Bonk!

Patrick is such a great daddy! He comes home and plays is heart out with Ellie. She just loves him so much and squeals with delight when he pulls up.One of the things that they love to do is head bonks. My mom gave Ellie a huge Easter egg filled with goodies for Easter. This egg has brought hours of joy to our house. Ellie and Patrick use the egg as helmets and walk around giving head bonks. Then they will both fall to the ground and giggle. It is so funny and I love watching them play, plus she just looks so stinkin cute with her helmet on, almost completely covering her whole head, face and all. September 19, 2011

More Crafts

I think I must just be in a crafty mood. Here are a few more bows I made for a friend who's having a baby. I may have to make some more for me. I also made this fall wreath. I tried to make a wreath like this, but it didn't work and just looked terrible, not at all like the one they made, so I pulled a few leaves off of it and reused them for this. Simple and easy and I love it.I am so excited for the next craft I'm doing this weekend. I will post when they are done!

Sidewalk Chalk, a Sensory Bin and Play Dough

Ellie loves being outside! I am slightly worried for Winter to come and having to be inside a little bit more than we are now. I found some sidewalk chalk on Clearance at Target for 25 cents!!! What an awesome deal and has been hours of fun at our house. I wish I would have bought more of it! This is the first time we drew with chalk at our house(Sept 21, 2011). It was slightly messy, I had to get a picture, but oh so fun! I have been trying to think of fun things to do inside, and even am starting a play group in our ward. Awhile back I saw a website, Jada Roo Can Do, that has a lot of ideas to do with toddlers. I decided that I really wanted to start to do some of these with Ellie, so she isn't bored sitting around our house;) I was really excited about the idea of sensory bins that this lady does on her blog and decided to try one out. My parents came to visit on Sept 22, 2011 and I decided to make a Halloween sensory bin that I had been gathering stuff for. Ellie played with it and thought it was great....however it will be super messy. We will have to really work on keeping the beans and rice in the bin! I haven't let her play with it again because I was kind of saving it for October, but I think it will be lots of fun. I'm excited to make different ones for other seasons also. We also made play dough the other day.(September 23, 2011) I've been wanting to do this for a while, but haven't wanted to brave the mess and making sure Ellie didn't eat the play dough. Well, I found a great recipe on the same website and we gave it a try. Super easy recipe and it turned out awesome. Ellie even helped me dump some ingredients and mix it all up. She has been a good little helper lately. We even made scrambled eggs and I had her put the cheese in them. It is so fun to have her want to help. I thought this picture was awesome, it looks like she's working super hard:) We have also made one of these....Ellie loves it, but after the first time with water, I decided to get rid of the water and just let her put the pom poms and beads into the water bottle. This picture is from the website where I got the idea, mine doesn't look quite as cute:) I also have a bag of pom poms in my bedroom that Ellie loves to play with. She will seriously spend 30 minutes taking each pom pom out of the bag and throwing them everywhere. I need to get a picture of this after she's been in the bag. She especially loves throwing them down the stairs. The other day while I was vacuuming the stairs, she sat at the top throwing them down. When I jokingly told her to stop(just a huge game to her), she snuck around the corner and threw them down anyways, and laughed so hard. It was hilarious.

15 Months

I found a great deal at JC Penney for pictures I just couldn't pass up. So, we went and got 15 month pictures of Ellie. September 13, 2011 I keep thinking that we are doing so many pictures...and we are...but I love having them. Everyone keeps saying our other kids aren't going to have so many, and while that is probably true, I will try really hard:)

Ellie had her 15 month Dr appointment on September 8 and is doing great. She weighed in at 21.75 lbs-33 percentile, and is 32 inches tall-91 percentile. I can't believe she is so tall, since I was always super short:) She got her MMR and chickenpox vaccines and screamed right when she got them. We got the shots before Dr Horkley came in and she did surprisingly well. She did throw a huge tantrum halfway through and wouldn't quit. She seriously screamed for the last 10 minutes of the visit. After she calmed down and we left, I had to stop and get a prescription filled and she threw another tantrum in Kmart. So much fun to have everyone looking at me. And...everyone says it is only gonna get worse:) Great! She actually is a really good little girl and helps out so much! I am amazed at how much she is learning each day! Here are a few things about Ellie.

