Good News + Bad News

Good news:

• I have our Year in Review letters printed out and ready to go out with our Christmas cards!
• We made it home from Seattle safely- although we were beginning to wonder with the traffic at Woodburn and a blown out diaper we couldn't get changed til we were out of there!
• We had a great, tasty Thanksgiving at dad and Laurie's house
• We get to spend Christmas in Oregon this year
• Hopper is the newest addition to the Clark household- and he sure is cute! --he had lived down in Cali- and was ~10-15 mins away from being euthenized when the fires hit. A rescue team went in to get the dogs, and Hopper was one of them. He then made his way up to Washington with an adoption crew and dad saw him at PetSmart and just *had* to have him. He has these long spindly legs- I like to call him Pip or Spidey. :D He's half chihuahua and half mini greyhound- so he has the body of a chihuahua, and the legs of a greyhound. He is awesome!

Not so great news:

• Sweet Honey pup has cancer :(
• My back tweaked out while we were in Washington and it hurts like crazy- I haven't decided to go to the doctor or not. With mass amounts of ibuprofin, I can keep it in check. I know that last time I messed up my back, it just took time to heal. I have a feeling this is the same deal- it just doesn't feel good, and makes me pretty grumpy.
  
• Drew's student loan payments start this month- which is making me thankful I have a job so my income can go toward them!
• We miss family :/

So, things go up and down around here, but we're still chugging along. Thankful for the great friends and family we have in our lives, and grateful for our jobs and our little girl.

And as promised- HERE is the TURKEY!!!

Hunter gave Elliekins LOTS of kisses! She didn't mind. In fact, she LOVED to pull on his ears. The poor dog was mauled but he kept coming back for more!


I don't remember what she was looking at, but this is a pretty awesome look!




Chillin with her goggie!


And here's some other random pictures from the past week or so:



Michele put this together to show the similarities between Elisabeth and me. Pretty awesome!


Happy girl!


We used the napkin as one of those lame scarfs!


Showing you her awesome new Legs she got!!! She's all dressed up for the Holy War game! (Utah Vs. BYU for those that aren't aware) :)

I got taggggered!

Here are the rules:

*Open your first photo folder.

*Scroll down to the 10th picture.

(if you dont have 10 in that one, then go to the next folder that does).

*Post that photo and the story behind that photo on your blog.

*Tag 5 friends to do the same.

This is my wee one when she was first born! What a great picture to have for the 10th picture!!!

I tag whoever wants to do it!

The little things

My little one is screaming pretty well today. The thought of teething has crossed my mind, but there aren't any swollen gums or anything. I'm not sure what's up. So, Drew is hanging out with her while I do some catch up time on here.

Today for some reason, even with a sad baby, I am still filled with humbling thanks for so many things in my life. Let me tells you about some of them.

• My sweet Drew that would do anything for me. I definitely got lucky there. He puts up with my crap, and even dishes out some good rants with me.
• My happy, healthy, loving little girl. I was telling Drew yesterday that I didn't understand how I could love someone so much, and no matter what is going on, they are the center of everything. I have become obsessed. I am so eternally grateful to have such a wonderful little baby.

• A safe home. I could leave my door open and unlocked all night long and not have any kind of fear that anything bad would happen. I don't, but I feel that I could, and this is a great comfort in my life.
• I'm grateful to have a job, and for Drew to have a job so that we can afford a lifestyle we worked so hard for, for that last 7.5 years.
• I'm grateful for the gospel in my life, and the joy and peace that it brings to me
  

There are so many others, but those are probably the main ones that come to my mind right away.

I also wanted to talk about Ms Elliecakes. This past week, she has learned to sit for extended periods of time. She still tips, but I think sitting for ~5 minutes is pretty awesome! She has also learned Stranger Danger! This past 1.5 weeks, she has been whining or crying when I drop her off at the sitters house. She has now taken to crying when I leave the room, or if she's ultra attached to Drew for the day, she'll cry when he leaves.

