Elle Updates

Eleanor makes me laugh, multiple times, every day. Sometimes she also makes me want to pull my hair out :) Luckily, the laughing happens much more frequently than the hair pulling (and I never really ever pull my hair out so we're all good there...)

Here are some pictures from my phone of the crazy little things she does on our normal days together at home...

Eleanor loves meat. Almost everyday for lunch she gets some type of sandwich sliced deli meat (usually turkey). I always break the turkey up to small pieces and put on her tray and she signs to me if she wants more. One day I put the turkey on her tray, left the deli bag on the table in front if her, then ran down to our computer to look something up. Of course, I got side tracked while on the computer and realized it had been a while since I left Elle and was surprised she hadn't been calling for me. Well when I walked back to her I found out why, she took matters into her own hands and had reached the bag of turkey and was helping herself to more!

When the weather was a little warmer, but still chilly in the mornings, we met up with friends a few times for morning walks. You can tell my little one has tired eyes in this picture!

I can already tell that Eleanor is such a girly girl. This last Sunday she wore a big pouffy dress to church, Monday morning it was sitting on the ground outside her bedroom door and we were in my room reading books together. Suddenly, Elle got off my lap and crawled down the hall- I thought she was going to go downstairs but instead she grabbed the big dress, crawled all the way back to me while dragging the dress along, put in in my lap and then signed "please". I think she wanted to wear it again! She is always asking for shoes to be put on. This day she was loving getting to "wear" my earrings. She had the proudest little grin...

She's just so cute...

She's excellent at making messes while eating...

Here she is sharing snacks with her buddy Easton...

The other day I turned the corner in our house to go upstairs and found Elle's boots in the middle of the stair case stacked like this. I had no idea she had been crawling around with those boots that morning nor did I know she had some balancing tricks up her sleeves! This gave me a good laugh :)

She wakes up with great bed head sometimes. Also, she is very attached to that little blanky. She has to have it with her for every nap and bedtime. As soon as we open the her bedroom door to get her when she's awake, she grabs "blanky" then stands up with it in hand. When she's crawling around the house and comes across it she'll pick it up and hug it tightly with both arms and also often puts it up to her cheek because it's so soft :) I think the attachment is cute, but I don't let her bring it anywhere when we leave the house.

And those are just some of the latest from my phone pics. I sure love my baby girl!!! I can't believe how big she is getting. Ah!

Be Not MOOved

At the end of August, I was called to be the Young Women's President in our ward. I was excited to become a Primary teacher (as I was sure that's what my scheduled meeting was for) so I was a little shocked, to say the least, when Bishop extended the call. Right after he said it I even asked, "I'm sorry, can you say that again...did you say president?" I was so overwhelmed in the beginning (and still am at times) but I am working with such great sisters who serve in the presidency and as advisers so I am extremely grateful for them. Now that I've gotten to know the girls (there are 26 total), it has become fun and I look forward to my time with them. They really are special daughters of God.

This last Wednesday was our Young Women in Excellence program. We combine this evening with the other ward that meets in our building - I think the girls like getting together with the other ward and it was good for me to get to see more of the youth and meet other leaders. We had a simple program, but I think it turned out well and people said they enjoyed the evening. If any one is reading this and wondering what Young Women in Excellence is - it is a night to celebrate the girls ages 12-18 in our ward. They set-up displays that show different interests or hobbies they have and they also include things they have accomplished through their Personal Progress program. We have a little program and then everyone gets to walk around and look at the displays while eating yummy treats, of course. :)

Our theme "Be Not Moo-ved" was taken from the mutual theme for this year, D&C 87:8 "Wherefore, stand ye in holy places and be not moved...". My wonderful sister helped me out big time and designed our invitation and program...

One of the mothers got this photo of all the girls singing together during our program...

We kept refreshments simple by serving an assortment of cookies with milk and water (more cookies came after this picture was taken and we didn't bring the milk out until after the program).

The girls did a great job with their displays! As a previous activity, we made the silhouettes of each girl to have with their display that evening. I thought it'd be nice to have one thing in their display be uniform, but unique at the same time, and it matched the black and white theme!

Here's a few of the great girls I get to work with...

 

I'm so grateful for the other leaders who I serve with and helped with the whole evening (my secretary broke her foot the Saturday before but was a trooper and still came in a wheelchair!) I'm missing a photo of the Laurel adviser, but the rest are here...

And as a little handout we gave the girls these little baggies with a great poem titled "Be Not Moved" that one of my counselors wrote and each bag had a few cow-shaped bath beads in.

It was a great evening! A little relieved it's over now :)
And this is the song all of the young women sang. The lyrics are beautiful and went right along with our theme of being strong and "not moved"

Wyoming Visitors

The first weekend in October was General Conference. Sam's mom, Sallee, was in Utah at that time so we were able to go down and spend time with her and G. The best part was, that Friday Sam had off work due to it being a "Hunter's Holiday". We've learned people take their hunting very seriously here - so much so that a company will give everyone a day off for it (and Sam's company already celebrated Veteran's Day - but Veteran's Day hasn't happened yet you might be thinking. Well, his company "moved" the national holiday so that it fell within hunting season so everyone had an extra day off during the season :) We're not hunters, but we'll take the vacation days!). Any way... so we had a three day weekend in Utah! It was nice and relaxing and Sam and I even got to have a temple date together at the Bountiful temple. And I am grateful we were able to listen to General Conference, inspired messages are always shared and I just always feel happy after listening to conference!

The following weekend, Sallee and G came out to Wyoming! It was fun to have visitors and show them around our little town. We ate dinner at Don Pedro's, took them for donuts at Cowboy Donuts, visited the Green River museum, found a very little pumpkin patch (Sam called it a pumpkin handful) and enjoyed time visiting at our place. Of course I had to bake for our visitors, so I made these Apple Buttermilk Caramel Muffins, which were a huge hit! I found the recipe off Pinterest and am glad they turned out well and everyone loved them.

 

Eleanor is officially in the "get into everything" stage. While I was trying to keep the house clean for our visitors, I snapped all three of these photos within 30 minutes:

I try and laugh and not get too frustrated. Most of the time she looks so cute it's easy to laugh, but after picking up the same mess five times in a day, it can get a little tiring.... But they're only this age once!

Thank you Sallee and G for visiting us! Until next time ;)

Razor Ride

Well, life didn't end after Eleanor turned one so I guess I should try and keep up with my blogging...

On the last weekend in September we went down to Utah and spent half a day riding a razor around in the mountains in Midway. Earlier in the month, Sam had seen a Groupon for this rental and since we had been wanting to try one out - we thought we'd do it! It was really fun and we lucked out that we scheduled it on such a beautiful day. I would have loved if more of the leaves had changed, but then it would've been colder so I'm happy with what we got! We both took turns driving the trails and Eleanor was just loving her time in the back seat. There was one part where we were going up a VERY steep incline on these VERY large rocks/boulders and I thought we just might die. I was literally holding on for dear life, holding my breath and looking back at Eleanor to see my daughter one last time - it was insane and when we finally made it to the top Sam exclaims, "Whew! Wow, that was awesome!!!!!" Ugh ya, a little too intense of a climb for me but fun now that I can say it's over with. The razor's skills did impress me there.