Indianapolis Museum of Art

I'm not sure I would have ever visited the IMA if it wasn't for scrubmates. We took a little tour of the upper floor (slightly difficult with little kids - there was a lot of "Don't touch that" going on). After, the kids got to create a piece of art themselves. So fun!

Ice Skating with YW

A few YW...notice the leaders are shorter then the girls.

The Leaders

With J.R's schedule so nuts sometimes we have to combine family time with my YW commitments. Elliot loves the girls so it works!

Who knew Elliot would like ice skating so much? He laughed the whole time. I think he thought it was so funny that he couldn't stand up by himself. Understandably he didn't last long because I think his little arms were getting sore from us holding him up. But, overall it was a great little outing.

The YW in our ward are so fun! I'm learning so much from those girls! It was a major old age shock when I first was put in the YW. I think I still felt like I was 18, but then quickly realized I am actually much older then that now. It took a minute to adjust, but I feel like I've found my place and LOVE my girls so much!

My sweet Elliot - Journal stuff

This is such a precious time for us. We love reading before bed. Elliot especially loves the books that have songs that go with them. Like, the Clifford book and Down by the Station. He sings along right on pitch. We play a game where I sing and he tries to match my pitch and he's really quite good at it! He must have a few musical genes in him. :0)

A few Elliot updates:

He loves to play with his train set. He got a new battery powered engined named "Lady" It never gets old hearing him say her name. He can't says his R's or his L's. "Wheahs wady?" "Go wady go!" "You can do it wady" "Good job wady." I LOVE IT! Sometimes I think about hiding her just to hear him ask where she is. It's a guaranteed smile on mommy's face.

He also loves dinosaurs! He watches Ice Age Dinosaurs all the time. (I don't love the movie - some lines are not that appropriate, but right now he's still young enough that he doesn't have a clue what they're talking about and he usually only pays attention when Rudy or the TRex is on) It's also the cutest thing to hear him say TRex. "Twexss" He seems to hold out the S sound a little longer then necessary. He has a sticker board and always chooses the TRex stickers to put on when he's especially good. Then he always counts how many he has so far. "one, two, fwee, fouw, five, six, seben. Seben Twexsess!" LOVE IT!!! Yet another smile all over my face.

He's loves to count EVERYTHING! He counts 1-9 then starts again at 4. Not sure where that pattern started because he used to count 1-4 then 6-10 (skipping 5 for some reason) I guess we drilled 5 so much that he's forgotten about 10 now. I'm not sure? With a little coaxing he'll give 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 a try too, usually without much success though. At least he's trying. :)

He's still the pickiest eater on earth. Right now the only thing he'll eat is fries and pancakes. He hasn't had a pancake binge for a while so I guess it's about time to rotate back to it. I'm sure we'll be back to chicken nuggets before too long. I wonder when hot dogs and macaroni and cheese are going to come into play?? This is one area where he didn't get any of my genes. I love food.

He's sings along to anything he hears. Even to chimes ringing outside on a windy day. He loves to stop and listen to them then try to match their tones. He sings along to the radio even if he's never heard the song...most songs have a short repeating phrase so by the second chorus he knows enough to belt it out. He knows every tune and almost every correct word to all the Disney & Nickelodeon cartoons.He tells me to sing "do do do" if I don't know the words or if he's making up his own tune and he want's me to give it a try. What a cutie pie!!!

We're still working on the potty thing. We talk about it all the time and occasionally he'll want to jump up on the seat and give it a good effort, but no results just yet. I'm not opposed to being patient. Potty training scares me.

My heart just aches when I think of how much a love this kid. He fills my day with such joy. Even when we have a grumpy day or things just aren't going quite right, it doesn't take much to remember what a blessing he is to me!

I LOVE YOU ELLIOT!

Baby it's cold INSIDE

Thankfully it was a rather warm weekend because Saturday night our heater quit working and didn't come back on till Monday morning. J.R. was on call Sunday and I have NO IDEA how to manage a heating system so Elliot and I spent the day wrapped in several layers thinking warm thoughts. By that evening when J.R. got home and we had exhausted all our ideas, we decided to call in a maintenance guy. He said he would be over around 9pm, but didn't call till about 12:30am and then said he couldn't be there for another 30 minutes. 1AM??? Seriously??? (there was a huge Colts football game that day so I have suspicions that was what held him up) We were long gone asleep by then so we decided to ride out the night. We were prepared with tons of blankets and fully dressed in ski gear. Elliot slept in the middle to add to the body heat. Luckily because of the weather it wasn't as cold a night as we were prepared for. J.R. checked the temp Monday morning and it had only dropped to 60 degrees. But still, that's pretty darn cold. Then, by some random miracle the heat just switched on. We hadn't touched it all night and Monday morning it just decided it had tortured us enough and switched on. Hummmm....weird! We decided not to recall the service guy and just wait it out for a few days. It's been going strong all week. Thank heavens, because the temp outside dropped dramatically this week.

Side story:

When we were waking up Monday morning Elliot was doing the morning ritual of trying to drag me out of bed to play with toys and watch cartoons. He handed me my glasses, phone and started pulling off my blankets one by one. After pulling back the last blanket he stood back as if in shock and said, "WOW, that's a lot of blankets! I'm gonna count them. 1,2,3,4,5,6. 6 Blankets!" It was hilarious. He just couldn't believe his eyes, as if it was the craziest thing he'd ever seen. I couldn't stop giggling and was then more then happy to get up and play with him. He's so funny and cute!

After that cold weekend I'm much more sincere during prayers when I thank Heavenly Father for a WARM house. :0) We're so blessed!

Outlet Oops!

I thought I had made it past the "let's put things in the outlet" phase without an incident.....until today. As we were organizing our basement Elliot found a kite. He took it upstairs. Harmless...or so I thought. Next we hear him saying "uh oh, uh oh" over and over. We ran up and sure enough he decided to take apart the kite then stick a piece into the outlet. Seriously?? We caught him pulling on the piece he had stuck in that apparently was not coming back out. The tear in his eye will tell you we had a little chat in time out...mostly because it scared me to death. Thank heavens the piece was plastic and didn't shock him. It took J.R. a while to figure out how to wiggle it out. Luckily there was no harm done - except to the kite that ended up in the trash.

Yet another day survived with a 2 year old running loose!!