Happy Birthday Poppa!

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The last days of summer????

I envisioned a lot more blog entries than ONE during the summer but it's been a fabulous, very fun few months and I feel we've definitely spent the time that wasn't used for blogging in a very productive way. As per usual with the blog, I'm out of order and I'm going to upload pics and stories about our family honeymoon or "familymoon" first and then get around to the wedding post shortly thereafter.

The Familymoon was soooo much fun. We went to Hyatt Lost Pines Resort about thirty minutes down the road. We swam, ate, roasted marshmallows, walked by the river, pet horses, floated in the lazy river, watched HBO, and relaxed for a few days. We had a fabulous time. Ella J absolutely loved swimming in the water. She could have stayed at the pool all day. In fact, anytime we were in the hotel room, she'd grab her float and drag it to the door and start banging on it, letting us know she was in on the fact that the hotel room was actually just a giant play pen.

The resort was great. It was all families-Texas Chic for sure. You could rent bicycles, ride horses, they had movies in the lawn and you got to make smores every night (even though kids running around with huge metal forks with flaming marshmallows attached to them is a little bit unnerving). We had an awesome time and really grew excited about the prospect of sharing a family vacation like this with our friends someday. It was the perfect familymoon for us!

The first days of summer

It's already so hot here that I really think this blog title should be the "middle of summer", but it's really just begun. Last week was my last week at work so besides summer school and running around for wedding stuff, I'm home full time. The Little Big Feats school moved to our house last month, but this week was the first week Clay had all three students: Ella J, Hutch and the newest addition, baby Lila. This is my second day as an impromptu 'assistant teacher' and already I have so much respect for the job Clay does with all the kids! Currently, he's cutting up an organic spinach pizza and feeding it to one of the kiddo's as a snack, cleaning a sinkfull of bottles and kids forks and plates, pushing another kid in the swing, singing songs and wearing a baby in the Bjorn. All with a smile and no stress (this is after a full morning of swimming down at Aunt Bev's with 5 more kids). I'm on my 4th break today ;).

We've been having a fun time enjoying the outdoors and friends. Our weekends seem to fill up quickly with fun friends and family stuff this time of year. The spring and summer birthday parties have started (it seems almost all the little ones were born between April and August), Nanny's annual pool party in Temple was fun, and we've been enjoying the awesome neighborhood pools and friend BBQ's.

This summer Clay is going to continue working on the awesome backyard he's building for us. We're excited about having all our friends together for our (hopefully not too hot) Texas wedding in July. I'll be working at summer school again this year in late June and hopefully be learning a little spanish with rosetta stone so I can hang with the little kids and Clay at school. And we hope to spend a weekend in August at a nice hotel in the hill country for a much needed family getaway.

Ella J at her friend Jayden's first birthday

Ella J and Hutch building couch forts at school

Morning visit at Twin Falls on the green belt in Austin

Ella J Turn(ed) 1!

Ella J is so much fun! She's a great baby and fast approaching kid-dom. We're having a great time being busy with all the new fun outdoor activities we get to do now that the warm weather and summer vacation is here. Ella J seems to be growing and learning exponentially. She's saying 'mama', 'dada', 'outside', 'more/mas', 'kitty cat', and laughing all the time. I was putting the final touches on this video and realized it's out of date! This is video of her in April and some of May.

She walks!!!

Just a few days shy of 1 year old and she's walking! Ella J took her first step towards our 4 year old neighbor Annabelle on Saturday. Clay texted me all day Wednesday from school that Ella J was practicing walking. This video was taken in the evening when they came home from school. How exciting!!

*for those of you receiving this via email, you will need to click on link to view video.

Easter!

The bluebonnets are awesome this year! We couldn't resist throwing Ella J in the middle of some in her pretty dress Grandma Liz got her.
Enjoy!

Growing growing growing

Ella J "playing" with Franny

Pushing her stroller and chair-which she also tries to stand on (no pictures of that!)

I bet that the next time I actually have 10 minutes to blog, Ella J will be walking. She is getting so close! Not that we're in any hurry really. Here's what I've learned about each baby milestone: it translates into "being able to get into more stuff". She is so coordinated and strong! She crawls up onto and ooches down off of all the furniture in the house. She likes to push around chairs, crawl out of the bathtub, and jump on the bed. She's fearless!

Spring Break

I've always thought that having a child meant finally having someone to tidy up around the house and do the dishes for you. Hah! Like most of my perceptions about parenthood that one was dead wrong. Ella J is a kind and wonderfully considerate baby, but boy can she make a mess. Mom and Dad have been busy spending spring break tilling the yard, painting, visiting Ikea and organizing closets. Ella J decided to do a little spring cleaning of her own with her toy box-daily. And yes, of all the toys strewn about, those items in her hand that she prefers to play with above all others- are a red pen and diaper.

Happy Valentines Day!

Make a Smilebox greeting

Christmas 2009

Continuing with the theme of updating the blog and never-mind-the-absence-of-chronological-order, here's Ella J's first Christmas.

Great time. Christmas Eve day with Dad's side of the family in Temple. We had a wonderful time at Nanny Zelisko's house and visited and ate and celebrated together in a very fun visit.
Onto Mansfield for Christmas Eve and morning. Grandma and Grandpa were thrilled to see Ella J and spend the holiday with her. The older Ella J gets the more fun she is for Grandma and Grandpa. Ella J and Grandma Liz really like each other and have a special bond.
Mom and Dad got to sneak away and see a movie and play games at the arcade at the mall. Air Hockey: Dad 2, Mom 0 (but I did kick his butt on our first date, multiple times).
We all got caught up on rest and absence of good, home-cooked holiday food. Dad met his yearly quota of peanut butter balls in one weekend (36).
On the way back home we stopped in Temple at Grandma Jeanie's and had a really nice visit with her and Michael and got the update on Buckholts Christmas.
Great Christmas. Definitely spent the way it should be and definitely look forward to spending many more together.
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eating? check, sitting? check, crawling? check, blogging?.. whoops

Shoot. Ella J has been doing so much lately that I figured she'd taken over the task of updating everyone on our blog. I guess that's not what she's been doing in the wee small hours of the morning when she's up messing around.
It seems like the theme of each blog recently has been "things have been busy"...but things have been busy. And, I have to admit, the thing preventing me from updating the blog recently was that I haven't updated the blog recently and would have too much to report and that the entries wouldn't be in order. Then I remembered that this is a BLOG and read by people who want to hear about Ella J and not her mom's neurotic thoughts, so on with the update.
Ella J has sprouted into a lovely little 9 month old. She sits, she crawls, she pulls up, and she gets into cat food. She has a very happy disposition when her two top front teeth that are growing in simultaneously don't get her down. They have finally popped through and boy are they cute! She's got a big ol' gap between them. (We're starting a braces savings account). She's shy about showing them, so we don't have any photos yet.
Her favorite song lately is Itsy Bitsy Spider and we think that she sings it on her own when she wakes up in the middle of the night and her boring parents won't play with her. She claps and she likes to stick her finger in people's mouths. She's super interested in basically anything that is a choking or electrical hazard.
She's started eating baby food two or three times a day. We've found some really yummy baby food and she's started actually attempting to use the spoon herself while she's eating things like roasted bananas and brown rice or carrots, apples, and mangoes.
She is so wonderful and we have so much fun together. She's such a great baby and makes all errands fun (well, most errands:) Today we're off for Ella J's first trip the farmer's market downtown while Dad installs an attic ladder in the ceiling for our stuff so Ella J can have more room to play around.

Ella J: 9 months