1 year update

sooo it has been a long time since I updated this, but I wanted to document ella;s first months of being one. At one years old ella:

-looves to talk, her most common words are: whats that?, doggie, daddy, hiii, nice, ooooh and she has random words here and there like jesus, santa, soft
-she LOVES to walk, when she first started walking she would just walk around with her hands in the hair just laughing because she was so happy she was walking!
- she has sprouted her first tooth! she now has three, on big one on the top and two on the bottom
-she has been more sick in her first month of being one than in her whole first year! she has had a fever multipe times, two colds, and the day after her birthday she was throwing up all day :(..I am so excited for her teething to be over for a while (I think that is what is making her so sick)
- she absolutely adores her cousin Tessa, whenever they see each other in the morning they both start laughing and smiling and reaching for each other. They also hold hands, mostly in the car :)


-she looooves to eat and likes everything she tries except for strawberry's.
-she weighs 20.6 lbs
- is in the 50th percentile on everything!
-has definitely gotten a lot more saucy! she can throw a fit quick! hopefully she will gorw out of that and we are working on "no hitting" and "being soft"
-mostly sleep through the night and takes either one 3 hour nap or two 1 hour naps, whatever she feels like.
-she loves music and dancing, and when i sing certain songs she will twirl her hands like she is leading music, it is SO cute!

Michael and I started school last week and I am trying to get an etsy shop started hopefully by valentines day! so we are definitely busy but we are loving our life and our family!

ellas first birthday

Her Birthday party was so fun and so many people came to share in this special time with her! We had so much fun! We did the "you are my sunshine" theme and i think it turned out pretty well :)
the decor....


























and lets pause to take at look at this pretty birthday girl...


ok unpause...


cousin Tessa


yes we are wearing matching shirts... love it!



ella enjoying her lunch



two wonderful ladies and friends


baby jack..ellas future prom date



and now presents! she loved all of them!







and then it was cake eatin time...and she was into that!












Thank you everyone who participated in making it the best first birthday party ever!!

fess up friday...second edition

I would just like to say that this is probably my most embarrassing moment to date. SO much so that i have only told two people about it in my life (Nina and Michael) well I need to get over this, so I decided I am going to share it, and please understand that I am still just as horrified now as I was about 12 years ago.


It's sixth grade and time for science camp. My one friend (teachers pet remember?) could not go so I was all by my lonesome that year. I was put into a cabin with a bunch of girls who were in my class but way cooler and cuter than me so we rarely spoke. I was pretty nervous about this set up but so far it was going pretty smooth, and then we had to take showers. In order to do this we had to go with our pile of clothes and toiletries to the shower house and do it there. Well we all went as a group and as I was waiting for the other girls to finish up I set my dirty clothes on the counter and waited for them to finish. The first half of our group left the showers and were in our cabin having a gay old time when the second half of the group came in busting up laughing at something. We were pretty excited to join in on the fun so we asked what was going on. "LOOK SOMEONE LEFT THEIR UNDERWEAR IN THE SHOWERS AND ITS STAINED. EWWWWWWWW" that is gross, and so we giggled and then they produced a zip lock bag with the underwear inside.

It was my underwear.

now let me take a second to defend myself, my mother is a serious thrifter through and through, if you stain your underwear for whatever reason, you soak it and wash it and its "good as new." even if you can still see the stain and the slight color of it. but that is apparently irrelevant to my family. so unfortunately i owned a pair of stained underwear. and unfortunately that just happened to be the pair I left on the bathroom counter when I picked up my clothes to go back to my cabin.