• Started really throwing tantrums
• She is very independent. She likes to do everything on her own, which I love and also don't love. It is nice that she is so outgoing and independent, but I also want her to stay little:( It makes me sad how fast she is growing up, but it is also so much fun to be able to have her interact more and more with us.
• She has started to eat less and less. I have been so concerned about this that I asked Dr Horkley because she will seriously eat maybe 10 bites of food the entire day. She goes in spurts, but doesn't eat very well. She is getting another tooth, so maybe this is the reason...
• She still only has 2 bottom teeth and 3 top. She is so close to getting the 4th on top.
• She has had a little red rash on her bottom lip and when I asked about it, they said to either try Vaseline or chapstick. Also, taking away the binky would probably help to not have as much moisture always there. We have only been giving her the binky when she is sleeping or napping, but decided to take it away starting right after the appointment.(Now that I think about it, what a mean time to take it away. Right after shots) Anyways, she did really well. She had a little bit of a hard time going down for naps the 2nd day and cried for a while, but going down at night was no problem at all. For a couple of days she woke up pretty early and was up. She actually woke up the 1st morning at 5:45 and cried for an hour. She hasn't done that again and really hasn't had a problem at all. I am sad because she doesn't say bink anymore and it was so cute!
• Ellie is starting to say so many words and mimics us so much! She says blankie(bee bee), Milk(mil), mama, dada and daddy, done, g'pa, g'mama, Jesus(we point to a picture of Jesus and she says jeeee and then whispers us. She will also point to Jesus when we ask, pretty-she put on a blue bead necklace(Sept 26, 2011) and said pretty, doggie, juice(ju ju), hi(this is my current favorite), she has said bye but only once on Sept 22 with my dad, Eric(eeee), Kids, tractor, cracker, truck. Those are all I can think of right now, but she will try and mimic what we say and it really sounds so much like what we are saying.
• We always wash her hands and face when she is done eating and she used to cry and cry. She will now give us each hand and is pretty good about it.
• She loves to just jibber jabber all the time. She used to say vroom vroom when she would push cars/trucks around, now she says beep beep or weeoooo(a siren noise). She says a lot of animal noises. She has really started to do monkey noises and we often wake up to monkey noises coming from the other room. She has them on her bedding, walls and many of her jammies. She also sleeps with a monkey. It is hilarious because she will say oo oo oo oo and then in a high pitched voice, ah ah(Patrick does an awesome monkey noise) She has also really started to do a duck noise a lot and always has to have her hands making a duck movement when she says it.
• She absolutely loves being outside and we spend a lot of time in the front waiting for daddy to come home for lunch or from work for the day. She also loves her sandbox and will walk around to the back because she remembers where it is.

I love being able to stay home and see her learn and experience so many things. It is lots of fun to be able to watch her grow.

Providence Splash Pad and Slides

We decided since Daddy missed out on the splash pad in Provo, we needed to head to the splash pad here in Providence so he could see the fun! This one was a little bigger than the last, and Ellie was a little apprehensive, but she warmed up. It is a circle and in the very center sprays out really high. Ellie would run to the center when it would start and by the time she made it there, it would stop and the next part would start. It would get her all wet and she would run away. It was really funny.Aubrey, Peter and Park stopped by and we played a little bit at the park by the splash pad with them.

Ellie and Park in the tunnelPeter and Ellie in the tunnelThis park has a little tunnel slide and Ellie really wanted to try, I figured this one wouldn't be too big. She loves slides, but puts her feet down and will flip over, so we haven't really let her go down by herself yet, unless it is a little kiddie slide. She did great!

We have a park by our house and she has actually gone down a much bigger slide by herself now. Last Friday, Sept 23, 2011, she tried out a bigger tunnel slide and wasn't quite sure what to think. Once she was safe on the ground she started laughing and smiling:)

One of the Many Joys of Summer-Corn on the Cob

We have been really struggling to get Ellie to eat vegetables. It seems like she will only eat peas and every now and then green beans. Well, we have finally found a winner. Corn on the cob. I have always cut it off for her before, who knew she would eat it so much better right off the cob!

August 28, 2011

Meeting Cousins

My cousin, Elizabeth, and her family, moved to Salt Lake area from Washington at the end of August.(August 24, 2011) The week they moved down, we decided to head down and get together with them and my Aunt and Uncle. It was a lot of fun to just hang out. She has 2 little boys Cameron and Conner. Conner is only 5 days older than Ellie. We went to a splash pad in Provo and it was a lot of fun. I've never been to any slash pads before and Ellie really enjoyed it. Here are a few pictures at the splash pad. My mom caught this great moment. Ellie giving Conner a kiss!I thought it was cute how Conner and Ellie would be doing the same things.I'm really excited to have Elizabeth live closer. We are the closest in age for all of my cousins, but haven't really seen each other a lot just because we haven't lived very close. We still aren't really close, but much, much closer than before. It will be fun to be able to see each other more and have our kids know each other. Also, I found this awesome website that has a list of all of the splash pads in Utah. I had no idea there were so many of them in Utah. There is even one in Providence that we have now been too. So fun!

Canyon BBQ

A while ago....August 22, 2011 we headed up Logan Canyon to have a BBQ with some friends. I wish I could think of the name of the place we went, but my memory is terrible these days. It was just a little ways up the canyon:) I really liked the area we were in. There was a little river and a couple of waterfalls. Patrick, Ellie and Ivy had lots of fun throwing rocks in the river.I really like this little family picture.Steve starting up the fire!

The fire pit was a little bit taller which was really nice because we didn't have to worry...as much....about Ellie getting too close to it. She was a big helper and wanted to throw every little stick she could find into the fire.Here are a couple pictures of the waterfalls.I think this would be a great place for a family picture...We tried to get one, but Ellie just wasn't having it. We will have to go back another time.I didn't get a picture of the food, but it was all yummy! We had a great night with tinfoil dinners(thanks to Lacey for making them) and S'mores. Thanks for the invite Steve and Lacey!

How could this not be funny!?!

Especially when he starts to talk! Patrick just doesn't get it. He did this while I was rubbing his head just after we got married and I laughed so hard I was crying. I still think it's funny today!!!

Getting Crafty and some Visitors

I have really loved doing crafts my whole life. I give credit to this to my mom! We always had fun things to work on and I still love it! The other day I was online looking for something to do and found this cool tutorial on box fold hair bows. I loved it and just happened to have some felt, so I gave it a try. I think it turned out so cute and I will be making more of them soon! I also made a bean bag find that I love! I dug through my mom's sewing room and found a ton of cool trinkets to put inside. I also attached a little loop to add a list of things inside to be found. I haven't quite gotten around to getting the list laminated, but it will be done soon. Ellie is actually pretty interested in it. I thought she may still be a little young for it, but she thinks it's pretty cool. My parents came up on Sept 5, 2011 and my mom helped me start a quiet book for Ellie that I have been gathering stuff for the last year....I needed a little motivation and my mom was just the person. Here is a picture of one page that we started. I'm really excited about it!We had a great day with them and it's so nice that they will make the drive up to see us so often. I love that Ellie knows her grandparents and is excited to see them. She even through a little fit when they left:( We went and fed the ducks and then got some ice cream. The rest of the day we just played around and then went to dinner at The Beehive Grill(which was pretty good). We love to have visitors:)

Bundled Up

Is anybody else's house cold when they wake up in the morning? I don't want to turn on the heat yet, I still have the AC on during the middle of the day! But Ellie's room is seriously 10 degrees colder than the rest of the house. We don't even have the vent open during the summer in her room because it doesn't get too hot. This morning she woke up at 5:50am and I think it was because she was cold. I felt terrible! Patrick brought her in and she snuggled in our covers with us(I love this). Then shortly after we all got up. I put on a hoodie and then some thick socks. Ellie saw the socks and immediately decided she needed some as well. She's so funny! Here she is sporting some of my fuzzy socks. Doesn't it just look like she is thinking, Another picture....come on!

Finally a Pepper?!?!

We have a tiny garden in pots on our front porch. We have gotten quite a few tomatoes this year, but our little pepper plant hasn't even grown in size at all. We kind of figured that there would be no peppers:( But, a couple days ago, I noticed this little guy! Can you even see it? Look closely, it's there, and we are so excited! It seems like I can't get peppers to grow....EVER! Maybe one day when we have a garden that isn't in pots, but for now....this little pepper is perfect!

Nachos in Bed

Ever since I can remember I have always loved 7-Eleven Nachos! I know, many of you are thinking, that is just gross, but I LOVE them. I remember going with my sister late nights and getting nachos with jalapenos. So yummy! I went all through college and Patrick and I even go. I seriously love them. Well, last night Patrick had meetings pretty late and I sent him a text saying that Nachos in bed would be so wonderful. You have to realize I have sent texts like this before and he always just laughs them off. Well, last night at 11:30pm when he got home, he woke me up with Nachos in bed! He is the such a great husband! It was awesome and oh so good! If you've never tried them...just go for it! They are really that good!