Article of Faith #3

Madi passed off the 3rd Article of Faith last week. This one was a little bit harder to teach- the Atonement is a pretty deep subject for a 2 year old.

Videos

Here's a couple videos I finally got uploaded.

This first one was from our trip down to NC.

Elle loves Baby Sam (and pretty much all babies for that matter).

This next one just makes me laugh. I love how great my girls get along!

Perfect!

Heavenly, gorgeous, lovely, beautiful SPRING weather!!

Spring has finally arrived and I couldn't be happier!

So not to take advantage of the warm temps we had here this past week, I spent every possible minute outside. Five of the past seven days were spent at the park, having picnic lunches, enjoying the front yard, and walks to the pond and neighborhood play areas. On Thursday I counted a total of 5 hours that we spent outside! Beach towels, sunscreen, shorts, and sandals were all busted out this week.

After our daily morning park outings I just couldn't handle being inside any longer than I had to. But I didn't want to feel like a complete dork laying out in our front yard by myself, so I let Madi skip all of her naps this week and be my sun buddy! So while Elle snoozed away upstairs, Madi and I soaked up the rays! I've never seen Madi happier- I'm pretty sure she'd play outside all day if I let her.

Most of these pictures were all taken on the same day. Madi found tons of ways to keep herself entertained!

New Do!

Why have I not tried to do this sooner?!?

I just can't enough of this little girl and all her funny expressions!

8 months Old!

At eight months old Elle is more fun than ever! She's become way more expressive- doing lots of babbling, and even trying to "sing" along with us. My favorite are the "conversations" that Elle and Madi have together. They'll go back and forth with screams, grunts, laughs, etc. It makes for great entertainment in the car! Elle really is such a crack up. She's just so silly and so easily makes us laugh- all the time!

Elle's possessive instincts kicked in this past month. She no longer willingly let's Madi take toys away from her. If it's something Elle's playing with, and Madi (or even Spencer or I) take it away, she'll let us know that she wants it back. I'm glad to see that she's learning to stick up for herself.

I've been happy to see that Elle takes after her sister with her love for books. She gets super excited about story time especially if we're reading one of her favorites. We were at the Children's Museum in NC, reading some of the books in the "baby area", when I handed Elle a board book that we have at home. She started squealing, kicking her legs, and grabbing for the book. Here she is- showing the page to one of her favorite books.

Unlike her sister, Elle loves watching movies! Since Madi doesn't really care about movies and looses interest quickly, we mostly stick to "Baby Einstein" and "Signing Time". It's been fun watching Elle's interest peak with signing. When I feed her I always stop to sign "more" near the end of her meal. For some reason she thinks it's hilarious. She'll always give me the biggest smile and then laugh like I'm asking her a funny question. I'm pretty sure she's catching on though.

Since my last update, I'm happy to report that Elle now has her bowel movements completely under control. I am still careful with what I feed her though. I've stuck to oatmeal cereal along with her regular fruits (peaches, prunes, and pears) and vegetables (peas and green beans). It was just recently that I branched out to feeding Elle "people food". I've completely forgotten what foods to start when. I know I've definitely gone slower with Elle than I did with Madi. At this age I was grinding up our meals for Madi- something I'm looking forward to starting with Elle this month.

As for sleeping- a couple weeks ago Elle finally dropped her third nap, making 6pm her regular bedtime. Luckily with the time change I've been able to push it to 7pm (cause I'd much rather have her waking up at 7 than 6am). She still takes short naps- usually an hour in the morning and an 1-2 hours in the afternoon. But by bedtime she's exhausted and sleeps great! She'll wake up in the early morning (somewhere around 5am) to eat and then goes back to sleep for another hour or two (depending on when her bedtime was). Hopefully this coming month I'll be able to break Elle of that early morning feeding. She really ought to be sleeping 12 hours straight. But then again it's nice to have someone to wake me up and get me started with my day. When Elle wakes up at just the right time, I nurse her, put her back to bed, and then get my morning work-out out of the way. Those are my very favorite days!

