Mushrooms, Gnats and Peacocks

The hunting season for morel mushrooms has come and gone; and after searching many areas, Seth hit a few good spots. Of course, I can't say where, though. He and my dad went out a couple of weeks ago, and he found his biggest mushroom to date - it was the size of a pop can. Here is one batch, which we promptly ate. Elena even liked them.

Unfortunately, Elena was attacked by gnats while we were waiting for the boys to come back from their mushroom hunt. One even bit her underneath her lashline. Fortunately the bites didn't seem to bother her at all. Here she is with her bloody lashes. Poor thing.

In other news, Seth's brother, Ricky and his wife Steph just had a baby girl on Monday, giving us a total of 12 nieces and nephews. We don't have a picture of her yet so for now, I'll put up a picture of a peacock that has taken up residence on their farm - just because I think he's pretty.

Elena is still not walking, but she has mastered the art of knee-walking. It was becoming too difficult to carry things around while crawling, so she started walking on her knees. Here she is "walking" across our floor while wearing Daddy's fishing hat. (I obviously hadn't gotten to cleaning the floors yet that morning so excuse the dirtiness)

Standing

About a week ago, Elena started to stand without holding onto anything. We managed to catch a glimpse of it on video. She's leaning on Seth a little, but she did manage to stand a second here and there without any support at all. She was pretty dang proud of herself.

Olives!

We went to an Italian restaurant last week for supper, and Seth gave Elena the olives on his salad. That wasn't enough for her so the waitress brought out a whole plate of olives, and she ate pretty much the entire plate. She definitely gets that from Seth. I can't stand olives!

Anyway, the next day when we had to change her poopy diapers, we decided we probably won't bet letting her do that again. PU!!

Storytime

Elena is getting to be quite the chatterbox. It will be nice when we can understand what she is saying. She's very expressive and uses a variety of intonations like she's really telling you something. Here's a video of her reading a story to us. It sounds pretty interesting.

Still waiting

Elena's going to be a late walker. I have no problem with that...at least I didn't until the warm weather came. Now she LOVES playing outside; and since she's still crawling, we're having a little trouble keeping her clean. It doesn't help that she much prefers playing with dirt to anything else she finds outside. On the bright side, I'm getting lots of practice at getting stains out of clothes.

Dancing

Gardening

I know, I know. It's been way too long since I've put up a new post. Computer time has dropped drastically on my priority list, especially with the nice weather. The main reason I've been neglectful though is that we're expecting another baby! Baby #2 is due Dec 15th, and we are very excited for Elena to have a little brother or sister. Once the 1st trimester is over I should be sleeping and puking less and will thus have more time to devote to keeping you all properly updated. I'm heading to bed now, but before I go I thought I should at least leave you all with a few pictures to tie you over until next time.

My dad spent the entire afternoon planting us a beautiful garden today. I can't wait to enjoy the fruits of his labor (actually it will be mostly vegetables). Elena was fascinated by the process. Here are a few shots of the little gardener watching and learning.

Rockin' Out

Elena figured out how to climb the steps today. It took a lot of work to hoist herself up, but she did it. Seeing how we can't block off the bottom 2 steps, my guess is she'll get a lot of practice falling in the near future. Should be fun.

Here's a little video of Elena enjoying a little Metallica with Daddy. For some reason she would only dance if she had something on her head that day.

Golden Birthday

Today is Elena's 1st birthday, and she is celebrating by taking a longer than usual nap on the living room floor. Woo hoo! We had a big party on Saturday night with dinner and carrot cake. Elena didn't care for the cake too much - she just poked at it a little. I was glad to see that -maybe she has avoided inheriting her mom's terrible sweet tooth. She absolutely loved all the attention and her new toys. She had lots of help opening (and playing with) her presents. Seth could barely get a picture of her surrounded by so many cousins. It's been a great year.

Easter eggs

Here's a video of Elena playing with some of her cousins (Maddy and Kaden) on Easter. Elena was pretty excited to see everyone, and I guess Kaden was looking for a new hiding spot for his Easter egg.