The Leonard Love: May 2012

Reading Books = Creating Memories

I remember when I was young how much I enjoyed looking at and reading books. Even now I enjoy picking up a good book and getting lost in the pages as they turn. I have found that Olivia has this same love. When the house gets quiet I know that Olivia is either up to something really bad or she is sitting in her room looking at books. We have made it a routine to read to her every night before bed and often times there is a negotiation on how many books will be read. Olivia keeps interested the whole time we are reading to her and after we have finished the book she likes to take it and read it back to us (since she is 3 and cannot actually read words she just repeats the story back to us as she remembers hearing it). Josh took a picture of me reading to Olivia the other night, you can see in her face that we are not just reading books…we are making memories.

Ducky Bath Time!

The girls took a bath together and they loved their new ducks to play with! Kiley is learning to enjoy bath time!

A New Baby is Reason to Party!

I recently helped throw a baby shower for my sister-in-law who is having a baby in June. They do not know the gender so this was my first time to throw a shower with no specific gender to go by! It was fun and Olivia counted down the days until she could eat cake! Olivia cannot wait until her new cousin gets here! Here are some pictures of the party:

Tents, Smores and the Great Outdoors!

A few weekends ago our family and some friends of ours went on a camping trip to Beavers Bend. The best part was how excited Olivia was about going. She kept asking me if we were taking our tent and our food and of course her new sleeping bag! Olivia might have been almost as excited as Josh. Josh just loves the whole camping experience and even though I didn’t grow up camping I can see that it will become something we do on a regular bases. We had a great tent and we had brought along good food so we were all set to go. We went with our friends who have a little girl who is Olivia’s age and they are best friends. The hardest part about the whole experience was fitting two families and all our camping gear in our SUV. The pictures below will show how we managed it! Olivia loved making smores over the campfire and skipping rocks in the lake. We took a hike that mostly consisted of us walked along a road looking for the hiking trail that we never found (haha). On our way to our campsite we saw some deer who obviously had little fear of humans because we got some up close pictures that I will share below. It was a great trip and I won’t lie, I had my doubt about the whole thing but I was pleasantly surprised!