E,E, and Little E Stringfellow

Easter Saturday

This year we celebrated Easter with our families on the Saturday before Easter. It turned out that Saturday worked best for both sides of the family. It was a busy day but we enjoyed it very much. We started by going to the park at Norris with Erik's family in the morning. It was SO windy that we had to hurry though lunch and leave to go finish out the celebration at his mom's house. I didn't take any pics at the park because we were not there long. When I say it was windy, I mean it was windy!! The lids to the metal trash cans were flying off and everything. We could not eat lunch very comfortably as we were afraid it would fly away - and some people's lunch did. There was a lot of chasing plates/eggs/napkins/everything going on. It was really unbelievable how windy it was. Anyway, I took lots of pics this day so hang on and bear with me for these....and enjoy :)

Blowing bubbles...

Elaina's second cousins - Liana and Kelsey

Elaina and Liana - say that 3 times over and over

Elaina with her Papaw (and her cake). She loves him.... I think the feeling is mutal :)

Just a cute shot of her walking away - what is it about pics like this that I love so much??

Elaina with her daddy - notice she still holding that cake. I'm not sure she even ate it, just carried it aroundMe and Elaina on the swingFor whatever reason this pic cracks me up... she looks so sad Coloring cookies - yes, I said cookies. I found these cookies that you color with edible ink. They tasted terrible but the kids loved coloring them
Kelsey coloring a cookie
Liana showing off her cookie

Next stop was to my mom's house... we had dinner, colored eggs and did an Easter egg hunt there.... fun times.

Quentin coloring Easter eggs

My cousin, Emily, brought her little girl, Eliza Grace.... Here she is coloring eggsCousin Celia coloring eggs Cousin Sadie coloring her eggsElaina coloring her eggs. She wanted to hold half of it in like the big kids were doing....

A finished egg....

And now on to the Easter egg hunt... loads of fun for the kids

Elaina counting her eggs with her Aunt Nell

All the kids after the hunt - from left: Eliza Grace, Alexandra, Elaina, Quentin, Celia, Sadie

kind of a blurry pic because of the light but this is Alexandra and Nell

Me and my sister, Abby (same blurry issue)

Great Friday!

Good Friday was a GREAT day. We spent the day together as a family at home. Erik tinkered in the garage and outside most of the day. Elaina and I enjoyed all the usual things we do around the house, only we did as many things as we could outside. Here are some shots of the days activities.....

Picnic lunch outside...this was taken with the timer

Then Erik came outside and helped take a shot at a more reasonable angle.

Playdough outside under the swingset at the picnic table.

She convinced me to get under - not very comfortable to lean over the whole time but we had fun. Another pic by Erik.

Then we died Easter eggs... inside. Don't know why, just didn't feel like taking it outside. She painted and stamped eggs and loved that.

The finished product - notice there is an egg for Jax. She insisted.

Warm Weather

It's been a while since we've posted... not too much to report other then we've been enjoying the intermittent warm weather. I hope it's here to stay - this Easter weekend should be amazing!!! We went to the park a week or so ago. Here are some pics of Elaina enjoying that...

One of Elaina's favorite past times is playing in the car. Don't judge. It's probably not the safest thing but we let her do it - supervised. She loves it and we roll the windows down and keys are out. It's interesting to see which buttons she has pushed when we turn the car on afterwards...Here are some pics of her crawling around inside.

She loves to buckle her baby dolls into her car seat

Elaina's favorite new "do" and more outside pics

The other day I put Elaina's hair in pigtails (which is not something that new) but in addition to this, I braided each pigtail. Well, she LOVES to wear her hair like this - she asks for it every day now. Here are some pics of the cute new do.... I did not put the pigtails on the side as much as I should have so it's hard to see them from the front so I got some shots from the back and side.

Also, we've been enjoying the warm weather lately.... Here are some pics of outside fun on her swingset...

She is getting really good at swinging on the big girl swing....

All smiles...

Also, you may have noticed I have not put videos on the blog very much lately. Well, that's because the videos I have been taking with the new camera do not upload to my blog at all. I think they are too big. So, I played with my camera and shot some compact videos in an effort to see if that would help... It did help but now the videos are blurry. This video is not anything that exciting except Elaina playing outside with her tee ball set and then swinging. She falls off at the end - oops - so the video gets cut short! I wanted to see if I could get a video to post to the blog. I did! I am excited. Hopefully, I can continue to play with the settings on my camera and get some more videos on the blog soon - less blurry though :)

Lowes

A friend of ours told Erik about this thing that Lowe's does every other Saturday for kids. They do a different project activity for kids at the Lowe's store on Saturday morning - AND, it's free!!! Pretty cool. Erik took Elaina this past Saturday and they had a wonderful time. They made these little wooden race cars so Elaina got a chance to hammer and glue stuff. Erik went with his friend and her daughter so it was a fun outing for all of them. Lowe's even gives each of the kids an apron with their name on it and goggles. After she was done, she got a "race car" patch to put on the apron. We've got the patch on there and will hopefully put more on there soon. Here are some shots Erik took of Elaina enjoying the action from his camera phone.

