A Little Elsie Love Goes A Long Way.....

It is about time I post about Elsie.  All about Elsie.  Elsie is hilarious!  She will provide hours of entertainment for us!  This post will probably be a little random as my mind wanders as I type of things all about Elsie.  Elsie is pretty "witty" these days.  She surprises me every day with things she picks up from us, her friends, tv, some things she says, I have NO IDEA where she got it from, which, of course, makes it all the more funny!!

Some funny things Elsie has said:

• One night she had spent an hour helping me make dinner.  When it came time to eat it, she said, "Ewe, this us yucky.  I don't like it." I said, "You don't like it?  But you made it." Elsie immediately cut me off and said, "WE made it."     HAHAHAHAHA!!  She wasn't about to take all the blame for dinner tasting yucky :)  I loved her quick comeback.
• One day Elsie and I went to Cafe Rio (one of our absolute favorite places to go out to eat) and we were heading back to the car and I set her down to open the door and put my drink down, and she RAN into the street!  I was scared!  Do you know how crazy people drive in parking lots???  She is so short, and fast, I was scared to death.  I ran and grabbed her by the arm and told her she couldn't run into the street because she was so short and cars don't see her.  Elsie immediately got mad at me for hurting her arm.  (at this point, I feel like I am having an adult conversation with a 2 year old...) I apologized to her for "hurting her arm" and kept repeating myself about her not running away from me and running into the street.  She told me, "You are the mean mom!" It took all I had to not laugh at her.  Then she said, "I wasn't running in the road, I was running to get ice cream!"  Haha!  Across the parking lot from Cafe Rio is Nielsen's Frozen Custard, apparently she wanted ice cream, it just took her 10 minutes to figure out how to tell me.  She is so funny.  
• Another time she was running from me (she loves to run, she thinks it is a game) and I stopped her and tried explaining to her that cars can't see her and that she needs to hold Mommy or Daddy's hand or she will get "owies" and have to go to the hospital.  I said, "Do you know what happens at the hospital?" (this was a rhetorical question, I wasn't expecting an answer).  Elsie immediately said, "We get a baby."   I love her!!!  Why would she think any different?
• One day Elsie said, "Mom, and we are funny?  You are funny.  And I am funny.  We are both funny, huh?"  I LOVED this one!  I take pride in my sense of humor, and I love that our 2 year old has the sense of humor of a teenager...
• One day Grandma Linda said, "Elsie, you are so silly."  Elsie immediately said, "I'm not silly, I'm funny." 
• Yesterday, Josh was out working under his truck, apparently he had a little "plumbers crack" goin' on.  Elsie went up to him, pulled his underwear up and said, "There Daddy, I fixed it for you."  She is so funny, and very helpful.
• Every time it is time to say a prayer, Elsie will just start saying her own every time (no matter where we are or who is saying the prayer, church, home, someone else's house, anywhere) She always says, "Heavenly Father, thankful for this day..."  then she always opens her eyes and looks at me, she never says more.  Well, one day she said the entire prayer all by herself, it went something like this, "Heavenly Father, thankful for this day, please bless we can be nice, bless that Jesus can come to our house, Jesus Christ, Amen."  I loved it.  I won't lie that I teared up, it was too cute.  I LOVE her innocence!  She us such a pure, innocent spirit.
• The other day she was playing with her princesses and she said, "And they lived Heavenly Father after."  I love it!  She says this all the time now.  I don't correct her because I love it too much.
• One night Elsie and I were driving out to see Josh at work.  Elsie hadn't had a nap that day, so I was trying to keep her awake.  I made up some stupid song that went something like this (mind you, this is in a horrible singing voice, to a tune that shouldn't even be considered music....this is why I love being a mom, my singing voice is beautiful to her - for now anyway) "Aaand weeee are going to see your daaaad, he is a firefighterrrrr at the fir'station..." I looked at her and she smiled, then immediately (to the exact "tune" I had just been "singing" in) she sang, "Aaaand my mom is a teacherrrrr!"  Haha!!!  Then we were listening to the radio and Elsie asked me to "Turn it louder" so I did and we were both singing "Call Me Maybe" at the top of our lungs and the next song came on, we were singing loud, then I realized I was singing alone....she had passed out, SO FAST!  Oh, this girl is funny!

