11 Months old

Elly is eleven months old now.  The time has gone by so fast.  She is walking alongthe furniture and getting in to everything. She loves that she can follow her brothers when they try to get away from her.  It takes her a minute to get to them but she finds them.  She is getting better about Mason tackling her.  She doesn't cry as easy any more and she has learned how to defend herself.  She now knows, thanks to her brothers, how to scratch, bite, hit and pull hair.  All the things that I wanted her to learn.  She is funny and has learned how to be as weird as her brothers. We sure love this kid.

I just don't think she could be any pretier.  She is such a happy baby. 

She loves dolls

Elly loves dolls.  I really didn't think that this would happen this early.  She is really funny to watch with them.  She hugs them upside down most of the time though.

It is pretty cute to see her hold both of the dolls.

She was funny when we went Christmas shopping because I would show her all these toys that make noise and she didn't care.  She didn't even want to play with it.  When I came to the isle with the dolls on it she went crazy.  She wanted to hold all of them.  It was pretty funny.  So I guess you can figure out what she is getting for Christmas.

Crazy about blankets

Elly is so funny about her blankets.  She has to have a blanket in her hand so she can suck her thumb.  It can't just be any blanket either.  She has a few of her favorite ones.  She can find them too, even if they are dirty and in the laundry.  The other day I had gone down to start some laundry and when I came back this is where I found Elly.  She had climbed in the basket to hold her blanket and suck her thumb.  She is pretty funny.

December Activities

We started off the Christmas season with getting the house decorated and making cains for the boys to cut each day.  I didn't know where else to hang it so it hung from the chandeler.

Next we put the lights up on the house.  It was a good thing we did it when we did because it snowed two days later.

The next day we put the tree up and decorated it.

I tried to do something fun each day but we missed a few.  We made some sugar cookies and other treats and got them to some of our neighbors.  I ran out of time though and didn't get everything done that and all the treats to everyone that I wanted to so I am sorry about that. 

Thanksgiving

At school Tyler made these things for Thanksgiving that he is wearing.  He looked so cute that he wanted me to take his picture, four inside and four outside, that is what he told me.

After Tyler finished school we headed to my parents house for Thanksgiving.  My sister's family came from Nebraska and my sister that lives by my parents were all there for Thanksgiving dinner.  After dinner we went to the church to play.  The kids loved having the space to run around.  While the kids entertained themselves the adults played lighting.  It was pretty fun. 

Elly loved that Tiffany brought this push toy for Leah to play with.  Leah rode and Elly pushed.  They switched around some, but this is what they did most of the time.

This is all the Grandkids that were with us on Thanksginving day.  Both my brothers families were with their wifes family.

The next day the adults went to the gym and played volleyball and then some dodge ball.  My younger brothers wer kind enough to watch the kids for us.  After that we headed for the mountains to get some Christmas trees.  I will have to say that I think ours turned out very pretty.  The kids loved going and getting the tree, Elly doesn't look like she loved it here, but she was mad that she had to sit for a picture.

Here we are hauling the trees down the hill to the truck.

We all had a pretty good time other than Tiffany's kids.  They did have fun until there feet got cold.

Elly loved being outside with us.

The next day Jay and I went out looking for some deer.  We saw some good ones but couldn't get a good picture of one.  This little one was right by the road.

We had a great weekend and Thanksgiving with my family.  Thanks guys for having us. 

We all are very excited about the drive home now.  The boys didn't want to leave.

Autumn leaves

Fall is one of my favorite times of the year.  I love to rake the leaves and then let the kids play in them.  The only problem with that is then the leaves break into a million little pieces.  This year I raked them acrossed the street and let the kids play in them there and that worked out great.  Mason loved it the most.  He layed there and had me bury him all the way with the leaves and then he just layed there under them, Tyler wouldn't let me do that to him at that age.

Elly even got in on the action.  She liked the leaves too.  She followed the leaf pile all over the lawn and was mad when I took it acrossed the street because she couldn't get to them any more.

Tyler had to wait until he got back from school to get to play with us.

The rest of our leaves have fallen off so now we get to do it all one more time.  The kids keep wanting to get me back out there to rake them up another pile because the wind blew the last pile away.

Ten months

Elly is ten months old, I know this happened so fast.  I told Jay it mkes me so sad to see her growing  up.  It seems like I was just fat and preganant.   I wish all the time that the first year would go a lot slower.  She has started letting go of things when she stands by them.  She doesn't last very long before she grabs back on, but it last longer every time. She has been a lot of fun and is a really happy baby.  She is very funny about her space, she doesn't like it when the boys get to close to her.  I can't say that I really blame her.  She learned that the hard way. 

Incase anybody thought that she was so happy while I took these here is the proof that she was a stinker.  Infact I was surprised that I had any good ones because she was so bad.  I thought that even the bad ones looked cute though and I like to have pictures like this for the day when they think they were always perfect.

Halloween

We went to visit my famly for Halloween because we were going to watch my brother play in a football game that day, it ended up getting moved to monday. While we were there the kids decorated sugar cookies and they did a great job.  Those cookies were eaten so fast.  This is one thing that my kids love to do.  What kid wouldn't love to shake sprinkles on a cookie?

Here are my little Trick or Treaters and some of their cousins.  My mother painted my kids faces and they loved  the way they looked.  When Mason saw himself in the mirror he didn't know what to think.  He just stared and stared at himself.  It was pretty funny.

Elly didn't love being in her costume.  She didn't like having the hat on.  I carried her with us for some of it but most of the time she just rode in the car and ate the treats te kid brought back to her.

Here is everyone after hours of running from house to house.  The kids had so much fun and it was perfect weather.  Tyler would sit out for a house every now and again, but Mason thought it was so fun.  I loved hearing him say thank you to all the people, it was amazing that he would do that because he really doesn't talk to people that he doesn't know.

Mason got these teeth atour ward party and brought them with him to Grandma's house.  He loved it when he put these in and looked in the mirror. 

We trie the witch wig on Elly and she sure didn't like it.  She looks so different with hair.

My little sister was a witch for Halloween and I just thought that her costume was pretty cute.

My little brother was a mummy for halloween.  My mother put this costume together as we were walking out the door.  I thought that it turned out great.  We all kept looking at him all night because it just didn't look like him.

Carving pumpkins

Carving pumpkins became a family tradition for us while living in Ohio.  We started to do it with our friends and have continued to do it since we moved.  We still think of them everytime we do it.  I was wishing they were her to help me now that I have three pumpkins to do and their children are older now.

We decided to do it one night when I didn't have enough time to do all three so I just did the two one night and Elly's the next.  The boys each picked out their pattern and I carved them.  It was fun to see if they were going to help me clean them out.  Tyler was great at it he helped me clean them all out and stayed with me the whole time.  Mason put his hand in one time so I could take a picture and that was all he wanted to do.  Apparently it is really sick inside of the pumpkin. 

I loved to do this with the kids and it is a great activity.

I didn't take on Elly's until a couple days later, but I did get it done in time.  Tyler wanted me to do a hard one but I told him I was ready for an easy one, so Elly's said Trick or Treat. 

Tyler is showing Elly how to clean it out.  I was surprised that she didn't even want to put her hand in.

The finished product.  Mason loved it when I would light the pumpkins because then he would go out and blow them out, then tell me that I needed to light them again.