Our Grateful Tree

I got this fantastic Thanksgiving idea from my friend, Anna (Thanks, Anna!). We did this for Family Home Evening on Monday. We had a lesson about being grateful (thanks to the Prophet) then, we each put several leaves on the Grateful Tree. I just took a big branch off of one of the trees in my back yard, cut the leaves out of felt and we put them on the tree using safety pins.

Here are some of our leaves (the pen didn't write super well on the felt):

Family -Elly

Holy Ghost -Daddy

Music -Mommy

Elly offered to write one for Miles -Bed

4 Years Old!

This girl is 4 years old today. I don't know how that happened. It went by so fast. We love almost every minute of her, though.

Today, she requested these waffles for birthday breakfast and healthy chocolate milk. She also requested the birthday present she accidentally found when I gave her a time out in the room I was hiding it in yesterday (whoops). Then, she went to dance class where she shared donut holes from Provo Bakery with everyone. Right now, she is playing with two of her favorite friends. And later, a friend of ours is coming to watch Miles (Thanks, Elisa!) while Mommy and Daddy take Elly out for a special birthday dinner and ice cream all by herself. She has requested Panda Bear Food for dinner. It's going to be a good birthday.  We love you, Elly bear!

A Tea Party Birthday

Elly is turning 4 tomorrow, so we celebrated on Saturday and had 7 of her friends over for a little Tea Party. It was super fun and several parents have told me that their girls have wanted to have tea parties non-stop since then.

The Email Invitation

I bought tea cups at D.I. and let each girl take hers home.  I painted their names on little wooden hearts for place cards. 

I bought the roses at Costco and put them in this cute white pitcher.

As each girl arrived, I took a picture of her with Elly.  This is Elly's cousin, Lily.

Elly's playmate from the neighborhood and our ward, Addy.

The table

We had so much fun serving them hot chocolate and I pulled out some herbal tea, too. We let them put their own marshmallows or sugar cubes in their drinks. I think one girl put 10 sugar cubes in her tea. It was hilarious. My favorite was the little girl who asked to switch her tea and have hot chocolate instead "this tea just tastes like water"...indeed.

Elly and Ayda...isn't her hat adorable?

The stirring with the tea bags was a little tricky.

Ahhh, the presents!

It's cupcakes for our parties from now on...sooo much easier and no one has to eat a piece of cake that the birthday girl/boy has spit on!

Boy is 9 Months Old!

Here are some facts about Boy at 9 months:

Boy would like to be doing this all day long (playing on the computer)...like his daddy.

Boy is still smiling...at everything.

Boy is curious about everything and is super fast at crawling.  He pulls himself up on all the furniture and I saw him trying to climb the bookshelf the other day!  Boy is a boy.

Elly is his favorite playmate...

He even likes it when she does stuff like this to him!

He just loves the heck out of her!

He even smiles when he does this.  He still does it...just not as much as he used to.

California Vacation

We went to California at the end of September and spent a few days in San Diego and a couple of days at Disneyland.  Here are a couple of highlights:

Elly loved the water attractions at California Adventure.  It was pretty hot, so I can't blame her for not really wanting to do anything else.



My cousin lives in San Diego, so we got to hang out with them.  Elly loved playing with their kids and their kids' friends at the beach at Mission Bay.  They had a great time collecting sand crabs.

Elly Quotes

Completely out of the blue:

Elly:  Mom, what did it feel like when baby Miles was in your tummy?

Lacy:  Uh.....

Halloween 2010

My Sister, Keri, did it again!   She crafted (with no pattern whatsoever) this amazing traditional "cowgirl" costume for Elly.  (Last year, she did the same thing with Elly's Belle costume.)She is completely amazing.  I hope we never move too far away for her to make Elly's costume every year.  Elly LOVED it and thought it was the best thing ever to wear around.  Elly dressed up a total of 4 times this Halloween.  This is right before our Ward Party:

 

The chaps were a little difficult to keep in place, but that's my fault (I was supposed to pin them).

On Friday, we went to the BIG Adobe Halloween event.  The employees spend countless hours transforming their offices into a "spook alley" that people can walk through and get candy.  Each building on the campus had a theme and each department had a part of the theme.  It was pretty darn elaborate with offices decorated like Shrek, Sesame Street, Super Mario Bros, Avatar, Board Games, Video Games, etc, etc.  Elly was already wearing her dorothy costume (that my sister made for her own daughter years ago); she uses it for dress up now.  So, I slapped some ruby slippers on her, braided her hair and grabbed one of her stuffed dogs and a basket.  Voila!  Two Halloween costumes in one year:

Boy was the absolute most adorable monkey on the planet (a costume I picked up at Target- I can't abuse Keri too much).

Someone snapped a quick photo of our family after the Adobe event:

PS, sorry about the gigantic photos, I'm working on it.