Our Daughter Loves Lady Gaga

This is Adah dancing to Lady Gaga. She asks all the time now to dance to the "crazy lady" :)

A few pictures for my brother Todd! (and anyone else that still checks this)

Hey Todd, since you are lame and don't facebook anymore, here are some pictures of our family hike up moscow mountain today. There's also a few pictures that Adah took with our camera. One is a self portrait, and one is a picture of her favorite TV show Ni-Hao Kai Lan (a Chinese version of Dora the Explorer more or less).

Just a few pictures

Hey, not too much to report right now, but I figured I'd post a few pictures so you can at least see something even though I'm not going to write a lot :) It's been a busy few weeks. I'm in a show right now called "Some Girl(s)" that is taking up most of my time. I've been at school around 12-14 hours a day between classes and teaching and rehearsals so it's been crazy. Katie and Adah are hanging in there though, and I'm grateful for loving me even though I'm gone a lot!
Anyway, this is me with my goatee I have to have for the show. I look a little like a creep. This was at 11pm, just after I got home from rehearsal. Adah was still up so I took a picture with her to prove that I do see her sometimes :)


This is Adah and her little boyfriend Jayden at Katie's birthday party. He's older, so I guess she likes older guys. He's 4, and she is almost 3, so yeah. At that age that means he is 25% older than she is! Anyway, they're cute and play well. I pulled Jayden aside and asked: "Do you think Adah is cute?" and he smiled really big and said yes. So I had my first official man to man talk with a boy for my daughter. Awesome!


Katie with her cake at her party. I made the cake from scratch, and it was REALLY yummy. It was a chocolate chocolate chip zucchini cake with cream cheese frosting; which I realize might sound a bit yuck, but it was fantastic. So moist and yummy and chocolately. It was a good treat and well worth the 2 lbs I packed on from that and other party food!


This last picture was taken about a month ago, but I just think it is funny. It's when Adah had her black eye, which makes it look like something fishy is going on, but it is actually her just having fallen asleep on her changing table when I was getting her ready for bed. :)


And that's all. CIAO!

Adah's first camping adventure!

Well, it's only been 4 months since we last updated our blog, that isn't too bad I guess :) This is mostly for my brother Todd who checks my blog all the time despite the fact that he is let down. I love you Toddy!

Anyway, last night was Adah's first camp out ever. We went to Spring Valley Resevoir, which is about 15 miles outside of Moscow. It has a really pretty little lake that is actually quite warm to swim in, so we swam a little bit in the evening, or rather, I swam and Adah and Katie stayed on the beach cause Adah is deathly afraid of water. But, here is a picture of the lake and area. It is really pretty!


Picture of us with camp all set up, sitting around the camp fire. We even got Adah a cute little camping chair of her own which she liked a lot. And although it isn't pictured, she had a princess sleeping bag courtesy of Grandma Patti that kept her nice and warm!


Adah's radical camping outfit. Complete with camo shirt and cap. Luckily she is really precious so she doesn't look like a boy!


Adah getting wasted and eating Doritos™ with our friend April Strawn.


The next morning, she survived! She even slept quite well surprisingly. She zonked right out.


Anywho, that is all. Hope anyone who sees this enjoys the pictures. Love you all and miss you lots!

Hey everybody!  Thought we would post a few new pictures of Adah since we haven't done that in a while.  She is almost two and a half now, and still as cute as a bugs ear :)  Adah and I went to the park today, so I took a few pictures of her playing and such, so enjoy!

Well, it's been a while since we updated the blog, quite a while actually :)  Not a whole lot of news to report as things are basically still the same.  Adah is getting more and more cute everyday and I thought some little videos would be fun instead of the regular pictures that are posted.  So ENJOY! Make sure and watch the top one first as they are kind of a continuation of each other. As a P.S. Adah chose the outfit she is wearing which is why she looks so nice in a t-shirt without pants and boots! We love you all!

Check it out

My friend Richie inspired me to start a weight loss blog since this is one of my big goals for the new year!  You can see it here

I think this will be a great way to keep myself accountable, so feel free to leave any remarks there you like to help keep me going :)  Also, if you want to start your own blog, send me the link and I'll add you to my post and we can get a little chain going! Yay!

Lanny out

Adah getting into the spirit of Christmas!

So this won't be a super long post, it's just a funny story accompanied by a cute picture!  This is what happened.

On the evening of December 16th, as I was putting our daughter to bed, she became VERY distressed, and started hysterically crying and yelling, "Mary! Mary! Please! Waaaaaa!!!! Mary!... etc... etc..." Now, there are a few possible Mary's she could have been crying for, so I will begin with narrowing down the list of who she may have been crying for.

