Dakota's Turn

Dakota has had a lot of fun with daddy being home for his pre-deployment leave. They spent a lot of time together and it was just great to be able to spend time together as a family. There are a lot of pics but there was no way to limit them because they all have a great story behind them :). Here is a quick rundown of what little miss Dakota has been up to.

This is a picture of Dakota and dad sitting on the couch spotting elk...on the t.v. :). Mark has some elk videos and Dakota just had to have the binoculars so she could see them better. She got so excited everytime she saw one come on the screen. Mark got his huntin buddy...hopefully Bodee will be just as excited!

The following pictures are of the entire process of introducing Dakota to "ants on a log." Something that I am not a big fan of at all (since I can't stand celery) but Dakota pulled the celery out of the fridge and just knew she had to have some. I had an idea as to how she would react so I thought I would add peanut butter and raisins to help soften the blow. She thought it was great...

...until she took a big bite. I think she was heading over to her easel to hide so she could spit it out. I followed her though and ruined her plans! She finished the bite with this look on her face the entire time.

After that, Dakota was convinced it was the raisins and peanut butter that made it taste bad so she wanted to eat the celery by itself. However, not before she had to use the stalk as a baseball bat. She swung the stalk and took a big bite...I spared you the picture of the "big bite" on the kitchen floor afterwards :).
This is Dakota at one of her soccer practices...completely covered in mud. We didn't care at all because she was finally enjoying herself! Whatever it takes.

This is Dakota before her first game...scoping out the competition I guess. Her hands hardly ever left her pockets which helped a ton with the whole, "no hands" concept!

A little pre-game warm-up. You would think that this meant that she understood the concept of the game and knew what she was about to do....stay tuned!!! (not so much)

Dakota spent the entire time she was on the field dancing around and teaching her teammates what we as adults would recognize as yoga poses :). It was funny (kind of) to see that she was actually causing quite a distraction for the other kiddos and one parent didn't seem too thrilled with her. My thoughts??? My daughter was actually out there having a good time and didn't have to be right by my side. Who cares that she showed no interest in where the ball was or even that there was a ball. We'll work on that later...goal #1: accomplished :). goal #2: getting her to actually touch the ball during the game.