I love the way Elsie says things:

• When we are going somewhere, she says, "And I will come 'wich' you?" or "I can come 'wich' you?"
• "Good job Mommy"  Love this one!
• Right now, if you ask Elsie how to spell her name, she IMMEDIATELY says, "H K L O P"  She just says the letters, and it is always the same letters.  She usually says them fast, it is so funny!!  I don't correct her because once she knows how to spell her name, she will never forget...I think this is so cute.
• If I tell Elsie we are going somewhere to see someone she will ask who will be there, I tell her, then she says, "And who else?"  She wants to know who else will be there.  She asks this all the time.
• Whenever Elsie sees a bird, or any animal (pretty much any living, moving thing that isn't a human) she will yell, "RAR" and try to scare it.  Even if the bird is really far away.  She will do this and then laugh at herself.  She's so funny.
• "What you said?"  She says this one all the time when she wants someone to repeat what they said.
• "Mom, what you talkin'?"  She says this when she wants to know what I am talking about. Or she will say, "Mom, who you talkin"?" when she wants to know who I am talking to.

Elsie's favorites right now:

• Elsie's favorite princess right now is Aurora/Sleeping Beauty
• Her favorite food is probably Ramen or any kind of chips.  
• We are in trouble because Elsie is already has a preference for a treat.  One day she will ask for a tootsie roll, the next day I will ask her if she wants a tootsie roll, and she won't want it.  She definitely knows what she wants.  I am in trouble.  I have created the problem with her and treats....
• Elsie's favorite tv show is probably "Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood"  She always wants to watch it! 
• Right now she is obsessed with all the Christmas Classics movies, Rudolph, Frosty, Santa Clause is Coming to Town and The Little Drummer Boy and the cartoon of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas she also LOVES all the Strawberry Shortcake movies.
• Elsie's favorite song on the radio is "Call Me Maybe"
• She sings everything!!  She loves to sing!!  She could sing and dance all day long!  I am amazed at how fast she can pick up on words she hears in a song.  She is definitely musically inclined.  It is kind of crazy, my Patriarchal Blessing says something about me listening to good music.  I have not doubt that Elsie's love of music is one of the reasons it is in my blessing.  I know our Heavenly Father is watching out for all of us!!  We are so blessed!!
• Elsie loves to play games on the iPhone and the iPad.  She loves the puzzles and anything princess.  She also loves to watch movies and shows on them.
• Elsie's favorite thing to play right now is pretend food.  She doesn't really use the "pretend food" for her play kitchen, in fact, she doesn't always play this IN her kitchen.  She LOVES to play with my old punch cards and rewards cards that I don't use anymore.  Each of the cards serve as money, food, anything you want it to.  She will hold the cards and ask you, "Wha'choo like for dinner?" you tell her something random, then she will hand you one of the cards and say, "Here is your 6 dollars." (it is ALWAYS 6 dollars...haha), then she will hand you another card and say, "Here is your______" whatever we had requested for dinner.  Then she will ask for both the cards back.  She has such an amazing imagination!  She is so fun to play with!  She will play this for HOURS!!!

I am pretty sure Josh and I are the luckiest parents in the entire world!  I love this little girl so much!!  I love everything about her!  I love watching Josh interact with her.  It is the most precious thing ever!  I am pretty sure that I tear up at least once a day as I watch them play and interact.  Josh is the best dad ever!! There is something about a grown (very handsome, might I add...) man playing tea party, dolls, princesses and any and every other "girly" thing you can think of with his daughter.  I am so lucky!!

Every day we are so grateful for Amanda and her selfless decision to place Elsie for adoption!  We just found out a few weeks ago that Amanda is getting married!!  We couldn't be more excited for her!!  Trevor is a great guy and he is so lucky to be able to have Amanda forever!  We love you Amanda and Trevor!  We will be forever grateful for Amanda!  We love you and your family and can't wait to see you again!

I wish the sound was more clear on this video, but it isn't so turn up the volume!  She was a little distracted, but she is still pretty funny :)

"Leapin' Lizards!" Happy Halloween!!

I am in love with Elsie's curly hair.  What better way to embrace her perfect curls than to have her costume be planned around her beautiful hair.  It's a perfect fit.  Annie.  I love it!  My decision to dress Elsie up as Annie started back in the summer when she loved to watch the movie, "Annie"  She can sing parts of every song from the movie.  She was so excited to be Annie!  As Halloween was approaching, she would say to anyone (and everyone, strangers included), "I'm going to be Annie for Halloween, and my mom is going to spray my hair red."  She really does speak that clearly.  I love it!  I did just that....sprayed her hair red.

