It's been awhile

Been awhile since I posted (do I say that every time?).  But we are always busy doing something, so here are some pictures (but not nearly as many as I wanted to post).  Ethnie is as cute as ever, so I will start out with her.  Here she is sharing a fat boy with Leisel.

And here she is checking out the cookie dough. This girl LOVES food.

One day Lila was whining at me that she wanted monkey bars, so I said, "well let's build some them."  I had all the kids pitch in some money from their piggy banks and I pitched in $20 and we all took a trip to the Home Depot and bought some pipe.  Then me and Luke nailed together some boards and drilled some holes and put in some pipe and voila!, instant monkey bars.  Well, ok it wasn't really instant.  It took about 4 hours to make.  Or maybe it was 8 hours.  I don't really remember.  But they loved them.  We will see how long they use them.

 

It is kind of a tradition now for me to take the kids camping on Father's day weekend and this year was no exception.  Grandpa Ellis likes to come with us too.  And I am glad because we like him and he makes breakfast.

Lila and Leisel spent most of their time hiding up on the side of the hill in their "secret hiding spot."

The kids love being out there.  We like to go up to my dad's property in Mantua.  It is nice and shady and private and there is a little river that is nearby.  It is great.

Fathers day was pretty good this year.  Molly decided to go big and bought me a big tv.  It is a nice 50" LG and it came with a blu-ray player and surround sound system.  It connects to the internet and we can watch netflix movies, and it connects to my home network and I can see all of my photos and videos.  I love it.  We watched Avatar on blu-ray the other day and it was incredible.  Now I can't stop watching tv.  But the tv didn't fit into our old tv cabinet so I had to build a new one.  I started out with these plans and made the cabinet a little bigger and added a top piece that goes around the tv to protect it from flying balls or shoes or whatever.

Molly chose the paint color and painted most of the cabinet.  I think it turned out great.  Looks almost as good as the tv.

And I guess I will end with a picture of Leisel and the first harvested blackberry from the blackberry bush we planted this year.  It is actually the only blackberry we have harvested this year.  But we have our fingers crossed that their will be more.

That is it for now.  More updates to the fascinating life of the Ellis family in a few months.

Spring Fever

Well not last weekend, but the one before that Molly had some girl conference at church that I had forgotten about and I was all psyched up to have a productive day so when she reminded me she would be gone, I decided that I needed to do something fun with the kids since I wouldn't be able to get the yard things done that I wanted to do while watching them. So I decided to take them to the zoo. That is always a crowd pleaser. Until we get there. Then Leisel and Lila just want to go to the playground and Zoe and Luke and I want to see some animals. And of course I try to say they can play when we are done looking at animals but the playgrounders just whine at me the whole time that they just want to play. I still had a good time though. It was pretty good weather for the zoo. Not hot at all, but sunny, light jacket weather. The little elephant is still everyone's favorite I think. Here is a picture of everyone trying to cram onto the fake elephants trunk. This wasn't my idea, by the way. I told them it would be too crowded. But obviously, I am not in charge anymore.
And here is Lila helping Leisel on the monkey chains at the playground that we eventually got to.

And here are Zoe, Luke, and Ethnie feeding the geese.

And here is Ethnie's first "Ethnie in the egg" picture. You can't really tell, but this is a giant egg that the kids like to sit in at the zoo park.

Well, the zoo was fun but on the drive home I decided to turn off at the Saltair exit and drive down past the marina on the Great Salt Lake to a big rock that just sits out there by the lake. I had never driven out there before and I just wanted to have a look at it up close. The kids loved it. They were all over that rock. I could not get them to come down once they realized the joys of rock climbing. It kinda freaked me out at first but then I relaxed and just let them climb.

Here is Leisel on the rock about halfway up.
And here are the rest of them near the bottom. I love Luke's new hands-on-hips pose.


And here they are on their merry way up to the top.


