It's beginning to feel a lot like... Minnesota

It is -7F right now and weather.com says it feels like  -30F! Holy smokes, I'm so glad I don't have to go out into this awful weather.  I can't imagine sending my kids off to school in this weather. This is what the weather reads today "Mostly cloudy and windy. Some blowing and drifting snow. Dangerous wind chills approaching -40F. High -7F." And tonight is described as the following "Low -21F. Bitterly cold."  

We can't wait to go to warm, sunny Utah in a couple of day!

18 months = Nursery

Ladd turned 18 months a couple of weeks ago and today was his first chance to go to nursery at church. Naturally, we got him dressed up in a tie (for the first time) for his big debut so he could impress the ladies. He loved nursery and I practically had to drag him out of there kicking and screaming.

Ladd has been such a joy in our lives since the moment he entered this life. He is so good natured and easy to please. He has been talking up a storm and tries to repeat everything we do. Some of his favorite words are: mommy, daddy, poppy (another word for dad), apple, Austin, more, water, cracker, and NO.

I love the mornings with Ladd. Usually he is up and jabbering for about 30 minutes before I roll out of bed to go in to get him up. One morning last week when I went in and picked him up he started signing and saying everything from his Signing Time Video- like he had been practicing all morning to show me. He gets smarter each day.

At his 18 month appointment he still only weighed 25 lbs, but he is in the 76th percentile for height!!!

I know this picture is a little blurry, but this is Ladd's favorite face to pull whenever he sees something cool and it always makes us laugh. He's such a little ham!

Lunch with Santa

Saturday we attended a lunch with Santa. As we waited in line to get pictures with Santa, Doug and I tried to get Ladd psyched to sit on Santa's lap.  Ladd was mesmerized by the guy with the funny beard and red suit.  This is what he looked like the majority of the time:

 

Although Ladd is very much a people person and really likes strangers, we really didn't know what to expect.  But this is what we got:

HE LOVED SANTA!!! I love this kid!

I love girlfriends!

This past week has been a rough one. Me and Ladd got sick on Thanksgiving and felt like HUD. Ladd was only sick for a couple of days, but I just couldn't shake my awful cold. Luckily my friend Kimberly came to my rescue this past Wednesday and watched Ladd all day so I could go to the doctor and rest. No surprise here, but I had a sinus infection. Then later that day my friend and neighbor Camie dropped off a pizza for dinner on her birthday. I don't know what I would do without so many good friends here. I love them!!! 
Thankfully I was feeling better on Friday for a girls night. We all braved the snow storm and went to Cheesecake Factory in Edina to celebrate Camie's 30th birthday. It was so much fun to get together with all the fun girls in our ward (There were 14 of us!). Afterwards a couple of us spent the night in a fancy hotel and stayed up until 4 in the morning. We just couldn't let our girls night end too early. In my opinion it was well worth the sleep lost.