Smiles :)

Have a great day!

Bath Time With Dad!

Ellie is so stinkin cute in the tub.  It is a really happy time no matter the time of day.  She absolutely loves the time with Daddy.  So far he has taught her how to stand carefully on the side of the tub, how to carefully roll over in the water, and how to crawl safely.  I gave her her bath on Saturday and was very impressed with her abilities.  She has changed so much in the last 2 weeks it's amazing!  She crawls so fast, gets to standing so fast and can even get down safely pretty fast.  She no longer sports 10 bruises at a time on her head, and that I am so grateful for.  It was getting pretty sad looking.

What To Do?

So Ellie and I have been sick for the past 3 weeks.  The first bug wasn't so bad, but the second took the cake.  I almost took her to the doctor thinking maybe she had RSV, but by Monday she seemed a little better so I didn't.  I'm glad I didn't waste the time because she was better four days later.  I've taken a while longer to mend since, well, I don't always get to nap or fall asleep quickly.  I don't remember feeling this zapped since mono.  That was a joy.  But this morning I was able to get up and even make breakfast for Michael.  Ellie finally slept through the night since her illness.  Yeah!  She had a night waking habit before and so when she got sick for so long and couldn't breathe good, of course it came back with us wanting to comfort her.  Two nights of cold turkey while she cries for an hour or more generally does it, and now she naps better too.  We just hate going through the cold turkey phase.  I'm sure our neighbor hates it too!  These are just some pictures I took with my new camera of us goofing around while we were sick.  She absolutely loves Jenga blocks!

Oh, and Ellie loves to put things in her mouth and crawl around without holding onto them.  She thinks she's really something.  Here are some picks of her with her bath toy turtle.  With a water hole on its head, I think it's obvious why we don't let her use it in the bathtub.  She would drown :)  My favorite is the turtle picking her nose:)

Yeah.  I know.  The action shot of the turtle falling out of her mouth was such a lucky shot!  So cool.

20 Days

That's right.  We were gone from Dec. 9th to the 29th. We spent the first 14 days in Arizona with my family and then back to Colorado for another week.  It was full of ups and downs as most trips are, but overall was a lovely time with family and friends. (we forgot our camera ,duh, so a special thank you to Grandma Corinne and Aunt Courtney for the pic's!)

Arizona

So we drove to AZ in two days, staying at a La Quinta in Gallup, NM (where we slept heavenly--very nice beds). We made traditional stops at Dairy Queen in Raton and Dion's Pizza in Albuquerque.  Yum.  Ellie was pretty good, no really long bouts of crying.  We arrived in AZ on a Sunday and stayed with my sister Courtney and her family.  Of course it rained for the first 2 1/2 days straight (which I consider us lucky to have seen), so we weren't able to do outdoorsy things like tennis for a couple days.  We had great dinners each night with my parents over, which was really great to see them so often.  I also got to see my cousins a couple times and that is always fun.  We had a fun girls day at Leila's and watched The Help. Good movie.  All the guys took off on a great desert mountain biking trip for manly bonding :) We also had an Appetizer Night at Phil and Leila's.  I think it is becoming a tradition because we all like it so much.  So good to eat so many yummy little things!

Santa's Helper!

She just loved this hat!

And then we all got sick....  Ellie first, Michael second, and me not so much till Denver.  It was awful because Courtney's kids were really sick, and Ellie had never been sick until then.  Let's just say she was up almost all night with a fever, and tylenol made her crazy hyper!  I have never seen her like that.  She was just really energetic and constantly babbling for about 2 hours after she took the medicine.  It was sort of cute but freaky at the same time!  So it pretty much grounded us for a good 4 days at least.  Oh well.  I barely was able to squeeze in a visit to my friend Samantha's just before we left for Denver.  Oh and we got family pict's taken by my cousin Kristin that night before we left as well. We packed it in.

Ellie with handsome cousin Brett in their snowflake pj's.

