For Forever: Birthdays, Salt Lake, and Fall, Fall, Fall! (Buckle up, it's gonna be a long one!)

Well holy moly we have done so much since our last post! My computer has been dying. Like, it gets too hot and then freezes and then when I restart it, it acts like there is no hard drive and I have to turn it off until the next morning when it's cool enough to figure out there is, in fact, a hard drive. So any attempts at blogging have been futile, as I get as far as importing pics to the computer and then the computer freezes :) Well my nifty hubby found an app that lets me turn the fans on full blast, so I can get farther than I've been able to in weeks. So let's pray I make it through this. I'm running on borrowed fan speed...

First, we initiated Elise into the tunnel world :) She was quite thrilled to be invited to play with Addy, which Addy usually avoids doing. They had quite the tumble in there and I am pretty sure Addy was on top of Ellie more times than either Ellie or I can count, but that wee babe smiled and laughed the whole time!

Second, Addy had a birthday! I cannot believe that it has been two years since the day that was simultaneously the best and worst of my life. Natural labor, unplanned, two ineffective epidurals, and one cone head scare later, there she was. Her cone head went away the first night and she has been perfect ever since. She is now pretty much potty trained, loves singing, loves singing, loves singing! She loves her hundreds of books (I wish I were exaggerating) and reads each one at least weekly. She can read many of them pretty much by herself. Lately, she loves to be naked. And since she has been going potty all by herself, I have been letting her go in just her undies. She has healed all up from her broken leg and can run and jump and stomp and hop and kick her legs when she wants to throw a tantrum. She loves baths and swimming. She begs her daddy to stay home every morning and she anxiously awaits his 5:00 return. She is a sweet big sister most of the time, and has started helping me wipe Ellie's bum, which is quite an adventure. Oh, and that's her new word! Adventure. She is always telling me she wants to go on adventures haha. I try to oblige. Luckily, to her, crossing the street to the mailbox is quite the journey on her little Dora riding toy :) Oh, and did I mention she loves singing? Yeah, she does. She got this table for her birthday and was quite pleased :) She has eaten on it every day since.

She got to dress up like Rapunzel for her birthday party with her cousins. She was pretty happy about that!

And of course, Ellie had to be a princess too!

Opening gifts :) She got some princess slippers, a doctor kit, a car seat for her dollies (which I scored for $1 off of a garage sale site here locally!) and some stickers.

When she saw this, she said, "Welcome home baby!" because she has a book where the baby sister arrives home in a carseat and the big sister says that lol. I was quite impressed with the connection!

Her cousin, Cherylyn, made her this sucker at mutual. She was thrilled!

Not sure what this smile is, but it's cropping up more and more frequently lately!

She was oh so happy about her pink cake :)

Third, we went to Salt Lake for a training with Scott. For a week. In a hotel. With two tiny tots. Never. Ever. Ever. Again. I didn't take many pictures, you say? Yeah. Because I didn't want to preserve the horror that was that week. But we did do some fun stuff while Scott was with us in the evenings. We did temple square, and we were with Uncle Shane. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I was busy toting children :)

Addy and I got to meet up with some friends who previously moved to SLC at the Hogle Zoo. It was a lot of fun, and Addy was telling me today that she got to go and see all the animals. We created a fun memory :) While waiting for Rachel and Weston, Addy threw all of mommy's pennies into this fountain. She loved it!

She loved this huge ball that the kids could roll around. She was pretty wet when we left lol.

We saw many more animals, but Addy was so excited that it was hard to snap a shot of each. She learned all about rhinos and spider monkeys and sea lions, which she continually talks about :)

Fourth, we enjoyed a day of Fall festivities. We played in the leaves, which Addy loved and Ellie was unsure about. She was pretty somber that day, courtesy of cutting teeth, I'm sure.

The only smile in about an hour and a half.

Raking, and ...

Shovelling?

Then we picked out and carved pumpkins :) Addy was so excited to have an Ariel pumpkin and Daddy nicely obliged. It was so fun to watch them do this project together.

Fifth, my mom bought Addy the pj's that Ellie is wearing when she was little and then someone gave me a bag of clothes in which I found a matching pair! Addy was so excited to have "matching jammies!"