It was fun until they got to the top and where running around all over the place. Then I decided I had better leave the baby with Zoe (who left the others about halfway up to go back to safer ground) and go after them. Once I got up there with them and saw how close they were getting to the edge and how crazy they were being, running around all over the loose scree without a care in the world, I started having a bit of a panic attack and decided it was time to go see the lake. So I got them all down , which they learned is a lot harder than going up and we went out to the lake.

Here they all are sitting on the sand halfway between the water and the rock. You can see the rock in the background. I guess they all decided it would be fun to highlight the fact that they were sitting on sand, by holding a handful of sand out.

It was beautiful. Here are the older four walking out to the water.

And here is Ethnie hanging back to check out a cool rock.

And a couple more shots of them playing near the water.

And one more shot of the whole family (minus me) because they are cute.

Ok and one more of Ethnie playing Wii Fit because it is a fun picture and makes me smile.

So it was a fun little trip and we got to get some of our spring fever taken care of. Today it has snowed all day and there is about 4" of it outside. And it is still snowing and is supposed to snow tomorrow too. So much for spring. I guess that means I need to go snowboarding again. Maybe I will do that Friday night. Or maybe not. We'll see.

Flying Flashbacks Batman

I was looking for some glue for the kids and digging through a box of stuff when I found an envelope of old photos. They were mostly from when I was young and I had a good time looking through them. Then I found one where me and my sister Shelli had been flying with our dad and a friend of his in a little plane and it looked just like the picture I took of Lila and Zoe by the little plane. I thought it was neat. The two planes look almost identical. So here they are. Enjoy.

Halloween 2009

You might have already seen Molly's post on Halloween this year, but I wanted to post some more pictures. So here they are.

First is cute Ethnie in her Eeyore costume.
She is just so darn cute.

Here is Lucy in her lady bug costume.

Me and Luke in our pirate costumes.

Luke by himself.

Zoe in her Dorothy costume.

Lila in her cowgirl costume.

Leisel in her Belle costume.

We decided to paint pumpkins this year instead of carving them. We just weren't up for the mess and all the work of cleaning them out, so I just got out the paints and let them go to town. I think they liked it just as much as carving.
The costumes seemed like a lot of work this year. Well mostly Zoe's I guess. Molly made it all which took a lot of time. Who knew making a dress took so much time? And Molly couldn't find any gingham so she had to go with a straight light blue which just wasn't quite right so it was kind of a bummer to spend so much time making a dress that wasn't quite right even before she started. But I thought it turned out pretty good. She can be Alice in Wonderland next year with a change in shoes and hairdo. We bought Leisel's costume used and I sewed in a few metal hoops that Molly shaped up inside it so it would have a little more shape. When she first put it on, it just kind of draped limply on her. The hoops made all the difference I thought. Lila's wasn't too bad. We just took a pair of old jeans and cut them off at the butt and sewed on some fabric for a skirt. Found a hat at the dollar store. We looked for cowgirl boots at the DI for the few weeks before Halloween but never found any so she just wore snow boots I think. Luke's costume and my costume were pretty easy. That's why I like a pirate costume. It is easy to make. Just some old pants that you cut jagged, some cardboard and some duct tape for a sword and whatever shirt you want with a little fabric to make a belt and a head cover. I grew my hair out for the occasion. But now it is back to normal. And Ethnie's costume came from one of the sister-in-laws I think. It was a good time for most of us. A little too much work or stress for Molly to really enjoy herself, but I think mostly it was because she was sick. But she is fine now. The experience may have left her a Halloween grinch though and I may have to be the main sewist next year. Is sewist a word? I almost wrote sewer but that isn't right. Neither is seamstress. Maybe seamster? Well you know what I mean. I may have to do all the sewing next year.

