Elise loves to help!

I know it is only one picture but I thought it was very cute and didn't have any other pictures to add right now. Elise is definitely her daddy's little "helper". I guess she decided that when he was laying on the floor doing homework that he would make a good chair.

St. Patrick's Day

So we like to have a fun and at least partially green meal on St. Patrick's Day. This year I was hungry for egg and sausage sandwiches so I decide to put green food coloring in the eggs. Then I made strawberry, banana shakes and put green food coloring in it. We also had green straws in our drink. So not way elaborate but it was still fun and very tasty.

 Elise really enjoyed the shake and she was very cute with a green mustache.

 Spencer enjoying his St. Patrick's Day meal.

fun with our family 1/1/2012-3/8/2012

So here are a few more pictures to catch everyone up to date on what our family has been doing.

This is Spencer's three floor elevator that he made and wrote the code for. So it doesn't quite look like and elevator but it is the simple model that he made for the students to see if their codes worked or not. Elise loves visiting daddy in the lab so she can make the elevator work. She told Spencer that he needs to build her a big elevator that she can ride in. Now Spencer is concocting ideas of how to build an elevator in a kids playhouse. Not that it will happen anytime soon but I am sure someday when we have our own place it will probably become a reality.

Elise stole the laptop and put it on her lap telling us that she had to do her work. She thinks she is so big!

She was very adamant that we could not have the laptop until she was "done" working.

Spencer was working on a voice recognition program and Elise recorded some things with him and then the next morning apparently her and her dog needed to help record more.

Elise so wants to learn everything about anything and everything. She wants to know and do everything. It is so cute to watch her figure different things out or just play. I got my alphabet rainbow out to see what she would do with it and she loved matching the letters to the letters on the paper.

This was our sorry attempt at a second snowman. We actually got another pretty good snow storm and Elise begged to go make a snowman. Unfortunately the snow was not very good snowman snow. She kept telling us she wanted it big like her other snowman but as you can see it did not work at all.

Although she did love throwing snow at daddy.

Our "snowman" or as good as it was going to get this time.

So Elise needed a new coat and she was so excited about her pink and orange coat that she didn't want to take it off and we barely got it off of her to sleep.

We were tending Aliza's boys and Spencer was playing with them. He started acting like an elephant and all of the kids took advantage of that. I think two 5 year olds and 2 almost 3 year olds is probably quite the load but Spencer humored them for a few minutes before the elephant bucked them off.

Here I thought David had two little boys but this picture says otherwise :). Elise wanted a princess dress while we were watching the boys and Carter wanted to put one on Stetson. Stetson didn't want anything to do with it and I found out that Carter was the one that really wanted to try a dress on. Luckily Elise had one dress that would fit him. After Carter and Elise had a dress on then Stetson wanted to try one too. I think they played in dresses for at least an hour. What can I say, my daughter has to have some girly influence on all her boy cousins.

Our little horse. Elise decided that she was going to be a horse and so she needed shoes on all of her feet. Then she walked around the house making horse noises.

Aliza and her boys decided to have a Fasching Party. This is a German celebration. First the kids made animal masks to wear. Then they made snake pizzas out of roll dough and put cheese, strips of pepperoni and olives on them. Then we played some games that involved winning candy, which they all loved.

Elise the donkey and Troy the butterfly.

Lasse the bird and his friend was a dog.

Grams and Grandpa sent Elise a Valentine's present. Books which she always loves and a big rice crispie heart which she loved just as much.


Aliza and I decided to make Liebeskuchen (love cookies) for Valentines Day for our husbands and then we made some little ones for our kids. It took us some extra time because we had never made Royal Icing before. When we do it again there are a few things we learned and would do different but I think they turned out pretty good.

The kids, extra and trial cookies.

Spencer's Liebekuchen.

Tobi's LiebeKuchen.

We also gave Spencer a book called Kisses for Daddy which Elise loves to read with him. Everything is more fun with Elise. She gets so excited about everything and loves to help you enjoy every little or big thing. She is cute!