1) Grandma Ackerman, who is named Mary

2) Her Cousin Mary, aged 5 (a good choice due to the close proximity of age)

3) Great Grandma Langston, also a Mary

4) Herself, who's middle name is Mary

5) And finally, The Virgin Mary

Any guesses?  If you guessed The Virgin Mary, you are CORRECT!  Here is why:  this week we had a ward Christmas party with white elephant gifts.  The gift our family received is about a 12" tall candle shaped like the Virgin Mary.  Adah has really taken to carrying this around with her and playing with it as well as her Little Mermaid Barbie, who knew that The Little Mermaid and The Virgin Mary could be Bff's? Obviously Adah did! :)  Anyway, as I was putting her down

 for the night, I put The Virgin Mary candle on her shelf, and she wanted to have nothing to do with it, and so cried her way into allowing me to let her snuggle it tonight.  So, as you will see in the picture below, she is sleeping with both the Virgin Mary and Ariel.  Pretty sweet. Gotta love the chilluns!

And on an unintentionally sacrilegious side note, as I was helping Adah pray tonight, I said "Thanks for letting me (speaking for Adah here) sleep with The Virgin Mary".  Sometimes I'm an unintentionally funny Dad, even if my real life Dad thinks I'm intentionally unfunny :)  

And on a happy note, we get to see lots of you in just a week or so! YAYAYAY!!

"Rabbit Hole", starring myself!

Last Thursday I opened "Rabbit Hole" at the University of Idaho.  It is my first semester up here and also my first show, and has been a really great experience!  I feel really blessed that I have such a good role my first semester here, as everywhere else I've been it seems like you have to "pay dues" before you get cast in stuff :)  

The cast I'm working with is really great.  The gal who is playing my wife, Crystal Munoz-Tesch is a lot of fun, and is about the only other Mormon in the department in general, so it was funny we got cast as the married couple.  We're both married in real life though, so I guess they figured we knew how to be married!  And just as a funny side-story/coincidence, we share the same anniversary (August 11th), although in different years. 

Anyway, I included a few of the pictures from the show for your viewing pleasure.  We close the show this Saturday, and I'll be sad to see it go (although my wife and daughter will be happy to have their husband and dad back I think!).  I haven't enjoyed working on a show this much in a long time, or working with a group of people this much either I have to admit!  I really enjoy it here, and I'm learning a ton and have grown a LOT as an actor, and although I'm not supposed to say this because it sounds cocky, I do a really good job in this play. :)  

Me and Crystal (or Howie and Becca)

Howie and Becca

In the background is Lauren Fins, a professor (although not in the theatre dept) at the U of I who plays Nat.  GREAT actress! Also, if I look skinnier, its cause I am ;)

The entire cast, including understudies.  On the back row (left to right) Daniel Gerber as Jason, Lauren Fins as Nat, Jessie Taylor as Izzy, Rose Fredson as Izzy's understudy, Jordan (don't know his last name!) as Jason's understudy, and on the front Crystal Munoz-Tesch as Becca, and I, Lanny Langston as Howie.

Thanksgiving away from home!

So, Katie and I had our first Thanksgiving away from either of our homes yesterday, and it was a LOT of fun! We had 12 people over, people from our ward as well as from the theatre department. There was much delicious food and lots of fun :) Me and Katie made the Turkey, and it actually turned out really good (thanks Dad!). Other yummy things we had were stuffing, freshly made rolls, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, corn casserole, ham, yams, apple pie, banana cream pie, coconut cream pie, pumpkin pie.... and maybe some other stuff too! It was all SO good! Adah had a lot of fun too. We let her drink soda, and she drank about 3 or 4 cups worth of cream soda and got pretty wired up on all the sugar. The picture below is her dipping her barbie into her soda, I think she was surprised I busted her :)


A sample of what we had to eat. These were actually the leftovers, yay for Thanksgiving!

One of our friends had a fancy whipping cream dispenser that used Co2 gas for the pressure. Our friend April squeezed the trigger a little too hard and there was an explosion :)

Adah with our friend Matt, who kind of looks a tiny bit like my brother Todd.

Me carving the Turkey! It's a lot harder than it looks.

The BIGGEST post ever!

So, we've got a TON to catch up on since we've been so bad about posting. I've got quite a few pictures of Adah to put on here from various occasions, mostly notably her 2ND birthday! Which happened yesterday, crazy!  Anyway, I'll put up all of the highlights from the last few weeks up here. We wanted to take some video, but have no clue what we did with our video camera :(  

And just kind of a funny birthday story.  Adah was absolutely terrified of her presents for her birthday.  We put them down by her and she started screaming "No! Don't! Stop!" So we tried to help her but she still didn't want anything to do with them, and tried throwing them and kicking them away.  Anyway, we finally just opened them ourselves while Adah hid behind Katie's back, unwilling to come out.  After they were opened she liked them a lot though, especially all of "The Little Mermaid" stuff.

