It's SNOW much Fun!

There have been a few inches of snow the past few days so Dan built Ellie an Igloo...

Tee-Hee

Poor little Colton wanted to go outside too

Hot chocolate with Marshmellows to help warm up!

Nutcracker

Ellie's dance studio performed the Nutcracker for the first time this year so I decided to take Ellie on a little date to watch the performance. Ellie's class didn't participate since they decided to make it for 4 yrs old and up.
It was so much fun watching her watch the dancers. She LOVED it! She was mostly excited to see her dance teacher and her good friend Sophia. When they appeared on stage she squealed their names and tried to get their attention. We were a little too far away for them to hear us though. ; ) Other than seeing her friends, her favorite part was watching the little mice and soldiers fight.
Afterwards Ellie went up on stage to say Hi to Sophia and to check out the set. When we were heading off the stage she told me she wanted to dance. After acting a little shy she finally burst out in a pretty long dance filled with stomping and twirling. I don't think anyone but me was watching but she sure was proud of herself and serious about her performance!

What a Team

Here's a pic of the boys putting up Christmas lights.

= )

Happy 1st Birthday Colton!

Colton turned one on Thanksgiving day. He had a fun day of celebrating with a houseful of relatives...about 32 of them (eight of them were kids three and under!)... I think Ellie was under the impression that all the Thanksgiving festivities were for Colton's birthday. When we sat down to eat Thanksgiving dinner she got all excited and said "HAPPY BIRTHDAY Colton!".

I think he was more interested in eating his party hat than his cake.

Bucko and Grandma Kristy

Great-Grandma Peggie has a tradition of giving money on birthdays. She gives the amount of your age. (Somehow I've been cut off...the past two years I haven't recieved mine. When I teased her about it last year she said I must have just lost it!) :'(

Cuddling with Daddy, Aunt Sheryl, and cousin Zach after a long day. Colton and Aunt Sheryl share a birthday.

funny

Colton always tries to play with the plug-in air freshener. Today he and Ellie were together in the hallway near the air freshener and I was around the corner and this is what I overheard.

Ellie said, "Colton this is freshener for when people toot. It goes up in the air (the air-freshener) and then it (the toot) goes away."

Not really sure who told her that's what it's for...but I guess it's true!

I thought it was pretty funny so I figured I should share the story...

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween. Ellie was a "butterfly" (Fairy Princess) and Colton was a BIG BAD Wolf. Ellie loved going around our little neighborhood loop saying "Trick or Treat!" to the neighbors. After Trick-or-Treating we went to our 2nd annual Red Robin Halloween dinner with Uncle Nate and Aunt Linda where we ate WAY too many french fries. It was a fun night.

Election Day

Well, I had big fears of standing in line for hours in the cold wind and rain waiting to cast my vote with two kids in tow. Guess I worried about nothing because we walked right in, grabbed a ballot and I was done filling in my ovals before Colton even realized he was strapped into a stationary stroller!

Ellie was pretty confused by the whole voting thing. I told her we were going to vote today and I immediately realized she thought I said boat. So I thought I did a really good job explaining to her that we weren't B-Boating we were V-Voting. Well, before we left the house to go vote she said, "Mommy, are we going to take a lunch to eat on the Boat?". Hmmm, guess I didn't explain it as well as I thought I did.

Our polling place was at our library so since it went so fast Ellie was able to go in and play on the library computers for a little bit. She even got to "vote" for her favorite cartoon character. Hopefully she's not confused about why we didn't get to ride on a boat today.

Happy Fall!

Pictures from trip

Well, I didn't take very many pictures of our trip. : (
And I'm very bummed that I often forgot my camera when we were visiting people. But here are a few...

Lunch in the airport

Ellie, Haley and Riley

Dan, Colton, Erik and Coleman Rogers

Ellie and Jordan

Ellie, Wes, Colton and Kim Blackwood

Nikki, Ellie, Stephanie, Dan and Colton

Checking out the loot from Old Man Turtle's Candy Room

LifeGroup Kiddos

Rt. 56 Alumni

There's no place like home...