THEN, yesterday, we were at dinner for a friend's birthday and she didn't take to being handed around to all the ooers and ahhhers. In fact, she got so bad that I had run to the restroom and when I got out of the bathroom, there she was, purple faced, screaming in the arms of another friend needing to be consoled. I felt horrible!!! So we sat there and paced around the front of the restaurant and I talked to her to calm her down. That was an interesting experience. And here I was thinking that there wasn't any separation anxiety until around 9 months. Darn kiddo is too aware already! hehehe It is nice to be the one to be able to calm her down though- that's a nice feeling.



Practicing her drinking skillz!


Happy Baby!!


Lovies from Mommy


Skirts are so much fun to play with!


5 Months Old!!!

Oh My Love

I sure love this little munchin to pieces!!! We got to spend the day together because of some unforeseen circumstances in the wee hours of the morning. Elliekins also seemed to have either picked up a cough, or has learned how to fake cough. I haven't decided which.- I didn't feel like taking chances, so we stayed home. :)



Don't you love those eyes?!


She wanted to show you her awesome matching un-skills. I put up two pairs of baby legs for her to choose, and even when I put them in different hands, she still chose these bad boys. So, I humored her by putting them on, and then I took them off! hahaha I feel this is just the beginning


Ellie was so entranced when I was squishing her diaper bag up to put in the trash, so I let her have a gander at it. She was LOVING squishing it and trying to eat it. Don't worry, all supervised ;)


This flower had a fun texture that she wasn't quite sure about to begin with. Within 3 minutes though, it was soaking wet. We call this outfit her Liz Lemon outfit cause she's all lemony yellow!

Lazy Weekend

I caught a cold bug about mid-week this week, and it's running its course rather effectively. I haven't seemed to have gotten Elisabeth sick, but I got Drew sick (sorry) :) So all we've done is gone to the mall to pick up a game doctor thing for one of Drew's scratched game discs and came home. It was pretty uneventful. We've been trying to keep it easy in hopes of kicking this cold a bit faster.

Here's some fun pictures of the last few days while we've been chillin


These pictures always make me laugh. She doesn't have her pj's on all they way cause she likes to play with her toes. She can't play with her toes if they're all cooped up. Elisabeth has also taken a liking to "helping" while we feed her. So every so often, I'll give her a smaller bottle and let her go to town with it. She isn't very good at holding the bottle by herself, and she was more interested in watching the football game, but I guess someday she'll be able to hold a cup :)



She learned this week that she can splash with not just her legs, but her hands as well! It was pretty cute!



I had forgotten about her boppy since I hadn't used it in a while, but I wanted her to practice sitting without puking, so I pulled it down. She really enjoyed rubbing the flowers on her arm rests. (I know we need closet doors....it seems to be an issue everywhere we live...)



If you look really carefully, you can see HAIR - click the pic to enlarge. hahaha


Smiles for mommy before school! I love her happy days :)

Genealogy

My sister has started a finding dead people business. She doesn't have a Ouija board yet, but she says she's legit...

She's found quite of few of our ancestors, and somehow manages to pull a story* or two from many of them as well. She even found pictures from several of them and created a 21 foot long image tree of who's related to who.

*Did you know that one of my relatives got buried alive? True story!

You should go check it out and get her help at finding all your dead peeps, too!!!

http://pasttimesgenealogy.blogspot.com/




(he's not really dead, he just turned into a vampire is all...)

Cooped up

Since our Dr. highly suggested we don't go out and about much, we've become creative. We carved our pumpkins, stood in pumpkins, and sat in pumpkins. It obviously didn't go so well, but we sure got some good giggles from it. I told Drew that Elisabeth is either going to think we're awesome, or be scarred for life by that incident. Either way, we win. ;)





We also decided that since we're not supposed to be going to large, crowded areas (this is all to avoid the flu issues while Elisabeth is still too young to fight it off well enough- and since she's at a babysitters all week, the doc felt that being there was more than enough exposure)



Anyway, we decided a trip to the coast would be a good idea. Wide open spaces, lots of clean, fresh air- it's a win, win situation!


We also had a pink bunny come to our house for Halloween. We got 5 trick or treaters, which was 5 more than last year! I made Ellie hang out in her costume all day! hehehe


I had to let some things go with working 40+ hours a week, and one of those things was knitting hats and gloves for Ellie. We went and bought some instead. I am loving this hat and gloves. I'm excited for them to fit!