Worst. Blogger. Ever.

My little sister Heidi has been bugging me about blogging this week and then I got an email from my Dad saying I should blog, so then I knew it was bad. Haha. We've been busy lately, but not with anything really exciting, so I haven't really known what to blog about. And I keep forgetting to take pictures.

But here are a few things:

We had a visit from another 2nd cousin. Jeremy's cousin's wife and her little boy were in town so they stopped by and we got to visit with them for a little bit. Tyler is about 3 months older than Eli. Both of them are the 1st (and only) child, so they didn't really like sharing, although Tyler was a lot better than Eli, but they had fun anyway. We told them to hug each other for the picture and this is what we got:

Eli was a little more into it than Tyler, so he about knocked him over, but they were pretty cute.

We also have Stake Conference this weekend. I'm the Stake Music Chairman now, so I've been busy organizing all the music for that. I'm directing a choir for the General Session and it's going really well! We had about 45 people at our rehearsal last Sunday, so I think it will be a great success. We're doing 2 beautiful pieces, and they sounded really great. So that's been fun, and it will be a relief when it's over. :)

Other than that, we've been busy with other random stuff. Eli continually keeps us entertained. He's been enjoying making animal sounds lately. He loves to read books, and lots of them have pictures of animals. He now does "raarr" for a lion (although he often whispers it, so it's not all that ferocious), "bzzz" for bee and dragonfly, and he tries to woof for a dog (and any other animal that he doesn't remember the sound for). He also says "wow" a lot, which is cute, because he really overdoes the opening and closing of his mouth. He also loves his hat. He used to hate it, but now he knows it means he gets to go outside, so he puts it on about 20 times a day and sometimes just walks around with it or he'll go to the door and grab his shoes (and sometimes mine) and pat on the door until I get the hint. :)

And sometimes he likes to put it on our heads too.

Oh, and we've been having the normal crazy Utah summer weather lately. A few weeks ago we had some giant hail. Okay, so it was about the size of an olive, not giant, but the biggest I've ever seen in person:

And then yesterday we had record breaking amounts of rain. We got almost an inch in 15 minutes. Crazy. It made me excited for fall though. My favorite season!

So...that's about it! We're looking forward to seeing my mom and little sister on Tuesday. They're driving out from California so Heidi can move in to her new apartment and start her Junior year at BYU! We're excited that she'll be out here again. We missed her this summer. :( And...Jeremy's birthday is next Sunday. Woohoo! Sorry I don't have anything more exciting to say, but at least I blogged! Thanks for checking in.

Little Boy

Eli is at a really fun stage of life. He's walking all around, he can communicate better (although he doesn't talk) and he loves to laugh and play.

Here are a few things he's enjoyed doing lately...

Watering flowers:He loves to play with the hose. One day he was working so hard trying to carry it somewhere and he finally got it over to the flowers and I realized he was trying to water them. So cute! So this is now one of his favorite activities.

Signing:

He does the sign for milk, more, and all done. We're working on some others, but he has these down and he does them all the time now. Haha. It's pretty cute.

Getting a haircut:
He looks so much older now! His hair has also lightened up a lot from being outside this summer.

Playing with oven mitts: (and everything else in the kitchen drawers and cupboards)Enjoying a visit from his 2nd cousin:
Remember this last year?
One year later, and they're bigger but still pretty much look the same.Playing in the coffee table:
He also loves to "read" books. He opens them up and jabbers to himself. And of course, he loves when I read to him too. Mostly he loves looking at the pictures and pointing to everything and having me tell him what it is. Oh, and he loves to dance. Whenever he hears music he starts bouncing. I need to get a video of that. He's always grooving to the radio in the car, just bouncing in his carseat, and our digital piano has a lot of fun demos and he goes crazy when we play those. There are some "pop" and "jazz" ones and he just starts running in place and clapping his hands when I turn those on.

So that's what Eli is doing these days. He's a good little boy and it's fun to see him growing up. He has been giving me the best snuggles before bed every night and I hope that phase never ends! It's so sweet. We love him!