Abby's End of Year Dance Recital

Sweet Abigail had another dance concert that we got to attend towards the end of May. Eleanor was in love all over again. Here are a few shots of the night. 

Abby is in the white dress, and was awesome.

Hugging our star after the show.

And of course, taking the stage at the end. It's all she wanted to do the whole time. After each number she begged to be let up there. Why don't I have her in dance classes again?

And a snippet of E dancing with unknown children after the show. She of course was up there alone for the first 5 minutes or so after, but her sweet moves gave other kids courage to pursue their dreams.

Miscellaneous Fall 201

My kids freaking LOVE uncle Adam's car. He is so sweet and lets them climb all over it when he comes, pushing every conceivable button over and over. If he ever has a dead battery, I can promise you it was us.

Eleanor in the elevator at City Creek.

After one of Abby's dance recitals.

Just a cutie.

Another cutie.

Standing on the table. No no no.

And trying on grandma's "extra" glasses.

 

Digging in the front garden with grandma in his little lumberjack shirt.

And hanging out in grandpa Tom's truck.

I took Eleanor to the Doll House fair at the Provo library. I was trying to get an Alice in Wonderland shot, but most of the houses are too cheaply made to even look cool. This one was the best one, and it didn't have furniture in it. I was fairly disappointed after reading great reviews about it back when we were in Michigan.

Grandma came and joined us there. She bought a cute red rocking horse, because that's what grandmas do.

Nail time with cousin Abby. Not sure what is going on with E's face, ha ha.

School shopping for Abby. She stopped and was laughing as every time Eleanor passed a mirror, she had to stop and admire herself.

"I feel pretty, oh so pretty..."

She seriously does it all the time. Here is another trip. We may need to work on vanity.

Misc Summer 2012

So- how about a few odds and ends from the summer? I'm only six months behind on my blog. Yikes. Let's start where we left off. Unpacking the moving truck. My brothers and a dear neighbor helped us move all of our crap into my parents shed. Thanks heavens for that. I would hate to be paying money to have to get a storage unit and essentially rent our stuff until we move again. Mainly because nothing we own is worth the amount it would cost. Heck, nothing we own is worth more than $20. Ha. Anyhow, here is our sweet, bald, baby Winston playing with the bleach and wiper-fluid. 

We kept a keen eye on him while we worked, obviously.

 Eleanor reacquainted herself with our immediate neighbor, Charlotte. Hooray for friends!

One of the best parts of moving back to Utah is getting to see our cousins more! Allie is such a sweet helper with Winston.

  

And it's fun to see the older cousins as well! Like Ryan and Kirsten and her sweet baby Rosaline.

Whom my children adore. Winston gets all spazzy around her and it cracks me up.

 

 See?

Rozzie Jean!

 

More Allie-time.

Poor Winston! We put him down for a nap he DID NOT want to take. After his fussing calmed down, I go in to check on him and find this. Ohhhhhhhh! My poor little man!

And here he is showing his sterner side at Target.

And then his happier side 2 seconds later. Kids are so funny.  

The kids, my mom and I went to the cemetery on Memorial Day to visit Seth's grave. It was the first time for Winston, and boy did the kids love the "park." Flowers, pinwheels and flags everywhere!

Eleanor looked so sweet looking at his headstone.

 

And Winston... oh yeah, Winston. We had to stop him from eating every one's flowers. As seen here.

 

Back at home Eleanor and Abby worked on their splits. Eleanor also likes to do somersaults and call them everything from "dimnastix" to "tartwheeeeels" (gymnastics, cartwheels) or whatever else the Olympic team is doing. Funny story, when watching the Olympics, Eleanor was fascinated by the girl's teams. One time while watching a gal do her floor routine she tells me "Oh! Mom! I tan do a flippy-roll like dat!" (I can do a flippy-roll like that!) Then the same gymnast does some insane run across the mat and Eleanor says in just as enthusiastically, "Oh! I bet I tannott do dat!" (Oh, I bet I can not do that!) Another time while watching the gymnasts she says, "Oh! She's dust lite Woner Woman!" (She's just like Wonder Woman.)

Win and Grandpa Tom.

At Tom and Jenni's house, there was a stray dog they had hanging around for a few days. The kids freaking looooooved him.  

 

More fun with Abby. Abby takes care of Grandma Marguerite during the summer so we got a lot of wonderful time with her. Here they are doing nails again. I love this picture especially as Eleanor looks so much like Allie here!

