Making up for lost time. Snapshots of March...

I did this backwards! The oldest photos are on the top right now and the newest are 3 posts down.
But here's a glimpse of our March.
One day that I had Lea all to myself while Dan was visiting his dad in the hospital (he is well on the mend now after a ruptured appendix and 3 weeks in the hospital). But while we had a girls day out I did Lea's hair. Our first sucessful ponytail attempt.






Then we had a great weekend of St. Patricks day. We went to the parade with some friends, including Wilder (3 month's younger than Lea) They were so adorable. Wilder wore his clan's tartan kilt. Very handsome! Lea on the other hand wore beads, a belly shirt (unintentional, she just kept showing her belly) and some styling glasses. Lea enjoyed much of the parade, but this first photo shows that she was a bit overwhelmed when we got there and the first thing that passed us was a fire truck with sirens at full blast. She did however get into the spirit with lots of beads and hands outstretched for more more more!












March then brought some sad days for us. I lost my Uncle Bud... to many Uncle Don, but to me Uncle Rat Fink. He was a fabulous and fun man. While he had been sick and through a lot for a long long time, he seemed invincible and continued to overcome all that afflicted him. So losing him was hard. Mom, Dan, Lea and I drove to Minnesota and for a funeral trip, we still had a nice visit with Dave, Marie & Joe. Lea would say Joooooooe! He became Lea's battle cry. We had a very nice dinner at Nye's Polonaise... a Polish steak house with gold sparkly booths and waitresses with seniority. Its got a beautiful 60s charm. What you might call "A real classy joint." You can see Lea liked it. It got a thumbs up from her!




On another weekend, we dressed up to go to the park one day. Not mom's brightest idea, wearing a dress to the park, but Lea made due. Its a great park with pea gravel that Lea loves to pour from one cup to another. Its also got lots of alcoves and wooden structures to hide and climb. This dress was bought for $1.50 at a consignment sale. It is so cute and retro 70s. I'm sure I had a dress just like it. I guess she should have worn it to Nye's to fit in with waitresses!


Is this not the absolute best photo! Like Mom, how do you work this thing? She has a digital camera that blew its circuit board or something, so she get to pretend to take pictures. She'll even say "click" But what a face!



And finally a recent photo (be sure to keep looking below because I've posted 3 posts today!) But this is at a birthday party for a 3 year old named Anna Harris. We had ice cream and got to tie dye shirts. Lea got messier eating cake than she did with the dye! Her tongue was blue all day from frosting! What a grin!

Easter... a little late

We had a very nice Easter. The weather turned on us a bit, including snow on Saturday before Easter, but it didn't keep the bunny away. We woke to Easter baskets for the whole family! Lea got some new bubble wands that make giant great bubbles and chocolate. She also got ju ju fish candy that she loved. She asks for fish, which used to mean goldfish crackers and now "fish" seems to mean candy fish please.

Lea said "Bunny" after dinnner pretty regularly for about a week as we finished off the cholate bunny. She was very cute eating the bunny.

When finding the Easter eggs that the Easter bunny so deftly "hid" in our back yard, Lea would squeal with surprise every time she found one. They were filled with cheerios, goldfish crackers and stickers! I think she would have been more thrilled with them if she hadn't had a big breakfast of bunny cakes (pancakes shapped like bunny heads) and candy. Oh so much candy!

We also decorated some eggs on Saturday. Lea enjoyed putting them in the "dip" and had to hit every color so she ended up with some pretty black eggs and green hands so she looked like the Hulk! She broke a few eggs, but what's Easter without a few broken eggs.

Fishing at Tawakoni

Well there is much I've missed on this blog. I've got many pics and videos to catch up on. But for now we're spending a weekend at Grandma's in Emory and I only have access to this weekends pics. We went out to the state park, and while due to the low water levels it wasn't quite what we expected, we ended up finding a small pond where the fish wouldn't bother us and we had a great day.
Lea loved throwing rocks in the water and playing with bubbles. We had a really nice day. I appologize for the wind noise.





And a brilliant little girl gives her best shot at the alphabet. She misses a few, but gets them all in the right order! Oh and then is distracted by the ball bobber, but gives a big finish!



