At Long Last.....

Finally, I've gotten around to posting pictures....it's a much needed update to our recently updated family. Our sweet Emmeline is now 4 months and we love having this little girl in our family. These pics go way back to Christmastime. Maybe I'll do a throw back to Thanksgiving in the near future, but don't hold your breath. :) Enjoy!

Our Sweet Emmels.

Daddy and his loyal buddy doing a little fertilizing.

Eli went from hating pictures in December to wanting to pose for everything...as long as Emme was in it with him.

One of my favorites of Emmies...love that cute girl! I just want to squeeze her.

Just before church a couple of weeks ago...I love matching my kids for church...I'm such a nerd.

Another cute one.

This is Eli fulfilling a lifelong dream of being on a construction grader. We found this one in our church parking lot...they are building softball fields next to it.

A five generation picture (minus Grandpa Larry). It's Matt's Great Grandma Aprato, Matt's Grandma Faas, and the two kids.

Our little cupcake girl. (There's cupcakes all over her little dress and tights... courtesy of Grandma Patti. ) :)

Barry's half birthday celebration on Jan. 13. Growing up I always celebrated my half birthday because my real one was on Christmas Eve. June 24 was a much better date to celebrate with friends. So in keeping with the half birthday tradition, of course we had to have a little celebration for Eli on his half day as well. I got the idea of making a half of a cake from my friend Allison. Eli's cake was made to order...a green cake (food coloring in a white cake mix) with green polka dots. He loved it and still talks about it.

Just looking around...

Sadly, this picture more accurately depicts the norm at our house better than all of these other cute ones I have posted. Eli's nickname "Beagle" couldn't be more fitting this that diaper rag in his mouth.

Eli on his first "alligator" ride in the mall. Gotta love the cheap thrills.

Dad always has the best ideas...putting Emme in Eli's dumper. Of course Eli was all over that idea and wants to do it often.

Christmas morning...typical Eli fashion...stashing any and all loot in his dump trucks.

Reluctant Christmas morning picture in matching jammies.

How could we not get a picture of Emme's cute ruffle bum?

Emme and her nearly twin cousin Baby Paul. Well, we can certainly tell who the good baby is in this picture.

All the kids posing with their matching Christmas jammies from Grammy and Grumpy. A very fun tradition and the kids always look so cute in them.

Emme made a very good Baby Jesus. Here she is with cute cousing Megan.

Matt and the kids.

Making Christmas Coo Coos. Love the cigar pose with the pacifier. Happily, that thing had it's last run on Dec. 31, 2008. Eli conveniently lost it at Souplantation (his favorite restaurant) and he hasn't used it since.

Our little reindeer.

Eli's first pony ride at the Cardon family Christmas party.

Just taking a little snooze in Emme's bouncy seat...a no no but I couldn't resist the picture. He's just so relaxed.

Free Denny's?!

The thought of a free breakfast caught my eye today so at about 10:00am I loaded up the children (all two of them) and headed to see if we couldn't get our hands on some free pancakes. Eli was actually excited about the idea and so I decided to give it a shot. Well, the lines were ridiculous (I even went to two different ones). Moral of the story... free = many, many, many, many people who had the same idea as you. I should have learned from my outings to free Ben and Jerry's ice cream days back in the good ol' District of Columbia.

My blog has been dead for about 6 months now but I hope to change that. I'll be getting some pictures of Emmeline up soon...that is, when I get my computer cleaned off enough so that I actually have some space to dowload pictures...I don't even have Christmas on here yet. We hope to get a new computer sometime soon as well but that will all depend on the "next great deal." (We missed a great deal about 2 weeks ago.) But, one of my life's mantras is "there's always another great deal around the corner" and it's oh so true. So, I'm never too nervous when I miss something. Anyway, I'll be posting again soon so stay tuned......

Summertime

Oh how I love the summertime. :) Well, here goes another gigantic post. This one has pictures from April to July. I will start with the most recent things we've done and go from there. It's been a great summer so far and we're glad it's not over yet.

Last week, we were at the ranch. The weather was beautiful and Eli is the perfect age to love every second of it. Here are a few pictures from that. First, is this one on our last day...Eli was exhausted. He always falls asleep on Ranger rides. It's hard to be a baby and be driven around in a jeep in the woods. :)

We saw the most gorgeous sunset while we were there. The pictures come close to doing it justice. Here is the token self family portrait.

This is my favorite picture though.

Eli entered his first beauty contest while at the ranch. His girl cousins (Abby and Allie) put it together and it was a lot of fun. Eli won for best talent which was jumping up and down.

You have not lived until you have experienced the Snowflake Pioneer Day parade. Matt said he refuses to ever miss one. This year was our first and it was really something. Complete with fashion shows on floats from the local boutique and flying candy aimed for your head (not intentionally of course....or was it?). It was great fun. Here is Eli on Grammy's lap. He loved it.

Eli got a tricycle for his 2nd birthday which he is getting close to riding by himself. He looks so cute and little boyish on it.

Posing with his stash of presents.

His birthday party with all of his Trendler cousins.

A close up of my cake masterpiece. All he wanted was a "truckie" cake. I think I delivered pretty well if I do say so myself. :) I must give a shoutout to Matt for helping with the design and color scheme. We had fun putting this together for our little Elijahbarry.

So happy to finally have his truckie cake.

Just looking cute in San Diego. We went there for the 4th of July.

Dad and mini-dad reading Dad's and Eli's favorite book. They have matching outfits of course.

Watching fireworks on Grumpy's (Grandpa T) dingy in San Diego Harbour. I must say, Eli has quite the life....

Waving, a little nervously, to Grammy who we left behind on the sailboat.

On Memorial Day weekend, it was unseasonably cool, so we celebrated by being outside and went down the street to this little pond/lake thing where they have ducks.

Grandma Patti with Eli in San Diego...we had gone there in May for Matt's brother's graduation.

Eli and Grandpa looking at Eli's favorite thing about San Diego...watching hot air balloons at night.

Watching all the balloons. They come really close to the Faas' house somtimes.

At the beach...

Getting ready to get on the plane.

Daddy and Eli looking at the planes in Phoenix getting ready to go to San Diego.

Just cute.

Earlier in May, the Faas' also cam to visit us at our house. We had a fabulous time and Eli loved them being on his turf. Here is Eli and Grandpa.

Sometimes Eli comes out wearing Mommy's cherry red heels. Of all the shoes I have, he of course picks these ones. Pretty funny.

We also went to San Diego to celebrate being done with Matt's April 15th deadline. A welcome break! This is on the sky ride at the San Diego zoo.

A little camera shy with his glasses....

Newsflash -- It's a Lady Baby

We interupt the 24/7 Eli nature of this blog to announce that another little person will be joining our little family come October 27. Some of you who read this blog know that I am pregnant and some of you do not. So I guess this first order of business is to announce that I am indeed pregenant with #2. The second would be to announce that we are having a baby girl!!! We're so excited for our little girl and we think Eli will make a great big brother. Here are the token ultra sound pictures we got today. Personally, I think the 3-D ones can look a little weird and blobby but it is cool to see. And the last picture is the traditional two dimentional profile. Anyway, it's great news and mostly we feel blessed that so far she looks normal and healthy. Oh my, so much shopping to do. :) Bring on the pink!!!