Pictures from Ellie's birthday photo shoot at the bottom.  My friend is amazing!

Today is Ellie's 26 month birthday.  Here is an update on my baby:

• Ellie continues to be about the cutest thing ever.  She still takes 2 naps a day and sleeps well at night.  Pretty much every night between 9 and 10 she cries for a few minutes (up to 10) and then goes back to sleep.  If you go in to comfort her, it  makes it worse.  So we just deal with it.  She loves her blanket and often tries to get it out of bed with her, but is good to leave it in her crib when I remind her.  One day I came upstairs to find her and put her to bed and she was in the kids' room laying on one of Cade's blankets.  If she is tired, she will come over to me and give me hugs over and over again.  
• She is kind of a picky eater.  She loves fruit, bread and cheese.  I figured out if she has a fork, she is more likely to try things and eats more. She still loves her milk at each meal.  She knows where to find crackers in the kitchen and will try to get things by herself.  Or she will go in the kitchen and push her chair around when she is hungry.  She drinks a lot of water.    
• Ellie loves to get down and walk around in stores, but is still very happy sitting in the cart or stroller.  She is not shy and will run away if given the chance.  She is not very good about coming back when you ask her to.  I had to take all three kids to the bank this week.  Luckily, the lady gave us suckers right off.  I gave one to Ellie and she stayed by me for the most part. 
• Ellie likes to give hugs to certain people.  Like a lady sitting on a chair at church.  Never seen the lady before, but Ellie sure liked her!  She also loves to sit on laps.  It doesn't matter who it is, she loves to sit with people.  
• Ellie knows where her head, tummy, mouth and toes are.  She can tell you what a bear says and what a cow says.  We're working on monkey and mom and dad.  She signs more and all done occasionally.   
• Ellie loves her bath and if I mention it, she will go upstairs to the tub as fast as she can.  
• She loves to make us laugh.  If she hears the other kids get excited, she starts yelling too.  If she knows she is being cute, she will keep going.  
• She loves to find treasures and carry them all over the house.
• We recently switched her to a forward facing car seat and she thinks it is great!
• Ellie loves to throw her diapers away.  Unfortunately, she throws toys away sometimes too.  Usually when this happens, it is like 6 toys at once and we find them.  
• Her hair is getting long enough it needs a pony tail every day.  She is about 10 months ahead of Cami when it comes to hair.  
• She is a great kid.  I love her!  I am excited to watch her grow up and at the same time, already missing my baby.  

Princess Sparkle is a character that Cami made up.  At first, she said that she was princess sparkle and came from a kingdom far away to live with us.  Now she tells us stories about princess sparkle.  She tries to make them as sillly as she can.  In one story, Princess Sparkle ate her mom, her dad and her whole castle.  Another story was about Princess Sparkle's dog who decided to throw everything out the window--trees, cars, couches, tables.  Basically anything Cami could see while she was telling the story.  Princess Sparkle has a pet rabbit, a pet dog and a pet cat.  One day Cade and Cami made a TV so they could watch a movie of Princess Sparkle.  

Jungle Avengers is a thing Cade made up.  He has cougar man, tiger man, Eagle man and a few more.  He tells me about all of their special powers and machines and what the like to do to bad guys.  I need to get him to tell me again so I can write it down.

They are both really creative.

We had a pretty low key week last week.  With the snow, Kirk's work was cancelled Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon.  He was off Wednesday.  Monday we cleaned up the garage a bit and I went to Costco in the afternoon.

Tuesday I played in the snow with Cade in the morning.  It was really fun.  He went out to play and I was up changing the laundry and was going to take a shower.  I heard him laughing outside.  He was just jumping in the snow and having a great time.  I jumped on the opportunity and went out with him for about 45 min.  We invited Cami to come out several times, but she did not want to.  We built a snow fort.  We did a movie night at home that evening and watched the Princess and the Frog.  Cade sat on Kirk's lap the whole time.  Cami and Ellie ran/danced around during most of the songs.  Ellie sat on my lap for about 30 minutes and cuddled.  She doesn't do that very often and it was fun.

Wednesday we decided to get our dental work caught up.  We took Ellie to Scott and Kara's house and the other two with us to the Kennewick office.  Kirk cleaned my teeth.  We got him some lunch and then I left him there and went to pick up Ellie and take the kids home.  Kirk got 3 fillings done and caught up on some other work.  We had our friends watch the kids later for our date night swap.  We went to Texas Roadhouse and had a great dinner.   It was a fun, relaxing day.

