Ella at 20 months

I should have done this post a couple of months ago, at 18 months.  But now is better than never.  Ella is so much fun right now.  She really always has been.  She's such a sweet little girl, although lately she is getting a little sassier.  Here are some things she can do/likes to do at 20 months.

This is a classic Ella face.

• Her favorite song to sing is Hello, Hello.  She has come to Primary with Steve or I since she was 6 weeks old, so it makes sense that she loves the Primary songs.
• She loves food.  Some of her favorite things to eat are blueberries, some of Dad's shake in the morning, mac'n cheese, squash.
• She can say lots of words and is putting 2 and 3 word sentences together like "more Dad".  She always calls her brother "Jack Jack".  Some of her favorite words are OK, see-ya, bite (when she wants a bite of your food), help, and of course "me" (she raises her hand when she says it).
• She's a great sleeper and literally always sleeps through the night.  She also loves her afternoon nap and sleeps 2-3 hours.
• She is not interested in TV at all.  We've tried a bunch of different shows, but she's just not into them.
• She is such a girl!  She always notices when she's wearing something new.  She takes really good care of her dolls, loves to wear pretty things, and carry purses.
• She loves to go pee in the potty before she takes a bath at night.
• She is obsessed with her binkie and blankie.  I'm super scared to get rid of her binkie!!!
• She is a brave girl.  She will go down tall slides, ride the 4-wheeler, pet horses, but she hates being pushed in the baby swing.
• She knows the color blue and purple.  I know this is from choosing what color otter pop she's wanted all summer.
• She is scared of the garbage truck.  She has to come and hug me when it goes by even though we are inside the house.
• She loves to count and counts to six, but only 3 of the numbers sound like they should.  She has a certain way she talks when she's counting and she always does it the same.
• She loves animals, especially our dog "Tuck" and horses (she says it horsh.)
• She loves to color, paint, play with playdough.
• Her brother is her favorite person in the world.  She follows him everywhere, and although they taunt each other to no end at times, they are best friends and really look out for each other.
• She climbs, hides, runs, and is into everything.  The other day I lost her in The Children's Place, then later that day at our house she ran out into the road and a truck had to stop for her.  She definitely has a mind of her own.

Playing in the pantry.  It's her new favorite pastime.

I don't think the cocoa powder tasted as good as it smelled.

Family Pictures

We had our family pictures taken the beginning of July.  Here are a few of my favorites!

Getting a picture with everyone looking at the camera is next to impossible!  By some miracle this shot happened.

Ella at 18 months old.

Jack a few weeks before his 4th birthday.

These two are buddies!

Me and cute Ella.

Picture day is always crazy, but I'm already glad that we did it.

Pineview

 Summer is slipping by too quickly, so we decided to take advantage of the warm weather and spend a Saturday up at Pineview with the Garrs.  We love going up there at lease once each summer because, A) it's free, B) our kids think it's the ocean, and C) we can take our dog.  


Here's Jack digging a hole in the sand that would fill with water when the waves came in.  See, it's practically Florida :)



Ella wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty!  I found several prickly burr type things stuck to her swim diaper when I finally changed her.  That couldn't have been too comfortable.



Jack after he "rode a wave in".  My Florida comment might have been sarcastic, but I'm not kidding here,  he really was body surfing.



Steve and Ella.  I'm kind of surprised Steve could even smile with the amount of boat jealousy he was experiencing.  It's still in our 10 year plan :)



Nobody, and I mean nobody, enjoys the lake more than Tucker.  His calling in life is retrieving sticks from the water.  Dog heaven!



These two little buddies had a blast and played so great together!  We're so lucky to have the Garrs as friends and neighbors!

Welcome Home From Albuquerque

Steve's parents recently returned from serving an 18 month mission to Albuquerque, New Mexico (or as we call it in our home with young children, "apple cookie".)  We are so excited to have them home, and have missed them so much.  We were able to skpe with them quite often on their mission which really helped the kids keep in touch with them.  That was especially important to us since this is how Ella looked when they left.

Yes, she was a whopping two weeks old!  We went down to St George for the weekend for their homecoming.  They both did a great job speaking in church, and it was so nice to spend a few days with them catching up.  I feel bad I didn't get any pictures of them with the kids, or after their homecoming, but I only broke my camera out when we were swimming.


