All Better

Good news since the last post: Elise is almost 100% better, we have Elise's baby blanket back, and the cookie jar has been replaced. We are enjoying our time here at Matt's parents' house, and we had a great Christmas together. All's well that ends well, I guess.

Good and Bad

the vintage cookie jar Elise broke

photo source

Today was a good day because Mike, Matt's brother, got sealed to Amber in the San Diego California temple. The sealing was the first I'd been to since my own, and it was even in the same sealing room as ours. It was really special, and I'm so happy for them. (I'll post some pictures when we get back to Arizona.)

Today was also a hard day. Elise got only short naps in the car between destinations. She was cold and tired and hungry much more of the day than I would have liked. She did great, all things considered, but weddings are just hard for babies. And I think she's sick with a little fever and a cough. And she broke a vintage cookie jar at the reception. The cookie jar belonged to Mike's new mother-in-law, who I've never spoken to before but will be spending Christmas Day with. And I lost Elise's baby blanket sometime today. Let's just say I've shed some tears more than once today.

Here's to hoping tomorrow will have fewer mishaps. And fewer tears.

Anatomy

Here's Elise with an anatomy lesson. Enjoy!

Yes, she says baby instead of belly; my sister just had a baby a few days ago, and Elise doesn't quite understand gestation.

Christmas Lion

The Christmas tree is fun. Elise spends a lot of time looking at it, admiring the ornaments and lights, and touching it. I spend a lot of time watching her look at it, replacing the ornaments, and reminding her not to touch.

Her favorite ornament is a lion. If she approaches the tree roaring, that means she wants to see her friend the lion.

Here she is getting ready to roar (just kidding).

This video was right before she bit its face.

Aaand here she is biting its face. Yeah.

(It's paper mache, so you can imagine how that went. The lion will never be quite the same.)

Ryland loves lions. (He loved them first.) And he loves growling. Here he is roaring in his lion pj's.

Me, I Want a Hula Hoop

Elise has a lot of fun with hula hoops. She's such a happy baby.

Or toddler, I guess.

We can hardly stand the wait.

Please, Christmas, don't be late!

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We did. Family and lots of food. We have so much to be grateful for.

Elise's turkey hand

It's not really a very good indicator of how big her hand is this year because it's so smeared, but it's pretty cute anyway.

The kids had fun cooking along with the adults.

Elise loved playing with the toy kitchen. It kept her busy playing on her own probably half an hour straight. That may be a record for her.

scooping up her mashed potatoes with her graham cracker

Yeah, she never really pauses long enough to look at a camera these days.

We had a big Thanksgiving lunch. This picture is from dinner, my second time around. Everything was so good!

Holly and I about to go Black Friday shopping

crazy turkey, biting on a Little People turkey

We sure are thankful for Daddy!

We had such a nice Thanksgiving together this year. I truly have been blessed, and this holiday was a great reminder to me.

Frying Pan, AKA: Location

Savannah loves the movie Tangled. She wants to grow her hair out like Rapunzel (until her brothers get their hair cut, and then she wants hers cut too.) She pretty much has this movie memorized.

In the movie, Rapunzel uses a frying pan as a weapon. At one point, Rapunzel holds out her frying pan and demands of Flynn Rider, "Who else knows my location?" Savannah, who is 3, doesn't know what the word location means, so from this scene she deduced that a frying pan is Rapunzel's location. And no amount of arguing will convince her otherwise.

Ryland and Savannah fighting with their "locations"

I love how serious she looks here. haha

acting out the movie

Elise thinks the "locations" are pretty fun too.

Budding Artist

Elise has just started to get interested in coloring. I think she's doing great! (Matt thinks all her scribbles look the same, but I can tell she's improving. ;) )

hard at work coloring the E I drew for her

She thinks all letters are E's.

snack break

Ta da!

Phoenix Zoo

We went to the Phoenix Zoo on November 11th. This was Elise's first time at the zoo, and we all had a lot of fun. It wasn't too hot or too bright, and the animals were generally pretty visible. Besides forgetting the stroller, hitting my head pretty hard by the boa constrictor cage, and needing batteries for the camera, I don't think there's anything I really would have changed.

trying to take a picture when we got there,

but Elise was too busy looking around at all the interesting things

to glance toward the camera

First we stopped by to see the snake exhibit.

Matt was a fan of the large birds. I think this one was the golden eagle.

(What a great dad, carrying that diaper bag.)

The mountain lion was cool to see. It had such a long tail.

the Andean condor

(because you don't really get to pick when a stranger will offer to take a picture of the whole family)

The giraffes were awesome. They were some of my favorite animals we saw.

The rhinos were another favorite.

Elise liked the rhinos too, but she was mostly just interested in her graham cracker at this point.

Actually graham crackers were a big hit all day.

The monkeys were fun. You can see them pretty close because you just walk among them.

at the aviary

(I can't remember what type of bird this is.)

Elise really liked the flamingos.

She didn't really like sitting on that post, though.

I was surprised that the peacocks were pretty much allowed to go wherever they wanted.

There were even peacocks in the elephant exhibit.

The elephants were Elise's favorite thing. She loves elephants.

She's signing elephant in this picture.

Here's Elise petting the Komodo dragon. Just kidding.

This animal was fun to see, but the metal sculpture was probably even more fun.

She also enjoyed the metal orangutan sculptures. A lot.

Unfortunately, the real orangutans were pretty shy, and we only got a couple glimpses of them.

kissing the orangutan

cuddling the orangutan

At first, we were bummed that the zebras were so far away. Then we waited for a minute, and they came up so close. It was really cool.

By the end of the trip, we could tell Elise was pretty exhausted from missing her afternoon nap. She was doing fairly well, though, until she tripped while holding a graham cracker. The cracker broke, she was devastated, and she burst into tears. Then we gave her a new one, and the world was beautiful again.

Here she is with red eyes and a fresh cracker.

on our way out

Matt made sure he got a picture of Hawaii as we were leaving. (That's where he served a mission.)