Almost walking

Elena has wanted to walk for a very long time.  She will coerce anybody and everybody to walk her around.  She crawls over to random people at church and maneuvers her hands into position in their hands for them to walk her around.  It's actually pretty impressive to see her determination.  Sometimes I just sit on my hands so that she can't get me to assume "the position".  I've been trying to figure out how to teach her to walk on her own, but didn't realize she just needed the right inspiration.  

Recently she found her inspiration, Elena absolutely loves dogs.  One day she saw one of our neighbor's dogs get into their car and leave and she was inconsolable for 20 minutes.  Anyways, I set her on the ground around a couple of dogs and she just started walking toward them.  I was busy talking to our neighbor so I hardly realized that she was practically walking by herself.  I just had my hands under her armpits for protection.  My friend made a comment about her walking so I started taking her a little ways back and then letting her walk towards the dogs.  One time she ended up with her arms around the dogs neck... not sure he appreciated that.  Later that night, Mike and I started having her walk between us.  She is getting really good.  We just keep moving further apart and she's getting better and better.  Here are a couple videos to give you proof of her progress.  Enjoy!      

We have carpet!

Our house has really been coming together the past few weeks.  Every time we go out there it feels more like home and I just don't want to leave.  Last time we got to meet our neighbors from across the street and ended up talking to them for over an hour.  It was fun to hear about their experience moving in and all the secrets on how to get good deals on blinds, the good and bad about the HOA, etc... The only bad news is that tarantulas and black widows are apparently very prominent in the area.  Not good!  I think I'm going to have the house sprayed the first day we move in.

*Warning*  I haven't posted in forever so there are a ton of pictures from the last few weeks. 

Here's the doorway that was supposed to be an arch.  We made sure they corrected it and it looks 100 times better.

Jori seemed to be enjoying herself.

I'm sure we weren't supposed to walk on this black rubber stuff, but we were rebels and did it anyway.  We tried to wipe up our tracks and I ended up pulling some of the black stuff up with my bare feet.  Oops!

Here we are in Elena's bedroom.

This is the kid's bathroom.

Our master bedroom.

Elena is already afraid of the monsters in the closet.

Here are the pictures from last Friday.  I'm loving the rock on the front of our house.

Can't wait to see this once all the dust is gone.

Elena tried to climb into the open vent almost immediately.  

Here I am pulling the carpet strands out of her mouth.

Standing in front of our laundry closet.

Master bathroom.

Elena just collapsed with her butt in the air.  I thought it was pretty funny.