Making Mother's Day Cards!!!

I forgot I took these and just found them! Ella helped me make our Mother's Day cards for everyone! She thought I was cool for about 10 min while I let her free with markers! Luckily it all stayed on the paper and just her hands! She loved putting the stickers on as well!

18 Months!!!

Our Ella Bella turned 18 months old today! I cannot believe it! She is still my baby! She makes our lives so happy, challenging, and fun! She is so full of personality but tends to be shy around others. She is so small and petite. I took her to the doctors this morning where she weighed in at a whoppin 20 lbs 10 oz! She was a little over 32 inches tall and her head was 17 1/2 inches. I am pretty sure Eastons head is that big as well! She learns so much each and every day and it is so fun to see her learn new things and discover things.

*She has learned this last week to climb on the couch, we can no longer put things out of her reach!

*She has started to have a love for Elmo and has learned to say his name.

* She always is handing us the remote and saying "T" for us to turn it on.

*Another favorite of mine that she says is "cute." I guess she has heard me say it a few times. It is now to the point if I pick clothes up in a store she instantly says it is cute.

*We have a book that has pop ups and it says things like "who says hiss is it a cheetah, no baby elephant it is a snake" and it pops up a tab with a snake on it. I heard her in her room the other day and went and peeked and she had this book and was turning the pages saying the animal sounds followed by a no and her shaking her head. She has that book down!

*She loves her dad! If we have him with us at a store she will not let me push or touch the cart Andrew has too! Every morning when I get her up she says dad, she looks sad when I tell her he is at school.

*She loves to give kisses. She can't give just one person a kiss it has to be everyone that is around. She really wanted to give the people behind us at church on Sunday a kiss!

*She has mastered the art of running and running away!

*She is deathly terrified of water. She eventually warms up but it wastes a lot of time. She loves her bathtime and splashing in the water, I don't get it!

We love her so much and can't believe how time is flying by!

She now officially owns her first pair of Jelly shoes!

A rock is much more important then smiling for the camera!


She never will look up!

And it has begun, she had a meltdown mid-picture taking. She actually scratched her head on the driveway!

It was quickly cured by spinning around and getting dizzy!

She loves our little Book of Mormon that we read from every night. She knows right where we keep it. I bribed her with it so I could get a few pictures even though I still didn't get what I wanted! She will sit while we read we usually can get in about 5 verses and then she is done. She loves to kneel and fold her arms for family prayer!

She ran into a door frame at the church the other night and ended up with a little goose egg which is now a lovely bruise on her forehead! It is on the right, kind of hard to see!

I am bummed this ended up with a shadow on it, it was so cute of her!

She loves her baby and the remote!

She loves to store the remote on the stroller!

Once again wouldn't smile! Could it be the shots she got today!

Mother's Day!!!

I had such a nice Mother's Day this year! I feel so blessed to be Ella and Easton's Mom! They make me so happy. We have our challenging days but most days really are just fun! It still is strange to me that I have two since they are so close together but now that they are both here I wouldn't trade it for the world. They are going to be such good friends they just adore each other already!

Ella will be old enough to go to nursery next week (Hallelujah!!!) so we decided to put her in on Mother's Day for a little bit to see how she would be and she loved it! I am glad we did it because they made these awesome crowns for all their moms!

We had such a relaxing day! We got to Skype both of our moms, went for a nice drive to see the mighty Mississippi, I got a nap, and Andrew grilled us a wonderful dinner! It was a great day!

Flooding!!!

Last week Memphis had the "Flood of the Century" as all the news reporters called it! It was interesting to see how far the Mississippi River rose. We decided to drive over the bridge into Arkansas to see how much it had swollen. The riverpark where we took my sister a short two weeks before was under water. I could not see the parking lot where we parked!

This was in Arkansas, previously farm land!

Ella enjoyed the ride!

Flowers

We decided to plant some flowers in the front of our house. We first had to move all these annoying white rocks out and weeds! I don't think the owners will really care what we did because we made the front of the house look better. The flower beds are on a slope and the house has no rain gutters so we put the rocks in the back to absorb most of the water but the dirt keeps washing away! I hope they will last!

After we got done planting it started to rain and Andrew sat down so Ella instantly ran to his side!

I got this hanging basket for $5! I just need to get something to hang it on!

Breakfast Time!!!

Last Saturday the 7th Andrew got up with the kids and made us all some breakfast! He had Easton up on the table to watch and snapped these pictures of him!

I love this one!

She started out with some strawberries. She was lining them up and then "counting" them in her own way! She would then knock them down and do it all over again!

He made one of her favorite breakfasts, scrambled eggs and toast with Nutella!

Half Way Done!!!

Andrew finished his last final this morning as a second year! He is now a third year and half way done with school! It feels good to have made it this far! Time has gone by so fast! He even made it home in time to eat breakfast with us! It is weird to think a year from now we will be headed back to Utah for the summer and his first externship! He will start in the clinic in a week and will start seeing patients. He is excited and nervous! I am so proud of him! He has put in a lot of time this week studying but six finals later we finally have him back! I kept telling him it has been a long week and he keeps asking me why I am so stressed about it he is the one taking the tests, I told him I am just nervous for him and that we missed him! We are excited to spend the next week off with him! This is the first break we don't have anywhere to go! We are going to try and find some fun things to do around here and maybe make a day trip somewhere!

Today we spent a majority of the day outside, the weather was a perfect 73*. We have to enjoy the outdoors before the humidity and heat really hit! We washed our cars, started planting some flowers, walked around the block, and Andrew gave Ella her first golf lesson! He found this golf set at Target in the dollar section! She loved it but not as much as she loves putting the balls in the bag and dumping them out and repeating!

We tried to keep busy this week so we didn't miss Andrew too much! Ella has started carrying her doll around like I do Easton. She had it on her hip but I couldn't grab the camera fast enough!

The advantage of being a baby is you always get new clothes. I have tried to stagger Ella's new clothes she has for the summer so that she has a new outfit once a week (wouldn't that be nice!). She is starting to run out she doesn't have near as many clothes as she did the first 12 months! I forgot to take the tag out of this one and noticed when the skirt flipped up and never went back down! She was putting her doll in the bumbo!

I don't know why I always take pictures of her eating. I think I was walking through the kitchen to take the next picture of Easton.

He woke up yesterday about an hour and a half earlier then usual! I was feeding him so cereal and he kept falling asleep mid-bite. I finally gave up trying to get him to stay awake.

He slept a lot yesterday as a result. He loves this duck once again!

This was yesterday as well his first outfit was to hot by midday! He slept with his two fingers holding this ring for a good 20 min!