...and I have two homes, one in Idaho and one in Texas. I'm blogging from Texas where we are enjoying a visit back to where we lived for five years. I'm overwhelmed by how comfortable it is here. Even though we have been gone for two years everything seems the same. I'm not good at keeping in contact with people so the communication has been limited over the past two years yet there is no awkwardness and it feels like we never left. The only reminder of the time that has past comes when I look at Ellie in Texas and she is a little girl now. When we moved away she was still a baby.
Our time has been wonderful so far and we are looking forward to a couple more days here. Tomorrow we will go to church and it will be so much fun seeing more familiar faces.
Even though we feel so at home here in Texas we are still so happy to be living back in Idaho. No regrets. I just wish Texas was a little closer to Idaho so we could visit more often.

Will blog more about our trip and will share a few pictures in a couple days.

Pumpkin Patch

How convienent is this??? My Grandma has a pumpkin patch right next to her house! She rents out some of her land to a man who runs a produce stand. In the summer he grows watermelon and in the fall he grows pumpkins. We took the kids out to pick out a pumpkin. Not the greatest pictures but oh well!

Dan and his two pumpkins
Ellie loves the little ones
Colton was more interested in the dirt

great-grandma's house

We had a nice visit with Great-Grandma Peggie yesterday....here's a few pics.

playing in Great-Grandpa's chair

hanging with daddy and a pill bottle full of rocks (great-grandma's favorite baby toy)

yipee!

We are no longer the owner of three cars!! = )

We bought a larger car 3 months ago and have been trying to sell either one of our other cars since then. (thought we would put them both on Craig's List and see which went first) Well, we finally sold them both. Okay, not exactly but pretty much in the same day people wanted each vehicle. We decided to get rid of the Escape since we could get more out of it and the Maxima is a better commuter car for Dan. (not so great of a hunting car though)

It was a little sad to see it go. We were original owners and had purchased it 7 years ago when we graduated from college. It was our first big purchase after Dan signed a contract with his first "real job".

Here's a picture of Dan with the Escape about a week after we bought it...this was taken about 4 hours into our 24 hour drive to TEXAS where we moved after college.

TEETH

Well, I've had a few requests for pictures of Colton's new mouthful of teeth. Four of his top teeth are coming in at once and I think they are pretty cute. By the way, Dan wanted everyone to know that Colton is looking at Dan in this picture...that is why he's smiling SO BIG.

Since we are talking about teeth...I will share Ellie's tooth misfortune.

A few weeks ago she was running to the computer to answer Lanae's web cam call and she slipped on the wood floor and smacked her mouth. The gums of her front teeth bled a little bit and she had a fat lip but we thought that was the worst of the damage...well a couple days ago I noticed one of her front teeth was looking grey, and it has become more and more grey as the days go by. = (

I guess the tooth is dying. How sad!! I haven't told her about this yet. I don't want her to be self-conscious about it so I'm trying not to make a big deal about it.

I managed to find some toothy grin pictures that kind of show the tooth although it has gotten more gray since these pics were taken.

and the decision is....

DANCE!

Well, after checking out dance class and gymnastics class it was an easy decision to choose dance for Ellie. I'm sure she would have fun in both, but the gymnastics class was kinda lame. = ) No music...dark...unorganized...etc.

Today was the first dance class so here are a few pictures. I was very proud of Ellie. She was very sweet and did a very good job listening to her teacher and obeying her.

Oh, and as you can tell she has completely recovered from her elbow owie. She wore the sling for a couple days and then let her arm hang limply by her side for a few days and then she finally realized that it didn't hurt to move anymore!

playground trauma

We had our first playground disaster yesterday. We were just about to go home and have lunch when I heard Ellie scream and start crying. I didn't see it happen but apparently she fell off something a couple feet high and landed on her elbow. I thought it must have been pretty bad the way she reacted...since she is usually pretty tough. She was barely moving her arm and at one point even asked me to put her arm up on my shoulder while I was holding her. = (

So I took her to the Urgent care where Dan met us and took Colton to get some baby food at the nearby grocery store. It was about 1:30 and none of us had eaten lunch yet so I was very glad Dan was able to get off work too meet us and help me with Colton.

They did a few x-rays of Ellie's arm and that was pretty traumatic. It was obviously very painful for her to move her arm so every little angle they tried to get picture of made her cry really hard.

Anyways, long story shorter, she didn't break it. She has a contusion (bruise) which is pretty deep in her elbow. So she is wearing a sling for a couple days and taking lots of Motrin.

Uncle Nate and Aunt Linda took some time away from their 25th wedding anniversary to join us at DQ for a little ice cream treat. Doesn't ice cream always make you feel better??? = )