Ellie's on YouTube!

When Uncle Andrew was visiting us at Christmas, he got some good video of Ellie talking to him on his new camera. He's uploaded that to YouTube, so you can see Ellie's words in action. Thanks for the video, Andrew!
This video was taken just a month ago, but she is already using so many more words than she was then. Her new favorite is "bye" and she makes it a two-syllable word that sounds like bye-ee! She's also good at hi, dad-dy and mom-my (instead of da-da & ma-ma), milk, more, water, book, block and chair, just to name a few.
Maybe Jim and I can get some new video of her talking and we'll post more soon.

Little Redskins fan

Unfortunately the Redskins playoff run didn't last very long. However, Ellie loved wearing her new jersey to cheer them on. It is definitely big enough that she'll be able to wear it for a few years, so hopefully the Skins will have more luck in the coming seasons.

Christmas in Lima

Ellie got to take her first plane trip on this visit to Ohio. We had easy 1-hour flights both ways & Ellie did great. Thanks to no reserved seating on Southwest and not having totally full planes, we were able to have 3 seats to ourselves each way, too.
We all enjoyed our visit in Lima at Grand Jane's and got to celebrate Christmas again with Uncle Luke, Aunt Pam, Cole and Zach and Aunt Sarah and Uncle Dave. Grand Jane kept us all well-fed and we had a nice family weekend. It was cold in Lima, but the kids still got to do some playing outside to burn off all their energy. Ellie even got all bundled up and played with the boys.
Take a look at all of our Lima Christmas pictures.