The Family Farm

Today for our ward playgroup we headed out to Grafton, WI to The Family Farm.  Elise has been getting so good at all her animal sounds and I knew she would have a great time.  It was about a 25 minute drive from our house, but well worth it.  We had a great morning playing with all the animals and with some of our friends!

Elise has no fear of the animals!  She goes right up to them and puts out her hand to pet them!  Good thing all the animals were nice to her too!

She had fun with the mini ponies

The farm had lots of fun playgrounds and swings to play on too!

She had fun in the mini maze until she realized she couldn't find her way out!

We also bought some cups of corn to feed to the animals. Here is Elise feeding some to the sheep!

The kids found some wagons and had a fun time pulling them around and pulling each other in them too!

 

We had a very fun morning and are glad we went!  Elise just kept laughing and running up and around to all of the different animals.  I sure love my little girl!



Elise at 21 months!!!

I know that I don't do regular posts about Elise and her development, but she is talking so much and getting so big these days, I thought I had to update my blog! So in no particular order, here is what our Baby 'Lise is up to these days:

-She loves to say Hello!  The other day we came home and I thought for sure Zack was home but hiding from us so I walked around the house searching and yelling "Hello?" and she has done it ever since.  She's been able to say hello for a long time but now it's one of her favorite things!

 

-Another favorite phrase of hers is "Help me!" This girl (like her Mama) doesn't have much patience.  So she'll try something once and if it doesn't work she quickly yells "help me, help me" until someone comes.  It's pretty cute!

 

-Much to my disgust, she LOVES to eat "dip" totally plain!  It doesn't matter if it is ketchup, ranch, BBQ sauce, she grabs handfuls and puts it down like it's going out of style!  Grosses me out every. single. time.

 

-She is pretty smart and knows if she is poopy.  I don't need to do a smell check or ask her.  She just comes up and says "Poopy" to me and then runs in her room and lays down on the floor for me to change her. She is so helpful!

 

-She knows where we keep all of our movies and runs up to the closet several times a day and yells, "show!".  Sometimes she gets it and sometimes she doesn't.  It's not a happy place when I say no.

 

-She loves any and all animals and is getting better with her animal words and sounds.

 

-She loves to help me count, her favorite number to say is "two!" It's so much fun to read the counting board books with her and have her chime in on her favorite number.

 

-She is very polite and knows when to use please and thank you.  She is good about saying them too. She will come up to me with food and say please on her own a lot, but if not all I have to say to her is, "What do you say?" and it is followed by a very cute "Peeeeess!"  I love it!

 

Another word she is figuring out is "Sorry".  Sometimes she will use it as a preemptive sorry before she is about to do something she knows we don't want her to.  It's pretty funny!!  She is getting better at using it when she is in the wrong.

 

-She is constantly asking to go "side!"  Like all kids she loves to be outside running around and exploring and would stay out there all day if I'd let her!

 

-Elise has a great schedule going for her and I hope it lasts for a long time!!  She will sleep from 8pm until about 7:30am.  She also takes one long nap during the day. She naps from about 12:45pm until about 3:30 on a good day.  Its a pretty great system!

 

-Some of her favorite characters are Barbie and Mickey Mouse.  If she sees any of them she yells out their name until she gets whatever it is.  Good thing she is going to be Minnie Mouse for Halloween!

 

-One of my favorite places to find her is in her room sitting in the big rocking chair reading books to herself.  I can't quite understand her cute gibberish but I know she knows she is reading the book to herself, and it is adorable!

 

-She still loves her Daddy or to her, Zacky.  She loves to run up to our bedroom and pound on our door and yell for Zacky and look for him when we come home from anywhere.  Her reaction when he is home is awesome!

 

-We love this little girl. She is the joy in our lives and we are so lucky to have her.  Sure she has gotten rid of our ability to ever go out to dinner or sleep in but hearing her giggle and watching this crazy girl run around the park is priceless.  We love you so so much!!

Friday Five!

-For lunch bunch this week I made a copy cat recipe of Auntie Anne's pretzels.  I'm always too cheap to buy a pretzel from the mall, but these made me 12 of them so I thought it was worth it!  You can find the recipe here.  They were very tasty and pretty simple to make!

- I went to a consignment sale this week called Just Between Friends.  Many cities throughout the country put on this sale and there were TONS of clothes, toys, shoes, costumes, etc.!  You name it, they had it.  I had a good time and got some great bargains!  You can click the link and put in your zip code to see if they have one near you! 

-Fall has definitely arrived here in Wisconsin.  I look out my window to all the beautiful colors all day and I love it! 

-Elise had her first real pig tails yesterday!!  It took me about a half hour of chasing her around the apartment to get her to sit still long enough to put them in, but we finally got them, and they were adorable!!  Of course our camera died yesterday so I did them again today for your viewing pleasure!

-Since General Conference is coming up soon, I made little gift bags to give to the girls that I visit teach!  I got the idea here and you are more than welcome to copy me and do the same!!  I'm looking forward to the Relief Society broadcast tomorrow and getting a night off and a yummy dinner with my friends.

Switch things up!

So I'm sure you all remember, since it wasn't that long ago, that we got our piano!  Well....since that blog post we have had some crazy ups and downs with it!  So instead of that piano, we now have this little beauty in our living room. 