After a yummy dinner at the pizza factory.  Jack stood in a long line all by himself to buy those suckers.




Swimming at Steve's parents community pool.



She's a looker, haha!  She loved these goggles. 



Swimming a couple of days later at Green Valley.  Ella needed a nap badly and finally dozed off.



Jack was fearless on the diving board!  That, and he really trusts his Dad!



Ella loves to do anything she sees Jack do, so of course she had to jump off too.  She loved it and wanted to do it again, and again.



Happy 4th

We love the 4th of July at our house!  It's Steve's favorite holiday, so I always feel a little pressure to have an extra fun day.  This year since it fell on a Thursday, I even requested the night off of work.  We started off the day with the Centerville parade.  We love this parade!  It's the perfect length, and they throw candy.  That can't be said about all parades these days.


Ella and Dad scoping out the candy prospects



She loved collecting the candy, but had it not been for her super nice cousins, she might not have gotten any.  She wasn't the quickest :)  Immediately eating each piece you collect really slows things down!



Jack was not his usual self at the parade.  He just sat on my lap and complained about how hot he was.  We kept spraying him with water and doing anything we could to cool him down, but it wasn't working.  About half way through the parade, he felt like he was burning up and I knew he must have a fever.  Jack and I left the parade to get him a drink and some motrin.  A holiday is never really complete without a trip to Instacare!  Later, we went up to my parent's house and he just laid on me until dinner time.  That is the ONLY perk of a sick kid.  He was so sweet and snuggly.

By evening he was feeling much better so we decided to brave the fireworks with my siblings' families.  We always love the Brigham City fireworks.  You can really get up close to the action.  At one point this year, a spark fell literally close enough to Dusty that he had to lift his leg up.  Unlike some of our fellow firework watchers, we didn't stand up halfway through and move our blanket further away.  Yes, we were the brave ones :)


Falling ash and sparks will definitely teach you to keep your eyes on the sky. 

Walk About

In June, our neighborhood had a walk about for a ward activity.  This is a ward activity that can be held only in certain parts of Utah.  Our ward boundaries are contained in our neighborhood, so it's easy to walk to any and all of the houses in our ward.  The idea is that at a said time everyone leaves their house and starts walking around the neighborhood until they get to a house marked with balloons where they can stop for a snack and visit.  Our home was a stop, and since it was 100+ degrees outside, I opted to make homemade root beer for our snack.  Close to 200 cups later the 5 gallons was gone, so it's safe to say it was a success. 

Palisades 2013

This year we went back to Palisades for a weekend camping trip with our friends the Nelsons.  The Pelaez's came along which made the trip even more fun.  That, and the fact that as opposed to last year, nobody had the coxsacki virus!  Thank goodness!

Ella kept walking over to this rock and sitting on it and saying "cheese".  I took the hint and got the camera out.  She was waiting for her dad to get back from fishing.  You can see them out on the raft in the background.

Steve and Jack out fishing with John and Spencer and Jack P.

Jack telling me that he caught 3 fish.  Steve promised he would buy Jack his own fishing pole if he caught 3 fish.  I wonder if he's going to pay up?

Jack and Kyann having a lazy morning in the hammock.

It was father's day weekend so we made crafts for our dad's Saturday morning while they were out golfing.

Ella making her "da deee" a fathers day poster :)

Charlie is Jack's first best friend!  They have been in preschool together all year and see each other at plenty of primary presidency meetings :)  They were inseparable all weekend and played so great together!

You can kind of see the floating dock behind Jack in the lake.  We swam out to the dock (Joe brought the kids out in the raft) and Jack jumped off of it to Steve in the lake.  He's such a brave little guy!  The water was freezing!

Ella is SUCH a daddy's girl right now!!  It's understandable, I like him quite a bit too!  You can kind of see the trailer we rented over Steve's left shoulder.  We weren't roughing it too much .

There's no better place for boys to be boys then when they're out camping!  I don't think Jack said a word to me all day Saturday other than when he was hungry.  Between the swimming, fishing, playing in the sand, playing at the park, riding bikes, and having a campfire, he was pretty busy!