Valentines Day/Rain Day

We hope everyone had a very Happy Valentines Day!! We hope you were able to spend it with the ones you love. Ours was a pretty uneventful Valentines Day however, we did get to spend the day together as family so that made it fun. It rained a lot so since Elaina is a big fan of being outside, she would not let us relax until she got out of the house. We backed the cars out of the garage so she could play out there. It was fun for all of us. I have video but they are long and I don't know how to edit them so here are some pics of the day.

She crawled around on the floor chasing this ball - needless to say she was filthy but she had fun so I guess that's all that matters

She had the most fun swinging the tennis ball that hangs from the ceiling that helps me know where to stop when parking in the garage. She could have done that all day

This is her expression as Erik is chasing her.

Erik getting his Valentines Day love...

After playing in the garage, while Elaina napped, I attempted making chocolate covered strawberries for Erik for Valentines Day. I have never made them before (not that it's hard but I usually don't brave very much in the kitchen). However, they turned out pretty tasty if I do say so myself..... Erik enjoyed them. I had left over chocolate and stumbled across some cashews in the pantry. So.....we had some chocolate covered cashews too. Yum!!!

Swingset fun...

For those of you who don't know, our house came equiped with a swing set suitable for a certain 18 month old that you may know. Since the weather was amazing today, we spent some time outside playing on it. Elaina LOVES the slide. This is a clip of her climbing up and sliding down - she has very little fear. It was fun to watch her have fun on it. Can't wait for spring time - I'm sure we'll spend many days playing on it.

The "unseen" shots....

So, my sister sent me some pictures that she has had on her camera for a long time... I love getting pictures that you had no idea someone took and then loving them so. Especially when you get them so long after they were taken. Anyway, here are a few that she sent that I thought were good. These first two black and whites were from Christmas....

This pic was from a day when Elaina was hanging out at her Aunt Nell and Uncle Dave's. She enjoyed wearing Dave's shoes...

This post brought to you by the letter "K"

Elaina newest sound is the "k" sound. This past weekend she started using it. It started with pronoucing the "x" in Jax's name. She really pronouces the "ck" sound with force. Since she has started this, she has popped out so many words. Take a listen. Maybe it's just me but the way she stresses the "k" sound on the end of each word cracks me up. She very careful to make sure she stresses it.

The Good Stuff

This weekend was filled with... well, very little actually. It was extremely nice. After the holidays and moving, we really needed a weekend to do nothing. Today, we all took naps and for those who know me, I don't nap. However, today I needed it. I think Elaina needed a weekend to do nothing more then we did so it was good to offer her that. The only down side to the weekend was that the Titans lost but life goes on.

Tonight, as we lounge around the living room, I watched Erik and Elaina sit and read a book together. As I watched them I am filled with emotion. I realize that things like that are the good things that we need to take in and really enjoy. Sad as it is, these moments will be over sooner then we wish. Here is a shot or two of the sweet moment...

On a funnier note, we recieved our furniture on Friday. It came wrapped in plastic so the couches were filled with static electricity for a while. While Elaina rolled all over couches, her hair came out looking like this... Pretty funny :)

Elaina is 18 months old!!

A year and a half old.... Sounds weird to say and type. I missed posting on Elaina's 17 month milestone. As always, she has grown so much the past few months. The biggest thing is the talking. She is saying A LOT. Its great to be able to actually communicate with her. Her most recent word is "Nell" - needless to say, her Aunt Nell is thrilled about that (she claims that means that she is Elaina's favorite but I don't know about that). Today, I swear she said "Where Jax go?" Then she walked around the house and looked for Jax.

She is also:

• Putting together puzzles - she put together one of the 8 piece wooden puzzles all by herself the other day. Erik and I were amazed.
• She can identify where her eyes, nose, teeth, hair, head, chin, feet, toes, fingers, hands, belly and knee are. She can say eyes, nose, and teeth. Today we learned where her elbow was.
• She eats with a spoon/fork at every meal. She is beginning to express her independence a lot with things like helping her stir her yogurt and cut things up. she gets very upset when you help her do those things.

It is amazing to watch her grow. She has been under the weather the past few days so we hope feels better soon. Here is a shot of her posing with her daddy and his hat on New Years Day last week. Notice Jax assuming his position to claim ownership (as much as he can anyway) of Erik.

Busy, Busy, Busy.....

It's been hectic to say the least over the past week and a half or so. We have done so much that I need to make this a long post so we can catch you up on what's been going on... We have seen Santa, had Christmas celebrations, my mom got married, we moved into our new house, and we looked forward to New Years for a day to be able to relax...

Dec 19th - I took Elaina to see Santa. It went about as well as you can expect an almost 18 month old to do. She sat in his lap and for the first 20 seconds or so had no idea who or what was holding her. However, when she tried to get down and he was clutching her in an effort to keep her on his lap for more pics, she began to scream. I had to put the camera down when that happened to get her but I do have a pic from the photography people of her screaming. It's a momento that every mom should have I guess. These photos are of the non-screaming times.

This was taken waiting in line... she was happy - she was clueless as to what was coming.

Just chilling with Santa - she about to crack.

This is me trying to convince her that Santa was an okay guy. She calmed way down when he gave her this gingerbread cookie.

Onto December 24th.. we had our usual Christmas Eve festivities at my mom's house. We went to church first and then came home to eat and let the kids open presents. Here are some pics of that evening:

My mom always has some sort of game to play at all our family gatherings. This time it was the battle of the cookie decorating-girls vs. boys. This is a pic of the boys in their aprons. Erik won the cookie decorating (hope he doesn't kill me for telling you all that). His really were very good though.

Elaina opening her presents with her Granny. She was not wearing her clothes because we were battling what my family likes to call the "back door trots." She had diaper rash so bad that each time she had an incident, I had to give her a bath to cool her little bottom :( After the festivities at my mom's we went home. Santa stayed up late putting all Elaina's presents together. Here is a final pic of her presents from Santa.

Dec 25th - Christmas.... we had a wonderful day. Elaina of course loved all her presents. The one thing I was amazed at was when I said "Elaina, let's open your presents," she brought it to me, sat on my lap and knew just what that meant. She tore that paper like a pro... Guess you don't have to teach them that. Here are some photos/clips of the day:

Playing with her kitchen - complete with her bedhead and all... this is pretty much how her hair looks every morning. It's cute.

Riding her bike that Santa got her..

Here is a clip of Elaina playing with her kitchen. She giving "bites"

December 27th - my mom got married. The ceremony was beautiful and everything went very well. We are all so happy for her. Here are some shots of the day:

Elaina in her dress. I just loved these dresses.
Mom, Gale and all the grandkids.

They walked down the isle with all the grandkids in tow. Here is a pic of my mom with Elaina just as she is about to hand her back to us. Walking down the isle with their grandkids (8 in all) was very sweet.

Okay... sorry to bombard with so many pics but I figured since I had time this evening I would. Hopefully, I'll get back into the swing of posting regulary now that we are somewhat settled. We got everything into the house with thanks to many wonderful friends on Sunday December 28th. We unloaded the entire POD in less then 1 hour!! It was awesome! We've just got about got everything in place.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and we wish you all many blessings for 2009.

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.