Ella at 9 months

Well Ella, you're now 9 (& 1/2, almost - oops!) months old. Here is a little about what you're up to these days. You are:

• 17 lbs, 12 oz and 27 inches long. That puts you in the 25-50% percentile for both weight and height. You're a petite little thing right now!
• pushing your push toys and doing lots of walking while holding onto our hands.
• climbing on anything you can hike your little knee up onto, including our stairs. :/
• getting more teeth on the top. You have your 2 bottom middle teeth right now, plus your right side lateral incisor, and 3 more trying to come in on top. I'm sure we'll see those any day now. You're always rubbing your little tongue over the top of your teeth, and you stick your tongue out at us a lot while doing that. Soooo cute! 
• nursing 5 times a day, and eating all table foods. You eat what we eat 90% of the time.... you're eally a great little eater, and you love to feed yourself! Also, a milestone this month is that you have officially joined us at the table for meals. The high chair takes up too much room in the new breakfast area, so I put you in a booster in the chair at the table, and I think you really love sitting with all of us to eat. And you look like such a big girl doing it, too. 
• not a fan of sippy cups, but you love drinking water out of a regular cup or a straw.
• down to 2 naps a day now. You've pretty much cut out your mid-day snooze that you were consistently taking. And your afternoon nap lately has been shorter than usual. I'm hoping this is just a phase and that my good little napper is back soon. Most of the time Carter actually gets more sleep than you do during the day.... that is crazy! 
• still a Momma's girl, big time. Not sure how I'm ever gonna wean you!! 
• such a little mockingbird! You cough, laugh, dance, say "ma ma ma" "ba ba ba" and "da da da" all on command now.
• you love to dance when you hear any kind of music.... and by dance I mean bounce up and down, bob your little head, and of course, give the cutest smile ever while doing so.
• waving bye-bye. I think I might be able to officially document your first word too. A few weeks ago (Mon 7/7/12), Daddy came and gave you a kiss because I was about to put you down for a nap, and as we walked away from him, you waved your hand and said, "Buh." We couldn't believe it! Sweet moment, for sure!
• you have handled the transition of moving really well. We even threw in the middle of it a week long family vacation, and that really didn't phase you much at all. You napped normally and slept great at night the entire time, and have been such a little trooper with all the activity and craziness going on around you. Very proud of you, baby girl!
  

I really cannot believe you will be ONE in 3 short months. I better start thinking about your 1st birthday party!! 

Family Vacation, July 2012

In the midst of our move and getting settled here at the new house, we took a week long family vacation! Haha - wouldn't you?! We knew that with taking the kids, we wanted to go somewhere close, so we traded our timeshare in at the Silverleaf Villages Resort on Lake Palestine, just outside of Tyler, TX. Here are some pictures of our week! Don't laugh, they are all with my cell phone because in the stress of packing for a week long vacation before we even got our house unpacked, I totally forgot our good camera. Oops! Thank goodness for our half-descent cameras on our phones, or we would have ZERO pictures to remember our first vacation as a family of 4 by!!

We spent LOTS of time at the pool. Each pool had such a great kid area with a beach style entry, which was perfect for Ella! 

 Nana, Grandad and Uncle Andrew came out and spent one day with us. Fun!

 The only picture of the 4 of us from the whole trip :)

 Big girl walking around in the water

 HA! Carter grabbed my hat when we were getting the kids ready for a bath, and this just cracked me up! 

 Day 1 - white booty! 

 Snack time poolside....

 Ella eating, AGAIN. She was a little piglet this trip!

 Exploring at the second pool. These pools were nearly empty in the mornings. So perfect!! 

 Eric inflating the world's smallest beach ball! 

 We rented a pontoon boat for a half day... Carter was on cloud 9!

 First time on a boat for this girl... and she isn't loving the life jacket!

 My two handsome guys :)

 Check out Carter's hook 'em..... HA!

