Happy Birthday Little Erin-girl!

Our little Erin turned one a week and a half ago (July 20)! I can't believe it's already been a year, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine that there was a time when she wasn't a part of our family either. We love this girl so much! The perfect word to describe Erin is "sweetheart" because she is absolutely such a sweetheart. I love that even newborns have their own, distinct personality. Erin is so easy to please and easy to take care of. It seems the only thing she wants is to be loved, which is very easy for us to do. :) She genuinely loves and cares for people, and has the sweetest, warmest smile to show it. She loves to be cuddled and she loves to play and be apart of whatever we are doing. The excitement in her eyes when her big sister enters the room is priceless.

We are so blessed to have Erin part of our family. We love watching her grow and do new things, and we're excited for all the exciting things she will do and learn next year. Happy Birthday Erin. We love you!

Birthday Fun!

We had a joint birthday party on Saturday with Erin's friend, Julia, who was born the day after Erin. We did it at the splash pad at a nearby park. Here are the two cute birthday girls!

Our friend Stephanie made the cutest cake for the birthday girls - she is an incredible cake decorator! I wish I could capture all the detail on the cake, but a picture just doesn't do it justice. Thanks Steph for a fabulous birthday cake (and yummy too!)!!

I made a cake on Sunday because it was a tradition growing up that my Mom always made our birthday cakes - and even if we had a "friend" party, we had a cake for a "family" party as well. I would like to try and be as good as my Mom was and make a cake for each of my children's birthdays. I am not a pro at this, so my cake is nowhere near as good as Steph's! My Mom discovered that her first birthday cake was a bunny cake, and my first birthday cake was a bunny cake, so since she recently discovered this, I thought it would be cool to do a bunny for Erin as well.

Here's a slide show of other pictures of her birthday festivities:

Funny Moments

I have to write about some of the funny things that have been said in the Trousdale household lately.

For anyone who wondered, Elaina is not the least bit shy (I doubt anyone even wonders...). Flying home from Las Vegas this spring, as soon as we boarded the plane, she turned to the guy sitting next to her and cheerfully asked:

"What's your name?"
"Pedro" he said...
Elaina: "Oh....that's a pretty name!"

I'm sure he was very flattered!

She also asked the too-cool cashier guy at the grocery store: "Um, excuse me, do you know where Princess Giselle is?" He turned to her and said "I don't know how to talk to kids." Poor Elaina, I had to break the sad news that he didn't know where Princess Giselle is, and he probably doesn't care that we are looking for her! (For those of you who are wondering, Princess Giselle is the princess in the movie "Enchanted" and she is Elaina's hero lately....Elaina will eat her cauliflower if she knows that Princess Giselle loves cauliflower...and Elaina will let me do her hair in braids if "it's like Princess Giselle hair"...and Elaina will clean up her toys when she remembers that Princess Giselle cleans too! For these reasons, Princess Giselle is my new hero too!)

When she sees a picture of herself as a baby she says "look Mom! I was a sister!" I guess when Erin was born we did a poor job of explaining to her the difference between a "sister" and a "baby."


We've been talking a lot about boys and girls lately:
Mommy is a girl...Daddy is a boy....Elaina is a girl...Erin is a girl...Matthew is a boy...Anabelle is a girl...
But now she points to everything - carrots at the dinner table, crayons, toys - and asks whether they are boys or girls. At least in Spanish objects are either masculine or feminine, but not in English. I just can't get Elaina to understand that carrots are neither boys nor girls. These are the kind of arguments I just never thought I'd ever have to have...

The other great words being said around here are:

"Mama"
"Dada"
"Na-Na" = "Elaina"
and, as of two days ago: "Baby"

I love these girls!

Eat Mor Chiken

Mike was chatting with one of his econ buddies today and found out about this cool promotion that Chick Fil A was doing. In observance of cow appreciation day, if you dress up like a cow, you get a free combo meal. Mike of course, being the economist that he is, couldn't believe it, thinking "what's the catch? There's no such thing as a free lunch!" So he looked it up online, and sure enough, it was true....but only for today.

So our family got decked out in our makeshift cow costumes (which consisted of white shirts, white pants, and black construction paper taped to our clothes). When we showed up, Mike goes "here we are....dressed like cows....what do we get?" The girl behind the counter said "well, all your food is free!"

We definitely looked ridiculous, but we got four free meals out of it :)

A Pirate's Life for Me!

This was a few weeks ago, but I meant to post it and forgot. Elaina went to her friend Madison's pirate birthday party, and she's been talking pirates ever since! She loves her little pirate costume that she got at the party. They got to go on a treasure hunt which included musical chairs, "sword fighting" with pool noodles, pin the patch on the pirate, and digging for treasure in the sand box.

Our friend was subbing in nursery that following Sunday and said that Elaina kept singing "yo-ho-ho, a pirate's life for me....yo-ho-ho, a pirates life for me!"

I hate it when I do this, but I did the video sideways. I thought it was too cute though and I had to post it anyway, so you'll just have to turn your head to the side to see it :) Elaina is our "nice pirate."

Happy 4th of July!

I wish I had pictures of our 4th of July holiday, but I forgot to take any! I feel like I need to do a "happy 4th" post though since I did one for Canada Day and since 3/4 of us are American! :)

We had a really fun day starting off with a breakfast with our church at a park. The big kids always want to play with our kids so as soon as breakfast was over, the older primary kids came and took the girls to the playground. It makes ward activities really easy for us :) and of course the girls have fun! Elaina loves to be with the "big girls!" Elaina was part of a parade around the park. We forgot to decorate a bike for her, but she still had fun carrying some streamers and marching around with all the other kids.

Last night some friends invited us to a barbecue at their house. At the end we set off small fireworks and poppers and sparklers. The kids loved pointing out the colors of the smoke bombs. They always got the color right, but poor Daddy needs to figure out his colors because the 2 year olds had to correct him almost every time (he's colorblind)! Then I came home to put Erin to bed and Elaina and Mike went to go watch the big fireworks that the university put on. They had a great view and some fun Daddy-daughter time.

Happy 4th of July! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday, and a wonderful Canada Day for my Canadian friends/family.

A friend read my post and emailed pictures to me that she had on her camera from the day. She's the primary president, so of course she was taking pictures of all the kids. I'm glad someone else is on top of things when I'm not :)

Here is Elaina in the parade with one of my Beehives, Caitlyn. Elaina adores her!

Nursery kids, lined up for the race

Even Erin ran in the race, thanks to Daddy's help!

Happy Canada Day!