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!