Catching up for missed months

These are videos we've intended to upload for ages and are finally getting around to it. They range from last fall, Christmas, and some more recent ones. Enjoy!

Long Beach California

Sing-alongs

Here are a few videos that make us laugh

What Elena does these days

Well, Elena has been trying to self feed with a spoon and sometimes she seems to know the concept. Others... well, not so well :).

Sometimes she has definite preferences on how she eats certain foods: for example, bananas are to be held by the peal and eaten as an adult eats them :) not as coordinated as an adult but.. can't have it otherwise. 

Aside from that she's started taking independent steps but is not walking quite yet. We're waiting for the day when she'll just take off. I haven't been able to capture her walking skills yet.

Lastly, she's discovered the joy of chocolate. We have a big tin box full of chocolates - the other day she learned how to open it and we caught her in the act of taking chocolates out, sucking on them for a bit, throwing them on the ground and going to the next piece. Luckily she had only gotten through 3 pieces. I am certain she would have gone through the whole box before she stopped on her own.

Booo!

Starting the Halloween festivities at our house. It's so much more exciting this year. Elena is exploring things and with all the decorations, costumes, activities, etc. that surround Halloween it's been splendid!

We had a family Halloween party for all 18 grandkids in the Luke family. The kids decorated pumpkins (Elena got her own, yeah), played Halloween games (Elena just watched them and I played for her candy), and decorated sugar spooky-shaped sugar cookies (Elena and I just ate the cookies; they were so tasty!).

Here's her costume this year :)
In case you're wondering what's with the ladybugs lately: one of Elena's endearing names is bug and there's just not so many bug options out there. Not to mention that ladybug things are not hard to make and there are lots of adorable ladybug themed things. Don't you think it fits her quite well?? :)

September

We skipped updating our blog in the month of September, so the next few posts will be dedicated to catching up.

Luke Family Photos

Kevin's brother Brian was in town from Texas with his wife and kids, so it was time for our family photo. We had not taken one since the year we were married and there have been some additions to the family - we had to update the last picture. Not to mention the last one was awful in my opinion. I love that we got to take these outside.

Left to right: Brian, John, Andrea, Brad, Debbi, Carrie, Kevin, David