Christmas Pictures

Tonight, before we put Ellie in bed, she got to put on her pretty Christmas dress and have her picture taken in front of the Christmas tree. She was pretty excited to sit there and have her picture taken this year, and was mostly cooperative. That's more than we can say for the last couple years! It was sweet, and I'm looking forward to getting the pictures from Costco tomorrow. =D In the meantime, here's one of the reject pictures, before we got all the lighting figured out... she's still pretty adorable, eh?

And when I went over to fix her hair in between shots (because there was much silliness involved, which lead to messed up hair!) we paused for a smile while Leif clicked a shot. Just a sweet little impromptu photo, but I love it!

Hope you all are having a great week before Christmas! Leif is officially off work for a couple weeks, so we are enjoying having him home!

Christmas Lights

Last night just before bed I put Ellie in her pajamas and slippers, got her some chocolate milk and two cookies, wrapped her in a blanket all snug in the car, and put on some Christmas music. Then we went out to look look at Christmas lights in our neighborhood.

We drove around, ooh-ing and aaah-ing, noticing which houses had LOTS of lights, and which only had a few. We voted on which houses were decorated the "best" and had winners in two categories: the MOST lights, and the prettiest/classiest. Here they are...

We stayed close to home, just driving around River Rock, but we had a very nice time. By the time we pulled up the driveway into the garage at home again, this is what Ellie looked like:

Sound asleep, with cookie smeared on her face. I love it.

Ellie's Musical Color Analysis

So a while back I mentioned that Ellie likes her bedtime music because it is "yellow and black." The yellow and black music is Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet. Today Leif was listening to Cloud Cult's Meaning of Eight and Ellie came in saying she didn't like that music. I asked what color it was. She said brown.

She's consistent in saying that Abigail Washburn is black and yellow. I'll have to pay attention and see if Cloud Cult is consistently brown. And ugly. And unpleasant to listen to, according to her. (Though Leif and I both enjoy it.)

There's something silly afoot!

The Gingerman House

Start with a $10 gingerbread house kit from Costco, full of goodies like these:

Okay, a few less of them than there should have been, due to this little sweetie, making her insides a little sweeter...

Add some frosting...

And give the girl some creative freedom...

... some details to plan...

... some Mommy - Daughter time while Daddy took pictures...

And you get a girl who is proud of her handiwork (she decorated pretty much everything you can see in this picture)....

... and a Gingerman House (as Ellie calls it) that looks like this! We're having fun kicking off the holiday season this year!

Mommy-Ellie Movie Moments

Lately Eliana and I have been watching a movie together some evenings. Tonight it was Wallace and Gromit's Grand Day Out. Good coffee (for me), snuggles from the wee one, and excited chatter as Ellie watched the show and told me all about it. Mommy-Ellie Movie Moments are good. =D

Halloween 2009

So... Halloween was a few weeks ago. But Leif promised a recap full of photos, so here it is!

This year I was in no mood to make a Halloween costume. I'm too cheap to buy one (because, who really pays $30 for a costume?!), and Robert wasn't volunteering. =D So I bribed Ellie into wearing one of her existing dress up outfits as a Halloween costume. She chose the purple fairy costume Grammee gave her for Christmas one year. How did I bribe her, you ask? Well, I told her that if she went as a fairy, I would put glitter all over her body and she could be sparkly. Every 3 year old girl's dream! It was perfect.

Of course, when people asked what she was going to be for Halloween, she told them she was going to be a princess with glitter all over her bottom. Eh, close enough.

So I armed myself with some glitter hair spray and Mary Kay Shimmeriffic Body Powder and went to work, making our little dress-up girl into an enchanted fairy. Here she is in all her sparkly glory...

And, in a nice change of pace from most Montana Halloweens, we had a warm day, so Ellie didn't even need to put on a snowsuit to go trick or treating! Since the inside light wasn't cooperating for pictures, Leif and Ellie trekked out to the back yard for a few snapshots. Of course, once the light started cooperating, Ellie stopped, so here's the best of what we got:

And, of course, a couple closeups of the sparkly hair...

Because we got invited to a couple Halloween parties this year, we decided not to have one of our own. I took Eliana to a kids' party at the Palmer-Warner home and she had a great time. She spent half of it playing by herself instead of with the other kids, but she had a great time. =D

After going to the Halloween party, Leif took Eliana and met up with the Richters and Gravings for some trick-or-treating. Ellie was very excited to get to go trick-or-treating with her friends!

After trick-or-treating, Leif took Eliana to another Halloween party while I stayed home and distributed candy to the kids who came by our house.

Ellie got quite a bit of loot, half of which was chocolate or caramel she couldn't have. We had fun separating the candy, though, and she got a few pieces each day from the "pure sugar" stash. She stretched her candy out for a little over a week, which I thought was pretty good!

Rocky Creek Farm

Every Fall we go to Rocky Creek Farm for pumpkins. Because of the early snow and freezing, I wasn't sure we were going to make it this year. Thankfully, though, the weather warmed up the last few days they were open and we made it! Ellie and I went with our dear friends Amber and Josie (who may very well be Eliana's new best friend):

Aren't they cute?? Ellie and Josie are just a few months apart in age and they get along great! They play together twice a week (Amber and I kid-swap so we can get things done!) and it was so fun to see them interacting as they examined the pumpkins...

The girls played on the tire swings and we got to watch the cider press, which was fun!

And, of course, there were lots of pumpkins and squash to look at:

We got to go on a hayride this year, too, even though we weren't part of a large group! I wasn't sure we'd be able to, so that was a fun surprise!

When we got to the pumpkin patch, Ellie took very little time choosing her pumpkin:

This is the winner!

Josie picked a pumpkin pretty quickly, too, though hers was bigger to carry!

Because of the early freeze, the pumpkins had already been brought in for the season, but Pete at Rocky Creek is nice enough to spread pumpkins out in a field for the kiddos to choose from. It makes the experience more fun!

While we were waiting for the hayride to take us back to the barn, Amber got to hold both the pumpkins while the girls used her as a base around which to play tag. That's a good mom!

We enjoyed the hayride back as the girls cradles their pumpkins. There's just something special about picking your own from the pumpkin patch!

This year the farm was quite a bit muddier than in years past, as evidenced by the caked mud on Ellie's boot. It was so muddy we got the car stuck in the mud and had to have assistance getting it out! Here's Eliana, showing off her muddy shoe:

I tried several times to get Eliana to smile for me, but she kept giving me goofy grins, so these are the smiles you have to choose from today:

All in all, it was a wonderful day to head to the pumpkin patch and I'm glad we didn't miss it this year!