Week 35

Ok, so looks like I am actually going to get caught up tonight on posting... write down the date, because it may never happen again! :)

Week 35 was pretty exciting for Miss Elena! We spent the weekend in Springfield and Branson celebrating the end of Daddy's seminary class. We went to Silver Dollar City all day on Saturday, and just ran around. A MUCH better trip than our last trip to SDC for Young Christian's Weekend when it was pouring rain and 40 degrees outside! It still rained Saturday morning, but at least it was raining and 60. And it got sunny and warm that afternoon. Aunt Jess, Uncle Luke, and Leila joined us, along with a couple of their friends, so we had a great time! Mommy and Daddy ate too much, and shared some with Elena. The frozen lemonade wasn't too bad, but she LOVED the blackberry topping from our funnel cake!

Making faces at Daddy through the "window" on the umbrella part of her stroller.

Hanging out with Grandma Looten... think these two are related?!

'Lena and Leila, chillin' outside the pottery shop.

The guy at the rock shop who makes jewelry gave Elena and Leila baby rings with a stone the color of their birthstones (obviously not a real sapphire). His only request was that we let him pray for the babies while he made the rings. That sounded like a win-win situation to us, and the ring is awful cute!

Besides Silver Dollar City, we spent Sunday hanging out, going to church, and celebrating the moms with lunch out at a mexican restaurant and candy (chocolate toffees for me, dark chocolate caramels for Aunt Jess) from Grandma & Grandpa Looten. For my first Mother's Day Elena got me chocolate covered strawberries... again! What a smart little girl she is... ;)

Listening to Grandpa Looten tell a story. Elena decided she was too big to sit in her swing while we ate- she had to sit up at the table with the rest of the family!

Showin' off the girls after church.

Grandma & Grandpa with their favorite granddaughters!

When we got home, we had a surprise package from the other Aunt Jess! She sent Miss Elena a couple of really cute dresses, a sleeper, and a swimsuit...

The most interesting part was the tissue paper it came wrapped in!

But she finally decided to try on the swimsuit. It looked adorable, of course.

Like every woman, after seeing herself in a swim suit, Elena decided to read up on some pointers to get herself ready for swimsuit season!

Elena is starting to enjoy the feeling of grass and different textures and that sort of thing. Last summer she was just too young to even know there was a difference. I love this picture because she's holding one of the little tiny blue flowers that I used to pick by the handful when I was little. Too cute!

Elena is also discovering some of the downfalls of crawling: sometimes you end up where you don't want to be! We heard her start crying in the living room and looked in there and didn't see her. Yep, sure enough, she had rolled herself under the table, and couldn't get out because she was too tall with her head up. Mean ol' Mommy got the camera and took a couple of pictures before rescuing her! It was too funny...

Well, the not so good news this week is Miss Elena has another ear infection. Sad. :( We were afraid it was pink eye because her eyes were just mondo-gunky and all red-rimmed. But the actual whites of her eyes weren't red. So I called the doctor on Wednesday to see what they thought, and they said to bring her in because it probably wasn't pink eye, but could definitely be an ear infection. And they were right... so we're on the 3rd antibiotic since January. But she's already feeling much better, and this antibiotic doesn't seem to be messing with her system as much (read: no diarrhea), at least not yet.
I did find out that she is about 16 1/2 pounds now, she's getting to be a porker! :) We sure do love her...

Post Script: I was so proud of myself for getting this post all done, with the pictures and everything. Then I went to preview it, and IT WAS ON THE WRONG BLOG!! So, here is take two, because, OF COURSE, you can't copy and paste pictures from the blog editor... NEAT. I may not make it to a year of separate blogs...