Pajama Day

Today, Elaina had her Christmas Party at her school. To celebrate, it was Pajama Day. So, I sent her to school in her PJs... I was able to put her hair up into pigtails which I've never attempted before. I am glad her hair is long enough to do this because it's pretty cute. She has a bath robe with a hood that she has never worn before because it's not the most practical thing for a baby to wear. So, rather then a jacket, for PJ day, she wore her bathrobe over her PJs. It was pretty fun... Here are some pics...

Okay, so a few more shots of her over the recent days.... These are just of her having fun around the house...

Eating a string cheese stick - her favorite

More cheese eating... The shirt is for all you grandma's out there. Pay close attention to the message.

Just a good pic of her laughing
Elaina's Papaw has a massager that he uses on his shoulder everyday. Everytime she spots him with it on, she climbs up in his chair with him and wants to use it too. She loves for him to use it on her back as evidenced in this pic below.... precious.

NEWS!

Okay, so this news is over a week old now but yesterday it occured to me that we had not told very many people - even siblings.... Oops! So, we've been a little busy...

So, here it is....Erik and I found a house. It is in Karns (like we wanted) and it only 2 subdivisions down from our old house. We didn't expect to find something that close to our old house but are excited about it. If all goes well, we close on the 19th. We have opted not to actually move into it until after Christmas though - we want to be able to enjoy the holiday with family without having the stress of moving hanging over us. Plus, my mom gets married on Dec 27th and we'll have that to deal with too.


So, that's it.... that's the latest and greatest from the Stringfellow clan.. And, how can I go without including a pic of our little gal? This pic was taken by our neice, Jessica, on Thanksgiving.

Growling... well, maybe Squeeling

A few posts ago I talked about Elaina's growling and promised some video of it. This was taken a few days before we moved out of our old house. She doesn't really do a lot of growling like I asked her to do but she does a little bit. She does do some screeching though... Just thought this was a cute video to share. Enjoy :)

Thanksgiving and Bounce House - take 2

The Stringfellow family enjoyed another Thanksgiving. We have much to be thankful for. This year was a good Thanksgiving - eventful, yet, uneventful all at the same time. We enjoyed Thanksgiving supper on Wednesday night with my Dad's side of the family and then on Thursday, we enjoyed Thanksgiving lunch with Erik's side of the family. We did not have to travel far for that one - just walk upstairs :) I did not take many shots of this years Thanksgiving for some reason but here are a few shots...

Elaina with her uncle Kevin... just thought this was a sweet moment. He's coloring with her after dinner.

Elaina ate too much turkey and started acting like one - bucket on the head... she's so silly.

Beautiful girl....

The day after Elaina's second Thanksgiving, we took Elaina to the Bounce House for her second visit there. She LOVES that place - especially the slide. I won't overwhelm you with loads and loads of pics and videos like I did last time but I do have to show you this one of Elaina going down by herself. Her Daddy was not there so I let her go down by herself (something he would not let her do the first time). She loved it. So much so that I could not keep her off the thing. Here is the footage of her solo flight down the slide (one of many)....

Tagged

Okay...I was tagged by Ashley to join in on the 'tagging' fun! Here are the rules: Go to your fourth picture folder, select the fourth picture in it, write four things about the picture, and then tag four people to do the same thing. Here is mine:

1. This is a picture of my mom's dog, Honey (left), and my dog, Jax (right), sleeping on my mom's couch at her old house. This was taken 4 years ago while we lived with my mom while we were building our house that we just sold. Coincidentally, we are living with Erik's parents right now while we search for a new house. Weird.

2) Jax and Honey growled and fought with each A LOT. It was quite annoying. Yet, you could always find them getting pretty chummy like this.

3). They are lying on the most uncomforable couch known to man - not to mention, ugly. It is about 100 years old (not really but close) and the fabric is ichy and feels like you are sitting on a potato sack. My mom would NOT get rid of it. She finally did when she moved. The dogs don't seem to mind it though.

4) This was taken at the house I grew up in. We moved there when I was 3 and my mom just sold it about 2 years ago.

Now I tag...

1) Marta Crass

2) Melissa Smallen

3) Melanie Barthomay

4) Okay, so I don't have very many friends who blog :)

We're moving!!!