Cousin Grant has about 50 little rubber duckies.  It was so fun to see her play with them.

 Colorado
Well, we left AZ and drove straight for Denver, trying for all in one day.  Michael drove most of the way.  We hit a big storm starting in Pueblo that continued to get worse the closer we got to Denver.  It was so snow packed you couldn't even see tire track lanes in the snow.  You just had to make it all up and work off of the reflectors and other cars in front.  It was wild and slow but eventually after 17 hours in the car we made it to Michael's parent's house.  Ellie was freaking out the last three hours thinking "why am I still in this car seat!" and crying pretty good.
All of Michael's siblings and their spouses were there, minus Matt who's on a mission in Mexico.  They all got to talk to Matt on Christmas so that was fun.  Ellie was super cute opening up her presents.  I didn't have to help too much as she loves paper!  Grandma Kathy got her one of those little tykes piano's--so as she was unwrapping it she kept hitting the keys which made her super curious and want to get at it some more.  She loves playing it, and I love to watch her play it!  All the boys got nerf guns and the wives got ammo.  Nicely played Santa :)  We all went to see the movie "We Bought A Zoo" and that was sooooo good.  Great actors and great story!  The little girl in it was sooo adorable.
And then we finally made it home after 20 days of fun and family!  It was good to get back to routine :)  Ellie loved being home too.  It was the first time I noticed a difference in her like that.  She loved seeing all her toys and familiar things.  Amazing.

Oh the wonder of toes!

Oh all the updating I do. I am so behind, but I'm catching up!  I was just released from my calling as the Stake Relief Society Secretary.  It was so fun and I will miss meeting with the ladies in the presidency every week.  However, I am happy to have more time to do the things I've been putting off for so long.  I am so excited to get things done and out of the closets.

So for Halloween (technically the Saturday before) we went to Boo at the Zoo with Grandpa and Grandma Huntington and Aunt Stephanie and her little boy Callen.  It was pretty fun.  They had booths sponsored by different businesses and organizations that handed out candy.  Ellie had a good time seeing a lot of animals for the first time!  Only downside was that the whole world was there and we had to park way far away.  Besides that it was pretty fun.  I do have issues though seeing some sad animals pinned up in really tiny enclosures.  It sort of breaks my heart. :(


For Halloween we went to our stake trunk or treat.  It was a mad house.  We were one of the few trunks to actually decorate our trunk.  It was funny to see some of the young kids reach in thinking that our monster was going to chomp their hand off.  Of course I encouraged this thought and told them to be really quick, or else....  hehehe :)

Auntie Ann and Uncle Keefe.  Scary child snatcher!

Oh my sweet pea :)

This picture is so cute!

Ellie with the Elliephants!  Funny face :)

In mid-October we thought we'd take a hike out in the mountains and so we took off and climbed up a bunch of boulders. It was a beautiful view from the top.  Also, I've included a few of Ellie being cute :)

Reading good books

For the record, that's my cookie monster. I have a pic of me around this age with it too!

Pretty path

Notice the tree growing in the rock.  Question: what came first? the crack , or tree? 

Yes, we hiked up there :)

Totally tuckered out.

We Bought a Piano

So I had an impression after church back in August that we needed a piano since we were going to be in Laramie for at least another three years.  I felt like I was losing my "talent" (as in I'm not that good, but Michael is).  I really enjoy playing the piano--its like therapy for me, sooooo we looked at good old craigslist and found this beauty for only $175 two blocks away from us. This old man was selling it and it had sat in their basement for 34 years in a corner.  Turns out his kids chose to play different instruments.  So we pretended it wasn't as cool as we thought it was so he wouldn't know and raise the price.  The sound is even good and not that out of tune.  Amazing, I know. :)

This is my favorite carving on the piano.  So pretty.

Before we cleaned it up.

34 years of dust (at least)

Half and Half.  Amazing the difference.

All cleaned up :)