 We filled a baby pool on the floor of the boat.... best idea ever for Ella! 

 Dinner on the boat!

 Naked baby!

 Mini golf at the resort.... Carter got not one, but TWO holes in one!! Impressive! He may or may not have had a little help from Daddy ;)

 Ella slept great in her pack and play, so grateful for that! 

 Carter and Eric took a paddle boat out on the lake. 

 They came back to the dock all sweaty, and Eric's legs were hurting..... ha! 

Great accommodations, great time away from everything, and great first family vacation for the 4 of us! 

Out with the Old, In with the New!

I feel like I'm sooooo behind on what our family has been up to lately, and I'm so glad to finally be able to sit down and write this post. As you know, we had our two closings and our move scheduled for Friday July 6th. Wellllllll, that didn't exactly go as planned. Long story short, our buyer's lender messed it all up! Fortunately we were able to go ahead and move into the new house on the 6th, but didn't actually get to close on either properties until Tuesday the 10th. To say that was a stressful and emotional 4 days would be a giant understatement. I was afraid my worst nightmare of all of it falling through AFTER we had moved forcing us to move back was going to come true. But thankfully, that did not happen, and we are now feeling pretty settled in the new place.  Thanks so much to our family that helped with the move itself and watching our kids, and to our agent, Deanna, and our loan officer, Jared, (who both also happen to be great friends) who helped to get us into this wonderful house! It was definitely a stressful and trying time for us, but you all helped tremendously, so thank you!

Sunday after the move, we took the kids back to the old house to say our goodbyes. I wasn't feeling particularly sad about the move at all until I started thinking about the kids leaving their rooms. For some reason, thinking of my tiny little babies sleeping in those rooms since birth got me all nostalgic, and made me a little sad about the memories we'd made there and leaving it all behind. I do know a lot lies ahead for our family in this new house, so I just try to remember that. Fortunately though, I can say there is not one other thing about that house I was sad to leave behind, so it wasn't horrible to say goodbye once I was able to get past their rooms.  

Bye-bye babies' rooms!

Now, a tour of the new house! It's taken a few weeks, but we're mostly settled now, so I finally have taken some pictures and feel like I can share them without it seeming like a total disaster! :)

Welcome! :)

 Front porch

 LOVE the front door!

 View from the front door. The office is to the right and the formal dining is to your left as you come in the door, neither of which are in any state to be photographed ;) Straight ahead is the living room, a bathroom on the right, and a closet under the stairs. The opening across from the stairs is a hallway to the master. 

Hallway to the master, including a built in desk and a butlers pantry/bar area that leads to the formal dining.

 View into the dining room

 Master and bathroom

 Other side of the master

 And the side patio that is just off the master. The little window peeks into the kitchen, and the window up high is the guest room. 

 View into the kitchen from the living room

 Living room 

 View of the living room and kitchen from the doorway to the garage.

High ceilings, catwalk above, and playroom over kitchen

 Backyard from driveway

 Backyard and driveway from the side yard

 View from the top of the stairs. Turn left to go to the bedrooms, right to the playroom and media room.

 Playroom 

 .... other side.

 Media Room

 Then to the bedrooms, view from the doorway of Carter's room

 other side

 View of huge closet (so big it has it's own window!) and into the kid's shared bathroom. Ella's room (see the crib?) is just through the bathroom. 

 Ella's room from doorway. Bathroom to the left, closet on the wall not pictured.

 Also, there is a guest room next door to Ella's room with a giant walk in closet and another bathroom next door. Again, not in any condition to be photographed, but we'll get there! On our list of things to do right away (in the next 1-2 weeks) is get all tile and grout cleaned as well as replacing the carpet! Can't wait until that is done!! 

Anyway, we're definitely feeling more at home every day, and loving being closer to things! We've met a few neighbors, and everyone has been so nice and welcoming! We know we'll be really happy here for a long time! And we hope to have all our friends and family over VERY soon! :)