A Little About Our Darling Elise

I feel like I haven’t written much about Elise lately and she has grown and changed so much in the past few months; so here is goes. She turned 18 months in November and finally got to go with her sister to the nursery class at church. This is the pic I took of her on her first day of nursery.

It was kind of funny. Before church I told Anna that Elise was old enough to go to nursery with her and I asked her if she would show Elise where to go and teach her everything about nursery and she was excited to do so. After Sacrament meeting I told Elise she was going to get to go to nursery today, and she didn’t wait, she took of running down the hall, between people, straight to the nursery. Anna was trying to catch up yelling. “wait!”

When Elise got to the nursery before Anna, Anna had a meltdown, because she wanted to help Elise go to the nursery. So I had to go get Elise and bring her back to Anna. Anna took Elise by the hand and walked her into the nursery with her. It was cute. They were excited to be together at church and it is fun they were in the same class.

One day in Nov. I got Anna a little tutu I found at the thrift store. Anna, loved it. It was her first frilly type skirt. She wore it every day, all day long, and would not take it off for anything; except I made her take it off to got to bed. I think Elise was a little jealous because one morning we found her in her bed sleeping with it over her footy pajamas. It was so funny. She must have woken up in the middle of the night and put it on and went back to sleep so she would be first to have it on in the morning.

She also loves to put on anyone's socks and shoes that she finds lying around. Elise love to put things on. Sometimes I will find her going through the dresser drawers putting on pants on top of pants and several shirt around her neck and multiple skirts on at the same time. In this picture I think she was wearing 4 skirts.

Elise loves her sister. She does her best to keep up with Anna and at times leads the way and shows Anna how to go down the slides and up the jungle gyms. She talks in one word sentences, but gets her point across good and clear. She now also can hold her own against Anna when she needs to, though she she is very sweet and loves her sister dearly.  If Anna isn’t around she always asks, “Anna?”  One day we got home from the store and Anna didn’t want to come in so I let her stay in the car for a few minutes while I brought Elise in along with the groceries. When we got inside Elise started crying and pointing to the door in much distress saying, “Anna, Anna, Anna!” Lately, Anna and her have been actually been really playing together for the first time and laughing and having fun.

Elise is a smiley, smiley girl and loves to have fun and be around people. She hates when we leave her in her room at night to go to bed. She also loves to snuggle. My favorite time is right when she wakes up, she will walk over to me and climb into my lap and just snuggle for awhile. She is very affectionate and gives wonderful hugs and kisses. she also has the most kissable cheeks and loves getting kisses on them.

It was so sad. A few weeks ago the girls both got fevers and coughs and were just not feeling well. Elise looked like this for about 3 days.

Oh and another thing that has happened is last month Elise moved from a crib to a big her bed. . Every time we put her in her crib she would climb out and then we realized that if we left then crib rails down she would stay in. She just did not like to be trapped and confined anymore. So she was moved into a twin bed along side Anna and was very happy about it.

Elise’s favorite thing to wear is her lady bug dress that her grandma gave her. Her favorite things to eat are cheese, raisins, and cheerios. The swings are her favorite thing to do at the park. Her favorite toy is her stuffed animal gorilla that resides at Nana’s house.

Elise's New Favorite Word

This is Elise's new favorite word...

She always holds up one finger and says one "minute."

Christmas in Mesa 2012

All of us siblings and our families and my grandmother came together at my parents house for Christmas this year.

We had a baby shower for Brigham and Elizabeth and since guys were invited Brigham had fun playing the shower games.

I think my favorite part was sitting around playing games like boggle and spelling bees with the family. We got together with the Powell cousins a few nights and played some fun games like Blurt with them too. We all loved Brigham’s wildebeest.

The girls loved having all their aunts and uncles around to play with them. Elise especially liked all the “horsey” shoulder rides she got she wouldn’t let Brigham put her down.

We went to the orange patch, got together with the Powell family at the Park on Christmas.

And we just hung out together ate ate a lot of good food and sweets and cutie oranges. We so much enjoyed having Mina around and the fun that she brings with her. We were able to sit down one afternoon with her and record many of her memories of her parents and grandparents.

