Yellowstone

Earlier this month we traveled to Yellowstone for 5 days. It was John's first time visiting that national park, so it was pretty exciting! We went with my parents and had a great time. We were a little disappointed with the weather though. It was pretty cold, especially at night. We camped out and had to bundle Ellie up quite a bit: 2 pairs of socks on her feet, 2 pairs on her hands, 2 pairs of pajamas, a jacket, a swaddler, a hat, and her snow suit was her sleeping attire.
One night we ended up having her sleep in our sleeping bags with us. This also ended her amazing sleeping habits. She woke up several times per night while we were there. Since we have been home, it just hasn't been the same. Despite this frustrations it was a great trip. We saw some fantastic geysers and had a good time getting away.
This is the only place we actually took a picture of Ellie there. I am kicking myself for it now, but it was just too cold to get her out of the stroller most of the time.

My parents and us at Daisy geyser.

Grotto geyser is cool because of the formation that the water has made over the years.

Other cool water features.

Mud pots!

Twin bandanna heads!

I love how blue the water is there! It is hard to get anything besides the steam though.

5 1/2 months

Thanks to my sister for taking these great pictures!!!

This is totally her whining face. :)

I love it how she uses her tongue when she smiles so big!

Blowing bubbles.

5 months

I can't believe how fast time flies! Here is a sampling of pictures we have taken of Ellie in the last month or two. She is finally old enough to play with her saucer which she got for Christmas last year. She was pretty overwhelmed with it at first, but now she loves it.
Bath time! This is where she gets some of her baths. She likes to play with the water coming out of the faucet, but unfortunately she sprays herself in the face a lot of the time when she does that.

This picture is just classic Ellie.

Her first encounter with rice cereal. This is the clean baby.

This is the messy baby. :)

This is my attempt at an impromptu photo shoot. She is starting to sit pretty well with the boppy supporting her.

This is how she spends most of her play time. She is just for a couple days now actually lift her her waist too, so she is just on her hands and knees.

The only problem is she always collapses when we make her smile or laugh.

Before she goes to sleep she always has to rotate 90 degrees to her left. I don't know what it is, maybe she just likes the feel of the side of the crib on top of her head.

Ellie is such a delight! I just can't believe how fast she is developing and changing.

Donut Falls

Over the 24th of July we wanted to go to a place that we both hadn't been since we were teenagers. Unfortunately we didn't know that the main donut of Donut Falls collapsed. Despite this we decided to go. We had pretty good timing getting there. We got there right as one big group was leaving and left right before one huge group got there. It was a beautiful drive to get there and a gorgeous little walk to make it to the falls. My mom came with us and we had a yummy picnic lunch afterwards. I love that extra holiday in July!
You can see that there still is one small donut at the top, but all of the big boulders are the reminants of the larger donut.

Midnight Movie

So ever since we have had Ellie, I have felt like our spontaneity has been shot. If we have an event during the day it takes most of the day to get her on the right schedule so that we can make it and it isn't during eating/sleeping time. At about 5 pm the day before the new Harry Potter movie opened, our friends said that they had two extra tickets to the show. We couldn't pass up on it. Fortunately because the showing was at 12:20 am there was no way this had to be an eating time for Ellie. We decided that because Ellie NEVER wakes up during the middle of the night we would leave her with the neighbors and go to the midnight showing.
I was so nervous. What if she woke up? She doesn't take a bottle. Would these people hate us forever?? The theater was 45 minutes away from our apartment! Anyway, we took a chance and it worked out. She didn't wake up at all. It felt so crazy to do something that spontaneous. I really enjoyed the movie. I am a romantic so I really liked that this was more love-story oriented than the other films. We ended up going to bed at 4 am. Unfortunately because Ellie had such a good night's rest she wanted to be up and playing at 8. Yeah, pretty sleepy that day, but it was well worth it.

Fourth of July

I know this is pretty late coming, but it is still fun. The weekend of the fourth of July was an eventful one for us. First Anna's adorable 1 year old birthday party. She is such a beautiful little girl. Then we had Independence Day celebrations. Small town parades are awesome! I really love this picture of the three of us. Notice Ellie can't open her eyes fully because she was outside. She is so sensitive to sunlight even when it is overcast.

She was a little bit happier later on during the day.
Also during that weekend was Jane's blessing. It was beautiful and the food was delicious! Afterward, we dressed them in these little festive outfits. I think it is so funny that even though Ellie is about twice Jane's age in this picture they are about the same size. This little photo shoot was so fun! At one point Ellie turned her head to Jane's and started licking her head. She licks most thing that come in contact with her face, but normally it isn't another defenseless baby! I sure hope that they are good friends growing up together.

Adventures

This is how Ellie has been a lot recently. She likes to roll over a ton, but can't get on her back once she rolls to her tummy. She gets stuck a lot which results in a bunch of spit up.

We went up to Willard Bay with my family and had a ton of fun. I love Ellie's expression in this picture.
I love the sky in this picture and Anna is adorable!
We also had a family reunion on John's side. It was so fun to see everyone. We did this really cool thing where everyone talked about their childhood memories. It was so entertaining to see what people talked about.

One of my favorites was how one time John's older siblings accidentally broke a water pipe in the basement. I quote from Sarah's story:

"I remember Mom and Dad had gone out, and we kids were playing house. I was of course, the "Mom" and David was play the "Dad." This happened back when the basement wasn't finished, and Mom used to hang laundry on lines she tied to the pipes in the walls. Well David was swinging on a line, as we did often, I am sure, and it happened to break the water pipe. We were so panicked and worried. So we went and got the Meli kids to help us. They had a 15 year old, I think it was Eni, and she called the plumber. He thought it was a prank call, so wouldn't come. We didn't know what else to do, so we ran outside, and I remember Jeff yelling at the top of his lungs, Mom and Dad, come home!" Oh a cell phone would have come in so handy then. I just knew that water would rise up the stairs, so I went upstairs, got Spencer out of his crib, and carried him to the Hasting's house, about 7 or 8 houses down the street. That should have been far enough, I thought. Well, eventually our parents got home, turned off the water, and we started cleaning up. We had to scoop the water up and carry it to the floor drain in the laundry room. Things were wet for a long time. "

It was so fun to hear the different stories. This was Ellie's experience at the family reunion. The kids loved to come over and peak at her while she was supposed to be taking a nap. She LOVED all of the attention!
We also took Ellie on her first camping trip. She did pretty well, despite having a hard time going to sleep that night. She still slept the whole night through. We are pretty lucky!
I love this picture of Lucas!
Thanks guys for picking out such a cool campsite!
Thanks to Marc and Miriam for organizing the whole thing!
She is just getting more smiley and laughy all of the time. Such a wonderful little baby!