I, however, thought I was smarter than everybody and decided to play dumb... I mean they cant KNOW it was mine. So i played along as they passed around the dirty evidence, everyone equally ewwing at it, and then I decided that I should end this moment and chastised the girls for doing this (teachers pet remember) "why are you guys even looking at this! this is so gross!" hoping that they would feel guilty and gross for doing this and would stop immediately...that didnt happen

at this time we are all in our bunk beds, I am at the top and underneath me sleeps ashley. well they are still looking at the underwear and STILL talking about who would own such a pair and how gross it is and really i am just horrified, but i still feel safe because they CANT know its mine RIGHT?! and then ashley (who is underneath me and I cant see) announces: "I think I know who the underwear belongs to"
and simultaneously all the girls answer "WHO?!!!"

and then i see their eyeballs slowly start to look up at me from ashley.


OH THE SHAME
OH THE EMBARRASMENT
OH THE HORROR

but what could I do?! What I could I say?
nothing.

so i didnt say anything, and i pulled out my harry potter journal and pretended like i didnt see.

we never mentioned the underwear in our cabin again. but it will haunt me forever.

and just so you know i am now paranoid about my underwear being stainless at all times.

the end.

ella is 11 months

Holy Moly I cant believe we are less than one month away from her first birthday.

at 11 months ella:
-does not eat baby food anymore, she likes whatever we are eating, even though she still has ZERO teeth, not even a bud.
-doesnt mind getting dressed as much anymore...Thank Goodness.. I swear people thought I was abusive when they would hear me getting her dressed
-has taken her first steps! but there is something that I have noticed about ella: once she has accomplished something, she is no longer interested in doing it. examples include: walking by herself, saying doggie, when she first rolled over she stopped for a while, when she first learned to crawl she also stopped for a while, etc
- she REFUSES to wear anything on her head. The other day I literally fought with her for over an HOUR trying to get her to wear a cute beanie. I pleaded, I tricked, I even tried to guilt trip her by making a sad face when she ripped it off (I know I have problems) but it was all in vain. We left the house with no hats and me afraid that this was a preview to what was to come as she gets older
- she loves books and stuffed animals
- she still LOVES water
- loves showers
- we watched white christmas the other day and every time there was a musical number she stopped what she was doing and watched
- is STILL into everything
- is a CLIMBER, we had to lower her crib because michael caught her climbing over it
-she also hates to wear socks/shoes - she rips them off constantly - this baby has determination for sure
- has added the words "hat" and "pretty" to her list

she is the greatest thing in the world and i love her more everyday

spill all saturday

I missed fess up friday, so i decided on spill all saturday. anyways here is my embarrassing story for this week:

the one where I ruin any chance of dating Travis Rodowick:
So last post I talked about how in elementary school i was a bit of a teachers pet, well now I am in junior high. Arguably the most awkward stage of youth, in my case that is nothing but the TRUTH. I made the decision to no longer be a teachers pet anymore (mainly because I now had like 7 teachers and I just cant handle that) and I instead went into a whole new direction. Let's just say I was a free spirit. Yes I might have worn mis-matched toe socks and capes to school (only on special occasions) and yes maybe my dad was terribly embarrassed of me when we went out in public. But I had a blast in Junior High. Me and Lisa Stever (now Williams) were pretty much lovers of life. we were just crazy. all. the. time. But she at least dressed normal. Sometimes we would get bored and decide to do random things like call the radio stations and see how long we could keep them on the phone until they hung up, or we would have people "adopt a pet" (the pet being pictures of animals we found on clip art in word and printed out onto paper..and to adopt you just had to sing your name underneath the picture...) anyways that should paint you a pretty colorful picture of what I was like. Also along with the toe socks and capes I had braces..and no make up...and I would put my hair in ponytail and pull it so tight on my head that I looked bald, I also had no boobs which I guess was important to boys in jr. high (found that out the hard way) So to say the least I was not a looker. but i was completely enamored by Travis and had been since 7th grade. It was now 8th grade and we had a class together! (which i was super stoked about.) Now I understood that I wasnt one of the pretty girls, but I was thoroughly convinced I could win him over with my personality. (I mean who WOULDNT have a good time with someone who wore colorful socks with shorts) So i made it my personal goal in life to be his friend, and then after a little bit of that he would realize that even though some might say i was unattractive he would still like me and decided to be my boyfriend. It was going pretty well, at least on my side. We would partner up in drama and have inside jokes with each other and then one day we watched a movie in class.

