Thanksgiving Weekend Pics

Ellie hamming it up for the camera -- eating mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner

Ellie recently started doing this particular finger 'trick' again (she used to do this frequently when we first brought her home). As someone who is not double jointed in any joint, this makes me a tad squeamish but I thought I would catch a picture of it to share with you.

We enjoyed our long weekend and took the opportunity to relax and be with friends. Here we are with Viktor and Kristen playing the new game they taught us this fall (and which has become our new favorite game), Settlers of Catan. (Think, 'Monopoly' meets 'Risk'). We've invented our own 'teams' version. Sidenote, I think it's funny how Reagan snuck his head in trying to get a quick snack while we're all looking elsewhere.

In other Ellie news... she continues to grow taller and leaner. She runs and bounces around everywhere. Her vocabulary grows daily. If she hears a new word that catches her fancy, she will practice saying it over and over. Some of her new words are 'handbag,' 'delicious', and 'sofs' (instead of soft -- by the way, everything is 'sofs' and she will stroke it over and over while telling us with raised eyebrows). Instead of 'ta da!" she says, "ta lah!" Today while waiting for the bus she was excited once again (after a very long break) to see her 'pack pack' (instead of backpack, which she used to say correctly) and then she told me that she would "see ta friends." Sunday she was giving her teddy bears some much needed medical attention and Reagan was apparently wanting some attention too because the next thing we heard was, "Don't bite da bears, Reagan!" Sentences or phrase chunks like this are not commonplace, but we are beginning to hear them more often.