Spring Break 2010

While Spencer was off fly fishing in Tennessee, the girls and I were having our own share of fun in North Carolina. Due to a runny nose (Elle's very first), we postponed our trip a day (didn't want to get a new baby and/or his siblings sick) and left early Wednesday morning. The drive down was a snap- 5 hours exactly, even with stopping at a rest area for a half hour to feed Elle and stretch our legs. We got in early afternoon, giving Madi the rest of the day to play with her cousins. My mom had flown in on Monday night to help out. It was especially fun to have her there to hang out with and help keep the kids entertained. With 5 kids age 4 and under, it was nice having 3 moms around. As great as Tisha seemed to be doing, mom and I tried to plan several outings that would give Tish some quiet time at home. Luckily the weather seemed to cooperate and we were able to go on lots of walks and several trips to the park.

All of us were happy about the gorgeous weather and time spent outside!

The little rain that we did get, didn't stop Madi from playing outside!

Aside from playing with Gram and cousins, and having exceptionally beautiful weather (high 60's, low 70's), the highlight of our trip was getting to meet "baby Sam". What a handsome little guy!

I feel like I've already totally forgotten what it's like to have a newborn. They really do grow up way too fast- made me realize that Elle's not much of a baby anymore. It was cute to see her excitement about her new baby cousin (video coming- it's not uploading for some reason).

Other highlights from the trip:

* Marbles Children's Museum- wish we had one of these close to us.

* Watching Madi try out her cousins' bikes and scooters. I think we've finally decided what bike to get her.

I didn't get a picture of Madi on the bike, but while I was taking a picture of Elle chillin in the stroller, Madi came zooming down the steep driveway- not sure how to stop the bike. Luckily she was able to steer it into the grass- giving herself a nice cushioned fall!

* Staying up at night hanging out with my mom and sister.

* Meeting up with the Gertschs. I'm so glad the Gertschs moved to North Carolina where we'll always be able to get together when we come to stay with the Calhouns. Thanks Matt, Doreen and boys for meeting the girls and I for dinner!

Overall it was a great spring break- but definitely one of the last we'll be doing without Spencer. As much as I love my husband and love knowing that he's having a great time, I couldn't help but resent the fact that he was completely off of dad duty for the week, getting fabulous sleep- not having kids in his bedroom, and then driving home in a nice quiet car. Luckily he got home Sunday afternoon only about 20 minutes after we did and he completely took over for the rest of the evening. It was the best ending to a great week!

Fly Fishing in Tennessee

This is Spencer here. Anie didn't want to blog about my fishing trip so I get the honors of memorializing what was an awesome trip down to Tennessee to fish the small streams of the Smoky Mountains and the big South Holston River in Northern Tennesse (a large tailwater which is part of the TVA on the border of Tennessee and Virginia) So if any of you avid blog stalkers don't like to read a long fishing report, this post is not for you.

Beginning last year, My buddy Wayne (from law school) and I decided to plan an annual fly fishing trip over spring break. Last year we braved the bitter cold and went up to Northern Maryland and fished the North Branch of the Potomac and the Savage and Casselman Rivers. Although we had a great time, we decided that this year we wanted to avoid ice and go some place warmer-Tennessee. Early Tuesday morning of last week, we drove down to Gatlinburg, Tennessee-a town just outside the Smoky Mountains Natl Park. This town is seriously one of the most bizarre places I've ever been to. The place is basically a vacation mecca for every red-neck hillbilly in the South. Driving through town was entertainment enough for us! Pigeon Forge, TN, the town right before you get to Gatlinburg, boasts the world's largest AS SEEN ON TV store. Not only do they have the world's largest, I am willing to wager that they have a world record for most AS SEEN ON TV stores per city block. Now that is something to be proud of! Even as I mocked this strange place, I secretly thought of all the FLOWBEEs I could buy to make sure I can flowbee well into the millenium!

