Catch up with photos

So an entire month has gone by and I can't believe it's been that long since I blogged. A lot has happened in this last month - a lot of good. :)

Shortly after our trip to Florida we got the house ready for Thanksgiving. We had 8 adults here and 5 kids for 4-5 days. My parents stayed in a hotel but the rest of the group was here at the house and it felt like it was coming out at the seams! We had a wonderful time though.

My mom brought a ham and got a turkey breast from Honey Baked Ham so we avoided cooking a bird. Then we pre-assigned everyone to different things and I have to say - I think this was the easiest Thanksgiving that we've had here. I only got moderately stressed out. :) So the food was good and then the next day we did Christmas with my side of the family. It was really nice and I think the kids enjoyed it. We managed to get a tree up and lights on it and I grabbed my bin of balls, but we did not put any other decorations on it because of time. Little did I know that we would not get everything else out so even still that's all we have up. It's kind of sad considering how much we normally decorate for Christmas, but this year with Ella it's just really hard.

Ella LOVES her new toys!

Somebody missed Ella...

A full living room!

Um... cute!

One of the big memories of this Thanksgiving/Christmas was guns... yes guns. Grant got out his pellet and bb guns and before we knew it our back porch was turned into a shooting range. Quickly the kids got involved and my 2 oldest nieces actually ended up getting their first bb gun while here. E, the oldest is 8 and I have to say - she's a pretty good shot. She reminded me of myself when I wanted to do everything that my older brothers did. I remember learning to shoot at a young age as well. I think we were all proud of her. :) I'm sure some people would cringe at that but oh well. :)

The gingerbread house tradition... this year we had pre-built ones and it was wonderful!

Quickly after Thanksgiving we headed up to Wisconsin to visit my Grandma. She had recently had a hip replacement and was in the nursing home for recovery. She had not met Ella yet and we wanted to get up there before bad weather hit. However, the first week of December is not safe when it comes to bad weather! Literally the day we landed was their first big snow storm and we had to drive 3 hours from the airport to my Grandmother's house in a bad snow storm. Luckily we did fine. We had a wonderful visit with Grandma. One day we spent the whole day with her in the nursing home, except for taking her out for dinner. Then the next day I took her to a wedding shower at her church with Ella and that was the first time she had gotten out to go to church since her surgery. She was so happy to see everyone and I think everyone was surprised to see her... and me! I'm related to almost her whole church so it's like a family reunion to go there. They got to meet Ella and it was nice to chat with some of my cousins who are also recently new moms. It's amazing how much having a kid gives you things to talk about with people you normally don't have a lot to talk about. I liked it though because I used to be closer to these people and I miss that.

A couple great shots of my Grandma's house in the snow.

So this is Ella's 3rd outfit of the day. I only brought 1 extra so when she needed a third we took the outside jumper from outfit #1 and put it with the pants from outfit #2... not what I planned for Grandma's first picture with Ella.
This was our last night there. Grandma's roomate went to bed so we hung out in the common area. We are soooo tired in the photo since it's like 9 pm and Ella was up all night, but we wanted to spend as much time with her as possible.
Ella being a doll for Grandma - actually that's Great-Grandma to her.
I love this photo.

Then after the shower and a lunch out with everyone we headed to Madison to visit a friend of mine. She recently blogged about our visit and I have to agree with her that even though I had not seen her in 15 years it felt like we picked up right where we left off. The only change was we had husbands and children and own our own house! It was a wonderful visit. She looked great (she always had) and her children were super sweet and full of personality. I think they took to me as well so that felt really nice. Ella was a doll our entire visit to Wisconsin until the very end of the night as we were about to leave. She had had enough and it was time to take a sleepy car ride home. :)

Me and Amy. I'd love to find some old pictures of us. I'll have to do that one of these days.

Madeline being sweet with Ella.

If I can figure out how to post a video on here I'll post one of the best things about this trip - Ella laughing! When we were visiting Amy her husband was playing tug-o-war with their dog and Ella thought it was the funniest thing! She has a cute little chuckle that we have tried very hard to get her to do again but have had no luck! If I pretend to growl like a dog we get close... but not quite the full laugh. She's close to doing it more often though. She squeals a lot and starts to kind of laugh but then goes into her silent laugh with a giant smile that she covers with her hands. :) Very cute. It was nice to not only have Grant there for her first laugh but also to be able to catch it on video and share it with friends.

On Sunday we went to church and then to lunch with my friend Jenny. We went to Pizza Hut which I know does not sound nice but I swear, the Pizza Huts in this area of Wisconsin are the best in the nation. Not sure why but they are fabulous and we always go there when we visit. Then Jenny came over for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We had a nice visit and it was great to see her. That evening we went back to see Grandma after Grant shoveled the driveway and sidewalk. Little did we know it was going to snow again that night so we woke up to a few inches of snow where he just shoveled! Oh well. At least we got some salt down and Grant easily cleaned the new snow off in the morning. We left soon after he got it shoveled since it was snowing again and we had a 3 hour drive to the airport.

It was a great a great trip - Ella cooperated in every way, and we got to see family and friends. What more could you ask for! Oh and the day after we left they got like 17 inches of snow... talk about getting out of there just in time!

So that takes us to last week. Since then Ella had a great check up with her new doctor... yes I changed pediatricians. Not because I didn't like the one we were going to but because we saw this other guy for Ella's ear infection because I couldn't get into my regular one, and I really fell for this doctor. He was much calmer and laid back and easy to talk to. A much better fit for me - a struggling new mom. She's weighing in at 15 lbs and 24 inches long. She's growing well and soon we'll start her on some solids. I'm hoping that may help her take a bottle more as well.

Since then we had a Christmas party with our photography friends and have been finishing up on some Christmas shopping, wrapping and just enjoying this time of year.

One thing I wanted to mention here is how much things have gotten easier with Ella. Some time this month things have changed and I'm not sure what it is but it's gotten a lot better. I've stopped walking her to sleep for her naps which has helped because I don't get so angry anymore. I think the mixture of the fact that she naps so much (4 times a day) combined with the fact that she fought sleep I felt like I was dealing with a screaming baby all day long. Now I put her down for a nap. She may cry for 5 minutes but I've leaned to deal with that, and when she's awake I'm able to enjoy her so much more. I think also her age is playing a part. Now that she can play better and entertain herself she seems happier in general. She now also likes to "talk" instead of fuss for her default position... and that is sooo much easier to handle. So I'm happy to report that for me, it took about 4 months to really love being a mother. A little longer than some other mother's I've talked to, but that's okay because I'm here and it feels so good. :)