Elly learned a new trick!

Elly learned how to wave. Here she is responding to me waving from behind the camera. She now waves for "Hi" and "Bye-bye"!



She is so cute, sometimes it hurts!

That's an 8 Months Bubbush!

Elly is now 8 months old and cuter than ever, pretty much. These are some highlights from the photo shoot we had today. She is growing so fast and learning like crazy!!! Her latest accomplishments include: waving hello and goodbye and tummy scooting backwards. She actually knows that she's supposed to wave when someone waves to her and says "bye bye". It always takes her a second to process the wave she's receiving, though. There's usually a 10 second delay. But, she comes through in the end. She now also scoots. She can only scoot backwards so far. She pushes up with her arms and just pushes backward, sliding along the floor until she hits something and can't go anymore. I think she's confused that she's not going forward, but she is excited that she is moving around at all.

She's got the whole sleeping thing down. When we put her in her bed after the nighttime routine, she pretty much just closes her eyes without crying most nights. She also goes to sleep in her bed for about a 2 hour nap each afternoon. Just in case you are wondering, the routine consists of brushing her teeth (she does it herself and she LOVES it). Mostly that means she chews on her toothbrush. Then, we change her into her jammies, which she doesn't like at all. Then, we read a story- usually Goodnight Moon, which she loves. She likes to turn the pages herself and lately for some reason she wants to turn the entire book over to see what's on the back. Then, we have family prayer. Then, we turn out the light, sing a song and put her in her bed. I think because she knows all the signals, she goes to sleep easier now. She used to cry herself to sleep in her bed after the routine until she got used to what was coming.

Her favorite toys ever are Mom and Dad's toothbrushes. She sits on the bathroom counter, looks at herself in the mirror and bangs our toothbrushes together and on the mirror. She loves it and even if she's really crying, the toothbrushes will calm her down.


She is so smiley most of the time and has a very serious face, too. She can seriously make us laugh and sometimes we miss her while she's sleeping. She's going to talk in about 5 minutes because she babbles all the time. I even think she's singing sometimes. Still just the two teeth on the bottom, but more may be joining them shortly. Sometimes she gets entranced just looking at her hands, opening and closing them. She seems to have qualities from both Brandon's and my personalities. She loves to be where the action is, wants to be with all the people (me). Even now, I am sitting by her on the floor with my wireless keyboard and mouse because she doesn't want me sitting at the computer desk without her. She likes her space, though, and doesn't like being squeezed or cuddled too much (guess who). She doesn't yet seem to have my sweet tooth, but isn't a very picky eater. She loves music like both of us do. She now tries to do actions when I sing Itsy Bitsy Spider. She can't do specific movements at all, of course, but when I start singing it, she raises her arms and moves them around like she knows exactly what she's doing. She still has this love affair with water. She will drink water anytime anywhere from anything. She knows the word and sign for water now and she loves it. Her way of saying "yes" is by smiling super big and almost laughing. It's the best. What did we do without her?

Our TV is making us smarter!

This is the new TV that Brandon got for his birthday. It's a Vizio 37" LCD TV. He's been talking about buying a TV like this for years. (What is it with men and TVs?) He doesn't really even like watching TV that much. But, I guess if he is going to invest and hour or so to watch it, it better be an awesome TV. I gotta say, I never thought he'd actually do it. But, with birthday money coming in, he couldn't resist a kickin deal he found online. My husband is the single most amazing online deal finder that I know, and that all the people I know know. I don't know how he does it. I, personally, did not think that we needed this huge TV. But, I have to admit- it is pretty awesome. And the thing that is the most awesome about it is something that is brand new to us...High Definition.

Our High Definition TV is making us smarter. This TV has some sort of built in antenna that receives a High Definition signal on some stations sometimes, even though we don't have HD cable. (Brandon could explain it better, I'm sure.) The station that is in High Def 24 hours a day is PBS HD. That's right, there is an entire PBS station that is only broadcast in HD. And so...we watched PBS all weekend long. We set up the TV on Friday night and since then I think we've watched 6 PBS documentaries. That's way more TV than we would normally watch on a weekend. But, just like when we first got our TiVO and constantly thought "I wonder what TiVO is recording for us now", we think "I wonder what PBS is showing in High Def right now."

We watched a very dramatic documentary about a Boston fire chief named Damrell, and how he saved Boston from being completely demolished way back in the 1800s. We saw another one about a guy who is single-handedly trying to save several species of turtles from extinction. And finally, our favorite documentary of the weekend was "Ferrets". You may think this was another wildlife show, but no- this was a one hour documentary about people who own Ferrets as pets. If you have never seen the Christopher Guest mockumentary "Best in Show", you should see the real PBS documentary "Ferrets" first. Then, when you watch "Best in Show" you will laugh harder than ever. You might think that ferret owners have one or two ferrets at a time...you'd be wrong. Ferret people usually have up to 10 ferrets at a time. For these particular people, Ferrets are their entire lives. They take their ferrets to shows and have them judged. They display their ferrets ribbons and trophies in their special ferret rooms. And my personal favorite part of the documentary was when they dressed their ferrets up in tiny ferret costumes and took pictures of them. That's right, read it again if you want.



All in all, I think we learned from our documentary filled weekend that there are some people out there with some pretty intense feelings about ferrets.

Uh Oh...

67%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

I guess I'm kind of in trouble. But, I promise I only regularly read ONE blog of someone I don't know at all. Everyone else is family or friends. Does that make it better?

Click on the image to take the quiz I took. See how addicted you are!

UTAH...The Cabin!

On the 4th of July, Elly and I flew to Utah for one week. Right from the airport, Keri drove us straight up Big Cottonwood Canyon where my parents have a cabin. It's new to us (a few years now), but it's wicked old. I think it was built in like 1870. But, it is pretty awesome and surroundings are incredibly beautiful.

As you can see, Tim's boys, Jacob(a.k.a Spider man in training) and Dan(a.k.a Spider man and/or Joe) are always excited to visit the cabin. They absolutely loved seeing baby Elly again, especially now that she can play more. But, I think they got more than they asked for when she repeatedly scratched each of them in the face.


Madelyn and Cody were also able to visit from Texas, so we all had a blast together. There's even a little creek running right through the property, it's beautiful.


We all took a hike to Silver Lake which is only a ten minute walk. It was amazing and brought back so many memories for me of when I was a counselor at Brighton Camp. Just being up there around Brighton made me miss it so much. It's probably hard for most of you to imagine me camping and hiking each day, cooking out on an open fire and even rock repelling, but I did it every day all summer long and I loved it.

After flying and driving all day long, Elly was exhausted!