Our valentines present from Spencer. He bought Elise and I flowers to share. Elise always wants to put flowers in her room so we divided the flowers into two vases. Elise had to smell them a lot and make sure everyone else had smelled them. She wanted to carry them all over but I didn't really want a flower mess so I told her to find a place to put them. She originally put hem in her bedroom but then decided that she wanted to put them by my flowers in the front room. She is so cute with her flowers.

Fun with our family since we have been home mid August through Dec. 2011

So I know I am very slow but here is some of the fun things we have been doing lately.

Elise loves horses. The first thing she wanted to do when we got home was ride a horse. She loved riding Cream with Daddy.

I think as long as she is outside she is happy but she also loves riding in Grandpa's wagon. Anytime the wagon leaves she wants to be on board.

At a parade that Grandpa drove the wagon and team in, shortly after we got home.

Grandma, Carter, Elise and Stetson having a water fight at a family reunion. Mom was a good sport and would help the kids fill their cups with water and then run away as they tried to get her wet. She got them a little but they got her and each other a lot more.

Lydia and Matt were camping and invited all of us to come up for supper. Elise loved chasing bubbles around with her cousins.

I'm not sure if more of the s' more got on her or in her!

Stetson enjoying the rocks.

Carter was very ready to eat.

Traygen, wishing he was bigger so he could keep up with the other kids, but still having a ball being outside trying to figure everything out.

Mom and I were making some cream corn to freeze and Elise was our good little helper. She decided it was her job to put the corn in the sink and wash it and then give it to us. She really did wash them pretty good so it was helpful.

Elise and Grandpa taking a nap.

We had to fix our bathtub and Elise had to help.

Having fun as I unpacked her toys.

She wanted to watch a movie and decided that her stuffed animals needed to come and cuddle in blankets and watch with her.

Helping Daddy again. I am sure he couldn't do "anything" without her.

Our cutie with her babies who if you look close are riding horses.

Elise fell asleep reading to her baby. She loves books.

Our only real snowman this year, so far. This was the only snow storm that stuck and so we went and built a snowman. It's a good thing to because I don't think the snow was around more than a day or two. Elise has been so excited about the snow this year and then it snows and melts so fast that she hasn't hardly been able to play in it.

On the airplane ride home the dessert they served was a pudding cup with miniature cream puffs in it that had pudding in them. I decided I wanted to try making them so for David's and my birthday we tried it. I am sure it didn't look as pretty as the ones on the airplane but they tasted really good anyway.

The grandkids. It is hard to get a perfect picture when you are trying to get four wiggly kids to hold still. I am sure it will only get more fun to take a picture with more grandkids

Halloween 2011. Elise wasn't so sure about cleaning out the pumpkin again until she touched it and then she didn't want to stop.

She wanted to help with every part, even getting the pumpkin seeds ready to cook.

We went to a Halloween carnival with Carter and Stetson. Our cute Tinkerbell wanted to be just like the cowboys even if a gun isn't quite normal accessories for Tinkerbell.

Elise loved trying to eat the donut off of the string.

Carter and Elise running around with their monster teeth.

Elise and Carter won the cake walk and Elise was not about to let anybody else carry her cupcakes.

Christmas 2011
I was so excited to get our Christmas advent calendar done this year. Elise loved moving Mary and Joseph on the donkey each day. She understood the idea that it was Christmas when Mary and Joseph made it to the manger and we put baby Jesus in but she didn't quite understand that she could only move them one spot each day.

Elise was so fun this year, but then again she is always fun. She was especially cute because she was so excited about every little thing that got opened whether it was hers or someone elses. She also loved being the one to hand gifts to each person. I think she loved this job as much as opening presents. We spent Christmas morning with Spencer's family so we could talk to Beka on her mission.

After we opened presents Elise had to have her princess dress on but she was not about to take off her farm animal pajamas that Grams had made her.

Elise and Stetson opening her puzzles together at my family Christmas party.

Grandpa reading with the kids.