Brian & April

My cousin and his wife who live in Georgia have just been approved for adoption.
If you know anyone who is looking for some great parents for their unborn baby, let them know.
Their profile can be found here. You can search for their profile name which is Brianandapril (one word).

When I woke up this morning...

... I didn't know I'd end up on a float in a parade tonight.

Above is a picture of Ella, just before Breanna's fun Birthday party today.

We found out this afternoon that Lily won 3rd place in the baby contest. She and I rode on a float in the parade.
Ella watched the parade with Tyler, Grandma, Trisha, Nana, & Papa. She got more candy than a trick-or-treater.The parade wore Lily out. It wore me out too! I'm headed to bed early tonight.

Who's the boss?

When Tyler first started working exclusively from home we had some issues about who would be in charge. It quickly came to our attention that Ella was clearly the boss.

Ella: Who threw this vinyl in the garbage?
Me: I did.
Ella: Why?
Me: It was ruined, I can't sell it like this.
Ella: Mom, you shouldn't do that. If you start to ruin something, tell me, I will show you how to not ruin it.

Another Scenario
Ella: Mom, I need you to draw a pink dinosaur with polk-dots and flowers (thus this shirt I made for her.)

She liked the shirt, but was unhappy that it was a Stegosaurus rather than a T-Rex. So I decided to draw her a pink T-Rex on my computer. When she woke up in the morning and saw it she was delighted with how it turned out. However she did have some changes for me.

Ella: Mom, him is supposed to have a claw on his foot.
I quickly drew a claw, but she still wasn't satisfied.
Ella: Mom, he needs 3 claws! Why did you only draw one?
Then she ran and got a little figurine of a T-Rex, and showed me his 3 claws.

Today she announced that Santa Claus would be bringing her a vinyl machine of her own for Christmas. When I asked her what she planned on doing with her own vinyl machine. She replied, "I'm going to make my own vinyl and sell it, and make my own money."

Clearly she wants to be in charge, and she's pretty good at it, so I guess she can be the boss for the time being.

Mommy Tag

Ella was tagged by her cute cousin Katie to answer some questions about her mommy.

1. What is something mom always says to you? I love you
2. What makes mom happy? when I give you hugs
3. What makes mom sad? when there's a monster, cause you're afraid of the dark.
4. How does mom make you laugh? you say buga buga buga (I do?)
5. What was mom like as a child? you weren't a kid, you were water. apples. (huh?)
6. How old is your mom? 7
7. How tall is your mom? Makes the letter "L" with her fingers.
8. What is your mommy's favorite thing to do? Eat snacks
9. What does your mom do when you're not around? Tell Lily things.
10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for? Your eyes.
11. What is your mom really good at? Drinking water (Actually Ella, I should probably drink more.) & building a castle.
12. What is your mom not very good at? Reading books, cause you don't know what the words say. (I'm kind of confused about this one.)
13. What does your mom do for her job? work
14. What is your mom's favorite food? strawberries
15. What makes you proud of your mom? Going Potty
16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be? Powerpuff Girls (Good answer Ella.)
17. What do you and your mom do together? drink water & eat food.
18. How are you and your mom the same? Jesus helped us be the same.
19. How are you and your mom different? Jesus build our bodies different.
20. How do you know your mom loves you? You like me, you like reading books to me.

Now Ella tags Chase Stevenett.

Happy Birthday Emily

This morning we went to visit Emily on her birthday. She was running a booth at Lehi Round-Up Days. Lily had this cute picture taken there.


Later we went to Café Rio to celebrate. There was an awesome car in the parking lot. They had huge weird & random graphics pinned to their car with black magnets. Why didn't I think of that?

To the lake

We live in such a fun area. When we moved here it seemed so far from everything, and so boring. But now we live within walking distance to the the new Temple, a huge Movie Theater, Target, and coming soon a book store. We also have lots of fun hiking/biking trails around the area. This week we walked to the Lake everyday. Sometimes in the morning, but tonight we went in the evening. It's so fun to see all the wildflowers & Ella loves finding the ducks. I feel so lucky to live where I do.

Bounceolines & Lolicycles

Ella has a habit of combining words & making them even cuter. For example instead of saying "trampoline" she calls it a "bounceoline". "Suckers" are not called "lollipops", but "Lolicycles." She likes to refer to roads as "Pathways". "Elevators" are "Ellagators" I could go on and on.

Ella sets standards

Ella: Mom, I'm going to marry a boy who is smiley and who can talk.

Happy Father's Day!

Tyler spoke in church today. He did a great job. Ella went up with the primary to sing a song to all the dads.

Ella drew this picture of a Lion for Tyler.

More pictures

Happy Birthday!

The birthday girl!

The Favors.

The invitations to our carnival.

(More pictures after the party.)

