Easter

Finally I am writing about Easter Sunday. Here it goes:

Dan spoke in church and did a really great job. He was lucky that he was so prepared because the youth speaker forgot his talk at home and the first speaker only spoke for a few minutes. Dan spoke for 30 minutes and kept everyone interested. Honest! I looked around several times and everyone was paying attention. He got so many compliments too. I wish that I could have paid better attention myself, but listening to Spanish and keeping Elena entertained don't go together very well. I was grateful to feel the spirit of the message. It was an uplifting sacrament meeting. It is so nice that Easter is always on a Sunday. I love to be able to concentrate on the reason for the celebration: He is risen!

My mom bought Elena an Easter dress when she was visiting a few weeks ago and I love it. This was the best shot that I got of it. I couldn't get her to sit or stand still - she kept walking away or trying to grab the camera. Hunt #1: I know I've said it before, but holidays are so much more fun with a kid! This is the first year (obviously) that we have done an egg hunt and it was a lot of fun. We were surprised how good she was at finding them. She found most of the ones that I hid without help. The ones that Dan hid, however, were a little trickier. He put one hanging from the ceiling fan, one on top of the mirror, etc. She is so lucky to have such a fun daddy!


After the hunt at our house, Elena was happy to pose with her goodies. I'm glad that Emily gave her a cute new basket that night because at 14 months, she had already outgrown this one.
At dinner: I didn't get a picture with the whole group in it, but here is one with Kristin, me, and Emily. We had a lot of fun, the food was fantastic, and it was great to meet so many nice people. Thank you Emily and Mike for hosting (all 15 of us), for providing an Easter egg hunt for the kiddos, and for the leftovers.
[If I was my dear dad, this is where I would insert a picture of a plate of food. He always starts off holiday meals by running and grabbing the camera to take a picture of his plate with a little of everything on it. Sorry Dad, I didn't think of it at the time. :) ]

Egg Hunt at the Evans's: Will could get the wrappers off of the candy with lightning-like speed. He was definitely the best hunter out of the three.
I'm sad that I didn't get a picture of cute Emerson's face (don't you love his name?). He was the most laid-back of the 3. Once he had an egg or two, he just sat and played.
I almost forgot to upload the obligatory family picture. I don't know what it is about Easter and having to take a family picture, but here it is:

New Skills

The past week has been full of accomplishments for Miss Elena. First and foremost, she is now walking like a champ. In these videos she does fall down once or twice, but check out how big the feet are on the pajamas! (Sorry that they are kind of dark.)


Accomplishment #2 - Elena now has enough hair for a ponytail! Just kidding - it turns out that it is only enough for a rat-tail, but I was still excited to be able to get a rubber band around it.
She also learned how to dye Easter eggs on Monday night. That's right folks - after 5 1/2 years, Dan and I are finally trying our darndest to have regular Family Home Evenings each week. It was a lot of fun, plus she enjoyed cracking the eggs and eating the yolks this week for lunch (she's allergic to the whites).
As if all this wasn't enough, she showed me a new skill that she had learned yesterday. I left the pantry door open after I put the toaster oven away, and the next time that I turned around this was what I saw. I have no idea how she got up there. The Easy Mac box that she is standing on comes up to her waist when she is next to it.
This last pic doesn't really have anything to do with the title of the post, but I thought it was cute. Dan and I are so grateful for our little girl and we can't imagine life without her. I hope that we love each one of our kids this much or else there'll be some serious sibling rivalry issues. :)

Happy Easter weekend everyone!

Zoo Trip

The last time that Elena and I went to the zoo was a sometime in the early fall and Dan had never been, so it was a real treat to get to go on Friday with Dan and my mom -- who by the way avoided getting in any zoo pictures somehow. :) She was here all week while my dad was on a business trip in Utah.

Family pic:

The elephants were some of Elena's favorite animals. We were able to get close which was cool. If only they had trumpeted. That would have been great. We've been teaching Elena animal sounds for a long time and she knows tons of them. It was funny that we were seeing all these animals in real life, but they were totally silent. I guess we'll have to go on safari and see them in the wild in order to show her that lions really do roar, monkeys actually say, "oo-oo, ah-ah", etc.

My mom took this picture. She thinks that it would be great to have Elena twins in real life because then she could take one home with her. Sorry, mom!

Here we are on the carousel. She sat on an animal when Granny took her, but when it was my turn, she was happy to sit on the swan bench. She loved waving at her daddy each time we went around.

At the zoo playground:

This is the best picture of the day. We taught Elena the end of the BYU fight song: "Gooooooo Cougars!" She rolls her arms during "Gooooooo" and then raises her hand in the air when we say "Cougars!" We couldn't resist when we got to this majestic animal's pen. Dan threw his sweatshirt over her to the add to the effect.

Dan decided to imitate the sleeping geese in the background.

I forgot to edit this video when my mom was still here with her Flip, but I still wanted to post it. It's a great little camcorder, but you have to have it plugged in to edit the videos - I think.
Dan and Elena are watching some geese fly by and they look identical as they both squint in the sun and turn to reveal matching profiles. The video is way too long though. All you have to do is fast forward to 30 seconds and watch until 40 - feel free to ignore the rest.

Thanks for coming, Mom! We had so much fun and we miss you already. Come again soon. :)

Quarantined

Things have been slow around here the past week because Elena is sick. We have barely left the house for a week. She had an ear infection which is probably gone by now and a stomach virus that just won't go away. The doctor said that it would last 7-10 days and I doubted her, but today was #7. Hopefully our sweet girl will be feeling like normal soon. She is doing pretty well and hasn't had a fever or anything, but she isn't eating very much and when she does, it usually finds its way back out pretty fast. Anyway...I thought I would post a couple of pictures even though there are no new/interesting stories to be told - unless you are wanting to hear gross ones. :)

Elena helps her daddy to do the dishes. He is so patient with her. He hands her the silverware one by one and she will put it in the basket.
I just took a couple of pictures of her in her pajamas the other morning and she was actually smiling for them, so I thought they would be worth sharing. Now that she is talking, it is hard to get her to pose for pictures anymore. She is to busy asking for "leche" or a "cracker" or saying: "no, no, no" which is her newest word. And she knows just how to use it.

Now that I think about it: I guess I haven't been stuck at home as much as it sounds above. Dan studies here at the house in the evenings, so I sometimes go run errands after we put Elena to bed (or sometimes just before Dan puts her to bed). I actually did a lot this past week - it was just mostly at night. I got together with friends on Saturday and we made baby-girl hairbows and saw the movie 27 Dresses which I really liked. I babysat for the Resident Spouses Association tonight which was a lot of fun for me. I miss older kids sometimes and tonight I got to play with like 10 at once (ages 1-6). Also I chaperoned a youth dance last Friday night plus I cheered for our branch's Young Women in their basketball game on Saturday while Dan watched Elena for the afternoon, and I went to Shelby's last Wednesday to hang out and watch American Idol after all our kids were asleep.
Thank you Dan for being so sweet and helpful!!!