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Christmas morning was a delight. Being a parent is really fun on Christmas. It was so fun to get presents for the girls that I knew they would love and to see their faces and how excited they were opening their presents.

I also loved that my mom gave me the nativity set I had as a child. There are many fond memories there. As I explained the Christmas story to the girls using it, I think they understood somewhat why we celebrate Christmas. 

I am grateful for this time of year, not only for Christmas trees and lights, presents, family and good things to eat but that our Father in Heaven gave His only Begotten Son Jesus Christ for us that we could one day return to him with our families.

The Turkey Trot and Thanksgiving

So I decided to run the Mesa Turkey trot this year, it is at 10k, 6.2 miles; so I would actually have a goal and make myself go jogging. I went out running several times a week training for this. So, the crazy thing is Kent randomly decided to do run it with me, and push the girls in the stroller along with too, and he hadn't even been training at all! Ok, if I hadn't been training and I had to push the girls in that heavy stroller for 6.2 miles, I would have fallen over dead after 1/2 a mile; there is no way. I thought maybe I can beat Kent; yeah, that would be so awesome to beat Kent in a race! But, then I came to, and remembered that Kent isn't normal, he has some sort of running super powers or something.
It was a good dream though. :)

We were all happy to accomplish our goals. I finished in 58:50, Yes I made it under an hour! Kent and the girls were especially excited to have beaten the Turkey with a time of 47:05. There really was a person running  dressed up as a turkey.

Following the Turkey Trot, we hurried home to make our part of the Thanksgiving feast and give the girls a short nap. After all the hard running, the girls were exhausted and fell asleep in the car on the way home. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time for naps for Mom and Dad.

We then hustled off to my grandparents home a great family gathering. The food was great! Though Anna wouldn't know because she refused to eat the amazing food, instead she only wanted to eat dinner rolls and tangerines. So sad, but what can you do.

Overall, it was a great Thanksgiving Day. We have a lot to be thankful for. (Like oranges turkeys that are pretending to be pilgrim so they won't be eaten for Thanksgiving dinner.)

The Crazies and the Fun

Now that the girls are no longer babies, they have started palling around a lot more and the synergy between them is taking off. Just recently they have started to encourage, cajole, snicker, and rial each other up. Sometimes it gets a little crazy for example:

Today a little while after putting them down for naps I started hearing laughing, talking and pitter- patters in the girls room. I went in to see what was going on and I found Anna in Elise's crib with dolls and stuffed animals piled around her, and Elise carrying the dolls to Anna. What! How did Elise get out of her crib and how did Anna get in it? They have never before left their beds, once put down.  

Yesterday, I heard them playing nicely in the bedroom and when I went to check on them, there was water covering their bedroom floor and coming into the hall, and they were dancing in it, with their empty sippy cups in their hands.

And later in the afternoon I found them sitting on the bathroom floor, surrounded by pads, unwrapping my sanitary supplies as if they were opening presents on Christmas morning.

They keep us on our toes.

On the other hand they girls can be quite helpful. For example I hate bugs and when Kent is not here and I  find one in our house and I kill it, Anna will get a napkin and pick it up for me and put it in the trash. Thank you so much Anna. She also puts clean trash bags in all the trashes by herself once we take the trash out; very helpful. When I don't know what to make for dinner she will sing the, "What should we make for din din?" song with me. She always asks daddy for a dance when their is dancing music going. When we are tired she will sing us a song. She always lets me know when there is a stop sign and makes sure I stop all the way even when we are out on a jog. When I went to the lab to get my blood drawn and they poked me with that ginormous needle she was there to say, "oh, poor mama!" I really appreciated the sympathy, as the lab tech had none.

Elise is quite helpful too. She will bust out biggest smile whenever the day is rough. Oh and she is a cuddle bug and loves to snuggle and makes me feel loved. She runs with her arms behind her and makes me think of a little bird. She will make me laugh with her little sense of humor. She even helps us load the dryer and unload the dishwasher. And she will point out all the planes that fly by in case we did not notice them.  

These are our girls, crazy and fun as ever.

Two Girls in a Box

This is what Anna and Elise were doing tonight.