Funny Jokes

Ellie has recently discovered jokes. This video shows one of her favorites: saying you are going to eat something that you don't actually eat. Pretty funny. A week or two ago she told her first complete joke. She said, "What says ribbit-ribbit?" We said, "What?" The answer: "Grandpa."

Mother's Day

 Mother's day this year was so wonderful. I don't think I have ever felt quite so maternal being 7 months pregnant and having a kid.

John and I designed this card for the grandmothers. The little rhyme is a primary song that Ellie sang for them. It was pretty cute. :)

Recently I did some major clean out of my old room at my parents house. It was pretty awesome going through the trinkets I saved throughout my childhood and teenage years. Turns out rocks aren't that cool if you don't write down where you brought them home from. :) Also, all of the moody journals that I started as a tween were hilarious!
This whole project made me think about my growing up years (which I am probably still in). I remember wondering how my life was going to turn out, what my husband and family would be like, and what I would end up spending the majority of my time doing. I was so worried about school, fitting in, and being an adult. Don't get me wrong, I was so blessed to have a happy childhood, but I am so glad to be in the situation that I am in now. Going through all of that stuff, I was just overwhelmed with gratitude that things worked out the way it did. I am so lucky to be John's wife and Ellie's mother. They really are my whole life, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

I am excited to have a new little one too. We saw a new little cousin the other day. I can't believe how nervous/excited it made me. Hopefully Ellie likes being a big sister. She was pretty fascinated with the baby.

Easter

I feel like I am always playing catch up with my blog, but oh well. I am going to do this post in reverse because that is how I accidentally uploaded the pictures. So our last Easter activity was at my parents house. It was a little bit chilly that day, but everyone had a blast. Look how cute those kiddos are!!!

 They were so excited to go find the eggs. And by this point Ellie was a pro at what to do for an Easter egg hunt. Although, she would only pick things up that were egg shaped.

 We also did such a fun hunt with John's family. I loved the idea of having names on the eggs so you had to find your specific egg. (Thanks Norma for the picture!)

 The Saturday preceding Easter we went with the Guinns to Thanksgiving Point to the Tulip Festival. So Fun! The flowers were gorgeous. It was a little bit chilly, but we loved it.

 Ellie really liked riding around in her "big, big stroller."

 Preceding this activity we decorated eggs and had a hunt with Madeleine. What a cute girls!

 Dying eggs was a little tricky with two 2 year olds. Fortunately there were no permanent stains. :)

 And the event that kicked it all off was receiving a new baby package from Ellie's friends, Knightley and Mason. She loves, LOVES the bunnies, which are nearly her constant companions. Thank you so much guys!!!

It was a wonderful holiday that was celebrated over the course of a few days. I am glad that there are so many great people in our lives to share these memories with.

Arches 2011

 A few weeks ago we took an awesome trip to Arches. It was so much fun! It was one of those trip where things definitely could have gone wrong, but just didn't. I don't have a picture of our campsite, but it was beautiful. Ellie loved camping (even if she didn't prove it during the night) and has been asking to go "camping" and "sleep tent" a ton. Here we are on the first day (by far the coldest) enjoying the view at the Windows area. So cool!

 Ellie found the pockets on her jacket and had to be just like Daddy.

 It was stunning. I wish our camera did it justice.

 The following day we took a 'hike' of three miles. Normally I would hesitate to call such a thing a hike, but between carrying baby#2 and water and food for us, I was really struggling to make it even that far. Isn't Landscape Arch awesome?!

 We climbed up a little further on the trail to see a few more. So worth it, but exhausting.

Even Ellie agreed!

 We, of course, had to hike to Delicate Arch. All I remembered about this hike as a kid was thinking that the arch was big and it was really hot. Fortunately, despite being the warmest weekend in April, it was still really pleasant to be out in the sunshine. Regardless, I was still surprised how hard it was for me to hike like that. Literally everyone was passing me up (and John and Ellie too, cause they stuck with me).

 The arch really is bigger than you'd think.

One of the highlights of the trip was Sand Dune Arch. Ellie and her cousin absolutely loved playing in the soft sand.

We actually climbed up on top.

Another one of my favorites wasn't an arch, but hiking in the Fiery Furnace. It was lucky that we were able to go because they are in process of banning children under five from that area, and we kind of had to finagle getting Ellie to be able to go. Kind of makes me irritated that they would do that, but I'll refrain from the soap box.

Regardless it really was beautiful in there, and we had a wonderful trip! It was so fun to spend time with my parents, my brother, and his family. We totally hit the jackpot on weather too, because the rest of April had been pretty cold/snowy/windy.

