Easter Dress

When Robert was here in September, we stopped in a children's store and saw an adorable corduroy dress. It was expensive, so I half-jokingly said to Robert, "Make that for Ellie!"

Well, he did. Not exactly, I'm sure, since he didn't have anything but a rough sketch and his memory to work from, but very similar, and very cute! And thanks to a chilly, rainy day on our visit to Texas, Ellie got to wear it as her Easter dress this year!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Tonight we had a Halloween party at our house. It was mass chaos, really, but it was a lot of fun. 4 families, 8 kids. We had dinner together and then the dads took the kiddos trick-or-treating while us moms stayed back and passed out candy to the kids who stopped by our house. We had a lot of trick-or-treaters this year! I made up 50 goodie bags for the kids and they were all gone in like 45 minutes! Good thing Stephanie brought an extra Costco bag of candy to the party! A glimpse of the mass chaos...

Ellie wore a princess costume made by her Uncle Robert. Isn't she just the cutest little princess ever??

I tried putting some fake hair on her head so she would have some little braids and curls sticking out of the bottom of her princess hat, but she wasn't too keen on the fake hair idea. She was, however, excited about wearing the sparkly white eyeshadow I let her wear for the first time.

She was also excited about dressing up and playing outside with Mommom and Daddy.

Eventually Ellie let Mommy do her hair and put her princess hat on.

After we ate dinner at the party it was time for trick-or-treating! Ellie was ready to go!

Off to go trick-or-treating with Daddy!!

Amazingly, she kept her hat on the entire time they were trick-or-treating. I don't know how many houses they stopped at, but the kids came back with plenty of candy! Here they are heading back to the house...

"Look, Mommom! They gave me CANDY!!"

I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween!

A dress from Uncle Robert...

Last week Eliana received a package in the mail... It was a cute little pink and white dress from Uncle Robert! It went with a hat he had made and sent up earlier this summer. She wore the ensemble to church on Sunday, along with a collar (or "necklace" as she calls it) that I crocheted. (which really did fit and follow the neckline when we took her to church. These photos were taken AFTER and she wasn't in the mood to let me fix it! Or to look at the camera...)

These ain't my momma's feet!

For as much as Eliana is like my mother, she apparently got someone else's feet. She has outgrown most of her size 6 shoes and the new shoes I bought her today are size 7. Wow! I can't believe that at 21 months Ellie is wearing size 7 shoes. Crazy. The saddest part is that I have to finally admit Ellie has outgrown my all time favorite shoes ever. I bought them in size 3, I bought them in size 5, and I admit that I'm tempted to go get them in size 7 now. I just love them. Maybe I should just go and buy them in every other size so she can wear them until she's 10.

Big Girl PJ's

Despite the fact that we are still waking up to fresh snow each morning, it has come to our attention that all of the stores have stopped selling footie pajamas. None. Not at Costco, not at Walmart, not anywhere. So we broke down last night and bought Ellie two piece pj's. Cute little shirts with cute little pants, and no zippers. Size 3T.

Last night she wore a pair. While Leif was getting her ready for bed he told her that these were "big girl jammies" and she decided to be proud of that fact. She stood a little taller and said with a nod, "Big girl pj's." This morning when she woke up she told me again that she was wearing "big girl pj's" and again when it was time to get dressed. She looked so sad when I took off her jammies and put her into real clothes for the day. She pointed at them, nodded, and told me sincerely, "Big girl pj's." It was cute, sweet, and sort of sad. I'm afraid, though, that we may never be able to go back to footie jammies again...

Happy Easter!!

Little Miss Cute Boots

The other morning I was met by this cute little sight:

Of course, when I tried to get a better picture, I was greeted by this response:

Followed by this response!

Do you see the utter destruction she leaves in her wake when she runs away? Yes, it's like having my own personal tornado to clean up after.

I never did get a good picture of her with her boots and PJs, so I finally gave up and got her dressed for the day. Around noon the boots made another debut, accompanied by her umbrella this time:

I only wish I had some puddles for her to jump in. That would have been perfect. I settled for watching her twirl gleefully in the living room instead. She loves her boots and umbrella.

New 'do

Okay... here's today's try on the braids.

And a few favorite pictures I got while I was trying to get pictures of the braids. =D This is her new sweatshirt, too.

(She gives me this look sometimes and I don't really know what it means. I love it, though, because it's so HER.)

(And this is her being silly because I asked her to take the sippy cup out of her mouth.)

And we leave you with a smile from Ellie! Have a great day!

Blizzards, Braids, and Baby duds

Well, I was planning on going into town today to meet someone for lunch and do a little shopping. But I'm looking out the window right now and it's blizzarding. I can't see the road in front of our house, and I can't see our back fence. So I don't think I'll be going into town at all. We'll just stay all snuggled up in our warm little house and enjoy walking around without frozen ice crystals pelting us at high speeds in subzero temperatures. Today might call for some hot chocolate.

The blustery weather also called for Ellie to wear her new sweatshirt today. Yesterday I went to Old Navy because I had too many people tell me I *had* to check out the amazing sale they were having. I'm glad I did! It was a pretty amazing sale (I think it's still going on, too, if you haven't been yet) and I got several things for Ellie and even something for myself! 50% off of the stuff already marked 50% off! I got an ADORABLE cream corduroy dress for Ellie (it has pink stitching details on it, but is in size 3T so I will have to wait to see her in it!) as well as a brown tank top and pink shirt for this summer and the aforementioned cream sweatshirt with little front pocket. She's been putting her hands in that little pocket this morning and running around - she thinks it's funny! I have to agree with her...

