Bikes and Buddies

Saturday morning Daddy set off for Hammond and the start of his grueling 150 mile/2 day bike ride, a.k.a. "The MS Tour." Stella and I set off to eat donuts and get fatter with our crew at the Hole. We ran into Metairie to do a little Halloween shopping, and then Stella went to visit with Jace and Emily while Mommy went to a teacher's workshop. Stella had a blast at the Raney's, filling their dogs up with treats, playing with toys, and playing mind games with Emily by saying "Jace" over and over and refusing to say "Emily." When I picked her up, she was totally worn out from her afternoon of fun, and fell asleep in her high chair during her snack. She has never done that before, so I know she was pretty exhausted! Close-up...(there's also video, but I'll save that for later)

After I packed up, Stella and I hopped in the truck to go to Mississippi and spend the night with Daddy. Stella slept all the way to Hammond, where we changed trucks, and then fell asleep again and napped almost all the way to McComb! I am now planning to send her to the Raney's every Saturday afternoon so that we can all take a long family nap when she gets home.

While we were in Mississippi, we contacted our friends the Oswalts and dropped by their beautiful new home for a visit. They were all sick, but we are the kind of friends who just come barging in anyway. Stella waited about 5 minutes before swiping Tristyn's pacifier and Marylou's shoes. She likes to make herself at home...(note the glint of mischief in her eyes)

You can tell from this cheesy smile that Stella LOVED Tristyn's new anywhere chair. We might need to put this one on the Christmas list...

A sweet smile from a sweet girl! Tristyn is already walking and getting cuter by the day!

Stella and Tristyn agree that we can make them sit in the chair together, but we can't make them like it...

Stella smiles as T-bird tries to make her escape...I imagine her thought bubble would read, "Let me outta here!"

Bright and early Sunday morning Stella was making this face when she got a whiff of her dad's cycling gloves....yuck!

In other news, just when I thought Claude had been relegated to the forgotten toy department, he made a reappearance and he even learned a new skill while he was out of the rotation. He is now giving kisses. I refuse to kiss him back.