My Mom's 1st Live General Conference

This was exactly a year ago. We took the kids and my mom to the pumpkin patch in Springville. I think it's called "Jack a Lantern". Sadly, most of the pictures I took were in the Live mode which isn't able to work for this blog. Still, here's a few showing my mom playing with the kids. That's one of her best traits as a grandma - she almost turns into a child when she plays wit them. She enjoyed playing in the corn wit them. My favorite picture isn't here but it captured her being in the pumpkin/corn field. She finds herself in those environments. She loves gardening, planting, picking. When we were children she'd take us to various corn fields to pick corn. It was like manna in those days when food was scarce. 

She came back with a whole wagon full of pumpkins and bought all of them. We had something like 10 large pumpkins last fall and she made us lots of delicious banica with it all winter.

Family Pictures 2016

These were taken last summer. I have neglected to update this blog for years now but it's about time I start recording some things. 

My friend Plamena  took these pictures. We had Jane come to visit and the last time we had my mom and Jane with us at the same time, we took family pictures. Elena was 13 months old then. In these pictures she is 5, Charlie is 2 and George is only 2 months old. 

We took the pictures at a park by Polie's house. Jane had spent the day with Iolly and Venci, they gave her a ride and stayed with us for the pictures. I should have asked Plamena to take a few with them in it but at least we survived the ones we did take. My mom was being stubborn. The kids lost interest quickly. The lighting was not ideal.

This was the year that Jane had found out that she has skin cancer. She underwent lymph node surgery on her leg and has to wear compression leggings for the rest of her life. Not too long after that her house burnt down and she lost most of her possessions. There were some miracles along the way and plethora of amazing people who helped her with clothes, money, furniture, etc. That's the only reason she was able to make it to see us. She is a strong one, this one! 

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?? :)