9 Months Old

Ella is super active now that she can crawl.  She loves to explore and gets into everything.  She follows me every where I go except for when I go upstairs.  Then she waits for me at the bottom of the stairs until I come back down.  Ella loves to eat almost everything.  Whenever I eat anything she comes to me and sits at my feet waiting for me to feed her.  Ella is happy most of the time except for when she is teething.  She is working on her sixth tooth right now and does not want to go down for a nap.  We love having her around.  I think she is the cutest and I just can't get enough of her smile!

Look who's crawling

Yesterday I was trying to get Ella to crawl to me.  I got out every toy she likes, but she didn't want any of them.  I got out my keys and she didn't want those either.  Finally I pulled out the ipad and she immediately crawled to me.  I thought since she was crawling to the ipad I might as well record it. 

This morning is the first time that she crawled any where just because she wanted to.  She followed me into the kitchen from the living room.  And so it has begun...

Almost Crawling

We have a semi mobile baby at our house.  I don't think it will be long before she will be able to get into everything.

Ella is eight months old!

As of yesterday, Ella is now officially eight months old.  Some of Ella's favorite things to do are pull hair, growl, and jump.  This first video was originally supposed to be a video of Ella trying to feed herself, but about half way through she starts growling in it.  It is so funny to hear that deep growl coming from such a little baby.  If you don't want to watch the whole 3 minutes start it at about half way to hear Ella growl.

This next video is just another jumping video.  Ella still loves to jump.

Happy Easter!

My parents and brothers came to visit us over their spring break.  We had a ton of fun spending time together.  Ella especially loved all of the attention.  The boys went to Cabela's one day and fishing another day.  Grandma, Ella, and I did a lot of shopping.  One of the days we spent the day together and went and did a tour of the GM headquarters in Detroit.  We didn't do a ton of things but we had fun being together.

My family had to go home on Easter but that doesn't mean we weren't able to have some Easter fun.

We colored eggs.

Ella got an Easter basket Easter morning.  She liked the basket more than she liked what was in it.

Ella got a really cute Easter dress from Grandma.

And of course everyone wanted their picture taken with Ella before we went to church.

We were so glad that they came to visit us and sad to see them go.

Dancing

This video is for Grandpa.  Growing up in my family, we all loved to dance.  Especially me and my sisters.  This video is almost exactly like half of the family videos my dad took of us dancing.  It is even the same song with bad singing in the back ground.  Ella is not feeling very good in this video which is why she is sitting in the bumbo.  She usually likes to sit up by herself but she kept falling over because she is sick so she had to dance in her bumbo.

Our first family vacation!

A few weeks ago we were able to go on vacation for Liam's spring break.  I really wanted to go to Nauvoo, but I was nervous about how Ella would do with a 7 hour drive in the car.  I didn't know if it would end up not being fun for anyone if Ella cried the whole drive there and back.  We figured that we should just go, because in just a few months we will  be driving to Utah which is a 24 hour drive.  We thought it could be a test run to see how it goes.  Of course Ella was a champ; she really didn't cry at all and was mostly happy. 

We decided to not drive all the way to Nauvoo the first day, so we stopped in a town about an 1 1/2 away for the first night. Liam was really excited to find out that it was the United States John Deere headquarters so of course we had to go.  There were tours to see how things were made at the John Deere factory, but we were not able to go because they don't allow young children to go.  Liam was pretty bummed, but he was really excited to sit in this nice tractor.

After we went to the John Deere headquarters we made our way to Nauvoo.  When we got there we went tot the visitors center and had a nice chat with a some senior missionaries.  They were all very happy to see baby Ella.  Ella definitely made a lot of new friends on this trip.  One of the more fun things we did was to go on a sleigh ride.  As soon as we got on the sleigh, I really started to regret the decision, because it was really windy and I didn't want Ella to get cold.  Ella was bundled up in a coat, hat, mittens, and a few quilts.  She thought it was really cozy and soon went to sleep.  She slept for the whole ride.  I was amazed because I thought it was freezing!   Later that night we had the opportunity to go to the show the senior missionaries put on called "Rendezvous."  This is really the highlight of these people's mission.  They love it!  We were asked several times if we were going to come, and so of course we had to go since we were the only people visiting Nauvoo at the time.  We thought it was a fun show.  My favorite part was all of the missionaries that weren't performing that night sat in the audience and sang a long any ways.  So the audience consisted of me, Liam, Ella, and senior missionaries who perform the show on a different night.  It was such a fun, happy night.

The next day we went to Carthage Jail.  There is definitely an incredible spirit there.  We were really able to feel it, even when Ella was being a silly goose.  For those of you who haven't visited the jail before,  they take you up to the room where Jospeh and Hyrum were martyred.  There they talk about what happens in the room the day that Joseph and Hyrum were killed.  It is really an amazing experience to talk about that while sitting in the same room where it all happened.  During one part they play the hymn, "A Poor Wayfaring Man," like on the day when John Taylor was singing it to the men, and of course Ella decided to start swaying back and forth on my lap.  She was dancing!  It was so hard for me to keep a straight face because I had never seen her dance before, but really it was not exactly the place to laugh.  Oh well!  What do you do right?  Ella also decided to leave her mark in that room.  She spit up all over the floor just as we were getting ready to leave. 

Walking up to the room where Joseph and Hyrum Smith were martyred.

The window that Joseph fell out of after he was shot.

After Carthage Jail we went back up to Nauvoo to see some more of the different houses and locations.  We were definitely the talk of the town.  All of the senior missionaries were hoping that we would visit them in the location they were at.  They all wanted to see and talk to Baby Ella.  After a few hours we left to make the drive back home.  We were planning on driving the whole way home, but once we got to Chicago we got stuck in a big snow storm and had to stop for the night.  So we got up the next morning and finished our drive.  We were all really happy to have made it home safe.  We had a really fun vacation!