March Trip to Switzerland

Elijah and I (along with my mom) went to Switzerland for two weeks in March for my grandpa's 80th birthday party. We had a great time relaxing with family. The only outings we had were to the kids' zoo in Rapperswil and the Zurich zoo. I'm so glad we went; I want my family there to see Eli as much as possible. Here are some pictures:

Aunt Trudi, Eli, and V enjoying some Gummi Bears on Grandma V's laptop 

 Didn't take Eli long to take over Aunt Trudi's living room floor

 Feeding ponies at Knies Kinderzoo

 Petting goats at Kinderzoo

 Feeding Aunt Trudi's rabbits

 Enjoying a bath at Great-Grandma's

 Had to visit the cows at least once a day at Great-Grandma's

 Lovin' on the cats

 Eating paprika shells for his daddy

 Admiring a peacock (who later tried to snatch a candy bar from him - while he was eating it)

 Saying hi to the chickens

 Walking with Great-Grandma

 Planting flowers with Grandma V

 Four generation picture

 Eli, cousin Anna Laura, and Lanos playing

Final breakfast in Switzerland

By Special Request

Here is the video that goes along with the pictures from my last post.

a- Yes, that is Ode to Joy he is singing. And he is singing the word "me" thanks to this video of Beaker from the Muppets.

b- Please excuse the cat whining in the background. She thought it was lunch time.

Play, Sing, and Pose

Something I've really been struggling with lately is finding activities to keep Elijah happy and occupied. I don't want to just be playing with his toys and stacking boxes everyday. It's been tough for me because a lot of the projects I want to do, Eli is a little too young for yet. So I've been checking out books at the library, searching the internet, and scouring Pinterest for ideas. I've found a couple good ones and will be sharing them over the next few blog posts.

The first one we did last week was from the book First Art: Art Experiences for Toddlers and Twos. It's called "stretchy dough" although I couldn't get it to stretch. It consisted of vegetable oil, water, food coloring, and flour. I think Eli enjoyed it.

One day Eli randomly began singing part of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". I'm not quite sure where he picked it up at (it's not usually on our song list for some reason) but we got it on video! And yes, that's his classic camera smile at the end.



And now I leave you with one of the most precious pictures I've taken in a long time.

WIP

Eric and I decided it was time to start finishing the basement in November. He and his dad, along with some help from Elijah, have made great progress. In just about 3 months they have everything drywalled but one ceiling and a lot of it taped. Plus the fireplace installed and the wall built around it. Here are some pictures of the work in progress.

 Yes, Les is holding a chainsaw. 

 Eli putting up "drywall".

 There are injuries on every project I'm sure.

Mom, this isn't frosting.

Construction & Destruction

For a few months now I've been saving all the empty boxes, jars, toilet paper rolls, etc that we have around the house. I figured once Eli is a little older we'll make lots of fun crafts. But last week I was running low on activities so we decided to pull ALL of this stuff out of the closet and see how big of a tower we could build. I think it was pretty successful all around. (There's a video after the pictures of how a tower ends up when there's a little boy involved.)