Weekend in New Orleans

Loftin camping

Paul B Johnson’s Mississippi State Park

For Chris’s 30^th Birthday, we rented a travel trailer from Keesler AFB and spent a great weekend camping. It was a bit hot but great in the air-conditioned trailer. We spent the days playing on the lake’s beach, at the splash pad, flea market and hiking around getting to know our friendly neighbors. Dad and Clayton gathered wood and built a campfire every night. Nothin’ like s’mores that are melted by the summer heat before you even cook them. It was a great change of pace from the neighborhood life and the kids loved every minute. These are the kind of vacations that make great family memories. We will defiantly be doing this often.

Hank at the splash park.

bunk beds in the trailer

Laney is ready to go with her 'baby Hank' doll

Happy 4th Birthday Clayton!

How has another passed by right before our eyes. Well it has and here's a glimps into Clayton's 4th birthday party. It's was/is super hot so we got a bunch of water toys and let the kids enjoy their day outside. We love living so close to the NOLA family. Clayton and Mackenzie are two peas in a pod. Watch out world...here they come.
We got lucky this year that my mom and Lolli&Pop were dropping the kids off in time to spend Clayton's birthday with us. This is the "Greatest Mom Award". 1. for me renting a cotton candy machine...yum and 2. for my mom getting all sticky to spread the sugary joy.

Alex and Clayton can't wait to open up the gifts!

Clayton is in love with anything with wheels. He really wanted a monster truck cake from Dairy Queen (like he had last year) but Dairy Queen doesn't do this design any more. Thanks to Tre's mom, Ms. Lourie and her eatable printer, we got a perfect ice cream cake.

and cupcakes of course!

Baby Hank is Here!

Weighing in at a whopping 8 lbs 4.4 oz and 20 inches long, we welcomed Baby Hank into the Loftin family July 21st 2011 at 8:19 am. He is the best baby and perfectly content just sleeping...

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Happy Easter Everyone!!

Happy Easter! We're back and bloggin'. We had a short, but great, visit with Lolli and Pop this weekend. Lolli left early Sunday morning to surprise our cousin Rayla Bay so we got some good picts with Pop!

Pop was a trooper: dying eggs, telling us the true meaning of Easter, chasing the Easter Bunny (see below), and helping us find all the hidden eggs.

Since we had another hand, we actually got a family picture for Easter. Yeah! AND it appears that there are four people smiling at the same time...its a good day!

We had an Easter Social yesterday at Church. It is tradition for the kids to color hard boiled eggs, the Easter Bunny hids them, and then everyone goes outside to find them with their buddies. Clayton was all over these eggs!!! He didn't want to eat them but he carried them around for 2 days. We're going to have to blow them out next year if he's going to continiue to hort smelly eggs. This picture is of him either kissing or smelling the eggs...

Ahhh, what my husband does because he can't say 'no' :)!!! This was the final year for Chris to be the Easter Bunny at church. He does such a great job of hopping in, scarring the little kids and winning the hearts of the big kids! Way to go Babe!

Girls are from Venus, Boys are from Mars....

Venus or Mars....it's all outerspace, right? Here's a whole bunch of pictures from March of our "out-of-this-world" children. Clayton is determined to do everything like Dad, including wearing his towel to model Chris.
Ahhh, the joys of long/fine/baby hair. It makes Bed-Head picture perfect!

She doesn't have a whole lot to say but she's getting really good at her signs. This is her sign for more and as you can see....it's always used in the KITCHEN.

My Mad Scientist is making a test tube volcano that Uncle JB and Aunt Janessa gave him for Christmas. JB told him to save his experiments for a rainy day. Sure enough, Clayton woke up, it was raining, and he remembered his science project.

This is Laney's prayer-stance. She'll gobble up as much food as she can until we all sit down and then cross her hands like she's been waiting to say the prayer the whole time :)

Monster Truck "JAM"

We had a fun little (LOUD) outting with our friends, the Mays and Hamblins, while Laney had a jolly good time with the sitters and Jacek.

