Mesa Falls!

So about two months ago we went to Mesa Falls with our friends the Ramsey's and the Rich's. It was a ton of fun and it was so nice and warm outside and I am truly missing those days right about now here in the freezer of Rexburg!





So gorgeous!






It took quite a few shots that looked like this one in order to get the pic above! Haha good ol' family pictures with a toddler!



Ella was picking flowers and smelling them along the trail. She was trying to get me to smell one as well.



The falls there are so beautiful, it's hard to not be in awe every time i see them.



Daddy carrying the little bear down the trail.



She loved climbing up and down the stairs on the trail.



Talking to her about the falls and how she can't climb over the gates that block you from falling down into the falls.



She still loves me even though I won't let her do "EVERYTHING" she wants.




The boys looking real tough!



When we were driving home we opened up the windows for awhile because it was so nice outside. Ella thought the wind tunnel on her face was pretty funny!

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!