This piano is much newer, it was made in 1955.  While that still isn't a brand new piano, it is much newer than the other one that was made in 1905!  It is a Gulbransen spinet piano.  How did we come about this crazy switch?  Well, it's a long story but I'll try to summarize. 

When our tuner came and took the sound board and said he would work on it in his shop, he said that the G chord was beyond repair and that he had a different piano in his shop he would give us for free!!  I was still a little confused by this and wanted to make sure it was a good deal so we went to his shop and checked this one out!  He told us he would even find us a good deal for piano movers since he knows a lot of them and wouldn't charge us for the tuning he had already done.  In the end, it has cost us less to move this new one to our apartment that it would have been to fix and keep the other one.

Even if we are being taken "advantage of" (which we don't think we are) we are happy to have this other piano.  It is a lot smaller and weighs much less than the other one so this is a piano we can move with us when we leave for residency.  The other one was too old and heavy to do that with. So in the end, we feel like we got a great deal!  They moved the new piano in yesterday and Zack played beautiful music for us all night!!

Friday Five

1- I've completely lost my voice this week!!  I sound like either a raspy man or someone who likes to whisper a whole lot!  I don't have a cold, sore throat, sneezing, coughing, runny nose or anything!  It is the strangest thing why it's gone!

 

2- We are having a neighborhood potluck tonight and I'm bringing one of my favorite fall treats, Apple Crisp!  Here's the recipe:

 

8 large apples (peeled and sliced)

2/3 C. Sugar

2 tsp. Cinnamon

1/4 t. Nutmeg

lemon juice

 

Mix mixture then toss with sliced apples. 

Topping:

1 1/2 C. Flour

1/2 C. Oatmeal

1 C. Brown Sugar

1 C. Melted Butter

 

Spread over apples and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

 

3- Zack and I often refer to each other as "sweetie" and when Zack got home from school the other day she ran up to him yelling "Sweetie!!!"  It was so cute!

 

4- Found out that the book check out limit at our library is 99 items!  That is a lot of books!  We checked out about 20 fun and new board books for Elise and are excited to read through them in the coming week.

 

5- I decided it was time for my annual (realistically it's been about a year and 4 months!) hair cut.  A friend in our ward cut it for me and I'm very pleased with how it turned out.  What do you think?

Craft Bug

I finally got around to cleaning up our spare bedroom which means that it is now my craft room!  It's not anything too exciting to look at, just a room with a desk and a sewing machine- but it's all mine :)  Since I finally have a creative area I had to get going on some projects! 

The first one I did was a crayon roll.  I used the tutorial from The Pleated Poppy.  I love this project because I can make the whole thing in about and hour and I can use my scraps to do it!  This is a very simple and straightforward tutorial and would be a great project for any beginning sewers as well!

Even though they are scraps, I love the fabrics I used on this project. Here is how it looks when it is filled and rolled out, ready for use!

 

Here is what it looks like when it is rolled up.  Super easy to move from purse to diaper bag and bring with you anywhere.  I've made different crayon rolls that have ribbons to tie it up, but I personally really like the look and ease of the button. 

 

My next project was to make and apron for Elise!  Ever since I made her play kitchen I have been meaning to make her an apron and chefs hat (next on my list..) and I am just now getting around to it.  Little did she know, Elise reminded me to do it since she has been putting on my apron in the kitchen almost daily.  Now we can both wear our own!

 

I also used left over scraps to make her apron and it matches the fabric I used for the curtains on the play kitchen!  It is a child size apron (even though it's still big on her!) so it doesn't take too much fabric to make.  This would also be a very easy beginner project and took me about 2 hours!  Quick and easy- my favorite project!  I used the tutorial from the blog Making It Fun.  If you click on the link all of her tutorials are on the right side of her blog.  Just scroll down until you find the one for the apron!

Fall is Here

Can you believe that it is September already?  I feel like it snuck up on me!

Here is today's list of my Friday Five!

 

1- It finally became official that me and my sisters will have a girls weekend in Chicago at the end of October!  We've talked about this since March and I'm so happy that it is really happening!

 

2- Zack and I were talking last night about how much we love the age Elise is right now.  I know lots of people say that about every stage their kids go through, but for me I'm loving this one!  Elise is still so sweet and baby like in many ways but also such a big grown up girl!

 

3- Ever since leaving Provo, Zack and I have been on the hunt for a great Massaman curry recipe.  Our favorite Thai restaurant, Thai Mango, has THE best and we have been trying to recreate it ever since.  This week we got very close!  I used this recipe and the only thing I did different was to add about 2 Tbs. of oyster sauce. It was delicious!

 

4- I was released from the nursery this week and called as a Relief Society activities committee member.  This is by far one of my favorite callings!  I love it!

 

5- For the first time since making all of my seasonal decorations, I have a display up for September! When I started to make something for all of the months it was October and the next season I couldn't find them after the move!  Below is a picture of what it looks like!

 

 

I love that in this apartment I have a great place to display all my decorations!  I found the printable for this month  here.  It reads, "Caramel apples, pumpkin pie, fall is here, my oh my!"  I thought it was cute.  I also love the acorn and the books and bouquet of pencils for September!  Here's to a great month!