It's a park thing!

So there are those days where Ella is just very very emotional, grouchy and really just plain bored and I have come to find that the perfect solution to any bad mood is to get out of the house! I can relate with Ella because there are those days where frankly I am quite stir-crazy as well and just really need to get out! So Ella and I have found the perfect outlet for our house arrest rage...THE PARK! (I don't know what we're going to do when Rexburg is covered in snow and it's below freezing outside!-Walmart might have to become our next best option!)

(So of course I started this post when it was still warm outside...now that it has already snowed here and cooled down excessively Ella and I are really missing our park days! It's time to go find a snow suit for Ella before we go crazy!)



Hangin out on the slide...



Ella looks so forced into this hug, its like she's saying,"I guess i'll stop playing for a second to hug dad..."



She gets a little nervous around half-way down the slide but at the end she's always happy and ready to go again!



I can't help laughing a bit at her face, she's so cute and growing up so much!





trapped behind plastic...





"Sheese" that's how Ella says cheese!



Lookin real determined and off to go do more hard core playing!



Every time we go to the park Ella could pretty much care less about the actual play ground toys, she is more interested in making friends! It's so darn cute she'll just go up to othere little kids and jabber to them, try to give them a hug etc.



She is just in heaven getting to socialize with other kids!

Creatively cute!

She doesn't seem to mind her new lampshade collar we had to get her in order to stop her from biting other children. She is usually quite tame but we had to take some precautionary measures- we don't want any more "accidents". :-)







A hat is also a very fashionable use of a lampshade...



Ella is quite the little inventor of excitement with seemingly unexciting things! She has always had more fun with things that aren't toys than the toys we have actually spent money on to buy her! "Se la vie" i guess!

The last day at the splash park!

When we got back to Rexburg the summer splash park was still open for a couple of days before they closed it for the season so we decided we had to go check it out!



It was awesome except for the water was absolutely freezing! Chad was the only one gutsy enough to get in it and with some coaxing Ella wanted to go play with Daddy as well.





This park is pretty intense with that huge bucket that fills up and dumps out over the whole thing every few minutes!



They were having a blast!



There was only a couple times where Ella was a little unsure of how much she liked the ice cold water of the splash park and I really don't blame her!



But she was a trooper and was Daddy's little buddy there!



Even though they were cold and wet they had a fun time together!

Goodbye Houston, Hello Idaho!

I'm sorry I have been quite delinquent with my posting lately! I have a bunch to catch up on so i have been putting it off! Plus we got Bridgemax "high speed wireless" internet and yes the quotations over high speed are put there on purpose because we have yet to see this internet be anything high speed! We've pretty much reverted back to having dail-up it's so slow...so i have been discouraged as I have tried to start posting again! Don't dismay though because we'll be switching back to Quest as soon as we can and I'll be back to my old self!

These are some final pictures of our times in Houston...



This was when we went to the Houston temple...we were feeling the spirit so strong that we started to glow! ha j/k



The temple is really pretty there, I'm really glad we got to go before we left!



This was at our last trip to Galveston, only a couple weeks before the hurricane that wiped it out!
El always loves to just run right into the water! Then she has to pick up every shell/rock she sees.



We had a good time but there were so many mosquitos there that night that we got eaten alive! Especially me-they just love my preggo blood i think!



These were taken at a Houston Astros game that we went to one night with all of Chad's Pest control office. Unfortunately the game was pathetic and the Astros were getting killed so we left early!



Ella had fun dancing to the music they were playing and clapping and cheering when everyone else would!



This is our friend Landon who managed with Chad over the summer. Ella really liked hanging out with him.



Here's a pic from one of our mini date nights that Chad and I went on over the summer. It was hard to ever really go out because of Chad's late hours he had to work but we had good friends in the office that would watch Ella for us so we could go out every once in awhile. We went miniature golfing on this date and hit up the batting cages/pool tables at this family fun center place. It was a lot of fun.



It seems hard to believe that this little angel could honestly cause so much mischeif but somehow she makes time... :) (these were taken around the beginning of August-16 mo. old)



The mischeief I am talking about is how Ella succeeded in shoving all of these items inside our subwoofer of our entertainment center. If you can't tell what these items are there is a spoon, makeup concealer tube, nail polish, battery and some random wads of paper. She is so funny, she has really started to like to hide things in random places. If i am not really paying attention to where she carries her sippy cup to I have to go on a wild goose chase to find it! She also really enjoys hiding her pacifiers as well, that little stinker!



But just look at how darn adornable she is! Gotta have her stuffed animals.



Being her crazy self!

Guess what!!!!

"First comes love then comes marriage then comes THE BABY in the baby carriage...."

For all of you who don't know yet the Henkel family is adding a new addition to our family! I am due on the 14th of January!
And on the 21ist of august we went and got an ultrasound and found out that we're having a baby BOY!!
Both Chad and I had the feeling that it was going to be a boy but as time came closer and closer to finding out what we were having we got so nervous to find out if our feeling was right! Chad said in jest that if God loves us he'll give us a boy! So you can imagine the excitement Chad had when we found out!
The funniest thing was that our little buddy was not shy at all in showing us his manhood, keeping his legs completely spread eagle, he made it very obvious to everyone that we are 100% having a boy!





His cute little profile!



Little foot



Another profile shot (this one is kinda blurry but the bigger oval in the middle is the side of his head which leads down to his chest)



One of the 3D shots it was so crazy to be able to see him a little more realistically even if it was only for only a few seconds!



In the video you can see his little skeletor face looking straight at the ultrasound camera and his little arm is resting up against his head. It was so cool to be able to really see what is going on down there inside of my belly! The doctor said that everything looked good with him and that he looks healthy. So we are just really thankful and excited! It is crazy how much sooner I have felt this baby move inside of me compared to Ella. I swear he is such a little wiggler and i have been feeling him kick since around 17 weeks and with Ella i didn't feel her till like 22 weeks! I loved getting the ultrasound because it just gives us something to be able to get to know this baby a little more and make things more personal now that we know that it's a boy. Now we can start thinking of boy names! If anyone has any good ideas let us know! We have a few we kinda like but we're really not sold on any one yet.

The joy of a faucet...

So it all started out as a normal dinner time and as usual Ella got incredibly messy...





she tried blackberries for the first time and loved them!



So instead of even trying to haul her messy little body to the tub I just decided to throw her in the kitchen sink to clean off.



And Ella found the greatest toy she has ever beheld...the faucet!



She thought it was the best thing ever holding her hand over the water spraying out which in turn made the water squirt everywhere! It was so cute because she was just cracking up every time she could get it to squirt!

Good stuff...

Good times playing in a laundry basket with her buddies the stuffed animals.







Last week I went to my parents house in Boise and here are a few pictures i took while we were there. (Unfortunately there were so much more fun stuff that we did but my camera battery died so I didn't get to take much!)