So, for those of you who may have not heard... The Stringfellow family is moving. We put our house on the market in September with our fingers crossed and really not hopeful that anything would happen soon. Well, to our surprise, in late October we got a couple of offers and a very good one at that. So, here we are, November 12th and we have to be out of our house by the 20th. Our original understanding was that we had to be out on the 28th but the contract was a faxed copy and the "8" was actually a "0." So, franctically, we are packing this week. Where are we moving????.... good question. We want to stay in the Karns/Hardin Valley area. We made an offer on a house we loved and it did not pan out. So, we are moving in with Erik's parents for a little bit until we can find something else we love. We don't want to get in a hurry and buy something that we don't LOVE. Erik's parents (mamaw and papaw) are pretty excited to have Elaina around for a while. Let the spoiling begin!!! We feel very blessed and are very grateful for them for letting us move in and uproot their world for a while. As always, we'll keep you posted on the status of where we end up. Please keep us in your prayers that we find something and that the move goes smoothly.

Elaina is 16 months old!!

Nov 6th - Elaina is 16 months old today. She is really doing lots of new things. She is signing very well these days. They teach signing at her school so it helps to reinforce what we are trying to teach her at home. She signs "all finished," "milk," "more," "eat," and "diaper." She also has started saying "byyyyyeeeee" and waving when people leave. She really drags out the word "bye" just to be sure that whoever is leaving hears her. Pretty funny. She also will blow kisses when you leave - usually without being prompted. It is very sweet.

Also, one of her favorite thing to do lately is growl like a tiger. She will point to a tiger in a book and growl. It's pretty cute. I'll have to record her doing it. Sometimes we wake up to the sound of her growling in her crib. Her second favorite thing to do is stand in chairs (as evidenced below).

This is pretty much her normal thing lately - standing in chairs... can't keep her out of them.

Elaina with her cousin, Zach...

Elaina's day with her cousin Liana

Elaina spent the morning with her cousin Cassie and her second cousin Liana (Cassie's daughter) while Erik and I did Operation InAs Much with the church. Elaina had so much fun. Cassie captured some good shots of the kiddos and I thought I'd share them....

Little girls smiling and having fun - there is nothing like it.

SUCH a good pic... Love it.

Halloween Fun

Another Halloween has passed and it was a fun one for the Stringfellow clan. Elaina was a ladybug - yet again. My friend Melissa got her this costume before Halloween last year and as you would know, it was too big. But this year, it was just the right size and it was too cute to not where so she was a lady bug again. I promised her that she did not have to be a lady bug again - ever, unless she wanted to. At our small group the Monday before Halloween, we had a small yet fun Halloween party for the kids where we decorated pumpkins and made witch hat cookies. The kids had fun and quite frankly, so did the adults. Here are some shots from that fun night....

Elaina coloring with Laurel aka Minnie Mouse

Spiderman made an appearance at our party. I don't know about everyone else, but I felt safer once he came.

Elaina sharing with her friend, Greyson aka Wonder Turtle

Is he not the cutest Wonder turtle you've ever seen???

Decorating pumpkins

The crew....

Goofy came to the party too...
And, the most exciting news of the day - pictured on the left Hannah Montana came to this Halloween bash!! The kids could hardly contain themselves :) No really, here is a pic of all the kids except Spiderman. They actually sat still for this shot

Here are some shots with Elaina's friends from small group on Halloween. These are post trick or treating shots so the kids were not as cooperative with taking pics...

Coloring fun

Oct 21st - Elaina does a lot of crafts at school so I thought it would be good if I got some paper and crayons and markers for home. Well, I'm glad I did because we have been fun with that. She's love to sit and color (or bang her crayon on the paper) but she does get something that resemble artwork done. Anyway, here are some pics of her coloring. BTW - the bows in her hair were her doing. She wouldn't do anything until they were both in her hair. Wonder where she gets her girliness from - sure ain't me :)

Family Day

Oct 18th - So, Erik has just started working a 9/80 schedule at work so he now has every other Friday off. Since I am off every Friday, I am super excited about this because we will be able to spend some quality time together as a family every other Friday - something which we don't get a lot of these days. Erik's first Friday off was yesterday. We wanted to go on a picnic but the weather decided to get rainy and a bit cold on us. So, we took Elaina to Bounce USA. Needless to say, all 3 of us had a great time. I'm telling you, it was a blast. I highly recommend it. Here are some shots and video of the experience.

