Sunday, February 23, 2014

Christmas in Chile, Part 1

(or February Catch-up, #3)

Here are a few pictures from Christmas to start with. The majority of the info and pictures will come later. :-)



Here is Ellie with Kent's Great-Aunt, Tia Carmen. She died of cancer a few weeks after we got back home. I am so grateful we got to meet this sweet lady, and that we have pictures of Ellie with her!

 



Thursday, February 20, 2014

Ellie in the Meantime

(February Catch-up #2 - Stuff Besides Thanksgiving & Christmas)

It amazes me how quickly - and how eagerly - Ellie learns new things about this new world around her. And it amazes me how excited she is when she learns something. And it amazes me how eager she is to love everything and everyone around her.

As of early December, she had learned to scoot backwards, push up to sitting, turn in circles, and pull up to standing on her own, and then finally crawl forward, roughly in that order. She's a little busy bee who loves cruising around the room by holding onto furniture or by crawling (I swear she crawls as fast as I can walk now!). She loves clapping her hands whenever someone says "yay!" or claps their hands, and she loves putting her blanket or dress or fireman's hat over her head and then waiting for someone to say "peekabo!" when she pulls it down again. She also loves shaking her head at me when she's frustrated (I can't imagine where she got a stubborn streak from...).

This is a lazy post - the rest of it is made up of some pictures of Ellie from over the last couple of months. 

October:

November: 



December:




January:



February: 

The End. Next post(s) will be about Christmas.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Halloween/ Thanksgiving Week



(February Blog Catchup # 1)

I’m playing blog catchup. So here is Halloween and Thanksgiving Week (as in Halloween and Thanksgiving 2013. Yes, 3 months ago.) 

Then my goal is to post one entry on the blog each day over the next couple of days til we’re a little more caught-up. And yes, those posts will finally include at least some of the pictures from Christmas in Chile. 

But to start with, Halloween was fun; I got to dress up my own kid for the first time! This is a landmark, people! Ellie made a pretty cute ladybug, if I do say so myself. 


I think I should explain before these next pictures that Kent was a federal prison inmate for Halloween.


I also should briefly mention my birthday in November. Mostly because I have this cute picture of Ellie with my present from Kent. Girl after Mommy’s heart. :-)
 

And now for Thanksgiving. My second-favorite holiday, and it starts off the season for my first-favorite holiday. This year, we were lucky enough to be able to spend Thanksgiving with both sides of our family. Kent’s sister Serena gave birth (Thanksgiving Day!) to a beautiful baby boy, Hardison, our fourth nephew. We got the news while we were eating with my family. We had Kent’s parents and his sister Sarah’s family in town to meet the baby and attend his baby blessing. So after enjoying a great Thanksgiving meal with my family, we got Thanksgiving leftovers and pie with Kent’s family. We also got to see Serena and the baby in the hospital. It was a good day! Okay, it was a good week or so – some of these pictures are right before or after Thanksgiving (as you can see from the pictures of the still-very-pregnant-bowling Serena just a couple of days before).


 Thanksgiving:

 






After Thanksgiving, we went to the Children’s Museum and Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City. And, Andrew and Serena blessed their baby boy when he was 1 ½ weeks old. 






And for our anniversary (the day after Thanksgiving) – five years! – Kent got me chocolate, a balloon, and my two favorite flowers: roses and Peruvian lilies (alstroemeria).  I kindof forgot our anniversary until the middle of the day. It’s a good thing Kent did too. :-)
 
It was also a very good day. I’ve loved spending the last five years married to my sweetheart and best friend!