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)

The letter A

I promise I won't post every letter she learns to write...but here's her writing the letter A for the first time. She must be taking some writing class at school that I don't know about, b/c I have no idea how she is learning to do this!

Wee Weet!

For Halloween Ella was the most adorable pumpkin I've ever seen! (thanks for letting Ella borrow the costume Stephanie and Hannah!). She just loved prancing around in the costume. We had a very busy day, which started at the Halloween parade at her school. Then we went to lunch at my work, she conked out, she had her 18 month check up (which wouldn't be complete without a couple of shots), then finally ended up trick-or-treating in Whit & Joann's neighborhood. All it took was her saying "Wee Weet" at a couple of houses, followed by a "Tank Tu", and we have way more candy than we should eat!

At the party in her class after the parade

Whit and Joann's house

(Thanks to Jonathan at John's work for the idea for our halloween costumes...Pumpkin Farmers...you know...farmers that grow pumpkins! )

No more Wee Weet....

Pumpkin Patch

A couple of weeks ago Grace Golightly had her 2nd birthday party at the Pumpkin Patch at Baker's Farm. John was out of town, so it was quite an adventure getting around the patch with Ella, all of our stuff, and 2 pumpkins (thanks for helping Drew!). Ella had a great time, and I was completely exhausted! Next year, I will not do this without John!

Mandy & Grace on the hay ride that did not seem like it was completely safe. Luckily no one fell off.

Stephanie & Hannah

Ella LOVED the horse. Although I was a little scared of the horse b/c I heard some other little girl running off crying that the horse hated her...apparently she got too close and the horse knocked her down with his head! But the horse seemed to like Ella ok.

Can you find Ella amongst all of the pumpkins?

A day at the Park

A couple of weeks ago Ella and I got to spend the afternoon with Jenny Strickland and her youngest boy, Dylan. Ella and Dylan had a great time flirting on the playground in Helena (this is the best playground if you've never been!!). Ella definitely is an expert on the slide. She knows the drill...and likes to slide again, and again, and again, and again.....