More to come! Win's first birthday! Firth Reunion! Park City and more!! Stay tuned!!! Or not, I really can't promise anything these days.

Hula Doll!

In my days as a flight attendant, I traveled to Hawaii around 10 times. When my niece Abby was little I would bring her back a Hula Doll. These are basically dark haired Barbies mounted on a base that dances around. They are terribly cute. I got one for Allie when she was smaller too. Well, recently my mom and dad took a now teenage Abby and her brother Jack to Hawaii, (I know, right?) and sweet Abby brought Eleanor back a Hula Doll! I was so excited, but more so was little E. This is right up her alley as she loves anything Barbie right now as well as anything that dances or plays "Pearly Shells" at top volume. We even went to the dollar store to buy her some leis so she could be a "hula girl" too. Here are the videos of her opening and playing with them. This is mainly so Abby can see her enjoy it, but you are all free to watch them too.

Wasn't Your Utah Trip Like Over A Month Ago?

So yeah, we've been back forever now, and I still haven't finished blogging our trip. And I am only doing so now for journaling purposes. I like things to feel complete. So here is the last of our trip. Lots of pictures with no real rhyme or reason to them. But hooray for me for getting it done!

The plane ride out was AWESOME! Eleanor decided to forgo her nap in exchange for a 4 hour game of "Hey, what's over there? Who's that? Let me down! Hey you, hey you! Why aren't you awake? Why aren't yo looking at me?" It was awesome, did I mention that? Ya, on the plane ride back we may have become friends with Benadryl.

Judge away internets.

Eleanor was delighted with grandpa and grandma Firth's new addition of chickens. The chickens are all named after old girlfriends of grandpa Firth. Sassy!We got the chance to see old friends, like sweet Emma. After Eleanor got over how fun her stroller was, they were totally happy to see each other.We also got to see our friend Matt and his family. Here are his daughters Ashley and Gracie with us at Cafe Rio. Oh, and we got to visit our friend Cafe Rio, we may have seen him more than our other friends.

It's hard eating ice by yourself.

We got to go lots of places with grandma Howell.And spend lots of time with grandpa Howell.We got to see aunt Cassie, visiting from Idaho.And Eleanor practiced the piano with dad.

She's a total prodigy, I can just feel it.

Eleanor took some fun walks with Jack and Abby.

Abby, who is now Lehi Middle School's newest cheerleader! Go Abby!As you saw in an earlier post, we enjoyed the annual Firth reunion up in Arbon Valley Idaho.Where Eleanor made stuff with clay.Rachel got to change her first diaper in something like 17 years. We went easy on her, no #2. The little kids stayed out of the way while...

...the big kids had a shooting competition, complete with 8 awesome shooting stations! Jeff outdid himself this year, and that is saying something.
It was so fun!

Bailey and I were on a team and we were, you guessed it, awesome!

Clayton was just horrible at it. Ok, kidding. I just wish I could beat him at something.
He and Kadin were terrific.

Later that night we had a really fun auction, with Clayton as the auctioneer. If you need a fun idea for a reunion or ward function, call me and I will tell you how it works. No money involved!He made sure to keep the bids going higher and higher. I kept chickening out on stuff, or wussing out as I didn't want to out-bid one of the little kids. Autumn lost her first tooth during the festivities.And the guys stood around and gossiped. Ok, talked, sheesh, whatev.

Back in Provo, Eleanor got to play dress up.Complete with grandma's "Sally-Jesse" glasses.

We went out to dinner with my brother Tom's family for his birthday.

Here are E and Tommy (junior) out front.Inside she had to show how cool she looks in shades. Pretty darn cool if you ask me.

Later Tom got to open presents. One of which was a clue leading him on a scavenger hunt. It's a tradition for them...

...which tends to put Tom in some awkward positions.Eleanor got to be one of the clues.The trip was so great, we easily could have stayed for a month and needed more time, alas, two weeks it was. We ate at all of our favorite food spots: JCW's, Cafe Rio, Smart Cookie, Costa Vida and best of all Chungas. It's a Taco place at about 650 North Freedom Blvd. It's in the same strip as Shirley's Bakery, which was also on our go-to list. If you want an awesome taco, possibly the best we've had, get the Taco Al Pastor at Chunga's. You will thank us.

We Miss everyone a bunch and hope to see them all again at Christmas time. Anyone and everyone are invited to visit us in Michigan! I'm looking at you, Allie.