Fun Filled Week

So, I go through phases where I take lots of pictures and then I don't take any for a month. Well, I have some pretty cute pictures that I wanted to share from this past week.

Aaron went to church with us on Easter morning, but he missed out on the Easter baskets. And then he left that evening after dinner and was gone all week for some training in Havre. We kept plenty busy this week, but we still miss him when he is gone.

Penelope had such a great time and was so excited when she saw the baskets in the living room. I was only able to get one picture of both of the girls looking at the camera, but Eleanor looked confused and Penelope looked like she was off in daisy dream land. At least in this picture they are both smiling, even if they are not looking at the camera.Penelope loved her chocolate bunny. She bit the ears off and then filled the bunny with her jelly beans and other small candies and then just carried it around shaking it. Penelope in her "Easter dress." She was posing, but absolutely refused to look at the camera.See what I mean about not looking at the camera?Aaron insisted on getting a picture of Eleanor and I,

but then wouldn't let me take one of him. I love Eleanor's smile.

Her whole face lights up when she smiles and I love the little eye wrinkles.

On Wednesday we had a fun birthday party for my friend LaDonna. We found the largest balloon known to man and it had the sweetest little blue fringe thing on it and, of course, Penelope loved it. (So did LaDonna.)

We had the party at Colleen's house and this is her dog Chester. Penelope loves Chester, but what is funny is that Eleanor loves Chester even more. She would lean toward Chester and kick her legs and try to grab at him. I wish I had gotten a picture of that. I couldn't believe how much she loved him.

We made LaDonna wear this tiara the whole time. Well, not the whole time. Penelope confiscated it toward the end; after all she is the princess.

Eleanor is doing really well with solids, but she really likes to blow raspberries with it too. I have decided that I need a full body bib, gloves and goggles when feeding Eleanor.

She thinks it is fun though.

This morning we walked down to story time at the library with Eleanor in the stroller and then after the library we walked to the park. Well, on our way back, Penelope started crying for the "car seat" so I had to squeeze both girls in the stroller and push them up the steepest hill ever created. The girls thouroughly enjoyed it.

Newspaper

My friend, Melanie, writes front page for our newspaper here in Shelby, so Penelope has been in the paper quite a bit. Melanie was with us when we were at Lisa's house dyeing Easter eggs and so she witnessed Penelope's "cracking" of the egg. Anyway, she used it in one of her articles this week. Check it out at http://www.goldentrianglenews.com/articles/2009/04/15/shelby_promoter/news/news2.txt

One of the pictures I have posted below was also in the newspaper, but it is not on the website. It is so fun to see all of these pictures of Penelope in the paper and someday she will have fun looking back at the articles I have clipped.

Easter Eggs

We went to my friend Lisa's house the other night for dinner and to dye eggs for Easter. Penelope had a great time coloring on the eggs, plopping them into the dye and retreiving them with a spoon. She was totally into it and more than one boiled egg met its fate at the hands of Penelope. Surprisingly enough though, the egg she slammed with all of her force onto the floor escaped unscathed. She evidently was trying to "crack" the egg open like Mommy does, but she is lacking a little in the finesse department, so her "crack" was more of a "whop." We all got a good chuckle out of that.

Righty or Lefty? Still don't know.

PlopEleanor had a great time too. Most of the time she was standing in my lap jumping away; excited to have so much to look at, but she also tried to eat one of the eggs in my hand. She thought that was great fun, but she couldn't quite get her hands out of the way enough to get the egg in her mouth. Good thing too, because she probably could have defeated the only egg that survived Penelope. :)

Fun

Eleanor is almost 5 months old now. She is growing up so fast. She is rolling over, giggling, trying to sit. . . just so much fun. She is such a happy baby. She just smiles and smiles.

Here is Eleanor's first attempt at real food.

Grandma Cox came to help Janet with "the boys" while John was on a detail, and we were able to spend some time with her too. Grandma, Janet and the boys came to visit and we spent a couple of hours at the park and then we made some sugar cookies. Penelope had a great time. I wish I would have done a longer video of her making cookies. She was so serious and she stayed and helped me long after the boys lost interest. She is wearing the apron that Grandma made her for Christmas and she kept it on the rest of the day too.

Put frosting on the cookies? What a waste!

Andrew, Nicholas and Alex

We have a lot of trips planned for this year. We are going to Utah the first week of May for Morgan, Katie (Morgan's wife) and Stephanie's graduation from Utah State. We just decided it would be a great time to see the fam. Then we are going to Seattle in mid-May with Dan and JaNeil and fam for a PT continuing education course and lots of fun. Aaron has the boys weekend in August with his brothers and Dad and I am hoping to go to Vernal with him for a few days to see the family there. And then we are going to Hawaii in October. I am so excited for Hawaii. My parents got us a condo on Kauai with their timeshare; a gift for our 10 year wedding anniversary. They also offered to watch our kids while we are gone, or my Mom will go with us to watch the kids if we decide to take them with us. Now I just need to get some tan in a bottle, since that is the only way I will ever get tan. Too bad they don't sell skinny in a bottle. :)

Song bird

Here are a couple of songs that Penelope has learned from her awesome nursery leader. Penelope loves to sing and dance and it is rare that she actually performs for us while the camera is on. Usually when we pull the camera out, she runs over to us and says "I see it, I see Penelope." So, I hope you enjoy our little song bird as much as we do.

One funny little tidbit. The other day we were in the grocery store and all of the sudden Penelope busts out singing "marry the mole" at full volume. It is a song from Thumbelina and she hadn't seen the movie for about a month, so I don't know what brought it to her mind, but it was hilarious, especially since one of the employees started laughing too. Kids are great.