Just some fun pictures

Elli concentrates so hard when she is coloring it cracks me up. I got this plastic picnic table at a garage sale and she absolutely loves it. She spends hours crawling up on it, coloring pictures at it and sitting at it to watch TV. I love the tongue out.

With her huge forehead I have managed to finally grow out her bangs. Her hairline starts so far back so it took me the whole 17 months to accomplish this task. I pulled her hair into pigtails and she looks so grown up!

I loved the look on her face in this picture so I had to post it. She has boogers and food all over but hey, she doesn't care.

Every kid has a moment when they get ahold of the wipes and proceed to pulling every single one out. I couldn't help but grab a picture of her in action. Again, she is concentrating ever so hard. Man, I love this girl!

Elliana update

Elli will often fall asleep in random places on the floor. What a mean mom I am to not just put her in her crib when she is acting tired. I love this picture because she has her eyes covered like she knew I was going to get the camera out.

I should have wiped her nose before I took the picture but I didn't so don't look too close. :) She has been such a good sport with having the NG tube. She has gained over three pounds and has only pulled it out 3 times in the month and a half that we have had it. I honestly think the tube is harder on me than it is on her. It breaks my heart when we are out in public and people stare at her wondering what is wrong. A few brave people stop to ask me why she has a tube coming out of her nose. The most common assumption is that it must be an oxygen tub. Why would an oxygen tube dangle down her back with nothing attached, and why would it go in only one nostril? Hmmm.... So from what the doctor has told me I think we will be sporting the tube until February so I might as well just embrace the whole experience of it all. She is doing gpretty well with her feeding therapy which we go to once a week. In some ways I think therapy is funny because Elli really doesn't even know what is going on. They make her take a bite of food and then give her a reward when she does it. She has caught on that this is what happens but then when we get home and I try to do the same game she isn't into it at all. Oh, well she will eventually eat. I wish I had the same problem of not wanting to eat. :)

This is what happens when you give your kid a ziploc bag with fruit loops in it while you are in the car. The bag looked like a gerbil had got ahold of it and knawed it apart. Mushy fruit loops were everywhere!

Halloween Night

We went trick-or-treating with Mayley, Porter, and Annie this year. Elli did a great job of just copying what her cousins were doing and she really seemed to have a good time. She carried her little pumpkin bag almost the entire time. It was great to watch her waddle around. The highlight of Halloween for me was having a kid that can walk and sort of get the fun of it all. I can't wait for next year!

We went to my parents house before trick-or-treating so we could have dinner and let them see the costumes. The kids were pretty excited about grandma's candy and went ahead and helped themselves. Good job kids!

Trunk or Treat

At church we have everyone come out for what is called trunk or treat. All the cars park and the kids go trick or treating to each car. Elli had lots of fun waddling around as a duck, or maybe a chicken. We aren't really sure what she was.

The costume was a size 2T-3T so it was way to big. It ended out working good and now we have a costume that can work next year too. :)

Halloween Memories...

We weren't quite sure what to have Elliana be for Halloween so we got out some of the old costumes to see if they might fit, especially since she is so small. Here is what we discovered. She loved dressing up even though we had to force her into them. The next morning we had the costumes on the table and she walked right up to them and wanted us to put them on her again. Kids are so funny.

The high water lady bug.

Elli had more fun playing with the lighter than she did helping us with the pumpkin.

More hospital pictures...

Elliana roaming the halls.
Trying to escape as we waited for her procedure.
Running the halls naked. I'm sure the nurses were happy once we left! ;)

Our 5 days spent in the hospital!

At the beginning of the month, right before we were suppose to go on our trip to San Diego, Elliana's GI doctor called and said he wanted to have us come in for a visit. I was thinking he was going to tell us that we needed to schedule for her to have an endoscopy, but nope, I was wrong. I was shocked when the doctor told me that he wanted to admit Elliana to the hospital. I asked him for how many hours and his response was, "a whole week!" Yikes! I was not prepared to hear that. I convinced him to let us wait until the following week so that we could still go on our trip we had planned to San Diego. He agreed and thankfully we had a fun weekend before the long FIVE days! The reason for admitting here to the hospital for those of you who haven't been updated on our medical saga with Elli, was to get a bunch of testing done. Normally you have to spread them all out and you drive all over the place, this way we could get it done and quick all in the hospital. Once we got checked in, they put a NG tube, (feeding tube) down her nose into her stomach. It was no fun to see her go through all this, but overall she did amazing! She is such a trooper. She had a lot of fun pushing her little IV pole around in the halls. All the nurses got to know her really well because we were roaming the halls most every day.
My mom came down everyday to spend time with Elli, which of course helped me a ton. Karen came down and spoiled Elli with some fun toys from all the aunts, my friends came and played and so did Matt, Lindsay and their kids. We are so blessed to have such great friends and family! Thanks for all your love and support during all this!
Nate and I slept at the hospital and wow, what an experience that was. The rooms are double occupancy so you have a roommate of which you don't know...kind of awkward if you ask me. The first few nights we got to be roommates with someone we knew from church which was awesome. The next night we had a little 3 month old roommate. Overall it was good, just a little crazy. Nate went to work everyday and then after work drove straight to the hospital. It was a crazy week! All in all, Elliana is one healthy kid that is just skinny! We will have the feeding tube in for at least a month and then we will see how things go from there.

Another fun time in San Diego!

