Hanging out with Elliott and Congrats for 65 years of marriage!

Josh and Meg are in Mexico for a 9 day trip.  We've had Elliott for a week now.  She's been such a well behaved and easy kid for us.  Here she is helping me blow out the candle on my Birthday pie.

Here's some of the great gifts, cards and food people gave me that day!

She even wakes up happy!

Here she is helping Uncle Jonathan play his great new game.  For some reason she got very sad partway through the first session of conference and needed the binky.  Her only melt down of the week.

Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.

Probably my favorite part of her stay with us has been having her fall in love with her "Papa".  The first thing she says when she gets up in the morning, is "Where's Papa"?

Jonathan and I took her to McDonalds for lunch today.

She really liked the kid seats she could reach the table from.

She liked the toddler slide, but really wanted to go in the big kid's slide.

Luckily Uncle Jon is small enough and nice enough to help her.

There they are almost to the slide.

Here she comes!

And Uncle Jon even made it down.  Jonathan said that the little girl in the picture lead them through the tunnels and narrated the whole way.

Josh and Meg get back late tomorrow night.  We get a day to visit the Francises!!  Oh and I have to mention that its my parent's 65th anniversary today!  They are so cool!  I'd better add a picture of them!

Here they are with a few of their 182 descendants!

One more day!

So I had an amazing April Fool's Day!  I got to see Jack, Steph and Jamison one more time AND..

Jack and Steph left Jamison with me for the whole afternoon while they went to lunch and visited some of Steph's family.  He is adorable!

AND..

Mondays I'm also tending Elliott, so I got to see these 2 interact.

They like some of the same things.  Elliott likes to change from trying to mother him to..

trying to be a baby like him.  She wanted her blankie to  hold and her sippy cup just like Jamison.

They made some beautiful music together.

Jamison wants to be just like his daddy and beat Jonathan in the old school Smash Brothers.

Elliott trying out her parents' scuba equipment.  They stayed here last night and left for Mexico early this morning.

I did manage one family shot before Jack and Steph left last night. 

Here's Elliott back from Meg's sister-in-law's house today.  In case you check Meg, she's eating and sleeping and sweet as ever!  Kelli didn't want to give her up.  She gets her back when I work at the temple next Tuesday, but she's all our's until then!

Easter Fun!

Jack and Steph came for some of her family gatherings for Easter.  They came by to see us last night!

Elliott is very nice to Jamison.  He is almost as big as her now.

Grandpa took Elliott out to play.

Elliott was showing Jamison tricks with Grandma's weird toys.

Today Elliott came and showed us her cute Easter outfit. She tried using the Nintendo 64 we found on KSL.com yesterday.

Here's the cuties watching Super Y yesterday.  Jack and Steph will be back and I'll try to get better pictures of the 2 cousins tomorrow!

A hodgepodge of updates and stuff

Jonathan really did like his ice cream pie from Cold Stone, I promise. 

Yup, this closet was the last part of the basement project!  Nice work Richard!

We now have a play room and...

An extra bedroom!

Yesterday we had 8 deer in the backyard.

They didn't like getting their picture taken.  They look healthier than the deer that visited us last year.

Poor little Elliott is sick again!  Last week it was a UTI, this week its an eye infection and a sinus infection. 

We rushed Jonathan's cake and ice cream after hsi birthday dinner last night..

so Elliott could run to Kid Care and get started on another antibiotic!  Poor Meg!

Good news is that today Elliott is happy and feeling quite a bit better!  She loves to play with the bunnies, eggs and baskets we have out for Easter.  She's sharing her strawberries with them and let Buzz and Woody each hold an egg.  She is such a sweetie!

My colorful and fun Uncle Mel died on Friday.  His 10 children and his wonderful wife, Aunt Rosemary will miss him!  I remember him for his great jokes, his Rook playing skills and his great love for his wife; "Dolly". I'll miss you Uncle Mel!

19 years of life!

So Jonathan had a shower at midnight and went to bed with wet hair, can you tell?  Here he is opening his birthday presents this morning!

He wanted red vans, but these were as close as I could find in his size.

His great friend Charity came over and brought him this awesome pokemon/little ponies shirt.  She is pretty cool!  We are too full from dinner to do the ice cream pie yet. 

We'll have his family birthday dinner on Sunday and then dinner at Grandma's on Monday!
 He is one loved boy!

Elliott loves babies!

We weaseled our way into tending the twins while Amanda took Dex to gymnastics.  Elliott love these babies.  And we were watching Toy Story, so she was one happy girl!

We followed Amanda's instructions and rotated the babies through tummy time, sitting in the chair, and sittiing in the jump activity seat.

Elliott loves Dex's toy room.  That's a Donatello face mask around her neck.

Miles likes tummy time less than Elinore does.

He does love the activity seat though.  Elliott loved it when he was in it, too.

Elliott loved siting and coloring.  In the background you can see the cute project Amanda started when she was on bed rest; the alphabet painted on the wall turned out so cute!

Elinore loving the activity seat!

I had Elliott sit between the babies while the were eating.  She kept saying "hi babies".

Here she's waving to them, too.

She couldn't resist patting Miles head.  Notice the cute stripes Amanda painted on wall while on bed rest.

Elliott loves playing with Dex, too.  We did get a couple of hours with him before gymnastics.  She really enjoys those babies though!