Elly's Art - Going to a Movie

Elly is a pretty amazing artist.  She's always drawing, coloring, painting, etc.  And she'll just do it on her own, drawing whatever pops into her head, which is usually our family.  She did this piece the other day, which she calls "Going to a Movie".

There are several things I love about this:

• It's night time...cuz that's when you go to the movies, right?
• Her handwriting is awesome (better than mine!)
• That she colored in the "o" of "going"
• Dad's hair
• Mom and Elly's painted nails
• Tiny Brothee
• And that the boys have legs and the girls just have dresses w/o legs

Elly and Gigi Cruisin' in the Jeep

Elly's cousin, Gigi, is just a few months older than Elly.  They had a blast playing together over Christmas.  My parents have this kiddie Jeep and big lot to drive it around on.  Gigi loved driving, and Elly hated it.  She only wanted to ride while Gigi drove.  Win-win.

Miles Loves: Mima and Food

Miles loves to eat.  I mean, really really loves to eat.  One night at my parents' house he got to stay up late, so he was eating of course.  You can see how tired he was.  But he powered through it in order to stuff his face with chips.  He also took a momentary break from eating to give Mima a kiss.

Princesses Elly and Gigi

We celebrated Christmas at my parents' place in California.  All my siblings live there, so we got to see everyone.  It was great.  Elly got to play with her cousins, including Gigi, who is only a few months older than Elly.  Their favorite thing to do?  Dress up like princesses of course!  They were doing ballet to the music, and then I guess they got tired because they ended up on the floor like this:

Catching Up on Videos

I'm way behind on posting videos.  I'll be trying to catch up over the next few weeks.  Here's a little taste of Christmas vacation with my (Brandon's) family.  Miles is great, but my favorite part is my mom in the background.

BTW, the song we're listening to is this awesome track called "We No Speak Americano".  That's pretty fitting for my family.  Listen to the whole thing and try not to move.  Seriously.  You can't not dance or at least bounce a little.



Link to video

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.

Family Portrait

Elly's a pretty awesome artist.  Here's one of her latest pieces.  This one features figures with skirts/dresses to signify that they are women.  I'm sure she picked it up from me, cuz I just do stick figures.  My favorite part is that Miles is so small he doesn't get a real body.  And where are my arms?  Good thing my hair looks good, though.

Merry Christmas!