I sprayed her hair red just for these pictures.  I was in love with how cute it turned out!!  I loved her costume!!!  I sprayed her hair with this...

It was only red for about an hour.  I washed her hair after the pictures, thinking it would come right out.  The bottle said...

"Directions:  Use with care; temporary color hairspray can permanently stain some fabrics and surface.  Protect clothes from overspray.  Shake well and spray evenly in short bursts from about 10".  Avoid dwelling in one place.  This is a temporary hairspray which will shampoo out."

Did you catch that last sentence?....WHICH WILL SHAMPOO OUT???......Harmless right?  That's what I thought!!  Until it WOULD NOT wash out!!!!

Our 2 year old has very PINK HAIR!!!!!!!  I took these pictures the week before Halloween so I could send out Halloween cards.  I was so excited because I thought she looked SO CUTE!!!  Suddenly, as I was looking at Elsie's hair trying to figure out what to do....I realized we had family pictures scheduled for 2 days later.  I didn't know what to do.  Washing it 6 times with shampoo and baking soda wasn't doing a thing.  I did the next best thing I could think of.  I called my favorite hairdresser, Katie!  Katie to the rescue!!  Katie did a bleach wash, put her under the dryer then tried to boost it with a green toner.  

  

Notice all the padding it took to get her little body to fit comfortably.  It was SO CUTE!

I can't believe how good she was.

She LOVED the salon!

Elsie kept watching Katie to see what she was doing

Pretty sure this is my favorite picture!!
...Now off to the dryer!

She loved sitting under the warm dryer

She was a pro.  She looked like the "old ladies" to me.  It was pretty funny to see our cute 2 year old sitting under a salon dryer :)

I told Katie to stop, I would rather have her hair pink than blonde because I figured the pink would EVENTUALLY fade, but the blonde would stay until it grew out!!  YIKES!!

The bleach wash only bleached her hair color, not the red :/
This is Katie putting the green toner in her hair.

Everyone was so impressed with how good Elsie was at the salon.
I just might be in trouble with her....
She may turn out to be more high maintenance than a real princess :)


We now have a 2 year old with curly, strawberry-blonde hair...Not sure what to think about it.  It looks "natural" if you don't know what Elsie's hair really looks like.  It is just a lot different than what I am used to looking at.  Pink hair, blue hair, blonde hair....I love her just the same!!! 

This picture serves 2 purposes.  To show her pink hair and to show what an amazing dad Elsie has.  We decided to have pancakes for dinner.  Josh can't just make regular pancakes for Elsie, he has to make a cute shape for her.  Tonight it was Mickey Mouse chocolate chip pancakes.  She was so excited!!  I'm not sure what she was trying to explain with her finger up, but it is pretty cute if you ask me :)

Pink hair and blue eyes.  Josh and I are the luckiest parents ever!!!

PINK!!  We love this girl more than life!!  Thank you Amanda for blessing our lives with this sweet little girl!  We love you!!

Ok.  I won't lie....I really did spray my 2 year old daughter's hair with Windex.  I heard it might work.  It did.  It worked a lot better than using baking soda.  I am going to try it one more time.  If this doesn't work, I will know that Elsie's hair is meant to stay pink :)

Halloween Night...

Danielle ended up scheduling her baby on Halloween.  We got to watch Macy.  Macy slept over Tuesday night and Wednesday night.  Danielle had baby Max at 6:01 (while we were out trick-or-treating).  He is ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE!!!!  We love Macy so it was really fun to have her come stay with us!  We ordered pizza so they would have "full bellies" before we went trick-or-treating and ate lots of candy!

These 2 girls LOVE each other!  They fight just like sisters and play like best friends.  I love it!

I LOVE these 2 girls!!!  They both looked so cute in their costumes!!!

My little Annie :)  I didn't dare spray her hair red again....

Cutest Strawberry Shortcake I know!!!

We met up with Brooke, Ben and their family (they were all dressed up as BYU Fans, GO COUGARS!!)  It was a lot of fun to trick-or-treat with lots of friends.

All-in-all Halloween was a great success!  Way too much  candy for a 2 year old!  This is only what she got , this doesn't include the 4 bags of candy we have leftover at our house because we were out trick-or-treating while everyone else was, we missed them all coming to our house...  

We hope you had a "pink-hair-free-lots-of-candy-eating-Halloween"!!!!

Round Two...Will Our Family of 3 become a Family of 4?

