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!

No More Monkey's Jumping on the Bed!

Last Monday I couldn't get the girls to take their naps. I kept going in & saying "stop giggling!" "Stop talking!" "Stop jumping on the bed!" After an hour of going crazy, I went in really upset and found the girls both in Erin's crib with a million blankets. It was so cute! I was laughing so hard and had to take a picture. Elaina had dumped ALL of the baby blankets that are stored under the changing table, plus a random booster seat into the crib and then jumped in herself. They were both giggling and bouncing in the crib and having the funnest time with each other. It was too cute. They really are absolutely the best of friends and I love it!

The next day when they were supposed to be napping again, I walked in (after hearing lots of giggling and talking between the girls) to find a very familiar scene: Elaina (who I know had just been jumping on her bed) scrambling into her bed and pretending to be asleep while Erin was just sitting up in her crib, wide awake and with a huge smile on her face. And of all things, she had a huge empty diaper box in the crib with her. I wonder how that got there? I had been in the middle of filling that box with too-small baby clothes to go out into storage, and everything that had been in the box was now scattered all over the floor. And look at the cute grin on Erin's face! :)


And of course this is the other thing scattered all over the floor. Elaina LOVES to read, and at nap time, rather than sleeping, she often pulls the books off her shelf and reads to Erin, or to herself if Erin falls asleep first. I'm so tired of cleaning up this pile of books every day (or even worse, being patient enough to get Elaina to do it herself when I know I can do it a million-times faster!)!!!


As of Tuesday the girls now take naps in separate bedrooms. :)

The other bedtime drama is that Elaina is now scared of monsters under the bed. She's been scared of the dark for several months now, so when it's dark we always leave the door open (night lights don't work for us!). But I am now routinely checking under the bed for monsters - both my bed and Elaina's bed, and sometimes under Erin's crib. I don't know if this is a stall tactic or a genuine fear, but I'm falling into the trap either way!

Take Me Out To the Ball Game!

The company Mike is working for this summer has season passes for the local baseball team, so we got to attend a home game last Tuesday night. It was so much fun to go as a family. How can you help but just feel good at a baseball game? And, our team won :)
GO BRAZOS VALLEY BOMBERS!!!

Elaina was more interested in doing other things besides watching the game, but that's ok, I usually am too :) We still have fun. She spent a lot of time flipping the seats up and down and walking down the row of seats.

Of course Elaina was mostly intrigued by the mascot: a life-size baseball. When he came to talk to her though, she ran away. Then we spent the rest of the game getting a little more comfortable approaching him. Near the end of the game, she was running across the bleachers to share her cracker jacks with him and was even bringing him cups of water to drink. She's so thoughtful :) Then at the very end of the night, she was even dancing for the crowd with him.

In this video Elaina is blowing kisses to the baseball - but she can't get too close :)

Erin loved the popcorn!!

Wedding Pics

I haven't blogged in a really long time, so I know these are like a month old, but I wanted to post some pictures I got at Jen and Jared's wedding. Enjoy! :)

Beautiful Bride

I wanted to get a really good family picture for our family room, so we took a whole bunch! Unfortunately it's tough to get one where all four of us (and especially the kids) look good. This is the best I got and I don't love it...so we'll have to keep trying for a great family picture. But it's good enough to post on the blog :)

My new family, with Jared included

Aunt Jen and the girls

Lunchtime!

Me and my (little?) brother, Dave

Jared's family made a swing for the reception in Las Vegas. Of course it was a huge hit for the kids at the reception and allowed for some really nice pictures on it. After 3 weeks of family around, Elaina was tired of smiling & posing for pictures by the time of the wedding, so we couldn't get a smile on her face. She was having a good time though....until we told her to smile for the camera!

Me and my brother and sisters

I love this picture of my Mom with Erin!

My Sisters