side note - at my junior high we had to wear our ID tags on our persons at all times. It was a safety precaution (ghetto)

anyways I was busy during the movie trying to charm Travis into falling in love with me by stealing his ID card (obviously theft is how you get people to like you) and he was trying to get it back and then we got in trouble. so he turned around (he was sitting in front of me), I slouched down and we watched the movie. This is also the moment that I learned that i have the tendency to chew on things when I am not paying attention. The movie ended, the lights came on and Travis turned around. A look of disgust overtook his face and I was so confused and then I realized that I had his ID card shoved halfway in my mouth and I was gnawing on it like a dog with a bone. I slowly removed it from my mouth and a long string of saliva followed as it came out. I offered it back to him..he said no thank you (and you get a detention if you dont have your ID card, so I must have REALLY grossed him out) and I knew right then that I just ruined my chance of ever dating him. Instead he dated Julianna Higgins ...and I stayed single until junior year.
but at least by then I ditched the toe socks.

the end :)

family

i love my family. a lot :)

fess up friday

one of my favorite things to listen to are peoples embarrassing stories. I think they are hilarious. so I thought it would be fun to share some of my own

1. the one where I pee my pants:
Some of you went to junior high/elementary school with me, most of you did not, so let me describe myself to you in two words: "teacher's pet" or "brown nose." My goal in life was to be the perfect pupil and have the teacher on my side (this might explain how i could count all my friends on one hand growing up) Anyways I was in fourth grade (yep fourth grade) and I went to Grafton Elementary in Knights Landing. My teacher passed out bathroom passes weekly, and whenever we didnt use ours he would give us a mini candy bar. Well you might not know this about me, but I am slightly obsessed with sweets, so obviously i held out for that candy bar EVERY week and for some reason I also felt like it made my teacher like me more. I prided myself in the ability to hold it for hours. I thought it was a gift, i thought i had a bladder of steel. Well one day we were just getting back from recess and I though "dang i really have to pee" (obviously I would never spend precious recess time using the bathroom.) But i couldnt let myself or Mr. Carter down, I was determined to hold it. So I held it...and held it...and i was sitting on my foot, and bouncing up and down, and finally I decided that I am going to have to sacrifice my sweet candy bar and just use my bathroom pass. At this point I was dancing around my little seat and then it hit me! I needed to go RIGHT THEN. So I rip my binder open and claw through it but i see SO many bathroom passes (i guess i got some kind of satisfaction from keeping all the ones i never used?) and I couldnt find the right week! So at this point the teacher is asking all of us to take our seats and everybody is staring at me (including my teacher ) because i was the only one not sitting in my seat; instead i am sitting on my legs on the floor flipping through my binder like a maniac.... and then it just goes...and i slowly look up...and every pair of eyes are on me.

and i had no idea what to do

so i gestured to my friend Yessenia to come over. So while everybody is still staring at me and my teacher is asking if i am ok I whisper to my friend "i just peed my pants"
Let me pause and just say how great my friend was for not laughing at me right at that moment
She grabbed my sweater and covered my bottom half as we shuffled sideways to the bathroom.

Well to give you a little more background information my mother was a teacher at that elementary school and it was about 45 min away from my house, so unfortunately I did not have the option of having my parents pick me and take me to ice cream as i wallow in my self pity and they comfort my bruised ego. Instead I had to dig through the lost and found and try to find some strangers pants/socks I could wear since mine were covered in pee. I spent the rest of the day in baggy boy shorts and mismatched socks with soaked shoes (because my mother made me wash them in the bathroom sink) So from then on i was pretty much the girl who peed herself when she was 10. Even though I tried to play it off like I just ripped my pants ("then why was it wet when you stood up?" Dang, they saw right through me!)

Thankfully I moved schools the next year (unrelated) and I never saw any of them again!

the end