Putting the stickers on the race car...

Hard at work

Hammering....

And a smile for the camera :) (That's her friend Addie in the background)

Outside!!!

This past weekend was AMAZING weather. We loved it. Elaina was puny all weekend with a stomach bug but we managed to get her out for about 20 minutes or so. I feel like the weather/sunshine helped her a little. She started to get sick on Friday night about an hour and a half after I got home from Idaho Falls. Sweet thing, she waited for me to get home (catch the sarcasm in that?). On Saturday she woke up at 7:30, then slept with me on the couch for about an hour from 9-10. Then laid back down at noon and slept until 4:00!!! Holy smokes - that was a nap. She woke up feeling better but not 100%. After that we went outside. She has made a full recovery since then. Here are some shots of outside. I am sooooo looking forward to warm weather again.

She wanted to push her baby in her stroller....she didn't feel well that day so not much pushing went on but I did get some cute pics out of the deal :)

Erik washed my car that day so she decided to get a rag and wash her tricycle too. Too cute!

Valentines Day

Valentines Day was over a week ago, but I'm behind - what else is new....??? We had a pretty low key Valentines Day but it was enjoyable nonetheless... We spent the day at home together as a family and I made chocolate covered strawberries again as I did last year. I am thinking I like this tradition and will continue to do it. This year I made white chocolate dipped ones too. I also made Oreo truffles which are DELICIOUS if you've never had them. No pics of them - they're not as pretty.

Elaina got gifts of things such as candy, candy, and more candy (M&Ms mainly).... and some bubbles and stickers.

She was so happy to get bubbles....

I got Erik the game of Bananagrams... super fun if you've never played it. It is right up Erik's alley, he loves scrabble and this game is a take on scrabble. If you've never played, you should, it's fun. We hope you all had a great Valentines Day! Much love to you all from the Stringfellows!

The things Elaina says...

So, I've seen several people do posts like this just to quote some things their kids say that are either cute or funny. So, I thought, I'd jot down a few recent things Elaina has said that have either tickled me or made me smile.... Plus, this way I can remember them later in life.

1. "Here Me Am, Mommy" which means "Here I am, Mommy"

2. "That's Daddy's Mud?" every time we pass all the mud at the end of our subdivision caused by construction in the road. Here is the story behind that. Erik played mud volleyball back in June and Elaina and I watched. She was really weirded out about all the mud and talked about it for a few days. About 2 months later, Erik left the house to go play basketball. She asked me where he was and I said "Daddy is playing basketball." Elaina responded with "In the mud?" Apparently she thinks he plays all sports in the mud and that all mud is now "daddy's mud."

3. "I want toose of them" which means "I want two of them" For some reason, "two" is "toose" when referring to how many she wants

4. Her teacher told me that the other day she was trying to tell her friend, Anna Grace, something at school. Evidently, Anna Grace was not listening so Elaina blurted out in a commanding voice "Anna Grace Claire!!" Apparently Elaina thinks everyone's middle name is Claire. That really cracks me up - especially since Anna Grace already goes by her first and middle name. She calls me "Mommy Claire' sometimes.

5. The other morning when I went to get her out of her crib, she asked "Where's Daddy?" I said, Daddy is at work. To that she replied, "It's just me and us?" I said, "yes, just me and us." Too cute

That is all for now but stay tuned, you never know what will come out of a 2 1/2 year olds mouth :)

Snow

I am a little behind with my posts and quite frankly have not taken a lot of pictures lately. My grandfather died suddenly a week ago so for about the past week and half, it's been little crazy around the Stringfellow household. During his final days the hospital, many family members drove/flew in for his final days. He had many visitors who I had never met before who wanted to pay respects to him. I learned a lot of wonderful things about my grandfather that I did not know which was neat. My grandfather,Pawpaw, was a wonderful man who lived a wonderful long life and was loved by many. He touched a lot of lives and will be missed greatly. We love you PawPaw!

Now for some positive stuff....My cousin Gabe and his family stayed with us during this whole ordeal. They were here for the snow so Elaina and her cousin Tasio got to play in it. It's actually the first time Elaina has played in it. The last time it snowed, it was very wet, slushy snow so I was not into letting her get wet and cold - I know, I'm such a prude. When she went out, she was not so sure about it - like she is with everything she does for the first time. She went out in it and put her hands in it, kind of. Tasio was the complete opposite - throwing snow balls, diving in it. Those two are like night and day but when they get together they play so well together. We really enjoyed having them here. Here are some pics....

Ready for the snow....

Elaina in front of the constructed snow man

Tasio was all smiles...He loved the snow

This is how Elaina ended up... We did not stay out much longer because of this.

Tasio with the finished snowman. Look how he is looking at it. So funny. Oh, and the face is made out of fruit snacks. Erik's choice to use the yellow ones. Looks like "yellow snow," huh? Nice work Erik :)