Sleeping beauty

January 14, 2011

My little Lexie is not a sleeper. She dropped her naps as a toddler at a very young age. She stays up late and gets up early. She just is not a sleeper. Every once in a rare while, we'll catch her fast asleep somewhere close. When we do catch her, it is always a sweet moment.

Yo Yos

January 12, 2011

I don't know if I have posted something about this or not since I made this back in March right before Porter's blessing, but I found it in my pictures and I thought that I would post it now just in case. 

One day many years ago I was visiting my gandma Ardene down in Las Vegas. She knows I love to sew and gave me a large bag full of yo yos her mother had sewn, but hadn't put together yet into a quilt. I took my new treasure home and knew that someday I would do something fun with them. These yo yos have made it all the way across the country and more.


I did finally get the chance to put some of the yo yos together and made this fun wall hanging. It is an eye catcher and everyone who comes to our home seems to savor it as much as we do. It's timeless and colorful and brings a lot of happiness into our home.

I decided to put the yo yos together inn groups of 4 by color.  You can see 4 greens together, 4 blues, 4 yellows, etc.  I was hoping it would help the colors pop a little more and not blend in so much.  Who knows if it helped, but I liked the end result!

Porter

January 3, 2011
Porter is just the sweetest, happiest baby.  This is the most mischief he gets into these days.  Which isn't much considering I have to open the Tupperware cupboard door for him! We're so very grateful you're part of our family Porter!  You are such a joy to us!  We love you!

 January 5, 2011

 January 11, 2011

Christmas in Missouri

January 2, 2011

We got snowed in a bit in Salt Lake and ended up staying a couple of more days. (Which the kids loved since that meant more time with grandpa's trains.) We made it back to Missouri, but not without a memorable drive. Wyoming is so beautiful and yet, the weather is so extreme there that the winter driving can be terrifying. I've never been more white knuckled in my driving than when I'm going through Wyoming. By the time we got home, we were very grateful to be back in our own beds and in our own stomping ground!

We had a BIG surprise when we walked in the door! (Thanks to our dear friends the Daltons for coming over and setting it up for us while we were gone!

Grandma and grandpa Ellingson helped us this year get a new keyboard! Derek plays the piano and we are very excited to have music in our home again! It was fun having two Christmases too!

Sledding

December 30, 2010

Another FIRST for our family was to go sledding! We did it up right and took the kids to Sugar House Park. That's the best hill in town for sledding! Mom, of course was nervous about all this since we were rather unexperienced and the kids are little, so we staked out a bunny hill off the end of the BIG sledding hill. There weren't as many people there and it looked manageable for little ones.

Special thanks to our Salt Lake friends the Nelsons for lending us their sleds!

Tanner was fascinated with how FAST you can go on a sled.  He's pretty sure he has Miles Per Hour figured out and was telling us exactly how fast he was going down the hill.  5 miles per hour seemed like freeway speeds to him, it was pretty cute.

We of course got a little competitive and did some racing down the hill.  Those little disks are speedy!

This was definitely some family fun!  A memory I'll never forget.

Train TRAP

December 30, 2010

One day I was cutting Colin's hair in our bathroom. I set up my DVD player to keep him still and put a Thomas the Train movie in for him. He'd never seen one before, but after that he asked me for a hair cut everyday for a month. He LOVES LOVES LOVES trains.

Grandpa High has quite the train TRAP, uh, I mean SET. I think he uses it as a lure to draw his grandchildren to his house. (Since Lexie is the only granddaughter, you can well imagine how such a toy would captivate so many little grandsons.) Once they come and discover its fun, they never want to leave.

Here's a photo of the train layout at grandpa's house (above) and a video of Colin jumping up and down as he has been caught by the TRAP (below).

Discovery Zone

December 29, 2010

One of our favorite places to go when we go to Salt Lake is downtown to the Discovery Zone. We can't do this without Grandma, Aunts and cousins though! The fun just wouldn't be the same.

The tough part about Discovery Zone is that each "department" of play is worth spending HOURS at.  We almost have to encourage the kids to move on so that they get to play with it all or we'd be there weeks!  The balls are one of those areas where the fun just never ends.

Lexie brought me a boquet of flowers.  What a sweet girl!

Here's cousin Benson.  Isn't he just the cutest little guy?  He looks right at home in this playhouse.  I bet he'll make the perfect dad someday!

Colin was right at home too!

I had to laugh when I caught Tanner trying to carry all his food to check out. Tanner is my biggest eater at home and you can see his love of food here!

Ice Skating Adventure

December 28, 2010

Columbia, Missouri does not have a single ice rink. There's one down in Jefferson City, but that is a 40+ min drive. While we were in Utah, we took advantage of the cute one they have in downtown Salt Lake City. We also took advantage of Grandma and Aunt Rosa. With four kids, we needed four adults to make this happen! I was terribly nervous about how we were going to pull this off. It was, after all, our FIRST time ice skating as a family!

When we got to the rink and started to put on our skates, we put the kid's skates on first. Soon they were done and we adults still needed to put ours on.  I was pretty impressed how they just hopped off the bench and started to walk on their skates.  I thought they would be falling all over their feet, but they didn't. 

They must have been so excited about ice skating because while we were all in the middle of trying to get our skates on, and Tanner and Lexie were just standing there with theirs already on, he asked one of the adults in our group what he needed to do next. (He did not ask this of me because I would never have given this answer, but it was awesome nonetheless.)  The reply was, "go get on the ice!"  So they did!  They didn't wait for someone to hold their hand or anything, they just jumped right in and went for it.  The over protective mom in me was shocked and super impressed. My kids are definitely tougher than I give them credit for. 

Grandma, bless her heart spent most of her time holding Porter while Derek, Rosa and I tag teamed Tanner, Lexie and Colin. 

Rosa's positive attitude really came in handy with this activity!

Colin didn't last long on the ice.  He was just too small, but he still went around a few times then jointed grandma on the sidelines.

Derek was the hero of the day for Lexie.  She kind of cried her way around the rink the first two times.  Then Derek took a look at her skates and decided to switch them out.  As soon as he got her situated with different skates, she was a happy camper.  She went right out, grabbed the railing, found a friend and went around and around the rink.  She had a great time!

Once the kids were all tuckered out, we left them with grandma and some hot chocolate (which you can see all over Colin's face!). Derek and I went out for a mini "date" on the ice. The last time we went ice skating was when we were dating, so this brought back some fond memories.

In all, it was a grand time.  The kids loved it.  I wish we had more opportunities to ice skate. I can see the kids really picking up on it if they had the exposure.  I'm so grateful we took the time to create this memory! Thank you Grandma and Aunt Rosa for helping us!  You made the memory all the more sweet!

Ellingson family fun

December 27, 2010

We got together a couple of days later with the Ellingson brothers. First things first: Grandpa time!

Here are a bunch of the grandkids! We were really missing Jonathan and Eleanor's kids. They have 4 and one due any day. This couch would have been really full with them all there! And the cousin time would have been all the more fun!

It didn't take us long to kiss these kiddos good night and put them to bed so the real fun could begin!

SUSHI!  We had some expert sushi makers with us here and they made some incredible dishes.  Watching the process was fascinating too!

Here are 7 of the 8 brothers!  Thanks guys for a great time!  For me, tonight was one of the best times I have had with all the brothers and their spouses.  They are a great group with some fun whit and a love of cooking.  I'm so blessed to be part of this family!