Keeping Busy...

Elle has been saying some of the cutest, funniest things recently; I love discovering more about her as she's able to communicate more and more! The other day, I made some mini-muffins, since we were hosting our neighborhood playgroup at our house, and after eating 5 of them (she went on to have at least 5 more throughout the morning!), she said, "Mommy, I want to eat muffins ALL the time!" Then, the other night, we were saying our prayers before bedtime and she started talking about baby Jesus (which she's been obsessed with since Christmas), so I explained to her that Jesus grew up and started talking about how He died on the cross for us in language that she could understand. She listened quietly and then a few minutes later, she said, "Mommy, I'm not Jesus! I'm not Jesus!" She sounded really scared (similar to the way she says, "I'm not taking a bath!" because she still hates the bath), so I'm not sure where that came from, but I assured her, that no, she's not Jesus!
She's also in "love" with everything and will tell me that throughout the day, i.e. "Mommy, I LOVE this balloon!" or "Mommy, I LOVE pancakes!" And apparently, I say the word "cool" quite a bit because she's been using it pretty often too, and she's become all about birthdays recently, constantly singing, "Happy Birthday to Elle!" and asking to blow out a candle and have a cupcake. So, I'm planning to throw her a little half-birthday party next month, just like my mom did for us as kids. If you're wondering why there's exclamation marks after all Elle's words, it's because that's how she is. She gets excited about everything; it makes her soo fun to be around! I can say, "Elle, do want to go clean the bathroom?" And she'll say, "Yeah!" I love her!

We've been trying to keep busy indoors, since we had all that snow, but we've had a couple of nice days sprinkled in too. Here are some pictures from the past two weeks:

Lauren's way too small for this thing, but she can already sit up pretty well, so she likes being upright!

I watched both Sam and his little, brother, Noah, for the first time this past week, so here's Lauren with her new buddy.

We tried out a new indoor gym/play area, and Elle loved it, so we'll definitely go back. She's still very cautious, though and won't try a lot of the inflatables and other things.

Playing with snow indoors!

She's pretty much got all her letters, so we've been working on colors. She loves color sorting with mini-M&M's!

She was a lot more excited about this than she looks. We made gingerbread playdough, which smelled soo good and then made snowmen and monsters with them, using googly eyes, yarn, and pipe cleaners--she can't get enough of googly eyes these days and wants to add them to all her art projects!

Finally, some time outside! She definitely liked the snow a lot more in the warmer weather!

She loves her new shirt and even when she's not wearing it, if you ask her what her shirt says, she'll respond, "My daddy wocks!" I just have to get her to do it on camera!

Indoor fishing


And Elle and Sam's favorite new activity: