Eleven

This month we didn't get a lot of pictures but we got a lot of videos!

Elsa is very mobile these days! She gets around and into everything and if your close by she'll pull herself up just to be closer. I love the white leggings turned to black after church every Sunday.

Elsa loves to talk on the phone! We tell her to say "HI" and she says "AHH". She's talked to a few people on the phone with the help from mommy and daddy but she actually speed dialed Aunt Micah and I didn't even know it until Micah called back wondering what was going on. Elsa is such a talker with or without a phone and the funniest part is she'll look at you like she's dead serious and have the tone in her voice like she knows what she's talking about. I have no doubt that she does! At the end of the day, Blake and I will lay in bed and laugh our selves to sleep mimicking the little conversations we've had that day.

Elsa loves her soft animals! She loves to talk and snuggle with them, it's so cute!

Notice at the end of the video when she's headed somewhere and looks back at me? That's because she knows that she's headed somewhere that's a no-no.

Give Elsa a brush and she'll brush her hair but she knows she's got pretty hair!

Elsa has just melted our hearts this month, she loves to snuggle! She'll crawl over and lay her head on you and say "aww". Some mornings we will lay in bed and repeatedly lay our heads together and say "aww". She is the sweetest! She even has learned to be "soft". She could tear your face apart, especially when I had neglected to trim her fingers nails, but not anymore! If she's getting a little too rough all you have to say is "be soft" and she'll pet your face softly and make a noise that mimics the sound of "soft".

I noticed Elsa was starting to get her front two teeth so I wanted to get a good picture of her fangs for you!

You can almost see all 4 teeth in this one. Elsa has been insistent on "using" utensils while she eats. We don't eat a lot of baby food anymore because it's super messy! So now I just give her a fork with her finger foods. 

Everyday is such a joy with Elsa, whither it's playing, talking, or snuggling. I don't think we could have gotten more blessed with Elsa in our lives.

On the MOVE!

Per request here is Elsa in her walker!

She really loves it and really loves all the treasures she can find by moving around and being at a great height to start opening drawers in the kitchen. Thank goodness the walker gets in the way to open cupboards. She also loves to look at her reflection in the dishwasher and oven. She favorite is helping mommie load the dishwasher or should I say unload the dishwasher, what I put in she pulls out. She also found out she can tip over the trash can, yippee. More work for papa. I think she'll be a great kitchen helper!

Elsa started talking her first crawls this week!!! It's so cute to see her concentrate on moving those little legs. 

New pictures of Elsa's little fangs.

10 Months

Getting into the double digit months makes me feel like Im losing my little baby girl to a bigger grown up version of our little Elsa. Well, she'll always be my baby girl, 10 just seems like such a big number for such a tiny little girl.

Happenings of our little 10 month old.

We started the month off with Christmas and New Years. Always a joyous time of year!!

Blake started school again and Elsa and I went back to our simple play at home all day routine. I love being able to be home with my sweet little girl.

We finally got a good picture of her two little snaggle teeth.

Since then, she now has her other middle bottom tooth and another just poked through up top.

 Elsa is getting very good a using her little teeth too. It's so cute to watch her tear and bite through crackers. Just don't get your fingers too close.

Babies in towels are the cutest thing in the world!

A friend of mine made Elsa a hooded towel, my new favorite baby accessory. We have a few of the store bought ones but they are so thin and I always feel that she's going to freeze before we get out of the bathroom. I love the one my friend sent us and had to duplicate it. Now Elsa's little buns can stay warm after a nice bath!

Our little white fang still loves to be with her papa. Although she gets a little too involved with helping out with the controller when playing video games.

This month Elsa went on another little road trip to visit her Great Grandparents in Etna, Cal.

We picked up Grandpa Thackeray and Uncle Slade in Reno on the way.

It was so nice to see and spent time with Great Grandma Elsie and Great Grandpa Bill. We love them so much!!!

Etna is such a cute little town. It was really neat to see where the Thackeray's come from and see all the history just driving around town.

Elsa got spoiled by Great Uncles.

Elsa is becoming quite social. At church she'll stand up on the pew and smile, giggle and wave to whoever is behind us. Her wave I have to add is probably the cutest thing ever. Her left hand does the open and close fist wave but her more active right hand does the Miss America all from the wrist wave. The combination of her Gooney smile and her Miss America wave melts everyone's heart.

Elsa loves to clap! All you have to say is "Yay!" and she'll clap up storm.

She still loves her tongue. Now when she sticks her tongue out little "ladle-ladle-ladle" noises come with it.

Elsa is our little jabber mouth. "Tuck -a- tuck" "dadada" "nanan" "LLLa" "raa-raa-ra" pretty much everything but mama it seems like. She reminds me of the little Ewoks from Star Wars. She even talks when she's crying.

