Christmas portraits

Funny how when I was a kid me and my brothers dreaded having family portraits. We didn't understand the point of getting all dressed up and wasting an hour just for a photo. Now that I have a daughter I understand what its all about. You want to have those memories of your family captured to look back on. You want to make sure to capture every year of your children. Now I feel bad for my mom, sorry mom. I know now that she just wanted to capture those moments cause now were all grown up. I'm glad she did because it's fun to go back and look at those pictures and see how little we all were. 

  Me and Devin have decided, like many I'm sure, that every christmas we will get a family photo. We also have started a picture frame ornament collection on our Christmas tree and we want to have a family photo in each one every year and when Elysa is older with kids of her own we will put grandchildren's photos in there until the entire tree is taken up with family photos.

  I am excited for Christmas and we wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

O Christmas Tree

I just LOVE turning on the Christmas music and decorating the tree. Elysa did too she watch so enthused the whole time I was putting decorations on the tree. She especially loved when the lights came on. She just stared and stared. She also helped mommy wrap some presents that she got for her.

Even tho I'm not fond of the cold I do love Christmas. I love when the 1st snow falls and its all powdery and white. I even love when the roads are covered, they remind me of the days me and my brothers would sit at the window with the radio on just waiting for them to say " no school today!". I love the most, wrapping up in a blanket cuddled up with someone you love sipping warm hot chocolate and watching a movie. *sigh* I just love getting excited for the holidays and its so hard to now a days when they decided to start Christmas before Halloween is even over, because by the time Christmas finally gets here you're so sick of the music and the rushes every where. But for me, as soon as I get the tree up the excitement begins!

Thanksgiving

Elysa and her cousin "Tof"
Thanksgiving is the best and worst time of the year haha. Best cause you get food and get to see family. Worst cause you get tons of food and your pants get all that much tighter ;).
It was so fun to have family over. We had fun with the cousins. As you can see they had fun getting Elysa ready for Thanksgiving by doing her hair. The night before we stayed up till 2 a.m. playing "stripoly" as my uncle calls it (tripoly) . We then had a Wii golf tournament till 2 a.m thanksgiving night. And of course there is always the 5 a.m. black friday shopping. We were supposed to go with Devin's family but everyone got really sick after thanksgiving dinner. Thank goodness we didn't! So instead we went at 8 am after Elysa refused to go back to sleep I think she was just so excited for us to go pick her out toys for Christmas haha. I ended up finding alot of really good deals!

It always amazes me, tho, how crazy people get on Black Friday. We were driving home at 2 am and passed Kohles and there were people already sitting out in the cold rain in front of the doors and the store didn't even open until 4 a.m. not to mention they were only giving out a $10 gift card PLUS inorder to use the $10 gift card you have to spend a certain amount. I've gotten $10 gift cards in the mail from kohles... so not worth waiting out in the cold just for 10 bucks. Plus I just couldn't believe hearing on the news how crazy people get on Black Friday tho. One man was squished after a crowd knocked down the entrance doors at a walmart ( which is why I don't go to walmart anymore on black friday especially after the one year I almost got punched in the face by some people and I was just sitting on the out skirts watching cause I didn't even want anything. I just went with my mother in law so she could get a good deal on a camera.) And another inccident happened when 2 guys shot eachother in a toy store! So sad on what the world is coming too!

Well besides all the chaos Thanksgiving is a fun time of the year!

1st meal with a spoon!

Today was her first time eating from a spoon. She really liked it and she did such a good job. I was waiting for her to start spitting it out as soon as it hit her mouth but surprisingly she swallowed it no problem. In fact, she would give us the biggest smile after she finished a bite and as you can see she ate the WHOLE bowl.

Playing glamour

I had to look for a picture of some model hands at work and was looking some up on istock.com. While I was scrolling through the 256 pages of some photos I ran into a few that were of babies that were so cute.. they were sleeping in the photos tho and they made me want to pull out the camera and try some cute shots of Elysa while she was sleeping.

Finally when she fell asleep I set everything up and set her done and for the FIRST time EVER she decided she liked the camera and gave me some really really darn cute photos to work with... I like em better then if she were sleeping!

I Love You!

I was so amazed when Devin sent me this. He captured it on his cell phone.

Its not the video that's amazing listen closely... Yeah.... that ACTUALLY is Elysa

saying  "I Love You" back. It's almost clear as a bell -huh-. Wow  at only 2 1/2 months old , 

we have an Einstine for a daughter!

Dallas lost :(

Elysa is now officially a football fan. Not only did she cry when I took her away from watching football with her grandpa and her daddy but when grandpa announced to her 4 different times that the Dallas Cowboys lost her little sad lip popped right out! I wish I could have gotten a better video but I was laughing so hard. To think she actually understood and was sad that the Dallas lost haha!

Elysa is so blessed ;) More so we are even more blessed to have her. She is our little angel and it was so exciting to have her daddy bless her. I love how little ones bring families together. It's always wonderful to have all your family together even if just for a day.

The Sad Lip

We've been trying to keep Elysa up a little later than she normally does so that
she'll sleep all the way through the night. But as you can see she just gets so tired
and she does the cutest little cry and she does our favorite thing of hers "The Lip".

