Beautiful Weather!

The weather was beautiful today so Ella and I headed out for a little playtime in the front yard. I can't wait for things to start warming up...it's so nice to get outside and play for awhile.

I also had a doctor's appointment today...Dr. Lawhon said everything is perfect and I go back in 4 more weeks for my sugar test...not looking forward to that!

Happy Birthday Uncle Kevin!

We celebrated Keith's brother's birthday on Saturday night over at Kenny and Karen's house. Keith brought over the Wii had fun was had by all either playing Guitar Hero or watching others play. I've never played because I think it looks so hard and I don't want to embarrass myself, but I hear it's a blast. Ella managed to get Pawpaw out of his cowboy boots so she could take a turn in them...pretty cute! They also had one of those little books there with information on the year Kevin was born. It was cool seeing the cost of living at that time, popular songs, tv shows, etc. Things definitely have changed in 26 years!

21 Weeks

21 weeks...Anna is a banana now...heehee...I know Anna Banana will be a nickname for her! :-) I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow so we should get to hear the heartbeat again. Everything is going great...the major work is done on the nursery...just need to do some caulking and touch-up paint on the crown molding. Now on to painting Ella's room and it will all be completed by Saturday when the furniture arrives. Yippee!

My Little Valentine

Long Week

With the cooler weather and the fact that Ella has had a cold, we were inside over the weekend and most of this week. It was a long week! :-) I did try to take a few pictures though because I got my new diaper bag camera in the mail and wanted to test it out.

I put together a closet organizer for Anna's room and Ella so badly wanted to help. I looked down and found her balled up in one of the cubes. Notice the pink tutu she was sporting that night:

Reading with Nana:

Ella's Meemaw and Pawpaw gave her this little puzzle for Easter...at the time she was a little too young to really know what to do with it, but now she knows how to put the pieces in and where they go so it's one of her favorite toys:

Cleaning out her baby's diaper bag:

20 Weeks

20 weeks and counting...half way there now! :-) I've been feeling Anna move for awhile and a couple of weeks ago I started feeling her with my hand on the outside. Last night I saw her kicking on the outside...so bizarre and cool! Love it! Anna is the size of a cantaloupe now:

Progress on the nursery: ceiling scraped and painted...trim painted. Now we just have to prime and paint, put up crown molding, and prime and paint Ella's room. We're getting there! Can't wait to share pictures of the finished product.

Cutie

I thought Ella looked so cute this morning before leaving for Mother's Day Out that I had to snap a quick picture. :-)

Driving Miss Sara

Ella has a grocery cart at my parents house that she likes to push around. Last time we were over there, we loaded up their little rat terrior Sara and Ella took her for a ride. Sara is normally pretty timid and afraid of everything, but she did great. I think she kind of enjoyed it!

Pump It Up!

Our playgroup went to Pump It Up (basically a big room with lots of bounceys) this week for our monthly playdate. When we first got there, Ella acted really apprehensive and cautious and I was a little afraid that she wouldn't want to get down and jump. But after about 10 minutes of watching her buddies do it and realizing that it probably was a lot of fun, she was ready to go. That girl had so much fun...she ran around there like a chicken with her head cut off. She tried out all the bounceys she even wanted to go down the big (and I mean BIG) slide by the end of our time there. The slide is cool, but hard to get up because you're basically climbing up a ladder made out of bouncey toy material so she had a hard time with it and 5-months-pregnant mommy ended up carrying her up and sliding down with her. But hey...whatever makes your kids happy! :-) Even with all the fun bounceys there, leave it to Ella to get interested in a toy that we have at home. Her and Tinsley really enjoyed taking turns pushing themselves around in a Little Tikes car. Afterwards we headed to Burger King for lunch and more playtime on the their playground. It was a great morning and Ella took a great nap that afternoon. She was worn out!

Happy Birthday PopPop!