The great thing about visiting a red-neck, hillbilly vacation mecca is that the motels are super cheap and there are lots of cheap buffets with plenty of meat to eat! Even better, Gatlinburg is only minutes from some great wild trout fishing streams. Here is the view from out $30/night motel:

Tuesday afternoon, we got a few hours to fish the upper portion of the Pigeon River. Wayne caught one rainbow but I got skunked. I hadn't been fly fishin since our trip last year so I was a bit rusty. I spent most of the first day untangling wind knots! Early Wednesday, we woke up before sunrise and drove to the Middle Prong of the Little River and fished all day.

The morning was a little slow, but right around noon, the Blue Quill's began to hatch and the fish started rising. I stopped nymphing and threw on a tiny blue quill dry fly and within minutes caught a few nice wild rainbows. They were small, but fun to catch on my new three weight rod. Here are a few of the rainbow's I caught on day 2:

On Thursday, we headed back to the middle prong of the Little River. It was much colder and rained most of the day. We did get just enough sun for some more blue quills to hatch, and caught a few more rainbows, but it wasn't nearly as good as the day before. Here are some more pics of some of the streams we were fishing.

Early Friday morning, we drove about 2 hours north to Bristol, TN/VA to fish the South Holston River. The South Holston is a tail water (a river that flows from a dam=cold water)-so it is perfect for trout, but it also means the river can only be waded when the dam is not releasing water. We got to Bristol around 11 am but had to wait until 3 for the dam release to shut off so we could fish. To kill the time, we found a couple local fly fishin shops and got some good tips on what parts of the river to fish. Like clock work, the dam release shut off at 3 and by 3:30, the river had dropped several feet. We waded out and got a few hours of fishing in before sundown. Wayne caught a nice rainbow and then almost landed a huge brown trout, but it broke off before he could land it in his net. I had a bunch of bites, but got skunked again. I'm still a beginner. Saturday would be a better day.

Saturday was the best day of the trip. The TVA had no scheduled water releases so the South Holston was open for fishing all day. We were on the river around 10 am. Apparently everyone got the memo cause there was a someone fly fishing in nearly every pool as far as the eye could see up and down the river. Wayne and I found a nice spot with a couple deep pools headed by some nice riffles and never moved the whole day. I seriously have never seen so many trout in one little stretch of river! The day started off a little slow, but by noon, there were tons to black flies and blue wing olives hatching and we were getting lots of strikes and landing trout all day long. Between the two of us, we landed upward of 30 trout (browns and rainbows) and had another 30 or so that broke off! It was the best day of fishing I have ever had and a great way to end our trip!

After a week of landing fish, Wayne and I are back to trying to land employment to pay for next year's trip...We are thinking of going someplace even warmer so our wives/families can come along and not be angry at us for leaving them alone (or alone with kids) for a week. The Florida Keys is sounding very nice right now!

All in a week

Haven't gotten around to blogging about anything this week- probably cause I haven't taken any pictures for over a week and a half. There was definitely reason to celebrate this past week though, mostly because of:

1) The glorious sun (I celebrate the high 50's)!!!

2) The yucky black snow finally disappearing! It's almost all gone- those ginormous piles will probably take another week to finally melt down.

3) First flip flop wear of the season!

4) Several trips to the park, with it actually being warm and dry enough to go on the swings (Madi's favorite). Elle found pushing Madi on the swings to be a completely hysterical thing.

5) Madi using the potty for the babysitter!

My nights have been preoccupied with projects and such. I feel like there's a lot of life changes happening for us right now- with thinking about moving, turning down a potential job offer, registering for the bar, wondering where we'll end up after that- there's been a lot on my mind.

This week is Spencer's spring break and he'll be spending it the same way he spent last years- fly fishing! This time he and his buddy are heading south to the Smoky Mountains of Tennesse. Spencer's very excited! As for the girls and I, we're also heading south- to North Carolina- to hang out with the Calhouns and Gram! We're super excited about meeting the newest addition to the Calhoun family- who's now 10 days old! Madi can't stop talking about getting to play with her cousins and meet baby Sam!