Ho, Ho, Ho!

Christmas and News Years came and went so quickly, its just hard to believe its 2009 already. We had such a wonderful Christmas! Ella's new favorite phrase is "Ho, Ho, Ho!" She doesn't quite understand Christmas yet, but she definitely understands that getting presents is a lot of fun. Here are some pictures from Christmas day, and I'll post a video shortly.

Checking her PDA while riding her horsey

Sporting her new Samford cheerleader outfit

Aunt Cookie and Ella

Dreaming of his Red Rider BB gun

I have been blessed with some time off between Christmas and New Years. Ella's school has been closed for most of the time as well, so I have definitely enjoyed getting to spend some quality time with Ella.

She just amazes me more and more every day, with more words and phrases, things she is copying or coming up with on her own, dancing, singing; her drawings and coloring is quite impressive I think for a 20 month old, and she is actually starting to color in the lines in her coloring books; she'll point out and say almost everything in her picture books; she is so expressive and is able to tell me pretty much anything she needs and wants, which has the temper tantrums down to very few! Now don't you dare try and take something out of her hands b/c she'll try to bite you! But if you ask her nicely, say please, and bargain with her, she'll hand it over no problem. She is trying to push her boundaries more, but she's also learning her boundaries pretty quickly. She likes to show off that can jump up in the air, and has the best sense of humor!

It's kind of strange because she can entertain herself for almost an hour playing make believe ,coloring, rocking on her horse, puzzles, looking at books, etc. I am actually almost able to get some housework done and bills paid for once since she was born! But its almost kind of sad too that she's growing up so much!

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

Christmas pictures at Morris Avenue

A few weeks ago Ella and I tagged along with my friend and photographer Stephanie Fisher (www.sfisherphotography.com) to Morris Avenue to get our little ones to pose for some Christmas pictures. Stephanie is also our fabulous photographer (and is hopefully going to be my photography teacher soon in all of our free time!). These pictures below were taken with my camera (and i actually took the ones that I am not in!). But our adorable Christmas card photo was taken by Stephanie...and is hopefully showing up in your mailbox soon (got them out a little late!).

All was fun and games....

Until I asked Ella to hug Hannah and she accidentally let go of her red balloon....
It was so sad!

A little late, but thanks Stephanie!!

Catching up...

Ok, a slacker once again. Busy, busy, as always! Let's see if I can update from the past month and a half...

- Ella is copying everything we say now and is quite a chatter box; she is putting words together herself; said her first sentence a few weeks ago...I Ate Cheese Toast! She likes to run around the house yelling, "Happy Day, Happy Day!"

- John taught her how to feed the dogs. He'll put the dog food in the bowls, and she'll go and set down each bowl just in the right spot. She'll even go and take some kernels of food to Brinkley to get her interested. Ella wakes up every morning wanting to give both Brinkley and Anne Marie hugs and they are definitely troopers.

- She now knows several colors, shapes, lots of letters; its amazing how much her little brain is soaking up and how much she remembers

- Ella is trying to sing (twinkle, twinkle little star...adorable!); she loves to dance and loves to draw (still prefers pens and colored pencils).

- John has been having court stuff in Montgomery, Huntsville, Tuscaloosa; had his first trial (but then in the courtroom it ended up getting postponed to January); he is loving his job, but has quickly learned that law school does not teach you how to be a lawyer!

- I am now the Financial Planning Association's director of public outreach (pro-bono). It's a fairly new position, and they are really wanting to focus on public outreach this next year with everything going on with the economy. In addition to being in charge of financial planning classes at a women and children's homeless shelter, I'll be coming up with ideas to reach out to the general public who can't afford financial planning advice. Yea, not sure how I am going to have time to do this, but I am looking forward to it!

- We are hoping to get our house on the market in the spring sometime and had a real estate agent come and tell us everything we should do to get it ready. Long list..... but we are hoping to take advantage of the low interest rates and lower housing prices to get into a house that we can actually fit into (maybe a basement for john's art supplies, music equipment, and ella's toys, toys, toys galore). Again , not sure how we'll have time to get everything done to our house and then pack up and move, but we are pretty motivated with the low prices and interest rates. Most of the houses around us are taking anywhere from 3 days to 3 months to sell, so hopefully we'll be able to sell it quickly, but we'll see.

- We just got rid of cable again, so maybe now I'll have more time to update our blog more often!

We are definitely looking forward to Christmas. A little elf told me that Ella might be getting a red vintage kitchen, and a handmade rocking horse. We'll just have to see what Santa decides to bring! Hope you are all doing well, and I'll try to start updating more often!

Thanksgiving

Collage of pictures from Thanksgiving at Elizabeth's lovely house in Montgomery

(try clicking on the collage for a larger view)