Ellie is 2!

Ellie celebrated her 2nd birthday on Saturday and had an eventful day. When she woke up, she got her first present from Mommy, Daddy & Aidan. It was a "band in a box" so she can make music with all sorts of instruments.

Then we went to breakfast with Santa at her Westover preschool. There she made some crafts like a reindeer headband and a necklace and ate lots of yummy food. She did not want to sit on Santa's lap this year.

She spent the afternoon with Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle Joe in Old Town. They went to a bookstore for a birthday party for baby Jesus. When she came home that evening, we had her party at our house. Ellie got lots of new books, Elmo DVDs, clothes and even a ukulele. She enjoyed her special b-day cupcakes, too. You can see this video of the birthday song.


Take a look at more pictures from Ellie's 2nd birthday. She also had a party at her CA daycare on Friday, so you can see those pictures too.

Fun with the Odellas

During our November visit to Ohio, we got to spend an evening with Phil and Janet Odella and their two set of twins. Clare and Macy are 3 and Ellie had a blast playing with them. I don't think she had ever seen a playroom with so many toys, so she was in little girl heaven! She especially liked their dress up clothes as you can see from the picture.

Susan and David are 6 months old, but Aidan was a little too young to enjoy their company. He basically slept the entire time we were there.

We enjoyed some great Indian food and with the big girls sitting at their own table, the adults got to eat in relative peace and have adult conversations! There must have been some sugar in the naan, check out this video of the big girls running around after dinner:



Thanks to the Odellas for a great evening. We look forward to getting together again!

A long November...

November was a busy month for us. It started with Jim and Ellie taking a trip to visit his family in Ft. Lauderdale, then Jim and Rachel took a much-needed kid free vacation to St. John, followed by nearly 2 weeks in Ohio at the end of the month for Rachel & the kids. Meanwhile Jim had a work trip to Las Vegas during the first week of our Ohio trip. Needless to say we are happy to be home for a while, but we enjoyed all of our wonderful trips! Here's a pic of Ellie in the cockpit of the airplane on her way home from Florida and one of the view from our room in St. John.

We need to give special thanks to Grand Jane and the McCrackens for taking care of Aidan and Ellie while we were on our trip to St. John. And more thanks to Grand Jane for driving back to Ohio with Rachel and the kids. We got so used to having Grand Jane around, we are going through withdrawal!

Our Ohio tour took us to Centerville to stay with Aunt Sarah & Uncle Dave where Ellie enjoyed chasing their cat Remy! We spent Thanksgiving in Loveland at Aunt Pam, Uncle Luke, Cole & Zach's house. We got to see Papaw Tom, Linda and Andrew as well as Bob, Kay and Greg Alkire (Pam's family) on Thanksgiving too.

Ellie loved playing with cousins Cole and Zach and asks every day if we can go to their house. I guess she forgot it takes about 10 hours in the car to get there. But maybe she had so much fun, she doesn't care. During her pretend play times, she always goes to Cole & Zach's house (our dining room) or goes to the store with Aunt Pam (also our dining room). Luckily we'll see them all again at Papaw Tom's for our early Christmas weekend.

Check out our November 2008 photo album to see pictures from Florida, St. John and our trip to Ohio.