Josh and I have decided it is time to grow our family.  Our family "grows" differently than the traditional family.  We get to adopt our children.  When we adopted Elsie, our paperwork took us 10 months to complete (that is SO LONG - WAY LONGER than the average couple)!!  Last time it was an emotional journey because of the unexpected.  Now that we understand the process and we are more aware of all the blessings that come, the second time around it has been a little bit easier.  We have started our paperwork and we just completed it all today!!  We hope to be approved (which means all of our paperwork will be approved and our profile will be available to be viewed on the LDS Family Services adoption website) by tomorrow!  This time around our paperwork took us exactly 6 weeks!!!  We are so excited for the journey of adoption again.  We hope and pray that the baby that is meant to come to our family, will come.  We know that the Lord is mindful of us and that he has a plan for us.  We truly do recognize all of the blessings in our lives.  We are loved and we are blessed.  Thank you to all of our family and friends that have shown us so much love and support thus far in our lives.

We Are Still Alive...

For all of you that read my blog.  I have had a few issues with the storage on my blog.  I have been "boycotting" fixing it and I refuse to pay any money to a site that is "free."  Here are a few pictures I had taken of Elsie in September.  I can't believe how big she is getting.  She is so fun and she is the light of our lives!  Josh and I both love everything about being parents.  Elsie has so much personality and is learning and growing so much every day!  I need to write down all the funny things she says.  Elsie talks really well.  She is so fun!!

Here are some funny things Elsie has said lately.

The other morning we were laying in bed (yes, Elsie still sleeps with us....don't judge) and I was telling her what we were going to be doing that day.  Our day was going to consist of shopping for my foods classes, at which point, she immediately cut me off and said, "And I will come with you and it will be GREAT!"  It was pretty funny!

2 Sundays ago, Josh was working and Elsie and I were hanging out.  We had just made dinner (Elsie LOVES to help me cook) and we were getting ready to eat.  Elsie immediately reminded me that we needed to say the prayer.  She folded her arms and immediately started, "Heavenly Father, thankful for this day..." She always says that when it is time for the prayer (whether we are at church, at someone else's house, anywhere! - she even says it when someone else is saying the prayer, she talks at the same time as they do).  As Elsie started to say the prayer this night, she was folding her arms and staring up at me while she talked.  I told her she needed to fold her arms, close her eyes and bow her head.  I showed her how to do it and at the same time I started to help her say the prayer.  As I started, she cut me off, looked up at me and said, "We BONK our heads?"  So funny!  Pretty sure she has NO IDEA what "bow your head" means.  She is such a funny girl.

Back in August I asked Elsie what she wanted for dinner and she told me she wanted "Mac'n'cheese-a'roni." She is so cute!

I have been taking lots of pictures of Elsie.  I have TONS of blog updating to do!!  As I sit here and type now, I begin to feel very overwhelmed with all of it.  I am regretting not at least typing her funny stories and the funny things she says and does.  I promise to do better.

Josh and I feel very lucky to get to be Elsie's parents.  We will forever be grateful to Amanda for her selfless decision to choose to place Elsie for adoption.  We are so glad we get to continue to talk to her and visit her.  We hope Amanda and her family are part of our lives forever!!

LAGOON!!!

It's no secret that I LOVE Lagoon!  I spent many summers at Lagoon.  It makes me so happy that Elsie loves Lagoon!  She was so fun, she loved all the rides!  She was 35" and needed to be 36" for some of the rides, so I can't wait to take her back when she is taller :)  If I had to pick ONE ride that was her favorite, I would have to say Puff.  She loved it!  She wasn't scared of anything.

Waiting in line for her first ride :)

Waiting in line to ride Puff with Daddy.

She was so excited!

I wish this wasn't blurry.  I LOVE her face in this one!

She loved putting her arms in the air :)

Elsie LOVES the Merry-go-Round

Cheese!  This was on the dragon ride.  I'm surprised this one didn't scare her.
It goes in a big circle really fast, then it stops and goes backwards.
I worried it would be too fast for Elsie, but it wasn't :)

She still loves Bulgy the Whale :)

I love this picture!  I love how Charlie is holding her hand :)
Such a good cousin!

Piggy!

Pausing for a cute picture of us on Puff :)

Pretty sure this is my favorite picture of the whole day!

Elsie and cute Henry

Family picture on the train.  Elsie didn't want to hold still!

...aaand she's out!  Elsie fell asleep about 5 minutes after we got in the car.
It was a successful day at Lagoon!!