Very much needed update

I am going to go over 6 months in a couple of paragraphs.

Update on Elyn: He has 4 molers and 8 front teeth, making a total of 12 teeth. At Christmas he was playing at Grandpa Morrell's house and tripped and hit a glass garbage can and chipped his front tooth. Luckily they are only baby teeth. His vocabulary is growning everyday. He says Mom, Dad, Nigh-nigh (that's for his binki and bottle), Ball, show, cracker, and he knows alot of animial sounds. Every bird to him is a quack quack. His favorite song right now is 5 little ducks. In the last week he has started to respond to questions, for example I ask him if he wants to watch a show and he will nod and say yes and run to the couch to watch a movie.

We just moved to Ethiopia and are loving it. Mark spends most of his time down at the farm which is 16 hours from the Capital, which is were I'm at the majority of the time, in a car but he had to go down in a semi truck this last time and it took 32 hours. He wasn't too happy after that. Our trip over here wasn't too bad, but we did have our adventures. We had a 14 hour layover in London which we were planning on touring as it was in the day time. The day we get there London decides to have its biggest storm in a generation. So their public trasportation is down and we were not dressed or prepared for snow. We ended up staying the whole 14 hours in the airport. Elyn did sleep the whole time in the airport which was nice because we didn't have to chase him around in that very busy airport, but it made it so he didn't sleep at all the last 8 hour flight. We finally made it to Ethiopia and got through customs smoothly. We get to the baggage claim and had found 2 of our 7 bags (we had 5 bags, a big box with a big first aid kit and his car seat) we wait... and wait... and wait. After about an hour or longer the baggage claim only had 13 bags left on it and our bags are not there. We go to the lost baggage area and they asked for a address to send the bags, and I didn't have it. So they asked for a phone number to call and I didn't have one. So we left with their number hoping that we would be able to call back and give them are information. We got home to Dad's house here and were able to get ahold of one of his workers who called and figured out our bag situtation even though it was their Christmas. We got our bags the next day. WHEW! The first bag I open we a big mess. This was very encouraging let me tell you. We had some lotion that I forgot I put in there explode, Formula can explode, and maple exctract explode in a zip lock bag the also exploded. Not fun to clean up. Luckily that was the end of our adventure getting here.

Mark is in Beltu right now, at the farm building our house. They went into the market the other day and had a crowd surrunding them. He said he had about 300 kids following him and towards the end of the trip sworming him. Because there were so many people stands were getting pushed over, fights were starting. It just was crazy all together.

I will try very hard to update weekly. I will post pictures later.

Elyn is 1!!!

Elyn turned 1 a month ago. It was so hard for me to have him turn 1. I know that he didn't change much just a number but that fact that he his getting more and more independent scares me. He is not a baby anymore, he is a little boy.

So much has happened in the last couple of months, I'm sad that most the pictures I have of him growing up and are funny are on my phone that just crapped out on me. So future note for me "take pictures with the real camera!!!!"

Anyways back to Elyn... He has 6 teeth now, 4 on top and 2 cute little teeth on the bottom and let me tell you they HURT!! One of his favorite things to do when he is mad is to bite mom. He never bites Mark, only me.

His 1st birthday was fun! We had a small celebration at Lake Powell with the Morrell side and then we had a celebration on his birthday with the Brown side. He had a lot of fun. We celebrated his cousins Karson's 1st birthday the same day and they had a blast. They got a cake all to them selves to dig in. Karson was shoving the cake into his mouth and Elyn just played in it and flung it everywhere.

About 2 weeks ago we were up visiting Grandpa and Grandma Morrell and Elyn fell down the stairs for the first time. Horrible experience but he got over it in about 60 seconds and it took me a half hour. I guess some sense was knocked into him because he started to walk a half hour after he fell (which is why I got over the fall) :)

We went to CA to hang out with Mark while he was working and went to the Sequioa National Park and saw the really big trees. That was really cool! As you can see Mark doesn't seem like that big of a guy next to these trees.

Elyn is still trying the walking thing but perfers to crawl because it is faster but every day he gets more and more confident in walking and I'll catch him walking even with out us there to encourage him.

He is getting so big, it melts my heart when he says mommy. Even though a lot of things are mommy to him but it is nice to hear my name. It brings me even closer to him. He also says dadda, hi, no, and he did say nigh nigh once.

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

Here is a movie I made of Mom for Mother's Day. I heard this song and felt like I had to make it. Even though it was a very frustrating experience I loved every minute of it. This video is not ment to make you sad it is to encourage and make you feel good. That she is ok and that we don't need to worry 'bout her. I hope you enjoy this and please share this with any one that you think will benifit from it. Thanks, love Heidi.

Elyn is our Army boy

Lots are happening with our little boy! He has two teeth and at the same time he is doing the army crawl learning how to crawl on his hands and knees and he is starting to crawl around furniture! WOW! It's fun but hard to watch him grow up. He has been saying "mamama" but I think he is starting to get what it means. He now will say "mamma" and "dadda" and "no no" after I have said it a couple of times. He also has learned how to throw tantrums :( not so fun. The other day we were shoping at cosco with Cherish, Katie and their little girls and they have sample foods all over the place. Elyn was sitting next to Eva in the cart and stole Eva's chip and then screamed at me when I tried to give it back to her. He would grab it out of my hand before it got to Eva. So I gave in and gave it to him and the started going again and then he started to scream again! I look to see what his problem was and he dropped in on the ground. I can't believe food can cause this much issues in a 9 month old. He shouldn't be loving food that much already. Oh well he is he father's son.

Below I've posted some pictures and Videos of Elyn in his Army outfit doing his army crawl. Katie suggested I do this before he quit doing it and I'm so glad I took her advise. Thanks Kate!

Enjoy.

He didn't like the grass so he wouldn't do the army crawl.

Growing

Time is flying by too fast, Elyn has his first tooth, and he can stand by himself now (only for acouple of seconds). He likes to stand up to things now but he hasn't quite figured out how to do that, so he screams at me until I pick him up and stand him next to whatever he wants to stand up to. I know spoiled kid! He has had a blast here living with Cherish and her family for a while, he loves Eva and always malls her, but she does it right back so it evens out. Eva loves to kiss Elyn, in Church she took Elyn's binki for him so she could kiss him on the lips. We will have to watch out for these kissing cousins. :) Elyn is getting so fast with his army crawl I forget how fast he is until he is almost in trouble. oops. But it is sure fun to watch him grow. Here are so more fun pictures.

Elyn in his cowboy outfit, boots and all.

Eva taking over Elyn's carseat as a Chair to watch TV

Elyn and Eva going down the Slide together.

Just some fun pictures

Elyn's drapes in his room.
Mark being weird

Elyn was haveing a hard time sleeping with some gas issues but Mark has the touch to get him to sleep, it was just to cute not to take a picture.

His cute Hair do.

Elyn chewing on a string on my shirt, his favorite thing to do.

Here is a fun video of him laughing make sure the volume is up!

Elyn is Crawling!

Here are some video's of Elyn crawling.

He's only in the army crawl/scoot but he is starting to get on his hands and knees to try and crawl that way. It's been a lot of fun watching him progress.