Teri Had a Little Lamb

A few weeks ago we got a lovely box of hand-me-down clothing from Ellie's cousin Ainsley. To our delight, there was a couple of very cute Halloween shirts that we thought would fit Ellie for the upcoming holiday. One day, not long after, Brad was getting Ellie dressed and pulled out an orange Halloween shirt and asked Ellie if she wanted to wear it. With a big grin on her face she said "Halloween!" Ok. So, how does she pick up on these things? We had hardly even talked about Halloween, but I guesss she just knew she would love this holiday. And she does. She loves her Halloween shirts, she loves loves loves "punkins", she loves coloring Halloween pictures, she loves learning new Halloween words, and of course she loves Halloween candy. She however does not love her costume so much. I found a very cute idea online of how to make a cute little lamb costume, so I went to work. It really only costed me about $6 to make the costume which was just great with me. It turned out so cute, in my opinion, but Ellie didn't care. As soon as I got it on her, the first time, she started tearing the cotton balls off! There was seriously cotton ball carnage after the first fitting. Well, we've worn it a few times since, and she is at least tolerating it now despite the missing cotton balls in some places. We are love seeing Ellie really experience all the fun things about this Holiday. It is so much fun.

The infamous lamb costume. She's super cute in it. And our pumpkins don't look half bad sitting next to her either.

There's Teri and her little lamb. Ever since we put the pumpkins on the stairs at the beginning of the month, Ellie favorite game when we're outside is towalk up the steps and "count" the pumpkins in toddler fashion, you know "one, two, five, ten". She is getting better though. She also just enjoys a good sit next to her pumpkin friends. Her other favorite pumpkin related past time involves her attempting to move them while straining to say "heavy heavy heavy" the whole time. Her attempts are never very successful.

How Ellie occupied her time while we finished carving pumpkins (it's kind of gruesome when you think about it a bit)

It took a while to finish

The first thing Ellie did when we cut open her pumpkin was take the lid and start chewing on it. I guess it's cold, and she is teething. It was just funny. She wouldn't put it down. She also, just in general, has an obsession taking off the jack-o-lantern lids and putting them back on.

And here's cute cousin Ainsley at Grandma and Grandpa's Halloween party. She makes a good bumble bee.

A few weeks ago

A few weeks ago, Brad was lucky enough to receive an Ipad 2 as part of a class he is taking in pharmacy school. He has actually been using an Ipad since he started pharmacy school last year (which he highly recommends for graduate school, by the way). And as much as Brad loves his Ipad, who wouldn't give up an Ipad for an Ipad 2. So guess who got the hand-me-down? Well, if you didn't guess, I did. Unfortunately blogger does not play nice with an Ipad, so that combined with our slowly dying laptop means I have been super bad at doing anything on the blog. Now, I know few people actually read this blog, so it really doesn't matter in that respect, but it is the only semblance of journal keeping that I currently do, so I have to keep it at least somewhat updated so I don't feel overly guilty for my lack of keeping our own family history. So there you have it. You probably don't care, but that is why I have not blogged.

A few weeks ago (a few less weeks ago than the above few weeks ago) Brad had a week long fall break. Can we say "GLORIOUS" !?! Yes, it was glorious. I unfortunately still had to work most of the week, but we did get to take a day trip to Salt Lake as a family. The real reason for the trip was to ride the train. Ellie is a lover of trains. Probably largely due a couple of choo choo train toys given to her by Grandpa Winter and a fun song we sing with Grandma Christensen. Anyway, we rode the train down to Salt Lake. At the train station where we got on the train, there was a buffalo statue. These buffalo statues are in random places throughout Utah, and are usually painted in a unique way. This one was black. Pretty boring. I know. But she was mesmerized. And ever since she love to say the word buffalo. Except she just says it so cute, more like "bufa whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa." She just doesn't know when to stop the whoa whoa whoa part, and it is darling. That has probably become the most memorable part of the train riding trip. Who knew the memory we would make would have almost nothing to do with trains at all.

Along with the train ride, Brad did lots of work on the yard. It is looking so much better this year than it did last year, so it is slowly becoming what we want it to be. We loved having him home for the week. And now, there are 6 more weeks of class left in the semester, so we are on the downward slope of the semester, and are anxiously awaiting quite a long break. Which will, of course, be lovely.

These piles are some of the fruits of Brad's yard work. More work! Oh, and along with chopping and pruning, Brad also pulled up a lot of the remnants of our very fruitful garden with the help of his friend Mikey. There were many a squash that we did not eat, so Mikey and Brad took this as an opportunity to make some great compost. They chopped up the squash and other dying veggies with by throwing them at eachother and then slicing them with a machete. Boys.

Ellie having fun working in the yard with Dad.

Just a cute picture of my two favorite people.