Real Random

 So when John and I were expecting Ellie we had difficult time deciding on what to name our little girl. We wanted to name her something that we liked, but also something that meant something more than 'we just think that name is cute.'  So we decided to look up our ancestors, and sure enough we found Ellie's real name and remembered a wonderful story about this particular ancestor. Thus we decided on our little E____.

Well, if anything, we are having a harder time deciding on a name this time. So we decided to try for the same method. Well, we learned that there are a lot of Margarets, Janes, and Sarahs in our family tree, but also we discovered something really random. We were curious about how far back our lines actually went. Well, as you can see below, it went a lot further than we thought it would. On my family tree it just kept getting wider and wider so we decided to just pick a random ancestor and go for as long as that one would go. We picked one that had some sort of British title because we thought it had a better chance of going somewhere. Ninety generations or so later (and about two HOURS of clicking) we hit Adam.

I am not sure how accurate this is (occasionally it would skip about 1,000 years), but it was still fun to look through. Some names stood out like some British royalty (gotta love the titles): Lagos "The Rabbit," Phillip II "The Great," and Aethelred II "The Unready" (poor guy).  Also there was King Arthur Meriodoc, Guinevere Pendragon, Urthy Pendragon High King of Briton, even "Old King Coel." Didn't actually know some of those people weren't fictional. This line apparently traveled from the Huns cause there was for sure Atilla the Hun "Scourge of God" in there, which was connected to the Romans somehow even with Julius Caesar. Once we got that far back we got some names that were more religious like Anna, Mother of the Virgin Mary, Ruth and Boaz, David and Bathsheba, Jezebel, Jeremiah, Jehosphat, Rehoboam, and a lot of other really random ones. The thing I was surprised about was how many of the names that far back that weren't in the scriptures. Good job record keeping! Anyway, like I said before, I'd be pretty darn surprised if this were remotely accurate, but it was fun to read through anyway. Although I am not sure how I feel about being related to Atilla, Bathsheba, and Jezebel. :)

Unfortunately, this whole process didn't help with naming the baby girl.

I just have to share that the entire time I was doing this post Ellie having a snack of "florn cakes" (corn flakes). Love that little girl! She is growing up so much! Her imagination is just taking off, even using different voices to have conversations with her toys.
She is really into "coloring" (with pens and pencils--not crayons, weird girl). She asks me to draw stuff for her all the time. Mostly, shapes and letters, but also animals and more abstract things like 'happy' and 'fun.' She doesn't want a smiley face with that one, so a lot of times I just write the word out because I don't know how to draw it. Poor kid, I sure wish I was a better artist for her.
She also still really likes to read stories and play with anything that she can wrap up in blanket and give kisses to.
Ellie talks more and more and is getting more opinionated all the time. She says "I want it ____" about a million times a day. We're really having to watch what we say in front of her. Last night she kept saying "dang it!" after I said it. Oops. Here is a picture of a recent dress up we did.

Ellie dressing Ellie up.

Me dressing Ellie up.

Ten More Weeks

So this picture was taken when I was 27 weeks. (Now I am 28 weeks.) So it has been 10 weeks since I put up a picture of my pregnant belly. Whew, I am feeling humongous these days! It is getting to the point where bending down is getting ridiculously hard and I have already started to ask John to tie my shoes. I keep vacillating between wanting this baby out right now because I don't want to get any bigger or more awkward and almost crying because I am so nervous about having another baby, and "What have I got myself into?!?!!" I guess it is a little late for that kind of thinking. :) I am just feeling so much bigger than I felt with Ellie at this same point. One way or another it is just not cool that with another whole trimester to go my belly button is already poking out, which never happened with Ellie.
So with all of this self-pity and bemoaning the loss of feeling 'normal,' I was brought up short yesterday by a friend's post on facebook. She is about five weeks further along than me and having twins. They moved to another state since she has been pregnant, so I haven't seen her in person for quite some time. So, last night she posted that she had had another ultrasound at her 33 week appointment. They measured her babies weighing a little more than six pounds each!!! So just to compare--at 28 weeks my baby is supposed to roughly weigh two pounds and a few ounces, and my friend has more than 12 pounds of baby in her. So that means that she is carrying around 10 more pounds of baby in her than I am. I think I should stop complaining now, don't ya think?!

Songs

Ellie loves songs. She can sing these songs, among others (most notably "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Five Little Ducks") even better than is shown here, but getting her to perform for the camera is tricky at best.

This next one should be a Cheerios commercial.