the beginnings of Destin!

Ellie swinging at Grandma and Grandpa Johnson's house on our way to Destin!

Sitting in her Daddy's old high chair!

Making her famous "Ellie face"

Ellie's first picture in our summer home in Destin!

Ellie trying on her new "floaty" suit for Florida! She obviously thinks it's pretty neat!

Hey all!

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Again, the days are flying by and I'm just now getting around to posting! It's been a wild couple of weeks! I got to celebrate my FIRST Mother's Day and it was WONDERFUL!!! Joel and Ellie bought me a beautiful pandora charm bracelet that I was so excited about!!! We also got to go on a picnic and had so much fun. I, of course, didn't get a good picture of the day! Such a bummer. :( But it was a wonderful day. :)

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The last week of school was a blur of final meetings, parties, etc. It's always so hard to say goodbye to everyone...even if just for the summer. I guess that's a good sign. We just love our students. They really are like extended family to us!
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Now we're in Destin and almost a week into our Kaleo Summer Training Program. Can't believe how quickly time is going. We are LOVING being here... such a neat change of pace and we absolutely living life on life with the students so closely for a few weeks. We build such neat relationships with them in this short amount of time because of the intense time we get together everyday. We love it.

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Ellie is loving being down here and just eating up all the attention from the students. I know I've said this many times before, but she is just an extrovert to the MAX! She comes to life when there are people around and is always so full of smiles and crazy expressions... It's the best! She also has some little friends here her age, which is so fun for both of us! It's great for her to be around other little people and fun for me to get to be with other young Mom's every day...

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God has been good! Looking forward to updating you throughout our summer here.

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Love you all! Thanks for checking in...

a much needed update pt. 2

Ellie with a bunch of StuMo girls after our last StuMo of the semester!

Ellie hanging out with the boys at Caleb's graduation party! They all color coordinated!
K-State Proud with Mommy and Daddy!

More fun after StuMo with the girls!

Ellie loves to read with her Daddy!

Ellie playing with her new friend Brandon on the KSU football team...

She was so intrigued with how big he was and his dreadlocks!

He was so tall, he had to duck to get through our front door! Ha!

Everyone has been laughing cause this is Ellie's infamous "9 month face" as her Daddy likes to call it! She is always raising her eyebrows and puts her little mouth into an "O"!

She is VERY into mess making these days... Her favorite activities are pulling things off of any shelf within her reach. As you can see in the background, she has pulled all of the CD's off of her bookshelf in her room... Then she loses interest. :)

I got to have lunch with my friends Jana and Gentry and then they graciously offered to watch Ellie while Joel and I headed to the Spring football game!

Ellie LOVED her time with Jana and G-dawg! :

Ellie "drinking" coffee at one of our morning staff meetings.

a much needed update pt. 1!

I can't believe that almost a month has passed since I last blogged!!! So sorry! A lot has happened since my last post so I will try to catch up a bit, though it will be impossible to cover it all... The third weekend in April, Ellie and I made a quick trip home to Iowa to visit my family! We had SUCH a good time relaxing and hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa McCulley and even got to see Ellie's Great Grandma Katie, Great Grandma Barb and Great Aunt Phyllis! Thanks for the wonderful time!!!

Grandpa Richard feeding me!

Ellie lovin' on Grandpa and Grandma after church

Fun times with Grandmas at McDonalds and at Grandma Katie's apartment
So glad that Aunt Phyllis could come over for a visit!

Ellie, Mommy and Grandma Barb

We even got to see some good friends of Mommy's! Here is Aunty Tarah!

Playing piano with Mommy

On our way home, we got to stop in DesMoines to meet my new friend Bethany and her Mommy Teri.

We have SO much fun when we go to Iowa!!!

I'm 9 months old!

Mommy is letting me write this post! I wanted to tell you how EXCITED I am to be 9 months old! And what a great 9 months it has been... People tell me I'm growing so fast and I'm getting a lot more hair! We're not sure what color it is going to be yet. Sometimes it looks blonde and other times it looks red!

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I'm learning to do lots of new things these days, too! I started crawling up a storm a few weeks ago and now I am pulling myself up on things and cruising along furniture. I am VERY curious and love to explore new things. I've gotten really good at opening cabinets and taking everything out of them, pulling books off of the bookshelf, trying to take buttons and knobs off of things, and playing with electrical cords and outlets. I still haven't figured out why Mommy and Daddy will quickly dash towards me and say no and make me go a different direction. The cords are so much fun!!!

Here are a few things that Mommy says are true about me right now...

• I love to play with paper and pens.
• I have this strange ability to know what I'm NOT supposed to play with and those are the most interesting things to me!
• I am almost always happy, I love to smile and I love all people.
• I'm a major extrovert, so I have a lot of trouble going to sleep if there are people around cause I don't want to miss a thing!
• I don't know a stranger!
• I'm a night owl and love to sleep late in the morning.
• I LOVE bathtime and splashing and getting Mommy all wet.
• Much to Daddy's dismay, I am not a snuggler at all. I have quite the personal bubble and need my space... Daddy says this will come in handy with the boys someday.
• I don't fall asleep when being held or rocked. I like to be laid in my bed and left alone. Mommy says that I am a very good sleeper, just pretty independent! :)
• When I wake up in the morning, I love to just play in my bed and make happy sounds. When I'm ready to get up, I stand up in my crib and have learned how to start jumping in my bed. Mommy and Daddy think it's pretty cute and I'm pretty proud of myself!

Those are just a few things that I can think of. I might add more later! Thanks for checking in on me!

Growing...

Hi all... just a short post right now. More to come! Today is Ellie's 9 month birthday, so we took a few more pictures! ha! Mommy and Ellie got a pic taken together by the same tree we took one in front of right after her first Sunday at church... I can't believe how much my little munchkin has grown over the last 9 months!!! She won't be my baby for long... I'm cherishing every day...

Ellie's 1st Easter!

What a wonderful Easter!!! We had a double gift today... the gift of Resurrection Sunday AND our first Easter with our little Ellie... Two years ago today, we were experiencing the heartbreak of our first miscarriage on Easter. Last year, we were anticipating Ellie's arrival... and this year, we got to celebrate Jesus with Ellie HERE! It's been such a good day! Thought we'd share some of our pics with you...

catching up...

Hello everyone! So sorry for the blogging slump. Now that little Miss Ellie is on the move, I seem to have less and less time to be on the computer! It's amazing how much less productive I seem to be. I just get started, look over, and Ellie is into something! :) Ha! But it's so worth every minute. She's always cracking us up!

One of Ellie's favorite new pastimes is pulling herself up on things and starting to "cruise" around them! The biggies are the chair and a half, the bookshelf, and our bench in the living room. She thinks she's pretty big stuff now that she can get around so well! Every morning, she's standing up in her crib looking like such a big girl!

Last weekend, Joel took us to Kansas City for a weekend away and we had SUCH a good time. It was so nice to get a couple of days to relax and spend as a family. Ellie got to go swimming for the first time. Notice her cute little suit! She had such a good time swimming with Daddy and Mommy got lots of pictures and video for sure!

We also got to shop, hang out at Barnes and Noble, have coffee, go to a movie (yes, Ellie sat in the theater through an entire movie! She did amazing!!!), eat at some fun places and just enjoy time together as a family. It was a wonderful weekend!

We're loving this stage of life with little Ellie! Not long now and she'll be walking and really "on the go"! Thanks for checking in. I will try to be better about updating!!! Have a wonderful Easter!