December Happenings

Hi everyone! It's been a few weeks since our last post so here are some pictures and videos about some family adventures of ours. The other week the Children's Aquarium at Fair Park in Dallas had free admission so we went and had a lot of fun seeing the sea life. Eli especially enjoyed the ray tank where we got to pet some live rays.

Here are also a couple pictures of us raking leaves and, interestingly enough, our microwave. The last picture requires some explanation. Eli's growth has allowed him to access nooks and crannies that were heretofore foreign to him. The microwave is one such place. As a result, we've recently been going to use microwave only to find some little present there waiting for us. On the day pictured below, Joanna started making some popcorn when we began to smell something interesting. Open the microwave and Voila! Eli had snuck a plastic bottle of horseradish in without us noticing. Ah, the adventures. Happy holidays!

Boo-Woof

Happy Halloween (tomorrow)! We celebrated Halloween tonight, and we had a blast. To start our Halloween weekend, we carved this great pumpkin that had walls at least 2" thick. It was a chunky one. As you can see in the pictures below, Eli and I scooped out the innards and Jake carved a cool cat silhouette.

Tonight was our church Trunk-or-Treat. Eli went dressed as a dog. He had so much fun going around collecting candy, and he kept saying "more, more" in reference to eating the candy. The last photo is after we returned from the Trunk-or-Treat party--he is obviously on a sugar high.

Japanese Fall Festival

Last weekend we drove to Fort Worth for the Japanese Fall Festival held at the Japanese Botanical Gardens. While there we got to feed the fish...

...walk around the beautiful gardens...

...and listen to the cool drum group.

We had a great time.

Country Roads

Our bedtime routine is our favorite time of the day. We start by making a train sound, and Eli automatically stops what he is doing or turn off the tv if it is on and leads our train into his room (all the while we say, "Chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga-chuga choo choo, choo choo!" over and over).

Yesterday Eli started singing with me and trying to match my pitch as I sang Country Roads by John Denver. My parents gave us a beautiful book that goes along with the song, and it has become a favorite at our house. We caught Eli singing along again tonight. This is one of those videos that I am going to cry while watch when I'm 100 years old.

Catch Up

These pictures aren't in the right order because Blogger won't let me move them for some reason, but these are some pictures we've taken over the past month or two. Below is the result of delicious chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.

Earlier this morning Jake mowed our lawn, and Eli likes to get in the action. He has a scooter car thing that he likes to use as his mower along side Dad, but this time Dad let him help push the big mower.

About two weeks ago we changed Eli's crib into a toddler bed (changed the front railing) because he figured out how to climb out of his crib. He actually really loves his bed. Often he will go into his room and close the door so that he can play in his room alone and jump on his bed. If I open the door to check on him, he says "close"--as in close the door. I knew he would like the autonomy of being able to get out of bed on his own, but the transition was still a lot easier than I expected. There is only one time when we came in to find him not asleep in his bed (pictured below), and this was the first nap he took in his "new" bed--by the way Mitzi, we still LOVE this green recliner!!
About a month ago I was busy working at the computer while Eli was napping and all of the sudden I heard a huge crash. It sounded like it was right above me. I peeked our the window to find a tree limb right in front of me and a surprised lady looking at our house (or rather the house we're renting). I went outside to find this the scene in the picture below. I was in the room right by that tree limb. It ends up that half of one of the trees in our front yard was dead, and so the limb just fell off. Our landlords are friends of ours, and they took care of the mess and dead part of the tree right away.

Next we come to our spider adventures. **shiver** I don't like spiders--big or small. A few weeks ago we had 3 encounters with what I consider huge spiders right in our house. Below is a picture Jake took of one of them before he flushed it down the toilet. They're pretty thick and a little fuzzy in real life. Plus, they're super fast when they run away from you. Once again, our landlords were great and got pest control out two days later to spray. We haven't seen any spiders inside since.

Lastly, we watched our friend's dogs for a little while about two months ago. They have two medium size dogs Lucy and Christy. Eli LOVES dogs. Loves, loves, loves. If we're at the park and he spots someone with a dog, he goes right over to see if he can pet it. He's just like his daddy. Below are a few pictures of our fun with them. Thanks for letting us spend some time with them Coopers!

6 minutes of Eli

We were watching our friends little girl last night and Eli started putting on a performance so we grabbed the camera and taped him to see how long it would go. This is the result. We think some of his best material happened before we started filming but you'll get the idea. Here you go doting aunts and grandmother's: Eli in all his diapered glory.

Splish Splash Storytime at the Water Park

Dancing

On Sunday morning I put on some Christian music. I pressed play on my ipod and left the room. I came back into the kitchen a minute later to find Eli rocking out in front of the ipod. Sadly, I didn't have my camera in hand when he was dancing with the most enthusiasm, but I did manage to catch a few glimpses of him dancing for us.

Millions of Peach...

It ends up that we made the jackpot by moving to the house we're renting. Not only do we like the look of our little abode, but there are four beautiful fruit trees in the backyard. Peach, green apple, plum, and we're not yet sure about the fourth one.

For the past few weeks we've noticed lots of fruit growing on one of the trees, but at the time we weren't sure what kind of fruit was growing. Peaches!! They're small, but they're definitely peaches. We hadn't been in the backyard for a few days, so when we went outside yesterday we were surprised to see so many peaches on the limbs of one of the trees that the limbs were actually starting to bend and break from too much weight. You know what that means...peach harvest time!

Below is only part of what we picked. By the end of the afternoon that whole tub was full to the top, and we still have a few more to pick in a week or so when they're more ripe.

Eli has two methods to eating peaches. Here is the first method...

Here is the second method...


We also have this gorgeous apple tree that isn't quite ready to pick. They sure look pretty, though.


And we end the afternoon with a shirtless boy and his favorite backyard toy.

A Day in the Dirt

A few weeks ago Jake needed to work on homework, I needed a break from watching Eli, and Eli needed to get some energy out. To satisfy all of our needs, we all went onto our front porch while Eli play with dirt and play dough. Below are some pictures of the disaster.

Ice Cream

Tonight I made veggie chili for dinner and chocolate soymilk banana ice cream for dessert. It was a hit...

Easter

Happy Easter!! This past weekend my parents (Joanna' parents) came to visit us. We had fun celebrating Easter, watching General Conference, eating lots of grub, and just hanging out. Below are some pictures of our fun. For some reason blogspot won't let me move the pictures, so they're out of order.