Crawling just doesn't seem to be on her to-do list. She spends plenty of time on her knees reaching for things but if its beyond reach she'll sit back down or end up on her face over reaching. She can still scoot on her bum and she gets around just fine, can't get too far too fast that way, which is nice for me. We are not in a rush for her to be too mobile. She has conquered the walker she got at Thanksgiving. She can get into every little corner in that thing and fast.
Our family decided to end Elsa's 10 month with a bang... I mean barf. Elsa spent Monday night throwing up, saddest thing in the world. I spent Wednesday night throwing up and Blake got Thursday night. Fun times! We all spent the rest of the week recovering.

Life is so great with our little family and can't wait for new adventures!

All I want for Christmas...

This year was our first year celebrating Christmas just as a family. We celebrated Christmas with Blake's family and my family prior. No in-laws/family, no friends, just us on Christmas morning. We really didn't know what to do...

 It was a fun five minutes!

Knowing before hand that we would have Christmas to ourselves we said this would be a practice year. Practicing to see what traditions we wanted to keep or add additional. Christmas dinner on Christmas eve with the reenactment of Luke 2 was a must for Blake, we spent it this year with Chris and Amy and all the little cousins. Christmas morning was pretty much the same for the both of us growing up so that'll stay the same; open stockings, eat breakfast, then to the presents, opening one at a time around the circle. Breakfast being Russell Goulash, Blake's version. I want to do presents a little different. Growing up we would have a Christ centered devotional type thing Christmas eve but once I woke up Christ was not on my mind for the duration of the Christmas season. I had heard of this idea wear Santa brings you 3 gifts to remind you of Christ and the reason why we get gifts, because Christ received gifts when he was born. One of the gifts would represent Gold, one represent Myrrh, and one represent Frankincense.

Gifts of Gold. Gold was a gift fit for a king. A great symbol it was for Jesus to receive such an offering from the wise men, as he is indeed the King of kings. The gift the is received as the "gold" gift should be something that is of great importance to suggest how valuable your child is to your family. Something the child would really value.

Gifts of Frankincense. In Exodus, God specifically requests that frankincense be used as a sacred incense in His temples. The gift that is received as the "frankincense" gift should be something spiritual or along those lines. Example, scriptures, journal, church music, church clothes, etc.

Gifts of Myrrh. In ancient times, myrrh was used to scent oils, perfumes and embalming liquids. Jesus being born that He would die for us. John 19:39-40, Nicodemus anointed Jesus with myrrh as part of his burial preparation. The gift that is received as the "myrrh" gift should be something for their body.

I think this is a cool idea but we haven't decided what we should do for our family.

I'm probably making Christmas too hard. I just never want to hear my children cry or whine because they didn't get what they wanted or it wasn't exactly what they wanted. I don't want Christmas to be centered around the gifts. I want Christ to be the focal point but I do want it to be fun. 

How do you make Christmas Christ centered and fun??

On with our Christmas, Russell tradition we eat out at a Chinese restaurant. This is Blake's favorite Russell tradition and insisted that we keep it. 

We also went to the Temple Square so Elsa could see the lights.It being freezing, she still loved it!

Elsa also loved opening presents, well she loved playing with the wrapping paper and curled ribbon. She now loves playing with the toys she got. It was fun sharing this time with her and Blake.
We had a wonderful Christmas!!
Thanks everybody!! We love you!!

The article that I found that explain each of the gifts I found in a forum at Babycenter.com so you have to scroll down a bit to find it or you can also find it  here . It's called Begging for Myrrh by Trina Conner Schaetz.

Who does Elsa look like?

I saw this picture last night and I could not believe my eyes...

Elsa with red hair...

Blake was a pretty cute little boy and I'm fine with Elsa looking like him then 

but the ending product... 

I love my Blake!!

9 Months

Elsa is nine months and still such a perfect baby.
We really have had nothing to complain about.

This last month has been busy...

At the beginning of the month we took a road trip to visit family for Thanksgiving, here's the run down of the trip:

Friday - left early in the morning and drove 10 hours to Pheonix, AR

Blake has a friend that lives there and was getting married,
Blake was the best man.

Checked in to our hotel, ate and hung out with Blake's friends.

Saturday - Wedding... I've never been to a wedding were the bride said "Woot-Woot" and "Word" during the cerimony... lol, to each her own I guess...

Elsa and I left the reception early (9pm) for bed time, in the van. Blake was done "partying" around 11pm and we headed off to MO. After switching every 2-3 hours we made it through the night!!!

Sunday - We/Blake drove and drove, etc.

Here's Elsa in Kansas about 13 hours in...

 

 

20 hours of driving we made it to Grandpa Thackeray's house in Lenexa, KS that night. Elsa did such an awesome job!! She didn't fuss at all!! Besides the normal hungry or sleepy cues she was wonderful!!! Amazingly she even took normal naps. The trip just confirmed Elsa is the perfect baby!!

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the rest of the vacation. I'm hoping I can steal some from the better parents that were there.

The rest of the trip went like this:

Monday - Left Gpa Thackeray's and drove 45min to Liberty to hang out with my sister, Micah. My sister, Micah, is so wonderful she went Thanksgiving shopping with me (Tiffany was but her sweet little babies were sick). Two shopping carts full later we made it alive!! Did I mention it was for 30 people? And that doesn't include 20 pies that were bought the day of (Did Doug end up eating them all?)

Tuesday - Hung out with Micah some more, we were in a Quiet Book group and had a page exchange party that morning (if you know what a Quiet Book is you know it's a task to try to make one yourself, so we got together with 9 ladies total, each making two different pages and making them 9 times, by the end everyone has 18 different pages and only had to think about 2 of them, it's cheaper too!)... and waited for my mom, Evan and Tyre to get home from visiting my aunt in Nauvoo... they made it!! My mom, Tyre and I spent the rest of the day brainstorming and  shopping for decorations for the big Thackeray event. Hint: Don't buy Fall decorations at Thanksgiving time - they don't exist. Thank goodness my mom had a lot of it already!! I love planning stuff like this with my mom, its so much fun and it's something she's super good at. It's fun to see her work her magic.

Wednesday - Woke up early to do some last minute errands and headed up to the lodge in Lawson to decorate and set up. Grandma Thackeray was having an important birthday this year so all of the family (kids, their spouses, grandkids) got together to surprise her for this birthday.

It was a grand surprise!! We had great fun being with each other and celebrating this great time of her life!!
Thursday - Thanksgiving!! Great food and wonderful company, what more can you ask for? I am so grateful that Blake's family let my mom, Evan and Tyre spend Thanksgiving with us too!!
Friday - People started throwing up... it's was aunt Neesha's day off and since we hadn't been able to see her yet we decided to visit her. So much fun!!! Back at the lodge more people were getting sick so we decided to stay the night with my mom(Grandma Dee).
Saturday - We head back to the lodge... I spend most of the day over the toilet... everyone decides to check out of the lodge early... the few of us out-of-towners left stay at Grandpa Thackeray's place.
Good thing the sickness that was going around was just a 24 hour thing so by the time we headed back to Utah the next morning I was feeling close to great! Elsa was such a good sport and she didn't get sick!! I feel so sorry for the little babies that did.
Sunday - Left early, drove the 15 hours to Utah with great weather until we hit the mountains and even then it wasn't that bad until 20 minutes from home. It always seems to happen like that, the last stretch takes longer than the rest of the trip. We made it home and happy!!
It was so great to see everyone and meet little Eliza and Sawyer!! I really wish I had gotten a picture of all six of the babies together. It really was great to be with everyone!!
  Elsa couldn't have been any better, she took great naps, she woke up more at night than usual but who doesn't when they are not in their own bed, her first tooth even popped out while we were there. She was so happy to be with other babies! Something she doesn't get a lot of at home. Over all it was a fantastic trip!! Thanks everyone for making it unforgettable!!!

Since we've been home Elsa has gotten other tooth...
we've just had a few cranky days and rough nights but Elsa is doing well with getting teeth. When they are easier to see Ill put up a picture of her Goonie smile.
(Babies getting teeth always reminds me of Sloth from the movie Goonies)

As for crawling Elsa doesn't have a clue... she can shimmy on her bum if it's just out of reach but it's seems impossible for her if it's any further. She loves to stand if your holding her fingers, other than that she really doesn't know what to do with her legs.

Elsa also had her first hair cut! Not much but a little off the back. She would get some nasty knots after sleeping. Although it didn't eliminate all the knots it's more manageable and I don't have to be the mean mommy that makes the tears.

We always have so much fun together!!
Papa and Elsa built their first fort together!
 Elsa loved it!

 

We might have enjoyed it more than she did...

Elsa loves to rock on her little rocking cow. 

It's so cute to watch her go to town on it.

Elsa likes to help her papa study for finals!!

I can't believe another semester is soon to be over.

  

This was such a good month!! I couldn't imagine anything else that would have made it better. 

Catching Up

Things have been super busy the last couple of weeks and blogging has not been a top priority. I never got around to post Elsa's eight month post so you'll get just a little one to catch up.

This is also mainly for Blake because I never got this video up and he is so proud of it!!

 

A familiar picture... papa in his chair... after a long hard day at school of course.

Elsa still loves to play and chill with him as he winds down from his day.

 Elsa is such a good sitter! She doesn't need anymore help.

Elsa loves to drink from cups... no matter how big they are and how wet she gets.