May 2007 Update

BFF

Ellie has a new best friend, Jayda. When I was 12 my friend Teresa moved in down the street. Other than being able to laugh for hours about rubber chickens, etc., I don't think we had too much in common other than our senses of humor. Thank goodness, because now she has a daughter that is 1 month younger than Ellie and they are adorable together. Well, we think so -- I'm not so sure that's what any of the bugs that they terrorize think. I swear there was a big stink bug that almost lost its mind with two toddlers screaming and jumping all around it. Anyway, I'm glad I'm back here to hang out with her again -- tsa calls it "tsa & kristine - part 2, the mommy years" Love it. Slide, Mommy, Slide!

Another fun thing we just started is playgroup at the park. Ellie is getting so much better on the toys and I'm ALMOST ready to let her play on them without being scared she'll walk right off the side. I almost lost my mind one day when she decided to go down all the big slides by herself without me knowing. I barely glimpsed her pushing off to go down, I started to yell and run and by the time I got there she had hopped off the slide on her own and ran back to do it again. There were lots of other moms and dads laughing at me that day.This is the view from our park. We live about 10 mins (walking)/2 mins(driving) away at the bottom of the hill.

CSI:Pocatello
Here is Ellie doing her new fave thing -- having her body outlined with chalk. Or sometimes just a hand or foot, but the fave is definately the full body outline. She begs us to do this. And as a result our back patio looks like a really grisly crime scene -- probably 10 dead toddler-body outlines out there right now. Bear Lake

Last weekend my brother Tony & his family came up from Vegas for a weeklong vacay. The first stop was a cabin in Bear Lake. They invited the rest of the fam to come up for Saturday, so we took a little drive down there. It was fun just being up in the hills away from it all, quiet . . . slow. We played a fun game "Crack the Case" and hung out. Later in the afternoon we went down to a private country club and swam in their pool (much warmer than the ice-water of bear lake). This is Ellie and her cousin, Maddy.Bear World

The next place we stopped by was Bear World up by Rexburg. Some crazy person bought lots of acreage up there and decided to keep 50 grizzly bears there and charge people $ to drive through. I think a lot of the bears are used in movies and when they aren't movie stars they live here. Anyway, they also have a petting zoo with yeilded much better pictures. While we were driving through the bears it was raining pretty good so all my pics turned out crappy. At the end was the zoo with all the animals roaming free where we got the better pics. From the zoo is where I got the pics of the bears behind the fence. The zoo was way cool, it had wild turkeys, baby goats, huge pigs, ducks, chickens, geese, a peacock, and a moose. Ellie, Misc.

About a year ago I posted a "Daddy's Girl" blog with a pic. Well, this is this year's edition. You can't see her face but I love being able to see those adorable toes from the back.Here is Ellie in her uncle James' white hat. He came home from his mission in Pennsylvania about a month ago. So Ellie is kindof meeting him for the first time -- but she loves him already. Her fave bit she's learned from him is yelling "peace out" at everybody. It's cute the first time but gets a little old. I am SO SO SO glad that Ellie loves play dough. To be able to have an activity where she's contained and entertained for the least bit of time is . . . well, awesome!