Back in May when Nate was on sabbatical we went to San Diego for a few days with our good friends Steve and Cyndi Mullenaux. Well, at the beginning of October we went for another trip to San Diego this time because Steve was on Sabbatical. We had a great time on the beach!
Elliana had so much fun playing in the water and in the sand. She is at a fun age to go to the beach!
Tillman and Elliana playing in the sand together. They make quite the pair! It was such a fun weekend!

My, how time flies!

There is always a first for everything and Elli just had her first big fall that left her with quite the big bump on her forehead. She LOVES to climb stairs but she has no concept that you can fall. She only fell from the first step down, but unfortunetly it was onto tile. Poor little girl. It's hard to see the bump in the picture, but trust me it was huge!
You can see the yellow bruise on her forehead a little better here. Pictures give it no justice.
We finally cleaned our car after waiting like 6 months. We made it a family affair and Elli absolutely had a blast. She was eating bubbles and helping out like one year olds do.
She is cleaning the driveway in this picture. What a helper!

My Bestest Friends!

I decided that after the wedding in Utah I would spend the week after with my good friends, Kim and Josh up in Idaho Falls. It had been almost three years since I saw them last and so this visit was much overdue. They are some of my bestest friends that I have known for about 6 years. I can't even put into words what they mean to me. They were two of the very few people who reached out to me while I was going to school in South Dakota. I spent every weekend over at their house and so after two years we had grown to be really good friends. I have so many fond memories with them, babysitting their kids, staying up late eating good food, a trip to the Mall of America, and tournaments of Mario Kart, just to name a few. They were such great support to me when that is what I needed most.
I had a great time for the week up in Idaho Falls. The four kids are huge and so grown up. It was so nice to catch up on life together. I can't wait to see them again...hopefully soon! Notice all the scrapbooking stuff out. Yeah, this was a definite highlight for me!
Me with all the kiddos at the Idaho Falls Zoo.

I got a picture of the gorilla and Elli at the San Diego Zoo so I thought I would keep the tradition alive and do the same shot at the Idaho Falls Zoo.

The weather was absolutely PERFECT in Idaho Falls. The Grahams have a blow up water slide that every day they wanted to play on. Elliana seemed to enjoy it for the most part, but since it wasn't 100 degrees she was a little cold. This is Mitchel sliding down with Elliana. She is really wearing a top to the swimsuit, it just hikes way up.
Popsicle break! Mitchel, Ashley, Kim, Coleman and Justin. Gosh I love these guys!
Kim's dad has two airplanes so one night we went to the hanger and had a little airplane tour. Elliana loved sitting in the seat on a small airplane but for some reason she doesn't really feel the same way about the big airplanes.
This is a shot of the two planes, for any of you airplane lovers.

Our Trip to Salt Lake City

Nate's sister, Katherine, got married at the beginning of August up in Utah. It was a quick trip for everyone but so nice to get together with all the family. I was terrible at remembering to take any pictures during the hussle of it all so this is all I have. The wedding day went like this: Wedding at 9:00. Spaghetti Factory lunch. Thanksgiving Point petting zoo (for those with kids, to kill time). Reception. Sleep. It was a full day but a lot of fun. Elliana wouldn't actually sit on the pony so instead Nate held her and walked along side.
Nate's cousins and aunt, with Mayley at the wedding reception.
I couldn't miss the chance to grab a picture of Grandpa Lunt with Elliana.

All the boys, plus Katherine! What a bunch of good looking guys. :)
We grabbed a quick picture of our little family before we left the temple.

All the girls at the Temple, plus cute little Thomas. Lindsay, Annie, Me, Elliana, Emily, Audrey, Kristine and Thomas.
One of the only pictures we managed to catch with Katherine. What a gorgeous bride!

BLUE!!

It is still so crazy to me that I have a blue-eyed child being that I have such dark features, but I love it! She is so darn cute! :)

Cousin Time

 

Kristine, (Nate's sister) was in town for two 

weeks visiting from Missouri. It was so fun to 

spend time with her and their adorable almost 

7 month old Thomas. They call him T-man 

and he is seriously the cutest little guy ever! I 

guess I can't say little because he weighs more 

than Elliana!

 

Nate with the kiddos.
 

Mayley, Porter and Annie are so sweet to Elliana. She absolutely loves her cousins as you can see on her face.
 

While Kristine was visiting we spent one afternoon over at Matt and Lindsay's. We thought it would be fun to put the camera on timer and grab a picture of all of us. It's impossible to get the kids all looking at the camera, but we did our best.

One More Action Shot

I had to capture the frosting face. She loved it! I still can't believe our little baby is already one. She has made some huge progress over the last month or two. She can walk pretty good holding onto hands and is just figuring out that she can walk holding onto the couch or coffee table. She makes all sorts of babbling sounds and comprehends way more than she did just a month ago. For some reason she has just exploded with her development. She has been going to physical therapy for two weeks to help build up her strength but I don't really think she needs much more of it. She is still delayed in things but they can see a lot of progress so they just think she is a late bloomer. Everyone tells me I should be glad that she took so long to crawl because we had that much longer of not having to child proof everything. Some of her most favorite things right now is clapping her hands when music is playing, waving goodbye, sippy cups, kisses and walking everywhere. She is so much fun! We love our little Elli!

Elliana and Landon turned 1!

Grandpa Lunt and Elliana reading some books together.
The action on opening presents. Elliana actually opened her first present almost by herself. After that she wasn't too interested. It was so cute!
Landee's and Elli's cakes that Heather and I made.
The results of the yummy cakes. :)