For myself I got a brown peacoat. I love it!! It was originally $78 and I got it for $18. Woohooo! I've been wanting a shorter winter coat. Living in Texas I never thought you'd need a variety of coats, but you really do! I have my ski coat, which I wear most of the winter since it is warm and keeps the wind out. Then I have my dress coat - a knee length black wool coat. I also have a light blue fleece to wear on days that I don't need a heavy coat or windbreaker. But I needed something to wear with jeans that looks nice, that isn't too dressy and isn't a full blown parka, but is warm enough to wear on cold days like today. That's my new brown peacoat!

And as for the braids... all of my years practicing braiding those tiny troll dolls' hair (do you remember those little troll dolls that used to be so popular?) has finally paid off. Last night Ellie was sitting in my lap drinking her milk before bed and I got the brilliant idea to try to braid her hair now that it's getting longer. Her hair is SO FINE, but I was able to braid it! Now, I probably won't braid it like this to go out in public... I'll have to wait until I find a suitable way to braid her hair, but we had to take pictures of her first braids!

Ellie's New Dress

On Sunday Eliana wore the new dress Uncle Robert made her for Christmas. When I pulled it out of the closet, she looked at it and exclaimed, "Robert! Robert!" I was pretty amazed that she remembered it was from him, especially since I'm not very good at reminding her of people we don't get to see very often. But she did remember! After lunch (when we'd taken the dress off her so it wouldn't become a mac-n-cheese victim) she brought the dress to me again saying, "Robert!" So here she is in her Sunday finery:

When I was trying to get her picture, she wouldn't stand still, so I had to sit her in the chair. Then she sat just fine, but wouldn't look at the camera. So I finally resorted to the age old trick of having her say "CHEESE!" It worked! Sort of... The picture above is cute, but the one below is pretty exemplary of the face I got in most of the pictures.

I did not get a picture of the back of the dress, but I will sometime. The engineer in my brother comes out in the most delightful ways and the back of this dress is one of them. He designed it in such a way that you don't have to fight with a toddler to hold still to get the perfectly tied bow in the back. In fact, the bow is fixed (and perfect, at that) and to tighten it all you have to do is pull the streamers to cinch the dress. It's ingenious! And beautiful... Thank you, Uncle Robert!

Ellie's New Boots

For Christmas Eliana got these kitty rain boots from Mommom and Poppy. She loves them and she has now mastered putting them on:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Merry Christmas,
from our family to yours!!

Snow Day!

We woke up this morning to a fresh blanket of snow! I got Ellie all suited up and Corinne came over for a snowy play date! It was cute to see the girls together in the snow.


At some point they decided they wanted to swing. They really enjoyed themselves in the swings, but I had to make a note to self: Babies in snowsuits and snowboots go into swings better than they come out of them. I'll have to think twice about letting Ellie swing on a snowy day again if she's in full snow gear. But oh, how she enjoyed swinging!


The fun in the snow more or less ended when the girls realized it was easier to walk on the bare gravel than it was to tromp through the snow laden grass. So they sat on the stoop and played with rocks until we decided it was time to go in.

Dressed for a Montana Fall!

Isn't this the cutest little outfit from Mommom?? It's perfect for a chilly Fall morning here in MT! This morning Ellie got to play outside for a little bit before we went into town and she loved every minute of it.


Look at her run! She has been a bundle of energy all day and is running around the house pushing a laundry basket right now! Tomorrow will be our first trip to the Children's Museum since she learned how to run, so I'm sure she will have fun joining the other kids as they chase eachother around.

Little Princess?

So yesterday morning Eliana was playing in her room and I was sitting at the kitchen table, when she toddled out, walked over to me, and put something on my lap. It was the little tiara headband she got for her birthday from Grammee. So I put it on her head and she happily toddled away and went back to her room to play. I guess she just wanted to wear it! Silly girl.

4th of July

This was Eliana's first 4th of July and she was decked out in red, white, and blue from head to toe. We gave her this little flag and she was cute as can be, waving it around like a miniature patriot.



We hiked up to Ousel Falls in Big Sky, where Ellie entertained us with her silliness. She waved and chatted and was all around adorable at the falls. She even took to playing peek-a-boo with hats for Poppy and trying to distract us so she could sneak off the picnic table. She makes us laugh and this day was no different.

We intended to eat a picnic dinner after the hike, but decided to eat before we left, since the fireworks didn't start until after 10:00. The hike and fireworks show were enough celebration, though, and it was just right, even without the picnic.


We watched the fireworks from the Meadow Pavilion in Big Sky. The show was slated to start at 10:15, with a blues band providing the entertainment leading up to the display. The fireworks didn't actually begin until 10:45, but once they did it was worth the wait. They were beautiful!

I really wasn't sure how Eliana would do with the fireworks. First, her bedtime is at 8:00 and this was VERY late for her to be up! Second, most small children I know are scared of the fireworks. Not Ellie, though. She started the event by bobbing happily with the music (that's right... my year old daughter dances to "Play That Funky Music, White Boy") and once the fireworks began she just laid in Mommom's lap in awe. She even said "OOooh" a few times. She loved it. When the finale was over, she looked at me and clapped. It was a great first 4th of July.


Leif took 450 pictures that day, so there are bound to be more to show you. But these give a pretty good overview of the day and how we celebrated it. Hope you had fun celebrating the 4th too!