Flying

Well, I found out that I guy I went to school with at the U (Wayne Crowther) has his pilot's license and so I thought it would be fun to take the older girls out for a spin in a plane and Wayne didn't mind playing along. Here are the girls in front of the plane that we went flying in.We started out at the Ogden Hinckley Airport and Wayne showed us how to do all the pre-flight checks on the plane and the gas and the weather. Then off we went. I decided to just have him give us a short flight because it is kind of pricey, so Wayne thought it would be good to fly up to Brigham City and back. That sounded great to me. So we got in and the girls were really excited, but they were being shy and quiet. It is kind of noisy in the plane and we all had headphones or earplugs in so we didn't talk much up there, but they seemed to like it. I was worried that Zoe would get sick because she gets motion sickness pretty easily, but she did just fine. Take-offs are pretty fun, but in such a small plane, I barely even felt it. We flew over Ogden and then over to the edge of the mountains. We stayed along the mountains looking at the pretty fall colors until we got to Brigham City. Wayne did a touch-and-go at the Brigham City airport where we came into the airport and touched down but then after going along on the runway for a few hundred feet, he just lifted off again and we turned around and went back to Ogden. On the way back we stayed west and flew over Willard Bay.It was a great flight and the girls really liked it. Wayne was a great pilot and the take-offs and landings seemed really smooth. Zoe has been asking me for years when I thought she would be able to go somewhere in a plane so I am glad we got the chance. And I am glad Wayne was happy to take us. Here is a picture with the girls and our pilot Wayne.
After the flight Wayne showed the girls his flight log and gave them their own mini-logs to write out the details of their flight. It was a good day. And when I think that Lila almost didn't come at the last minute because there was some thing in town were they had free hot dogs and she didn't think she would want to miss that. She was glad I convinced her otherwise. We stopped at the Burger Bar on our way home and that was way better than hot dogs.

Baby Girl

I love Ethnie. I mean, not a little bit, but a whole lot. I go away in the morning to work and school and I actually think of her several times during the day and coming home I can't wait to get back home to see her. Maybe this is how I should have felt about all my kids, but for whatever reason I never really did. I love them all and I think I love them more and more as time goes on, but I never really felt this way about any of them when they were small. I am not exactly sure what is going on, but I think I must have been asleep or something when the last four kids were little. It is so fun to see her smile and cry and crawl and eat and drool and fall and play and stand and everything else she does (which isn't a whole lot more than that). I can just sit and watch her do things and not get bored. I am pretty sure Molly could do that with all of them when they were small. But I couldn't. Molly would say, "oh Shanie just look at her (or him) doing this (or that)" and I would have a look and say, "yeah, that is pretty cute" and then go back to what I was doing. It was never fascinating to me the way it is with Ethnie. It's like I am watching a kid grow up for the first time. I could always see in Molly's eyes the fascination with them and kind of thought it was cute how infatuated with them she was, but I never really got it. But now for some reason I get it. It is so fun. And she is so great. I am glad she came along.

Painting at Grandma's

Every few years grandma Ellis needs her garage and sheds and fence painted. And this year was one of those years. She said the last time it was done was eight years ago, the year grandpa died, but it seems like we have done it since then. I am probably wrong though. I always like going over to do it though. It gives me a chance to spend some time with her and my dad. And Uncle Dan is always there and he can be a good time. I usually go alone, but this year we all went. We got there about 10:00 and painted for a few hours. Then we had some grilled hot dogs and pasta salads and beans and whatnot and then painted some more. I think we didn't leave until about 8:00 that night. It took a long time. But it was nice to be there. Cousin Monica and her husband and kids where there, and Brooke and Bob came for a few hours too. Brandon also showed up for a little while but he didn't stay too long. The kids really had a good time painting. We usually don't let them help paint at our house but because this was outside and paint drippings from previous years were already all over the place, I didn't think it would hurt to let them go at it. Luke liked it the most. Here is a picture of Luke, my dad, and I painting grandma's back patio.


Here is a picture of several of the others. Uncle Dan and Zoe are in the background, with Grandma holding Ethnie, and Leisel climbing a ladder.
Lila spent most of her time in the kitchen next to the goodies. As always, grandma had plenty of yummy things to snack on the whole day. That is one thing you can always count on at her house. There will always be plenty of peanut m&ms, coke, cookies, chips and salsa, and plenty of other goodies spread out. I don't know how she keeps her girlish figure. I love being there. It feels safe and comfortable.