We need a Video!

Last June, Tyler and I decided to make a video on how to put our wall art up, but we never got around to it because neither of us wanted to be in the video. Then we decided we were just going to take some pictures, step by step, but again, neither of us wanted to be in the picture. We tried taking pictures of Ella putting the wall art up, but that didn't turn out too well.
Now, it's a year later, and we've decided to ask for some help. If you are interested in making either a "how to" video or taking "instructional pictures" for us, let us know hollybjones (at) yahoo. com. We will send you any decal of your choice to use for this project for free. We will use all entries on our website. From the entries we receive we will pick one grand prize winner. The winner will receive a $25 gift card to my favorite store, Target!
Feel free to make the video or take the pictures however you want. Simple, detailed, funny, not funny. What ever you feel like. (as long as you don't use bad words, etc.) These do not need to be professional videos or pictures. If you have any questions, let me know. Just let me know which decal you want, and I'll send written instructions & tips with it.

This week

On Sunday, Lily played on grass at Nana's house.

On Monday, Ella went to dance class.

On Tuesday, Ella made dessert for Tyler, and rewarded him with a "My Little Pony" sticker for trying something new. Tyler ate it all.

On Wednesday, Ella made home-made raspberry juice for Tyler. MMMmmmm.

On Thursday Ella went to paint class. She learned that mixing red & blue makes purple. Now she wants to know what brown + purple + orange + silver makes. Or what about grey + matte black + red? To her, the color combinations and possibilities are endless.

On Friday we went to the Dinosaur Park.
Ella was very excited. She's been watching (incredibly boring) Dinosaur documentaries (meant for adults) that she checked out from the library last week. She now knows more about Dinosaurs than I do.

Packages of packing supplies

The Fed Ex guy who delivered these wants to know what we're doing with all these packing supplies. The answer? Packaging! Lots of it.

Ella's Birthday Wishlist

When Ella turned one, she didn't know what a birthday was. She had no wish list.

When Ella turned two. She asked to go on a bus ride, and go to a car wash for her birthday. This was very easy, as Daybreak was having a grand opening for their second phase on her birthday, so we just had to walk 5 houses down to catch a free bus ride to the model homes. Our car was dirty so later we took it to a car wash. Ella was thrilled!


Last year, Ella's birthday list included anything cars, or anything blue. Very easy! 90% of her gifts ended up either blue or something to do with cars. Again, she was very pleased.


This year her birthday wish list includes the following 2 items;
1) a gun
2) a washing machine
I don't know that she'll be getting either one... I guess she can have my washing machine if she wants it that bad?

Lily starts a food fight at Sweet Tomatoes

We decided to take Ella to her favorite restaurant "Sweet Tomatoes" last night. Since Lily can sit up now, we decided to leave her car seat in the car, and let her sit in a high chair. We didn't foresee any problem with this, as Lily is usually a pretty easy baby. As soon as we put Lily in the high chair, she switched in to hyper mode. I've never seen her so excited or loud before. She was completely out of control. She started off by throwing a bowl of Jello on the floor, then a few cucumbers. I gave her some toys to play with, but she just wanted to bang them on the table and make as much noise as possible. When I turned my back for one second to put her loud toys away, she grabbed my entire salad plate, and threw it across the table. While trying to get that under control, tomatoes went flying, she batted a muffin across the table as well. The whole time she screamed with Delight. We've never seen this side to her. I'm not sure that we will be taking her out to eat again anytime soon. (Notice in the picture, she's about to grab Tyler's soup. Luckily he grabbed it before she could throw it.)

A tiny purple partical tragedy

This is really quite a dumb story, but
Yesterday morning during her bath Ella started crying and screaming hysterically. When I finally calmed her down enough to understand what she was screaming about. I found out that she had lost a tiny purple thing, (no larger than a grain of sand.) Amazingly, we found it after letting the water out, and Ella was happy again. She carried it everywhere that morning until Tyler finally convinced her to put it in a safe place, so it wouldn't get lost.Well, it did get lost again, and Ella was completely freaking out about it. I looked everywhere for it, but had no luck. Finally I was tired of all the yelling, so I got a little purple cake decorating sprinkle out for Ella. She was not satisfied. The sprinkle was "too big," and not "bright enough". (See fuzzy picture above.) I told her we would have to paint it later, cause I just didn't feel like getting all the painting supplies out just to paint a tiny little sprinkle. I guess Tyler was tired of all the screaming about a tiny little purple thing too, so he went and got the purple paint and peeled a tiny little piece from the bottle. Ella was as happy as could be again. In fact, she was so happy about the little purple paint chip that Tyler "made" she wants him to make one for all her friends. So, if you're a friend of Ella, I'm sure you will be looking forward to getting a tiny little purple paint chip from her.