At first all we could get Elaina to do was ride on this toy...
Once I got in the jump "thing" with her, she warmed up quickly. sorry no picks of mommy jumping :)

This was by far her favorite. It took a time or two for her to smile going down it. This is slide #1....she's a bit stiff in this one

slide #2.... a little more relaxed

slide #3 - notice the smile this time

Elaina and her daddy resting after all that sliding. Daddy looks tired after all of that sliding... :) or maybe it was all the walking up to the top that pooped him out.

slide #4 was with me... I look like such a dork but I was having fun

me and Elaina - I look like less of a dork in this pic

After all the sliding, she really warmed up to the whole experience and went into the "under 2" play area and had a ball with the balls... she loved this.

And I promised video - maybe this is overkill on the pics and videos but we had such a good time and am so excited about it, I want to share with everyone all the details.

one more... sorry :) this is Elaina playing in the "under 2" play area. She took the balls out, handed them to Erik, and then put them back in. I got her to show off her bouncing abilities too (as little as they are, but still fun).

Elaina is 15 months old

Oct 6th - Elaina is 15 months old today. I'm sure as a mother, you have moments where you look at your child and you think "when did you become a big kid?" Well, I had that moment for the first time last week before I put Elaina in the car to go to school. She was in the garage trying to play with her tricycle and I stopped dead in my tracks and said out loud "Elaina, you look so big. When did that happen?" I stopped what I was doing and went and got the camera, tearing up on the way, to take a picture of that moment. I don't know if it was the outfit or what about that moment that made me say that, but it hit me. I thought it was an appropriate post for her 15 month post. I guess those moments will never end. My prayer is that they come slowly. Here is what she was doing and what she looked like at the moment.

On a different note, she had her 15 month check up and all is well. She's growing and healthy - as always, we are thankful for that. She weighed 22 lbs, 10 oz. Her daddy took her to her appointment so he got to endure the 4 shots that she got, one in each leg and one in each arm- OUCH!

Murphy's Law

Well, to keep you up to date with what's been going on with us... Last week, Elaina's daycare called Thursdays and said she was running a temperature. So, I went to pick her up and sure enough, she was. She slept most of the day Thursday and ran a fever of over 102. Then on Friday it spiked to 103.7. After a trip to the doctor, went home with a prescription for an antibiotic because she had and ear infection and tonsilitis. So, needless to say, it was a tough weekend for us.

The reason I tell you that??? On Wednesday night, we went to visit Elaina's Mamaw and Papaw and I was commenting on how blessed we have been because Elaina has only been on an antibiotic 1 time in almost 15 months of her life.. Well, wouldn't you know that the next day she came down with all of that. So, word to the wise.... don't say things like that out loud and put them out into the universe. It will be heard... I know I won't say anything like that again.

As you can see she's feeling much better. She loves wearing her sunglasses. Here are some shots of her posing in her shades.....

Road Trip fun

The past two weekends, we have made road trips. Elaina is turning out to be quite the traveler. The weekend of Sept 12,13,14, we made a trip to Chattanooga to see her Pappaw (my dad). We spent lots of time with her cousins and swimming in Pappaw's pool. Here are a couple of shots of that weekend... no pics of her with anyone - weird. just solo shots.

Elaina has discovered that the steps of the pool is the coolest place to be. She loves to climb out of the pool and throw things in it.What you can't see is that the glass coffee table has a fish underneath it that Elaina thought was funny when you put your finger in it's mouth. This is her cracking up at the fish.

Last weekend, we took a road trip to a wedding of some friends of ours (Russ and Jen). Elaina made the 6 hours trip in the car beautifully. She was a real trooper. This was Elaina first wedding. She had fun running around on the dance floor and chasing the other kids. Every once in a while she would break out in a dance. It was a lot of fun....

This is Elaina cutting a rug on the dance floor....

Taking a breather after dancing all night....