I ♥ Faces Week 18 - Laughter

Laughter. Isn't is one of the MOST beautiful things? Well, I surely think it is and that is why I was so excited when I saw that this week's I ♥ Faces photo challenge is...yep, you guessed it! LAUGHTER :)
Adult Entry:
Some of you may recognize this picture from the Lego Land post. Just a little editing, change it to black & white and voila! There you have it. The picture is of my beautiful Aunt Kala enjoying a fun-filled day with her son. Can't you just feel the love?

Kids Entry:
This is my little Tootie (aka Audrey) when she was almost 11 mos old. I fell in ♥ with this picture the minute I saw it. How could you not with that huge 4 tooth grin and cheek dimples?


Make sure to head on over to I ♥ Faces by clicking on the link below and check out all of the other beautiful laughing faces!

Leggo My Eggo

My little Beep Bop isn't feeling too hot today. Actually she is hot, she's just not feeling well. She has had a fever off and on (only off because of Tylenol) since yesterday afternoon. She slept in until 9:30 am this morning and was miserable when she woke up burning up with a booger crusted face. Poor baby. She's back down for a nap now so I thought I would share a few pictures I took of her about 2 weeks ago. I bought a new lens for my camera...a Canon 50mm prime lens. There is no zoom at all on the lens so if you want to zoom you have to "zoom" your whole body. You may be wondering why the heck I would buy another lens and lens that doesn't zoom for that matter. The answer is simple. It takes awesome pictures in natural light! I am still learning a lot about how it works, but I'm loving it for indoor shots! This entire montage was taken the first day with the new lens and it goes a little somethin' like this...
Tootie decided she wanted to try the Cadbury Egg that the Easter Bunny brought her so I bibbed her up and let her go nuts!

Mmm Mmm!

Tasty!

Look, there's a bird!

Say cheeeeeez chocolate.

Uh-oh! I'm makin' a mess.

Hey, it's actually kinda liberating.

Who do you think you are?

Don't mess with my egg-o...

...or I'll be forced to give you one of these!

Hope you're having a great day. I know I am enjoying my time with the kiddos...sick or well...I love spending the day with them.

Toodle-oo!

Lego Land!

Have you ever been here???

This was Grant's second trip to the Mall Of America (MOA) and this time he had a BLAST! We went down with my aunt Kala, and her three kids. The older girls took off shopping and the boys had a day of Lego building, rides in Nickelodeon World, treats galore and a special prize from the Harley store.

As soon as we arrived we ran into Sharky from Underwater World.

When the boys were 2 (by the way, they are only 2 weeks apart in age) we brought them down to Underwater World. Although they don't remember it, they sure warmed up to Sharky much more quickly this time around!

As soon as we finished eating (and we were barely able to do that because Grant was begging tirelessly) we headed straight down to Lego Land! In case you didn't get a good enough view from the first picture, here is one more for good measure.

Can you believe this dirt bike and it's rider are built strictly out of Lego's???? Blows my mind. Oh, and when we first arrived, Grant thought we were going to be able to build these. Dream on little man! Your Mama isn't that talented or patient!

We scaled things back a bit and convinced the boys to build robots. Good choice. Easy for the Mommies :)

Grant lost interest in the robot quickly so we created a car that he could race on the track.

Check out this creation! This Mama is pretty creative with her Lego-mobile building, don't-ch think?!?

And let the racing begin.

Can you tell that Grant was totally in his element here?

He was all about racing his Lego-mobile.

And he kept bragging that his was so awesome because it never broke when it crashed into the wall at the end of the track. Guess what happened next? Yep, crashola! That is okay

That is okay since it was "Mommy to the rescue!" After it was all rebuilt, it was off to more racing!

Even us big kids were having fun. I just love the pure happiness captured in this picture. Doesn't a smile like that just warm your heart? It does mine!

After building our little fingers to the bone it was off crash some bumper cars!

The boys were waiting so patiently. But once it got going, poor Grant kept looking at me to tell him which way he had to turn to get unstuck so there wasn't much crashing after all. I think we are going to have to have a little Demo Derby 101 lesson from the Queen of Derby herself. Yep, "back in the day" I drove a demolition derby car at the county fair! Little known fact about little ole moua! So, I digress...back to the fun!

The boys really got a kick out of this semi-truck ride. It was more like a mini semi-roller coaster. The funniest part about it was on the first ride when Grant was "driving" the first truck, he really thought he was pulling everyone!

There is my little lead driver tootin' his own horn!

Evan was back a few cars and was intently making sure he stayed on track...or he was just having fun pressing his face up against the glass. Not too sure about that one but either way he was having a blast!

On the second ride the boys took the back truck and decided to ride together. Wanna know the funny part about this one? Well, you are going to hear it anyway. Grant thought he was pushing everyone while he was driving the back truck! I'm tellin' ya. I do not know how that ride moved if he wasn't in one of the drivers seats! He he!

On the way out, and while we were waiting for the girls to arrive from their shopping spree, we hit the Harley shop. The boys were even offered to sit on the bike! You don't hear that very often so they jumped at the chance!

Grant really thought he was something up there on that big bike!

Here he is stylin' and profilin"!

Don't they both look at home on there?

I just love that the boys get to grow up together and that we live close enough to be able to let them spend so much time together.

I think this one is funny because it looks like Grant is leaning down and starting up the bike!

And this picture just makes my heart smile. I love to spend special days like this with my special boy.

Oh, and I didn't tell you about his purchase at the Harley shop, did I? Well...he just fell in LOVE with a little stuffed animal puppy-in-a-purse. It was a denim Harley purse, but a purse with a little puppy in it none the less. I figured his dad would think it was sissy but how could I say no to him lovin' that little puppy so much. By the way, he named it Lightning. That makes it tough, doesn't it?!?