It's a good life...

It's the tiny little moments that make such lasting and wonderful memories!






Reading under the dining room table in our "pirate ship"
Coloring inside a massive box...thanks Amazon! Yes, both Lucy, me, and the coloring tools fit with room to spare
Huge baby smiles and a very slobber soaked toy carrot
Toothless grins
The boy can hold up that massive Summerill head!
Pat took Lucy to the Frog and Toad play and Lucy wasn't big enough to hold down the seat.
Eating the pink frosting off of a huge Top Pot donut
wearing daddy's hat
She was actually trying to show Elijah her newly painted toenails and fingernails

Palm Spring with the Whites

We just got back from our first family of four vacation...and we survived! :) It was actually such a great time. We went down to Palm Springs (they have sun there) with our friends Chris and Kristen and their little cutie Hayden. Kristen is amazing and found this perfect house for us with a pool and TONS of kids toys. It was so perfect! We were able to chill and relax without the kids stuck in a tiny hotel room with nothing to do. Instead, we had a whole house for our two families. We were able to make our meals at the house, hang out by the pool during nap times, and have some drinks and conversation after the kids went to bed. Hum...we MUST do this every year now!

I will say the travel days were a bit taxing (I am putting that really really nicely). If I'm totally honest, Pat and I were ready to pull our hair out by the time we got to Palm Springs. A bit of sun and coffee the next morning cured our frantic nerves though. We enjoyed our little coffee spot that also has a big, grassy, courtyard that is perfect for the kids to run around in. We sat by the pool a lot and I think I may have even read 5 pages from a book between naps, lunchtime, and other kid stuff. It was glorious. Pat and Chris took a morning and afternoon off to go do photos around Salvation Mountain and the Salton Sea and Kristen and I got a day off to hit the outlet mall! It was a bit harder to fit everything in my suitcase on the way home! I absolutely loved shopping around with Kristen! I think we must have purchased 3 matching outfits including the same pair of shoes on one of them. It was awesome. I can't wait to do that again. We totally clicked on the shopping scene. Perhaps not a great thing for the husbands. ;)

The last day was magnificently beautiful and we spent nearly the entire day by the pool. We started early and Chris made us all super tasty turkey burgers and salsa. Nothing like a little lunch and prosecco by the pool to make a perfect vacation day. You know how you hope to find good friends that will last a lifetime? For us, God gave us the Whites as amazing friends. We're so grateful for their friendship. I hope that we have many more trips like this in our future as our kids grow. It is funny how vacation with kids is nothing like vacation just as a couple. There are moments of total insanity but then there are the moments of pure sweetness where it is is so clear that God has made life abundant....like looking at this face!

and this face...

Here are a few too many photos of our adventures

poolside with the family
heading out for our morning coffee and frolicking around in the grass
My two cuties by the pool.
Sweet love for Daddy. These two are the closest buddies!
My three favorite people at our coffee hang out spot
The little buddy in a pool for the very first time. He was completely confused.
My tiny man
Evidence of the shopping disaster and our matching shirts and shoes!
The greatest belly the world has every known. I loved that it and the thighs were on display in Palm Springs!
Pat and Chris with their Gin and Tonics. Bubs turned down a drink and instead opted to chew on his hands...typical
My baby burrito
Me and the peeps at our coffee spot with Lucy's favorite "mountain" in the background. (translation "fountain")
Oh the roundness of that lovely face
And there was even a tire swing in the backyard. A big hit with Lucy
More of the little dude enjoying poolside living.
The buddies
Seriously, you can NEVER get a serious shot with us all! :)

Elijah growing up!

Of course everyone says that babies grow up too fast and it is oh so true. The little man is filling out more and more each day and learning new skills. His latest is that he is now reaching out for toys rather than just accidentally hitting them with his wildly swinging arms. Here is a little video of his new found skill.

He has also taken on some new vocal stylings, the most notable being the "pterodactyl" as Pat coined it. It is quite loud. ;) Pat also got him to really, full on, baby chuckle the other day. We tried to get a repeat on camera but no luck. Hopefully he will begin doing that more often. I only caught the tail end and it was too cute.

Bubs Joins the Army

Well, not really but Pat did give him a bit of a buz cut! He has a serious mullet forming and some awesome bald patches, so we thought we would do him a favor and even that craziness out a bit.

Here are some terrible before and after pictures. Both kids were going a bit nuts when we were trying to do this, so the pictures are completely blurry. It was the best we could manage at the moment.

Summerill Christmas!

In my attempt to catch up on the happenings here, I am posting some photos from our Summerill family Christmas. It was so great to have everyone in one city this year especially after being away from the family last Christmas. Craig and Renee were up from San Fran until Christmas morning and then Mom and Lindsey were in town through January 1st. We were able to get together for dinner a few times and then we celebrated Christmas on the 24th. It was so much fun to see Lucia interacting with all of her Aunts and Craigers. She was so excited to have them around that she acted like a total spaz whenever they were around. She wanted to show them everything and make sure that they were fully engaged in all of her games. After everyone left she said, "mommy, I love my aunts and uncles. They are sweet people". It was, of course, fun to show off the little man. He had grown so much since my mom had visited when he was first born and it was Lindsey, Craig, and Renee's first visit with the little man.

Here are way too many pictures of the fun

Our Smiley Baby

Eli has really been changing so fast over the past few weeks. He went from being fairly smiley to smiling all the time. He's even started a little baby laugh of sorts. He is such a great baby! When he is mad, he is definitely very mad and lets you know he is upset, but most of the time he is totally happy. We did just turn a corner though. He had been quite fussy and we just couldn't figure out what the problem was. We knew that he was thrown off by our hospital stay and couldn't really get back into a good eating/sleeping rhythm, so we forced him onto a very specific schedule and it has been great ever since. We still have lots of work to do on nap training to get him to sleep the full time without our intervention and to go down more easily, but each day seems to bring about a little victory.

Today I just put him down for his afternoon nap completely awake with no rocking, he cried for 5 minutes and then fell right to sleep. That was our little victory for today. I hope that sticking with a good schedule will continue to pay off. It has been so nice, if nothing else, to know when he should sleep rather than just letting him run the show. Anyway, all of that to say that he is even more happy these days. I think the poor kid just needed more consistent sleep especially given that we still have to wake him up twice during the night to feed him for MCAD reasons. Poor little guy won't get a full night a sleep for a LONG time...

I leave you with an awesome video and a picture of our little mama feeding Elijah