Can you tell in this picture that Clayton had fallen asleep on the way to the arena and Dad was a bit over-excited about the whole event?

It was pretty fun. Mom thought that she mostly came for the cotton candy...but little did she know that the moto-cross would win her....attention.

Where's the muscle shirt you say? Well, apparently if you go to the matinee, they are not required attire.

He was just waking up, and starting to clap, as the show was coming to a close. He was awake enought to realize that he loves the Grave Digger and that he wants a "giant" one for Christmas.

We Love You and Will Miss You Reed!

Our Perfect Child

As our children were born

We wanted them to be perfect.

When they were babies,

We wanted them to smile and be content playing with their toys.

We wanted them to be happy and to laugh continually

instead of crying and being demanding.

We wanted them to see the beautiful side of life.

As they grew older,

We wanted them to be giving instead of selfish.

We wanted them to skip the terrible twos.

We wanted them to stay innocent forever.

As they became teenagers,

We wanted them to be obedient and not rebellious,

mannerly and not mouthy.

We wanted them to be full of love, gentle and kind-hearted.

"Oh God give me a child like this" was often my prayer.

One day He did. Some called him handicapped....

We call him perfect!

We had a lot more time with Reed than any doctors expected. But, it never seems like enough time once it runs out.

A Few Fun Pictures...

I'm drawing a bit of a blank this evening and can't remember what I was going to blog about this week. So, here's a few pictures we've had hiding in our archives...
Lolli and Pop came down for the weekend. We had a fun filled weekend at the science museum and the clydesdale park and eating and eating....without any sight of my camera.
At Christmas, Clayton wanted to make a birthday cake for Jesus. "Ahhh, that's cute", I thought, So he and Lolli were off to the kitchen. The problem now is, when he see's Lolli, he feels as if there should be cake involved (hence the eating and eating)

Puckered out at book time. I keep telling myself, if only we could get him still for 30 seconds...he'd fall right to sleep. The proof is in the pudding.

Bird watching

Laney is quite the snuggler. She is a girl of (very) few words but when she sees an animal (in a book or live) she gives a cute little "ahhh" and tries to hug it. When she catches Stella (which seems to be more and more rare), she's in snuggle heaven!

Back From A Hiatus!

Oh my goodness, I can't believe that it's been a month since I've updated our little Blog. So, here it goes:
We hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday season. Ours was great, minus the part where we had to literally fight Clayton to let us take down the Christmas tree at the end of January! Laney is our little climber. She's so quiet that we rarely catch her. BUT, if there is food at stake (here's showing her getting a fair share of her brother's bananas that he, earlier, refused to share) she'll risk her life for it.

Yeah for pig-tails! This is the first of many more to come!

What to do on a cold Oklahoma day?

Clayton is officially in SUNBEAMS at church. His class is made up of 4 three-year old boys and he LOVES it! He has his own little scripture bag and is thrilled to carry it to 'his class', as he calls it. He loves singing time. However, I'm not sure how the bum is connected to the vocal chords, but none of the Sunbeams can sing unless they are standing up. It is too cute!

Welcome Old Man Winter! On Tuesday we received quite the winter storm. First an ice storm, typical for here. Then came the snow. We got somewhere between 10-14 inches. The biggest problem was the wind was blowing as high as 50 mph with a -25 WCI. Snow's not as fun when you can't go in it. This picture is Clayton's attempt to help Dad dig us out....it lasted about 1 minute and he was back inside.

I don't know if you can see this but it's a huge snow drift in our back window that almost totally covers a yard stick. This is my favorite snow drift because now the dogs can look at us through the window by standing on the snow.

Laney's a but jealous that everyone else got to go outside. The problem is getting her to come back inside before frost bite sets in.

That's all for today. It's now Friday and the snow has started falling again...but we love having our Daddy home to play!!

I promise to update soon!!! Scout's honor!