Kennet cooked me a fabulous Valentine's Day dinner of filet and crab. He decided to really celebrate and open the last of his bottles of Sebastiani Cabernet. Kennet, our brother-in-law Charlie, and our good friend John White split a case of this many years ago in Minnesota, each going home with 4 bottles. It is a great wine and shortly after the split case, the entire winery and vineyard burned down in CA. The wine jumped in value and became impossible to get. Kennet slowly savored these bottles over the past 9 years and enjoyed the last one last Saturday. I rarely drink red wine and I even took a second glass! Thus, the picture.
Elsa is ready to go out and play! She is at such an adorable age right now. Even with the challenges of toddler-hood and occasional melt-downs, I really love this age! She is walking everywhere, into everything and has a really funny personality. She says a few words and has really caught onto Baby Sign Language. She uses "please" "thank you" "more" and "all done" really well and we are teaching her more signs all the time.
Here she is with Scotty! Scotty has been such a trooper this past 18 months (yep, Elsa will be 18 months next week!! Crazy!) Scotty is so good around her and she loves him!! She laughs at him, pets him, and now chases him around the living room! Luckily for him, he is still much faster than her and can get away when he wants to.
The living room has been completely toddler-ized. Elsa now has all of our previous knick-knack and what not shelves as toy and book shelves. Here she is with one of her baby dolls (which she loves to play with and put to sleep) and her other favorite...Legos and Mega Blocks! She also LOVES storytime! If you say "storytime" she will drop whatever she is playing with and go find a book to bring over. It's adorable!
Our little Valentine! Thanks to Auntie Marian and Uncle Charlie for her Valentine top! Also to both sets of Grandparents for the cute Spring outfits! She will be wearing them soon!
All in all, things have been great but as the title says...BUSY! Kennet and I have both been very busy at work lately. Kennet is working hard writing proposals to bring in more engineering jobs and doing design and mentoring for EIT's and for students in Engineering at Gonzaga. By the way, Go Zags!!!! I have become quite the Gonzaga basketball fan and can't wait to watch another one of their games tonight! Work has been crazy busy for me too. I have been doing a lot of staff training on health issues since I am the Health Mgr. and only nurse in our Early Head Start program. I have been writing a milliion health plans for kids and working with their doctors and parents etc. It is a great job and such a rewarding field to be in.
Elsa has been growing and changing every day! Like I said, she will be a year and a half old next week! It is so hard to believe how fast time goes! She loves her daycare and so do we! It is such a great curriculum-based child care center with a wonderful staff of teachers that adore Elsa and all the kids! We feel so thrilled to have such a wonderful place to take Elsa to. She gets so excited when we tell her it is time for "school!"
We are getting excited for spring and then summer for the beautiful sunshine in Spokane and eventually golf and lake weather! Kennet and I are going on a get-a-way weekend to Las Vegas in a few weeks!!!!!!!! We are both in need of a Spring Break and it will be my first time away from Elsa ever!! I am nervous but know she will do great here with my parents. Elsa loves time with Grammy and Papa and they are looking forward to it too.
We will try to keep up better on the blog...we'll see how that goes!
Kennet and I took our first trip away from Elsa last weekend to Las Vegas! My parents came over and watched Elsa and we flew off to the sunshine!! It was an incredible trip with fantastic weather!! We stayed at the Mirage on the strip. I highly recommend it!! The pool is huge with waterfalls and people everywhere. It was low 70's, which felt very warm to us!!
Again, fantastic pool!! Heated and open year-around!
We played golf at Desert Pines Golf club on Friday. It was a very challenging course with tons of sand and other assorted desert trouble to get into but we had a great time.
Here is Kennet hitting over the water. It was a great shot onto the green!
Here is another view from the cart path of the great course. We played with Bob and Paul (kind of like the Bryce and Gary of Orange County...quite the pair they were.)
Kennet in front of the Venetian Hotel on the strip.
We walked down to the steak house at "Paris" and then came back to the volcano erupting at our hotel, the Mirage. This is the Mirage behind us. It was kind of cool at night but just a little sweater or jacket was all we needed. Perfect time to go to Vegas!
Self-portrait. It was hard to get many of us together since we were there alone, but we tried...
This is the first night, we went out for seafood and gambling. Good times. Kennet lost at Blackjack, but I actually did quite well at the Roulette table!!
Right after we got there...this is oustide Cesars Palace. I have no idea who the other girl is...
Our hotel The Mirage. Perfect location on the strip!
The Bellagio gardens do seasonal floral and plant presentations. This picture was for Elsa...she loves ladybugs!!! This is hundreds of little red flowers.
Kennet was thrilled to be looking at flowers and butterflies...he was a little anxious to get to the casion and the bar!!
The Bellagio Gardens. Love the tulips!
Okay, here he is playing video poker. You can see he is smiling more than in the flowers!
