around all hyped up on Birthday!  We might have an annual Birthday parade.  Maybe throw some candy next year.

Here's the fort deal - more on that in another post.

Of course Grammy and Poppy also made it down for the big day!

This pretty much wraps it up - She's 3.  She's classy.  She's sassy.

After her late afternoon nap Savannah got super attitude.  It was cute and we let it fly because it was her Birthday and all.  I just thought this picture was excellent because it totally told the picture of the rest of the day.

Thanks to everyone who made her 3 year old Birthday super super fun!  

THIS is my life. It's real.

So, i've been debating posting this stuff because I'm afraid of being judged. After my post about Savannah at the playground (here, incase you missed it), I got a lot of laughs...but I have been surprised by how few people have related to my situation.  Come on people - doesn't anyone else go through this stuff?  I haven't had ONE person combat my story with "oh yea, one time when timmy was little he....." Just lots of laughing at OUR situation.  Which really, I'm fine with.  Let's face it, if you can't laugh at yourself and let other people laugh with you, then how can you really enjoy your life?  Besides, this story telling is really more about me just blogging it out.  So, here is more adventures in potty training:

Let me say, Savannah is successfully wearing underwear pretty much all the time now, excluding over night.  And MOST of the time, she's stays totally clean and dry.  But the times she has accidents always turn into big incidents.  In just the last week,
-  We were at Target shopping when Savannah got a crazy look in her eye and started running toward the fitting rooms saying "I have to pee pee!".  The signs on the fitting rooms there look like mens/women's bathroom signs, so I see why she was confused.  She flug open one of the doors and the look in her eye got even crazier!  So I grabbed her hand and we ran to the restroom in the front of the store, the whole time her screaming "I have to pee pee!!".  We made it to the bathroom in time.  Then when I got done paying I looked down at Savannah (who was messing with toys in that impulse buy section right by the register) and she whispered "I pooped".  "What?" "I pooped in my underwear".
I knew I didnt have any wipes in the car so I bought some hand sanitizer wipes that were right there and walked Savannah to the car where we could clean her up.  On the way to the car she pulled her dress up and showed me that she had poop running down the backs of both her legs.  I said "RUN Savannah!" and we ran the rest of the way to the car.  There i proceeded to lay her in the back of my SUV and clean her up. It was sick.

- A few days later we were at a graduation open house.  Savannah was downstairs playing with some other kids and Travis was talking so I ran up to get some food for us.  When I returned I found Savannah's wet pants and underwear in a pile next to a wet spot in the carpet at the bottom of the stairs and my daughter running around bare butted.  Just then a whole bunch of people from church decided to leave so they all passed me standing there with wet pants in hand. Uhg.  Plus I had to get help from the people who's house it was...embarrassing much?

-Today we were at a park, with no bathroom mind you.  Savannah looked up at me and told me she had to go potty.  I looked around trying to figure out what to do and she said "I pooped".  I had my mom's car (mine was in the shop), so I didn't have the normal change of clothes, wipes, and extra diapers with me so I rummaged through my mom's car and found some Windex wipes.  Yep - used them to clean her up, then threw away the underpants at the park.  Savannah didn't mind that much.  She had a dress on so I'm sure the breeze felt nice.  A few minutes later Savannah comes over and tells me she has to pee.  I was talking with a friend and there really was no near by bathroom so I just took her over to a tree and had her squat.  There was no one around.  Then I brought her over the the drinking fountain and splashed her off.  You'd think this was enough, but no.  THEN, a few minutes later she comes over and tells me she has to poop again.  We were going to be leaving soon so I just told her to hold it.   I have never really tried that with her before.  (let's not forget, she's wearing a dress with no pants or underwear).  I sent her to play and a few minutes later spotted her in the grass, squatting and pushing.  I hollered at her, ran to get the Windex wipes, and cleaned her up again.  Then, sent her to play.  I had just sat down when she called me over to see a turd she had left in the wood chips.  So, again, got some Windex wipes and cleaned it up.

Like I said, every accident she has becomes and incident.  I need a day off!

My Father serves My Father

Tonight Cornerstone hosted the first ever Member's Banquet.  Travis and I got to go super early and help with check in since I'm on staff and they wanted all the work to be done by staff.  It was actually pretty fun to talk to so many people from our church that I didn't know - or to put faces to names I'd been hearing for years.

After dinner there was a short presentation given by our two head pastors, Troy and Jeff.  They kind of work as a comedy duo when you get them sitting next to one another on stage.  They went through some of the high lights from each of the many ministries at our church and even highlighted a few "Super Volunteers" from each ministry.  Well - wouldn't you know it - one of those Super Volunteers was MY DAD!  Travis and I found out about 15 minutes before the banquet that they would be honoring him tonight and we kept it a secret.  Not even my mom knew until she saw a little blurb about him written in the program. It talked about all the volunteer work he's done in crafting things for different ministries and all the painting and work he's done on the building. She kept it a secret from him though until they called him to the stage.  He said that he thought he was going to have a heart attack when they called him up.  Anyway, they gave him a little plaque with a little hammer on it that reads " Servant", which he is.

Here he is on stage receiving his "award". 

This is a picture of the worship at the end of the night.  I just love the music at our church. 

Here's my dad with a good friend of ours, Tyler Farner, who also happens to be an Elder at our church.  Tyler was one of the first people at Cornerstone that knew my dad, so he was pretty excited about the whole deal. 

We love my dad so much and we are so proud of him!  Apparently we are not alone in that.

Fishing with Savannah

We took Savannah fishing last weekend for the first time.  

She picked out this Barbie fishing pole at WalMart and my dad was pretty excited to get it for her and get her started.  We took her to a private lake that is owned by some people my dad worked for.  It's a stocked pond so the fishing was pretty easy! We literally caught 30 fish in less than an hour. 

Here's Savannah with her first fish.  It was pretty fun that she only had to wait about 2 minutes to catch it, but that probably ruined her for any future fishing. 

Savannah was not at all afraid to touch the fish.  In fact, she even helped take them all from the bucket to the table when it came time to clean them.

Dad got some time in on the Barbie pole too!  I like how you can tell he's kind of fighting the fish in this picture.

And of course you can't clean a fish if you don't have a ball gown and glass slippers on first!

FINALLY

Since it finally warmed up enough to play outside, we have been doing nothing but playing outside!

 Here's Savannah explaining to Travis what she plans to do at the park.  She goes on these really long rants lately.  Like MINUTES long about what she's doing, how she's doing it, what she plans to do, who will be there.... It's really fun.  But also can be hard to listen to and nod along to all day long.

 Shout out to Leann Farner for getting my kiddo some awesome new clothes from Good will - including that shirt she's wearing in this picture.  Thanks Leann!