Videos

I've been stumped on what to blog about lately, but I have been enjoying taking some cute videos of Eli, so I decided to put these up. I'm the first to admit that I don't always watch videos on people's blogs unless they're close family, so if you don't watch these I won't feel bad at all. I know the grandparents will appreciate these though, especially since they're all 2 states away.

Most of these are of Eli jabbering. He loves to make lots of sounds with his voice and he has quite the range. :) He can be very entertaining at times (more so of course when the camera is not on, but oh well). So here are a few moments with our favorite little guy...


Playing soccer with dad:

Jabbering some more:

My 2 Valentines

I was lucky to have two valentines this year - a mini and a full-size. :) I sure love these guys a lot. My favorite part of the day is when Jeremy comes home from work and we have dinner and then he and Eli play on the floor together while I clean up. Jeremy always asks if I want him to help me and I always say "you ARE helping me!" I love how excited Eli gets when Jeremy walks in the door and how happy he is when his daddy's home. :)

We didn't do anything too exciting for Valentine's Day this year. We got to go on a nice date last weekend when Heidi babysat for us, so that kind of counted as our Valentine's celebration (on our date, we went to Target and bought a 20 qt. stock pot, so that was our gift). :) We just had the usual church duties and then we watched some of the Olympics that night. Monday was GREAT though because Jeremy had the day off! Yea for holidays! He didn't get the Monday holiday in January, but he did get this one, so that was really nice. We had a fun Greek dinner last night and enjoyed being home together.

We've had a lot of fun watching Eli change before our eyes lately. He's getting much more interactive. He's always loved playing with phones, but now if I hand him the phone he'll hold it up to my ear for me. So cute! And he's started trying to feed me cheerios when he feeds himself. Another exciting thing happened today when I went to get him up from his nap. I walked in the door and saw him standing up in his bed! Yikes! He had pulled himself up and was holding on to the edge. That was a first. Pretty crazy. He also can kind of crawl backwards now. Silly kid. He can get onto his hands and knees from his tummy and then he goes backward to get onto his bum. He's pretty adorable.

Here's a picture of him yesterday. This is what happens when I'm busy baking and don't bother to stop him from getting into everything:Haha. Look at that innocent face. :)

And here are some more random pictures. I love these guys!

Partay!!

Last night we had some couples over for a little shindig. It was so fun! We had invited about 16 people (8 couples), knowing that a lot of people would be going out of town for the 3-day weekend, and we had 8 people planning on coming. Then at the last minute, one couple called to cancel since their little boy was sick. So we were down to 6 people coming, 8 total with us. I was a little worried that it would be lame because of our smaller numbers, but it was so fun! We had such a great time eating and playing games and laughing and getting to know everyone better. I made some yummy appetizers and then had people bring drinks, veggies, and dessert (which was amazing - oreo truffles that were to-die-for! I will definitely be looking for an excuse to make these in the very near future).

Anyway, so it was really fun. We played "Catch Phrase", thanks to my Aunt Cassie who lent me the game, and we had a few other games lined up to play after, but we ended up just chatting instead. It's so fun to get together with other people in our same age group and situation. They're all in our ward (along with the other people we invited) and have all been married around 3-5 years. One couple has a boy 9 months older than Eli and another couple is expecting their first this summer. I was so impressed with the intelligent, well-educated group of people we had. We both agreed that we liked everyone more after getting to know them better (which is of course a good thing) and that we should do things like this more often. Our boisterous laughter only woke up Eli once (oops), but luckily he went back to sleep pretty easily.

So that was a great start to our 3-day weekend. We don't really have any specific plans for the rest of the weekend aside from a lot of church duties tomorrow. It seems like we've had a really busy week with random things, so it will be nice to have Monday off to relax together. We hope you all have a great weekend and a Happy Valentine's Day!

Thanksgiving in February

We had a fabulous weekend. It was our Stake Conference this weekend, so I got to have Jeremy around all day yesterday!!! It was great. :) But I'll back up. Friday night we stayed home and relaxed together. Saturday Jeremy watched Eli so I could go get my haircut. Yay! It had been a few months. That evening, Heidi and 3 of her friends (girls she's planning on rooming with next year) came up to babysit Eli so Jeremy and I could go to the adult session of Stake Conference. They successfully him put to bed and everything! So we went out to dinner afterward and then came home and visited with them until midnight. (It's been awhile since I've been up that late.) Heidi was so cute. She brought me a cookbook and a box of chocolates. Why? Just to be sweet. And sweet it was. :) Thanks Heidi!

Then on Sunday we went to Conference and came home and prepared our turkey feast! Yep, we cooked a turkey yesterday. Crazy, I know. I'd been wanting to cook one for awhile. We saw this recipe on America's Test Kitchen a long time ago and we've been wanting to try it. It sounded fun and it was absolutely amazing. I've put the recipe on my other blog if you want to check it out. We didn't go all out with traditional Thanksgiving fixings, but I did make rolls, and of course we had potatoes and gravy. So we have tons of leftover turkey, some of which I put in the freezer and I'm in the process of making some turkey stock right now. Mmmmm. Anyway, then last night we went to my grandparents' house for their "Family Night" they have every month. It's always fun to see everyone, especially since we hadn't been to one in awhile.