My dad turned 54 on Monday so last Saturday we headed to the bowling alley for a little birthday celebration. This is kind of becoming a tradition for us since we did it last year as well. Bless Keith's heart, he had a hard time bowling with that ankle and I managed to beat him in one game and tie him in another. I never get to beat him in anything and even with a sprained ankle I only tied him!! ;-)

Since Keith wasn't playing to win anyways, he let Ella bowl with him which made her feel like a very big girl! After rolling the ball down, she always came running back clapping...she was so proud.

High-5 Dad!

Even though bowling was fun, the driving game in the arcade was very cool!

Enjoying the nice weather...

We had a couple of days of really nice weather last week...after all the rain we've been having it was really a treat. We took Ella to the park for a little playtime and some fresh air. It's been awhile since we've been and she thought it was fantastic.

She loves the "side!!!":

On the seesaw with Nana (they didn't plan their matching outfits):

Loves to play in the rocks...:

But does not like the resulting dirty hands:

Sprained Ankle

If you're friends with Keith on Facebook you've seen this picture already. He was playing in a Volleyball game last Thursday night at church and unfortunately came down wrong on his ankle. We thought that it was broken, but it turns out it's just a really bad sprain. The doctor said it's the worst sprain he's seen. It actually looked worse than the picture shows. His ankle was swollen to probably 3x its normal size. He's been pretty good about staying off of it and hopefully it will be healed in about another week. Poor little accident-prone guy. :-)

Busy, Busy, Busy!!

We have been busy bees around our house lately so I haven't had much time for pictures or blogging. I've got a lot of energy right now so I'm trying to take advantage of it and get a lot accomplished. The guest room is all cleaned out now and is ready to be transformed into a nursery. We were able to sell the furniture (yippee!) and Keith and I combined closets since he had previously been using the guest rooms closet. It's the first time we've shared a closet since we've been married...pray for us...haha!! :-) I was pretty good about keeping and storing all of Ella's clothes and since the girls should be born just about the same time of the year, it will be perfect for handing down things. So I've been going through all of Ella's clothes and now have Anna's closet packed with pink things awaiting her arrival. Ella got her bedding for Christmas so I've picked out a paint color for her room (pale apple green). We're going to try and get that painting finished before her furniture arrives on the 31st. I ordered Anna's bedding, so once it arrives next week, we can pick our her paint color (I'm thinking a very pale, powdery pink) and get that taken care of as well. We're going to do the same in Anna's nursery as we did in Ella's and scrape the popcorn ceiling (yuck) and put up crown moulding. Still have a lot more to do! :-)

So anyways, if you made it through all of that then here are a couple of pictures to enjoy from the past few weeks:

Ella and Mommy in (almost) matching pjs:

When cleaning out one of the closets in our house, I came across this old office phone and gave it to Ella to play with. She loves it! She dragged it into the den and put it right in front of her chair so she could sit and talk on it. :-)

19 Weeks

19 weeks yesterday:

and here's 15 weeks in the same pants to compare. She's growing for sure!

Baby Anna is the size of a mango now:

20 Months

Ella is 20 months as of yesterday. She is changing daily it seems like and I can hardly keep up with the new words that she is learning and putting together. Her favorite thing right now is the kitchen that she got for Christmas. As soon as she wakes up in the morning, she's ready to go and play with it. When we walk into the playroom she says "oh boy!" because she just can't contain herself! :-) She is also really into her babydolls. She likes to feed them "bites" with a spoon and push them in their stroller. I love this because I loved babydolls when I was a little girl too. She's gotten very affectionate lately with lots of snuggle time, blowing kisses, and giving big around-the-neck bear hugs. Love that too! Finally, she has a pink pig blankie that she is really attached to. She used to have a square fleece blanket with tags around the edges, but mommy unfortunately left it in a hotel in Tenn. Oops! So we replaced it with her new pink pig and she loves it. I hear "bankie???" all day long. :-)

Happy (belated) New Year!

You know you're not a kid anymore when you spend New Year's Eve with your parents and grandmother and can barely hold your eyes open until 11pm (we're on Central time) to watch the ball drop! :-) We did have a lot of fun thought...ate yummy appetizer food (my fave!) and played a lot of Wii. Our family is looking forward to a very exciting 2009 and I hope that the new year holds many blessings for all of you!!