HaLoWeEn!!

We had a fun Halloween. We all dressed up which surprised me cause Devin usually never likes to dress up. He decided to be Peter Petrelli from Heros. I just played it safe with a kitty Elysa was going to be a butterfly; Devin had a plan for next year that I would be Laya he would be Hons Solo and Elysa would be an Ewok. While I was out shopping I found a costume that looked just like a little Ewok and it was 75% off so we just couldn't resist. She ended up being an Ewok and a cute one she was. We didn't have enough time to look around for a Laya and Hons Solo costume since it was the day before Halloween so we went with what we had

planned on being before.

At 4:30 we met with Devins family and went trick-o-treating. Some ppl didn't like that we, Me and Devin, were trying to use Elysa's cuteness to get 

candy too haha, we promise we were going to save it for her till next year when she could eat it.. well....... ;)After we carved pumkins at Grandma's 

and Grandpa's. Even Elysa had a pumkin. Mines the ghost and her's is supposed to say "BoO" I sorta carved it wrong :)

All Dressed up

bebe girl

Doesn't she look so cute. I can't believe how big she is getting. She smiles so much more I LOVE IT. Its the most gratifying thing having your little one smile and acknowledge you. The best is when she is wakes up at night crying and as soon as she sees her mommy and daddy she'll stop crying and get the biggest smile on her face like "i knew you'd come". She loves to be loved and we love to love her :)

Cabbage Patch baby

The first thing everyone notices on Elysa is "those cheeks!". They say she looks just like a cabbage patch baby.

   My mom went to a yard sale on Saturday and happen to find a cabbage patch baby, she just had to get it for Elysa.  After she bought it she noticed what the Cabbage Patches name was:

What are the odds that it would be the same! Spelled different but the same. What else was funny was that the little doll was a butterfly and I happen to get Elysa a butterfly costume for Halloween before my mom even found the doll. WOW!

Thumb?

uh oh we have a thumb sucker! We finally got her a mobile and she just loves it. She hears you winding it up and knows its going to start spinning and singing for her so she gets the biggest grin on her face. It also helps her to doze off and when there's no pluga plug around in goes the thumb.. for now it's cute right? :)

Johnny Jump Up

We ordered her a Johnny jump up cause she is such a kicker and we figured she would love this. My mom said it was my favorite when I was younger.

  As soon as it arrived we hooked it up. She's still a little small for it and we had to stuff the sides with a blanket so she didn't flop around in it. Once we got her situated she started hoping around I had a hard time getting pictures of her cause she wouldn't stop spinning!

 I decided it's got to be one of my favorite toys of hers, if you can see why :)

Budda Belly

       

        Doesn't she just look so content.
Boy does she have a belly on her haha, but 

she sure is cute. She had just eaten, if you couldn't tell.

All In A Day

What a day we had. It all started out with Elysa's first day to church. She looked so cute in her little dress. She was such a good girl at church. She was awake and alert the whole time. It happened to be the primary program that day and she just loved hearing all the little kids singing. Singing is one of her favorite things to hear. Devin always sings her the cutest nursery songs and she gets a smile on her face everytime and you can tell she is listening so intently. At the end of Sacrament she started to fuss and thats when disaster stuck. We'll just say we had to run home and bathtime was NOT an option :).After a refreshing bath for all of us, haha, we decided to head down to 1st dam and feed the ducks. She loved being outdoors and the weather was so nice. As you can tell her little hat wasn't so little on her and didn't do to much on protecting her from the sun hehe but she still looked so cute in it.

After feeding the ducks we went to GREAT grandma's and grandpa's house and had hamburgers and hot dogs and sat outside and just enjoyed the weather. AFTER THAT we went to grandma and grandpas and played Wii Mario Kart literally from 6-11 p.m. We tuckered Elysa out as well as ourselves. I have never seen her so dead tired before. She didn't even budge when we put her in her car seat to head home. What a day!

Snoring with Daddy

FINALLY!!

Finally! I have a blog! ha ha.. Not only was it difficult trying to accomplish when I have a little girl that always wants my attention * which, of course, is a good thing and I really don't mind :) * but for some reason it just didn't want to work for me. I kept getting error messages and things weren't working but FINALLY here it is.. my own blog!

  So as you can tell I have a little girl now. She is SUCH a blessing. You always hear people say that when they have kids but you never really understand it until you have one of your own. I just lover her so much and it just makes you appreciate everyone, especially your husband he is so cute with her!

  She is now 1 month and 1 day old! She is growing so fast already! Its so hard too because I want her to be older so that we can go hiking, biking, camping, and I can't wait until we can coach her in soccer

:) 

* no we aren't going to force her to play.... we'll just make sure everything revolves around soccer so that she'll want to play... haha*  but at the same time I want her to stay little forever. She is so cuddly and I just love it. She is starting to smile for real now and Devin is so cute with her, he really knows how to get her to smile big. It will be so nice when she holds them longer than a split second and when I can actually get them on camera, I swear she knows right when to stop and thats right before the flash goes off haha, I'm just not quick enough I guess.