Anyway, it was a great weekend! It was nice to be able to sleep in on Sunday. Saturday is usually the only day either of us gets to sleep in, but this weekend we had 2 days, so Jeremy slept in on Saturday and I slept in on Sunday. Wonderful! Eli has been moving SO much lately. Still no traditional crawling, but he is doing this army crawl thing and he's getting a lot faster at rolling and scooting around. It always amazes me when I look up after looking away for just a minute or two and find him in a totally different spot from where he was before. It's pretty fun! And he loves it too. He gets a little bit giddy when he finally reaches whatever object he's been scooting toward. :) Here are a couple of pictures...

Tired after eating:Playing with dad:

Three Men and a Baby

Expect these "men" were ages 12 (almost), 10 and 8.

Last night was our Stake Temple night. We heard the Stake President and the Temple President would be speaking to us, so we both really wanted to be able to go. I had asked my cousin to come watch Eli and she agreed, but then she remembered she had an interview to be an EFY counselor (by the way, Michelle, I hope that went well!). So I was trying to find someone else to come watch Eli. I was planning on just putting him to bed early and having someone just hang out here while he slept. So I wasn't having any luck until I was talking to our Bishop's wife, who also happens to be my visiting teaching companion and my piano student. So after our lesson yesterday we were talking about the temple trip and then when she got home she called and offered to have her boys come play their Xbox while Eli slept (since that's what they were going to be doing at home anyway). These boys are also my piano students and they're really good kids, and so I thought it was a great idea!

Well, everything turned out alright. It wasn't how I thought it would be, but oh well. We left a little before 7 and I had put Eli down and then we got home about 9:45pm. I walk in the door and the first thing I hear is the boys saying "We're sorry Sarah, we tried to get him to go back to sleep, but he didn't want to!" And then I see Eli on the floor with a controller thing and then he sees me and starts crying. Poor kid. Just a little past his bedtime. :) So I guess he woke up right after we left and was awake the whole time. I felt so bad! Not for him, he seemed happy enough, but for these 3 little boys. But they said he didn't cry once they just got him up, so I guess it was fine. They just gave him some controls and he was happy. :) I bet he had a blast watching those boys. The 8-year-old was asleep on the couch when I got home. They said he conked out around 8:00. They also said they were arguing over who got to carry Eli out to the family room from his bed. They decided to take turns oldest to youngest. Haha. Too cute. Anyway, I don't think I'll have them watch him again, but it was really nice for Jeremy and I to be able to go to the temple together along with so many people we knew from our Stake. We got to hear from our Stake President and the Temple president and it was a great way to prepare for our Stake Conference this weekend. We knew it was where we needed to be last night, and in it's own way, it all worked out.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm ready for summer. I looked out my window this morning and all the snow is melted and it's sunny, and my first thought was, "Oh! It's so nice outside! We should go for a walk!" And then I remembered that although it may look warm, it's still freezing outside. Bummer...

Foodie Blog

Well I've decided to start a food blog. I've been so apprehensive about this for some reason, but I decided just to do it. I don't have a sweet high-tech camera and I'm still learning a lot about cooking, but I mostly just wanted a place to log the recipes I've tried and have them all organized and photographed. It will be mostly for myself, but this way I can share them all with you too! (Without using this blog for that). I know there are a gazillion food blogs out there, but I guess that's the beauty of blogging these days. Anyone can join in. So, I won't post any recipes on here anymore, but feel free to check out my new blog! Thanks!

All About Eli

So Eli is 9 months now and I feel like I haven't done many updates on him lately, so I thought I would let you know what he's been up to and what he likes to do these days.

• He has started bouncing when he hears music and it's pretty much the cutest thing ever. :)
• He loves to feed himself crackers and, as of 2 days ago, cheerios (he used to not be able to get those from his hand to his mouth)
  
• He doesn't crawl yet, but he moves - he can scoot forward on his bum, scoot around in a circle and backwards on his tummy (using his hands), go from sitting onto his tummy, and roll around a lot; so although there is no crawling, he gets around just fine
• He loves books now - he loves to turn pages and he really likes the "touch and feel" books; he sticks his little pointer finger out and feels everything
• We don't swaddle him for sleeping anymore; it was great while it lasted! (until about 7 1/2 months) but now he's too much of a mover (it's always fun to see what odd position he's in when I go get him)

(And yes, he now sleeps with that little doggy. After his sleep got all messed up from being sick, I started using that and, long story short, he goes to sleep much easier now).

• He can clap his hands and loves to do it when I say "yea" and clap my hands
• He loves to bang his toys together and make noise - that's the sign of a good toy for him
• He still adores the bath
• He likes to jabber and experiment with his voice - singer in training
• His hair still sticks up a lot, but the front is laying down some and the back now curls backwards
  
• He loves when his daddy comes home....but his mommy is still his favorite (yessss)

That's what's new with the little guy! He's still adorable and smiley and happy and wonderful. He loves to learn more about the world and we love to watch him do it.