Lea enjoyed ... well there's not much better of a word than torture for what we did to that worm, but Lea enjoyed it and worm lived and we set him free in the marsh. He lucked out better than the worms that hit the hooks. No fish, but the worms didn't come back either. It was a great day for us, but a bad day to be a worm! hee hee The worm was in one of the tubs of water and she would pour it from one to the other. I would get the worm out of the water a couple times so she could see him move and the worm headed for cover under the bowl. We left him to rest there for a bit and then Lea would pick up the bowl and say "peek" I think the worm was thrilled to play peek a boo. Then Lea would say "mommy" and point at the worm, which meant "mommy pick up the worm and put him in the water so I can send him back on the worm slalom ride!"
Lea also got her shoes muddy. She was ok with that until she got mud on her toe and then our prim little thing pointed at her toe and said "ouch" I tried to explain the mud didn't hurt, but she wasn't happy until I brushed the dried mud off her big toe. She's a real outdoorsie type! She did enjoy holding grandma's fishing pole, but mostly she liked dipping the tip in the pond.

A weekend at grandmas

Lea will actually say "tyderd" when she's tired. We were at the store, a little past nap time and she was leaning her head in her hand and saying "tyderd" She's so sweet. This is Lea asleep at grandma's. We had a small melt down because she didn't have her usual pillow so we came up with a "grandma pillow" a pillow just for Lea at Grandma's house.

Look at that big girl. Grandma, mom and Lea went shopping. We got some great play equipment. Lea can say "Charge it"

Oh and she eats apples. Lea takes bites all by herself... skin and all.

Now you see the apple.

Now you see me gnaw on the apple.

Now you see the apple that looks like a badger has had its way with the poor apple, but she can sure use those 6 little teeth!

Gearing up for Dan's birtday

I know most of you are here to see cutie pie pictures of Lea, and there are some new ones, but I had to post some of my other cutie pie! Dan has been looking for some high school pictures and did find some, but they're not as cute as these. The Neal family famous photo of Dan reading the government book stuck in a pot. The caption on the back reads "This book tells you how to get in this pot, but it doesn't tell you how to get out? Hmmm?" June 15, 1967 Chico, Calif And then in a different pen it says "My favorite of all!" You know I think we have that pot in our kitchen!





And also a photo of Dusty, Sonny, Danny and Teresa Lincoln New Mexico, - Sept 1969.




What a great guy and a great family! I'm lucky to have him. Happy Birthday Danno (a few days early).

A pretty girl on a pretty day

Look at those curls!





Well ok they weren’t the same day. Lea got new clothes from Aunt Teresa and was playing with a hair band and ended up looking beautiful. Thanks to a dying camera battery I couldn’t get the shots I wanted, she’s beautiful in these photos, but nothing compared to real life! But I’m prejudice. And then another day we were out playing. Mommy drew on the sidewalk, Lea’s smart, but she’s not that advanced yet. She does know Star and Circle pretty well though. Oh and she swung a lot that day and decided instead of blowing bubbles, she’d chew on the bubble wand. She must be getting her molars because she chews on anything she can get to the back of her mouth and she is one cranky girl a lot of the time. She also walks around with her tongue out or in the side of her mouth. There is one photo here that is of a strange smile, that’s because she has her tongue over her lip. Last night I thought she was tired because she kept putting her hand to her head and leaning over until she was almost upside down. Dan said she’d been doing that all day and we figured out she was probably holding her cheek where her toothies are aching. Poor little thing. Its about time though. She’s had the same 6 teeth since October. The doc didn’t seem worried, so we won’t be either. As grandpa says, the longer they take to come in, the stronger the teeth will be. It makes me feel better at least. And she does pretty well with just those six. In this batch there is a photo of her eating an apple. We used to slice the apple and peel it, now she wants almost the whole thing. She wouldn’t eat the slices, she wanted a big chunk of apple and bit right into the skin part. She worked that half an apple until it was just a little ball of gooey skinless apple. She know how to use those 6 teeth she does have!

Wahder, wahder everywhere

Because if mom asks you not to drink bath water our of a cup, the logical thing is to drink it out of a boat. HEY... you didn't say don't drink out of a boat, now did you?



Poor little thing has no toys to play with in the bath! But she loves her letters, and can get about half of them right, although she tries harder with Daddy than with Mommy.










Wahder, wahder...oh and tosies too! This child could spend all day pouring water from one cup to another or in the bath. She would grow gills if she could. She LOVES the wahder!



This is a song I invented for Lea because she tends to drink bath water and eat bubbles (but can't stand to have bubbles on her hands!)


So then after we spend about half an hour to 45 minutes IN the bath, we then spend 15 to 30 minutes on the step stoll playing in the sink water and brushing our teeth... much less time brushing teeth than anything else. By the way at the end of this video, the only thing that toppled was the tooth brush and it didn't even hit the floor. Its just hard to keep a camera dry while water is flying.


And finally my cute nakey bear says her name. Its a hard name to pronounce if you're only one and a half!


AWWW Mom, put the camera away already!