23 Months

This month officially marks McKinley's last month as a 1-year old! We love her so much and are so happy to have her in our lives! She is so much fun and doing so many new, fun things! She loves to play and be active! Here she is playing at the Children's Museums and an indoor playground (it's been too hot to play outside as of late!)

Another thing she has really taken to lately is stickers! She loves putting stickers everywhere, especially all over me & Travis :) Another thing she has really gotten into lately is coloring. She always asks to color and can spend a good 10-15 minutes just coloring in her coloring books (which is quite a while for one activity for a toddler!)

We did have a few cooler days in July, so we took advantage of those days and headed to the park. McKinley decided she was too big for the baby swing and would only swing on the big-kid swings. She did a good job hanging on and loved it!

Another fun, new activity for McKinley that we were able to do this month is go see a movie! She loves Madagascar, so I thought it'd be fun to take her to see Madagascar 3 at the movies. She did good and loved it! We were the only ones in the theater, which was good because she decided she wanted to walk up and down the stairs after watching the movie for a bit.  She loved the movie though, and everytime she sees this pictures she says, "show, animas!" I think she wants to go back and see another movie there!

McKinley loves to get out and go places during the day. One of her favorite places to go is to the grocery store! Especially HyVee! At HyVee they have a car shopping cart that she gets to sit in and drive while I push the cart around. They also have free cookies there, that she loves and asks for every time we go! She also gets to ride on this horsey at the end of our shopping trip! She knows what HyVee looks like and every time we pull up she gets to excited and squeals, "HyVee" and asks to go there when I tell her we're going to the store. She also knows what many other places around town look like and whenever we pass by them she says what's there. She knows where we get ice cream and donuts of course! She knows the park, the library, the Y, the children's museums, and the McDonald's play place. She also knows she gets stickers at Target and they have the big balls outside which she thinks are great! She also knows where Home Depot is and always says, "Dada, work!" when we see it.

Another thing McKinley has really started enjoying even more lately is dressing up! She loves to put on hats, jewelery, sunglasses and still loves to wear mine and Travis's shoes around the house. She's even gotten pretty good at walking around in my heels! I'm pretty impressed, she's definitely a girly girl! She even has a princess dress she likes to put on and says, "princess" when she has it on. She has really started to love princesses and even knows who Belle and Ariel are.

 

McKinley still loves kids and has a few friends/cousins that she loves to see and talk about all the time! Of course she still loves Mya and Madison. She still calls Mya, "MyMy" but recently started calling Madison her full name, "Maisen" instead of  just "Ma", like she used to call her. We got to go to Madison's first birthday party which was a blast for McKinley. There were so many kids there and her 2 best friends, how could that not be a great time for McKinley! McKinley had fun helping me pick out Madison's birthday present. And when she saw the bag she knew it was for Madison and would let me know who the present was for! Her other friends that she likes to talk about are Dane, Evyn and Trey. She knows them from Nursery and we also sometimes see them at the Y in the child watch which McKinley loves! She always asks me if there going to be there when we go to church or go to the Y. She's always so excited to see them when they are there!

 

We've still just been enjoying the summer time around here. We've been swimming to keep cool and playing outside when we can beat the heat. McKinley likes to pick flowers outside and picked one for me, it was sweet :)

I can't believe this little girl has already been in our life almost 2-years! Expect a fun 2-year old post and fun 2-year old Zoo Animal birthday party pictures next month!

Fun Time in St. Louis

We had a great time the rest of the time we were in St. Louis! We spent a lot of time just hanging out with Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Angie and Uncle Doug. Travis's sister Rachael was even able to join us for a few days while she took her oldest son Trent and a few of his friends to Warped Tour in St. Louis. Me and Jan even started a t-shirt quilt with all of my old t-shirts from Elementary School through College! We didn't quite get it done, but saved it for the next time we're visiting!

 Here's McKinley wearing one of my t-shirts from Kindergarten :) I thought it was pretty cute and fun for her to wear a shirt I used to wear!

 

McKinley even got her first haircut while we were there by Grandma! Her hair was getting a little crazy and her bangs would always hang in her face, so I figured it was about time to cut it. She did really well and was still through the whole cut! You can see below how cute her hair looked afterwards! We were sure to save a cute little curly lock of her hair from her first cut.

We even made the trek out to the St. Louis Zoo while we were there. They have a great zoo in St. Louis and it was so much fun to take McKinley there, despite the blistering heat! The days we were in St. Louis they were having record-breaking hot days, and it was very hot to be out in. We tried to go early to the zoo to beat the heat, which was not possible! We only spent a couple of hours at the zoo since it was so hot! We still got to see some very fun animals! Here's McKinley on Daddy's shoulders checking out the Rhinos!

Here she is asking where the hippo went. It was swimming around and had just gone under water. You can kind of see the top of it's head in this picture. The hippos were really neat and fun to see!

We even got to see elephants there, McKinley's favorite animal! She loved seeing the "e-fants"! They were really neat! They were swimming around in the water and squirting water on them with their trunks to stay cool!

 

We then went over to see the penguins. We got to go inside a cold building to see the penguins which was nice on such a hot day! McKinley kept saying "cold, cold" and snuggling up against me because it was quite the contrast to the hot temperatures outside! The penguins were neat and fun to watch swim and walk all around!

We ended our zoo visit with a ride on the train. McKinley loves trains and said "choo, choo!" the whole train ride! We loved the St. Louis Zoo and look forward to going back on another visit!
 

On Saturday we went over to the Car Show to see Doug's Mustang that he had on display there. They also had some firetrucks on display there that McKinley got to climb inside! We didn't spend long at the car show, because once again it was super hot outside, but it was still fun to see Doug's car and walk around for a minute!

We were sad to leave and head home! On the way back to Lincoln, we were ready to get out and walk around as we were driving through Kansas City. We decided to stop at the temple grounds and walk around a bit. It was nice to stretch our legs and enjoy the beautiful scenery!

We had so much fun and look forward to our next visit to St. Louis!

4th of July!

We had a wonderful 4th of July this year! We were able to take a few days and head out to St. Louis and spend it with Travis's parents and a few of his siblings there. The morning of the 4th, we decorated a wagon for McKinley to sit in for a parade through the neighborhood where Travis's parents live. She liked the wagon and had a great time waving at all of the people we passed by.

After the parade, she enjoyed a yummy popsicle to cool her off and playing on Grandpa's riding lawnmower.

One of McKinley's favorite things of the day was playing with Aunt Angie's dog! She loves animals and wouldn't leave the poor dog alone! She chased her around all day saying, "dog, dog, dog!"

That night, we lit off a few fireworks in the backyard. McKinley thought they were so much fun! When one would go off, she'd cover her ears and say, "loud, loud, loud!" Then once they were done she'd say, "more, more!" It was so cute and she had fun being a part of the festivities!

Stay tuned for more on our fun trip to St. Louis!