Am I truly my mother's child!?!

We've had two sets of visitors come in this past week (ish) and let me show you ALL of the great pictures I took.

First Jeremy Clifton drove through with two Morrison friends on their way to a wedding.  It was great to seem him.  He only stayed one night but we were able to get a good Chinese meal in while he was here.  And these are ALL the pictures we took:

Yes, that's it! :( Mind you this is at 6:45 in the morning seconds before they left!

Then my brother Matt came in for about 4 days.  The first night he arrived Joey and I left him with Ellie and went out for a Mother's Day dinner.  Such good hosts we are!  Then the next morning we got up around 7 and then spent the morning dropping chairs off at good will as well as doing some recycling.  We went to a different recycling place than usual and when I attempted to explain our normal center to him he responded with, "yes, I've already been there!"  Do we always put him to work while he is here!?! Yikes!  We then left him with Ellie ALL day on Tuesday, which I think he preferred! And here are ALL of the pictures we have of him:

If you look closely, you can see him in the reflection!  We do have three more of the same variety though Matt's not as visible because I was trying to get a picture of Ellie (who I see everyday mind you)! :(  It's a pretty nice picture of his car though!

Pathetic, I know.  But who would be most upset?  My mother!

Mother's Day

My first gift from my child on Mother's Day (isn't it adorable!?!):

Another Torgerson visit!

I'm finally posting about Joey's parent's visit back in the second week of April! I just get a little behind sometimes! :) In my defense I've had some problems uploading these pictures!

Well, early April Merrilee came to visit us for a week and Steve joined us for about 3 days! It was most wonderful to have them! We love their visits and look forward to them! :)  I'm not the greatest at capturing all of our moments together, but at least I got a few!  We had fairly nice weather most of the time they were here, so we were able to enjoy some of that time outside! Ellie LOVED all the attention she received from her loving gp's! :)  

On this day we went to the park.  The tulips were in bloom and SOO pretty!

Playing at the park:

Steve ended up being at our place for his birthday, so we celebrated with a YUMMY homemade apple pie baked by Merrilee (yes, you would think since I was hosting I would have gathered up the energy to bake a pie, but I guess someone beat me to it though there wasn't much of a fight)!

Joey being creative:

This was another day at the park:

Ellie likes to imitate us (hands on hips):

And here is Ellie enjoying the gifts she received from grandma and grandpa.  A book:

And a chair set (two chairs and a little table):

A few days after Merrilee left, my mom came down!  Those two weeks Ellie was showered with grandparents and absolutely LOVED it! :) For photos of my mom's trip go to my mom's album.

A few things...

We took a trip to Chicago for easter and brought home with us "A-Gee-Da", a rocking elephant.

  When I brought it out for the first time on Monday morning I asked Ellie if she wanted to go on her elephant to which she raised her arm as if to imitate an elephant's trunk and then made an elephant noise! I was completely shocked! I had no idea where she had gotten that from! As it turns out my family taught it to her! That was weird! And then just this wednesday she lifted up her foot and looked at her toe she had stubbed and said, "BooBoo".  Another thing I had NOT taught her! I think she learned that one at daycare.  It's so strange to experience Ellie learning things from people other than myself or Joey! She's such a little sponge she just picks up on everything! So be careful if you're around her because she just may imitate what you do!

We've had some nice weather this spring and we celebrated it by going to the botanical gardens in early April.  It was lots of fun and they have a whole entire children's area that Gabe and Ellie explored together! I think it will be a little more enjoyable when they are a little older, but we still had fun!

This is Ellie and dada looking into the creek:

Ellie and Gabe climbing up this ladder unaware of the purpose of the rope! :)

Here's Gabe in the tree house:

Ellie going down the slide:

Sarah and Gabe going down the slide:

Ellie by the "lowla" (flower):

Ellie needed a snack break:

Josh and Gabe:

And here's a group shot (minus Joey the photographer):

Thanks, Taos for a fun day! :)