A big piece of news for our family is that we have welcomed a new family member and said good-bye to another. We bought a MINIVAN!!! I know, I know, we've always said we would NEVER get one but after our first 9 hour road trip to Gunnison, we jumped on the opportunity to buy Papo's van. It's amazing and we're really enjoying it. . . despite the fact that it's not an SUV. We're enjoying the good gas mileage. We did, however, sell the Civic. It was a tough decision because the civic gets 35 mpg, only had 94000 miles on it and was working great as a commuter car for Brad (and it was my first car!). But, Brad was ready for a 'big boy car' so he upgraded to the Subie and we sold the Civic. We actually got close to our asking price and for a 16 year old car, we were pretty happy with the sale. Brad is adjusting to the image wrecker of owning a minivan pretty well because Addy is so much more pleasant (and farther away from earshot!) in the van than she was crammed into the Subie.
Addy Paddy turned 2 last week and is just as busy as ever. She talks non-stop when we're at home and is fairly quiet around other people or in public until she gets comfortable. She loves being a big sister and has recently started reading books to Elsie Mae. She tells Elsie what is in all the pictures or she asks her, "Mae Mae what's dis?" to everything in the book. It is precious. Addy is really tall, most people think she is around 3 years old, and is working on getting her 2 year molars in. We found out she's in the 95% for height and she's almost 50% for weight. She gets a lot of 'owies' (she trips all the time - perhaps because she is so tall!) and likes to wear band-aids whenever possible. She's in the phase of asking what everything is, even people she sees walking past us. She points to them and says, "What's dat Mommy?" It's a little embarassing. She has a great laugh and loves to read books, take care of her stuffed animals, play in the pool and go for walks. She has also recently started praying after our family devotional time for everyone she knows.
Elsie Mae is almost 5 months old and she has been described by others as HUGE. :) She is really tall and has more chunk than Addy ever had and she's such a happy baby. At her check-up last month we found out she is 13 lbs 7 oz (50%), 25.5 inches tall (90%) and has a 15.4 inch head circumference (2%!). She just started rolling over from her back to her tummy and often sleeps on her tummy now because she can't flip back over. She squirms and scoots on her head (or face if she's on her tummy) to get around a little. She also touches everything and wants to put everything in her mouth. She loves making the music play on her mirror or the exersaucer. . .Addy was such an observer (and still is) that all this activity is so strange for me to see in such a little baby. She is super cute and loves face-time with whoever will give it to her. She's started giggling but it's hard to predict when she'll do it. She has also started sucking her thumb on her right hand while she puts her left arm over her eyes while she's sleeping.
Brad has officially welcomed his 2 new supervisors to the office and has finally has a full leadership team. He is really looking forward to getting them all trained and on their own so he can get a bit of a break! He's started mountain biking with a friend from church and he's looking forward to snowboarding with him this winter.
I have had a few breaks from the girls recently when I went to a Beth Moore conference in SLC and left the girls with Brad (Elsie decided to take a bottle after 5 hours without eating!), a girls night out and a trip to New Mexico for Papo's birthday last weekend (I took Elsie and left Addy at home). Whew! We've been busy lately!
