The amazing versatility of a strawberry box :)

A couple months ago Ted and Elle built a little sled out of some rope and a strawberry box.  We can't tell you how many hours of fun have been spent with this little creation.  Here's a little video to give you a flavor. Elle's friend, Aubree, took the video. :)

Link to our new family video

We recently created a new family video to help prospective birth parents get to know us better. The video can be accessed through youtube at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNPRXYJ5qDs .

We hope you will take some time to view it
and then share it with as many friends/family as you see fit! 
Remember, the best way to facilitate an adoption is to talk to
as many people as possible. 
Thank you for your willingness to help us grow our family! 

We also have a profile with pictures and video on adoption.com.
Here is the link to access that profile:

http://adoption.com/profiles/tedg-1434

A Christmas Letter from Our Family to Yours

Dear Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas!!  We send our love and greetings this Christmas season. Though it has been awhile since we have physically seen many of you, please know you are often in our thoughts and prayers.  We hope you have a wonderful Christmas holiday and an even better 2016.  Below you will find some highlights of this past year.

Elle turned 3 in January, so for all intents and purposes, she’s 4...going on 16.  :)  She loves to sing, dance, wrestle, play hide-and-seek, jump on the trampoline, tease her parents, have family hugs after family prayer, go on family dates, and read books and nursery rhymes.

Elise is very busy caring for an energetic, inquisitive, strong-willed, sweet 3-year-old.  :) When she is not busy with Elle she loves to read books. She has also taken up the organ again and enjoys going to the church each week to practice.  She suffered a stroke three years ago, but you’d never know it now.  She is relentless in her pursuit to become the very best version of herself regardless of the challenges.

Ted is in his 8th year of teaching math at Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy, a 7th-12th grade public charter school in Lindon, Utah.  He loves his job.  Along with teaching he is currently involved in math education research.  He just finished applying to PhD programs and hopes to start next Fall.  His baseball team (that he played on) won the league championship this past summer!  With all the things going on in his life, his favorite part of each day is walking through the door and seeing Elle and Elise.

As a family we love going to the BYU athletic events.  We are eagerly pursuing another adoption.  We have not been selected at this point, but have done all of the pre-requisite paperwork to be eligible again.  (To follow our adoption journey more closely check out our family blog.)  This summer we finished reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a couple.  It was so moving and powerful!  This December we will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary!  

We wish we could see each of you and give you a big hug, but the next best gift we can give is sharing our testimonies of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and of Their Plan for our lives.  We know They live, that They love ALL of us, and that They have great things in store for those that seek out a relationship with Them.

We look forward to seeing you in the future.  We love you!!!!!

Your fans,

Elle, Elise, and Ted

Christmas at Thanksgiving!

Well, after a long break of not posting here we go!  For Thanksgiving this year we traveled to Idaho Falls and had a nice break with Mom and Dad Gilbert, Katie, Robby and Kathryn and their cute kids!  This is a picture of Elle with her cousin.

It was so rejuvenating to spend so much time with family. It was a great trip.

No pictures...

For safety reasons.
A while ago we did a post about how Elle was scooting, albeit unintentionally. Well she is FULL ON crawling. What a mobile babe we have now! She can get basically anywhere. She loves to pull herself up and walk along the edge of the couch too!
Again, a while back, I promised a post about a crawling story. Well the reason it has taken SOOOO long to get it up is because I had great intentions of recreating the scene and taking pics. Yeah, that didn't happen. To be fair, I don't even have internet access during the daytime, so all my blogging has to happen at night. That is, by the way, also when I have other things to take care of. So the blogging has suffered. And so have you. Sorry about that.
SO: here's the story. Our apartment is pretty small, so it's hard to make sure everything is out of her reach. We have to use all the cupboards to store our stuff. As a result, I usually put all of Elle's toys out on the living room floor and let her explore in there. To keep her in that room I place our coffee table between the couches. To keep her from crawling under the table I place the couch cushions underneath it. Well, the other day I was putting something away in another room. It sounded like she had crawled around our barricade to the tile portion at the front door. Imagine my complete surprise when I found her "pacing" back and forth on top of the coffee table!!! No one told me she could climb. So now we prop the cushion upright in front of the table. They are too big to fit underneath, so the excess part she can use as a stepping stool.
Needless to say, I immediately removed her from the situation and did not take time to snap a picture. You're welcome!
If you need pictures (and don't we all?) check out our cougar post right below.

NOT a fair weather fan :)

So, as you may be aware, our BYU Cougars have not had the season we were hoping for. However, while some people were ready to throw in the towel partway through the season and wait for better things to come next year, I want to announce that we still kept going to all the home games. See for yourself:

The BEST part about being able to attend the games was taking this cute girl to cheer them on:

I wish you could see how cute the whole cheer outfit is, but it was not meant to be that night. No good pics of it. As it is, we'll have to get the whole outfit in a picture at the Marriott Center, where the Cougs have their home basketball games.
Another quick note: do you see the ladies in the background of this picture who are admiring Elle from a distance? Yeah. Every time we take her to the games people are talking about her from rows away. I can see them pointing her out to their neighbors. She really brightens the day for many people!

It might rain

Elle and I have been going on lots of walks lately. Today we needed to go pick up Ted's contacts, which had just come in at Shopko Optical. It is about a 25-30 minute walk each way, which is perfect because we're trying for an hour/day.
Unfortunately, when our opening came I looked outside and saw that it had been raining just before. I wasn't sure if the rain was finished, so I decided to put her in a jacket and hat. The good news is it did not rain on us at all (don't worry--I had an umbrella too. It covers the opening of the stroller PERFECTLY!). The other good news is how CUTE Elle looks in her hat... even if she doesn't really like it all that much. Check out her cuteness for yourself:

 

Check out our blog soon for a Cougar update and a crawling story!