Also, in some fun news, we're having our very first Thanksgiving away from either of our homes, so that will be fun! We're having like 15 people over: some couples from our ward, and also some of my friends from the theatre department at the University of Idaho that were still in town with nowhere to go.

So, without further ado, picture #1: Adah at her miniature sized birthday party with her friend Jessica

Picture #2: Adah sleeping with her sweet new Ariel blanket which she LOVES, and her new Ariel Barbie which she basically carries around nonstop.

Picture #3: Adah in her new Ariel towel.  She also has a black eye that you can see in this picture. I think she kind of looks like a boxer in this one.

Picture #4: Adah at the duck pond by our house a few weeks ago.

Picture #5: Adah with a deer on a walk near our house. She thought it was a "Cow Rabbit", and no matter how much I told her "deer", she'd keep calling it a cow rabbit. Pretty cute.

Picture #6: On a walk a few weeks ago as the leaves were falling. Pretty leaves and an even prettier baby!

Picture #7: Adah's first tattoo.  Which, although you can't tell in this picture, she was REALLY scared of. She was sobbing and trying to rub it off her arm.

Picture #8: Adah's first haircut. This took place in October actually, just prior to taking a family picture with Katie and her siblings.  Katie's brother Neal said that Adah looked like she had a mullet, so that was that :)

Only one week late, the HALLOWEEN post!

Well, first of all, sorry we're so bad at posting on this site (this is Lanny btw). I've been in rehearsals a whole bunch, especially at nights, and then at school most of the day, and Katie has been busy being a mommy and working on her at home business--which is coming along very well, she's a smart girl, my wife.

Anyway, Adah was Tinker Bell for Halloween. We bought the new "Tinker Bell" movie that just came out for her so she could pick up some of Tink's qualities for her big night.  Her research was pretty good, she especially got the mischievous aspect of Tinker Bell's personality down really good :) So, anyway, here's some pictures!!

Adah Trick or Treating. She got the hang of it really quick. We went at our church, and they just had parents behind the doors in all of the classroom, and she learned real fast that she could go to a door and say treat and get candy. She didn't get the "Trick" part though, she'd just walk up and say "Treat! Treat!" And sometimes take more than the one candy she was supposed to :)

Adah with Peter Pan (also known as Soren who's in the Nursery too). She was really scared of him though and didn't want to take her picture with him. 

Adah and Mommy. Katie went as the ideal wife (barefoot, pregnant, and without shoes :)

Just another cute picture of the little girl!

More Is on the Way...

Just a quick post to let you know we'll be posting again soon--including some STUNNINGLY gorgeous photos of Adah as Tinker Bell.

Quintessential Childhood Moments

The last week or so, Adah has done some pretty darn cute things that it just seems like every kid does at some point or the other, so we thought we'd show you some pictures :)

Specimen 1:  Pants on the head

Specimen two: Partially naked princess towel picture

Specimen 3: Curled up watching "The Little Mermaid" with 'horsey' and 'turtle'

Specimen 4:  Splashing in puddles out in the rain!

Anyway, that's about it for now!  Moscow is a lot of fun, although their football team is even worse than Utah State, which is sad, but we still cheer for them.  In some ways it is even a little less stressful to cheer for a team that never wins because when they lose you aren't disappointed but when they win you are on Cloud 9!  Love ya'll, ciao!

P.S.  IMPORTANT!! We made it so anyone can comment on our blog now!  You don't even have to sign in or anything to do it, so its simple!  So leave us lots of cute messages :)

Adah's 22 months old!

Hey ya'll. Not much to report, but I thought I'd just post a few more pictures of little Adah. She gets cuter and cuter every day. She is starting to like watching TV a little bit now that we have TV for the first time since we've been married. First time in like 8 years for me personally (this is lanny btw). She really likes to watch The Backyardigans, but more than anything she loves The Little Mermaid and tries to watch it multiple times per day, but we usually only allow one time per day, for our own sanity as well as to not feel like bad parents :)

She just recently found out that she's the baby in the mirror as well, so she's been spending a lot of time in front of the mirror dancing and smiling and talking to herself, it's pretty funny! She also likes to dress herself by pointing at certain clothes and saying "pretty". Sometimes she has silly outfits, but she's just a kid so whatever!

Anyway, here are a few cute pictures in some cute outfits as well as outside our house, and out on the track at the local High School football field which is just a block away or so.