We were home all day Thursday, except when I took dinner to a friend who was sick.  I don't really remember what we did.

Friday both kids had preschool--Finally!  I was able to get some computer work done at home while Ellie slept and then we went to Walmart, picked up Cami and went to Yokes before getting Cade.  It worked out really well.  Kirk came home kind of late that night and had a really bad head ache.  I put the kids to bed and went to get him some medicine and we watched Hawaii 5-0.  Saturday was super cold and still snowy.  We cleaned the church in the morning.  Kirk went to work and I watched my friends' kids while they went car shopping.  The kids were here about 3 hours, but it worked out great.  They all played together really well.  I took Cade to the Richland high school basketball game in the afternoon.  He is really liking basketball and football right now.  We were going to stop and get root beer floats on the way home, but our coupon didn't work.  It made me frustrated so we left, stopped at Yokes and bought root beer and ice cream.  We went home and made them with Kirk and Cami.  Ellie had some ice cream and it was really funny.  She made kind of a sour face when I stuck it in her mouth and then got a big smile and wanted more and more.  As I put each bite in her mouth, she wasn't too sure about it, but then loved it.

Sunday was our first day of one o'clock church for the year.  Ellie has had a cold and didn't sleep like I was hoping in the morning.  Kirk wasn't feel well either, so he took her home after sacrament meeting.

We had a good week.  We have a few more things planned this week, but it should all turn out good too.

Today is Sunday.  We had church cancelled because there is a lot of snow on the roads.  We have had LOTS of snow (for Richland) this year.  Cade's preschool has been cancelled 4 times already and I bet he won't go again tomorrow.  It's been really cold too, so the snow has been sticking around in between storms.

We had a great trip to Utah and fun Christmas.  We spent the first 5 days at Morris' house and then the next 5 days with the Smith's.  One thing I enjoyed was leaving the kids at the Morris' and going with Kirk to visit my parents for a couple of hours on Sunday.  We also went with the Morris' to the aquarium in Sandy and we all loved that.  I took the kids and Connor to see the new Disney movie, Moana, we went to Dairy Queen for lunch and went to a BYU basketball game.  Cade had a great time playing with Legos and Cami loved setting up houses and playing with the dolls.  Ellie walked around and collected anything she could find.  We enjoyed spending lots of time with them.  Kirk went fishing a couple of days.  We also drove up Provo canyon and saw mountain goats, elk, deer, and bald eagles.  Cade loves bald eagles right now.  Its fun to watch Tom get better at being a Grandpa.  He loves the kids, but isn't always sure of how to play with them.  But this trip he read lots of stories and even played dolls with Cami a couple of times.  He showed Cade all his bullets and made sure they got lots of ice cream.

Alan and Kristi drove up from Arizona the same day we moved our stuff to my parents' house (Wednesday).  We got to watch the BYU football bowl game.  Cade and Cami had fun playing with Tyrell and we got to meet Brady for the first time.  Cade, Kirk, Alan and Tyrell went hiking up American fork canyon.  I really wanted to go, but wasn't feeling very well.  My mom, Melissa and I went out to lunch for my birthday.  We spent one afternoon/evening at the Morris' opening Christmas presents with Scott and Kara.  Lindsey and her family drove out on Friday.  Cade had so much fun playing with Daniel and Josh.  They played with castles, cars, swords, pokemon cards, foosball, sticks outside and ran around like crazy.  Saturday was Christmas eve.  We did the traditional grandpa donut run.  We opened a few presents between me and my siblings.  We had a yummy ham and potato dinner and did the little nativity play.  Christmas day we went to church and Alan blessed Brady.  It was fun to have everyone there.  We did presents in the morning.  Cade got a new bike and Cami got a doll that she could dress up.  Ellie got a hooded towel and a water bottle.  (she doesn't need or want much).  We had a great day.  I feel like we really got spoiled from everyone.

We ended up spending a lot of time at my parent's house and not going out much.  My dad can't be around people or germs.  He doesn't have a lot of energy and its hard to mobilize that many people anyway.  I'm really glad that we could go and spend as much time as we did.  I always wish we could stay longer, but I love being there for whatever time we can.  We don't get my whole family together very often.  I really liked the time we could spend with Kirk's family too.

Now we are enjoying/enduring the longer, colder part of winter that comes after Christmas.  Kirk and I are looking forward to going to Cancun next month.  We've never done a big trip like that before and it's time!  We only have 5 days and 2 will be mostly travel, but we are excited.  Tom and Lisa are going to drive up to stay with our kids.