Ella's first Christmas

We had a small Christmas celebration at our house last night.  We weren't going to bring the three presents I had wrapped under the tree to Utah with us so we decided to open them last night.  Ella really enjoyed holding the presents because they made a fun crinkling sound.  She also liked eating the presents.

Ella is 4 months old!

Time is flying by and Ella is getting so big!  Big enough in fact, that she is  now wearing 9 month clothes.  I swear she gets bigger in just one night.  Liam and I are both enjoying how much she interacts with us.

Yesterday Ella ate rice cereal for the first time and she absolutely loved it!  It didn't surprise us too much because she is a bit of a piggy.  She didn't even make a weird face when I put the food in her mouth; she just started sucking it down.  It was pretty funny when I fed her today; she started crying in between bites because I wasn't feeding her fast enough.  We got a video of Ella's first feeding.  Of course it is not the best because my camera man ( Liam) decided that he would record my hand rather than the baby's face.  He also decided to let me know that I was feeding her wrong (Like he has every fed a baby before.  I love you Liam:) ).  Anyways, here is the beautiful video.

The after picture.

 A cute picture of Ella in her jumper.  She still doesn't jump, but she does enjoy standing and spinning around.

I put Ella in this coat yesterday.  It is way to big for her, but I wanted to keep her warm while I was out walking around yesterday morning.  You can see by her face how she felt about it.

Playing

Ella is starting to learn how to play with her toys.  It is fun to watch her stare at her hands as she tries to figure out how to use them.  A friend of ours was kind enough to let us borrow their saucer.  Ella is loving.  Although as you can see, Ella still spends most of her time playing and sucking on her hands.
Also my sister Tara and brother-in-law Tyler had their fourth child yesterday, Luke David Ross.  He is a little guy (at least according to what I know), and is really cute.  Ella is about double the size of him right now.  We can't wait to meet Luke when we come visit for Christmas.

Our trip to Utah

     We had a ton of fun on our trip to Utah.  It was so exciting to let Ella meet her family.  It was nice to see everyone again as it had been 11 months since we had seen most of our family.  Although I do have to admit, that Liam and I were not nearly as popular as Ella.  She got most of the attention on our trip.
     One of the best parts of our trip was Ella's baby blessing.  A lot of family and friends came to support our little family; we thank everyone for coming. Ella was very good during her blessing.  She was awake but didn't cry, as I feared. Ella looked beautiful in the blessing dress that my grandma made for her. My grandma is a very talented lady.  Ella really enjoyed playing with the lace and ribbons on her dress.  Ella untied the ribbon on the front of her dress as quickly as I tied it back up. 

 A four generation photo.

 Ella and Uncle Tyler

Ella with Great Grandma and Grandpa Johnson.  (This is the grandma that made Ella's dress.)

It was nice to introduce Ella to her family.  Here are some pictures of Ella with some of Liam's family.

 Ella and Great Grandma Stone

 Ella and Nana

Ella and Popeye

Liam's mom was nice enough to take some family pictures of us while we were there.  Here are some of my favorites.

 Sadly I realized once we got home that we never did take a picture of Ella with my Dad.  Ella and Grandpa spent a lot of time together.  Grandpa really enjoyed holding here and Ella loved the attention.  We will definitely have to fix the problem of no pictures with Grandpa at Christmas time.  We look forward to seeing everyone again in just a few weeks.

Liam is 27 years old and Ella is 3 months old

Liam's Birthday was last Friday.  He turned 27 years old.  I got him a dehydrator (Liam prefers to call it a jerky maker. He thinks that is a more manly name)  We dried some fruit last night, but it didn't turn out so well.  We followed the drying times that came with the dehydrator and our fruit ended up being burnt.  Oh well, we will have to try again with about half the time we did this time.  

Liam has always wanted me to post a picture on the blog of his turtle he caught.  I keep telling him no, because I find it to be pretty disgusting.  I am finally going to post a picture of the turtle for Liam's birthday.  For those of you who don't know the story, the short version is Liam caught this snapping turtle with his hands.  He ended up keeping the skull and preserving the feet.  If you want the long story, ask Liam.  He will be more than glad to tell you about it.

On a much cuter note, Ella is three months old today!  I can't believe how big she is getting.  She is a very strong girl.  She can easily hold her head up and also likes to spend a lot of time standing (with my help of course).  Ella is also learning how to grab things.  She spends a lot of time staring at her hands.  She is definitely learning how to use them.  Ella loves sitting in her new bumbo.  She loves to be able to sit up and look around.  

Ella spends a lot of time looking at her feet while she is sitting in the bumbo.

Ella got a pretty new dress.  I had to put a picture of it on the blog even though we didn't get a great picture of her in it.

We put Ella in her jumper for the first time yesterday.  She didn't seem to mind it, although she didn't do much jumping.

Stretching

This first video is of Ella stretching just after she woke up.  She does this everytime she wakes up and I unwrap her.  It is really cute.

And of course who can resist a short video of Ella's smiles.  Please ignore the baby talk; it makes me feel silly.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween!  We got some pictures of Ella in her Halloween outfit.  Unfortunately most of our pictures are blurry because we don't have very good lighting in our house.

 Ella was a lady bug for Halloween.  She looked super cute in her costume, although I don't think she was a huge fan of it.  I couldn't get her to smile in her pictures.

On a non Halloween related side note, Ella slept through the night last night!  She went from 10:00 to 8:30 and it was amazing!  Hopefully she keeps it up.