October Celebrations

On Tuesday Ella will be 5 months old.  I simply can't believe it!  She is such a sweet little thing and makes us laugh and smile all day long!  She loves to play rough, with lots of kisses and tossing about.  Ella demands attention, but in a good way.  First, she'll use her big brown eyes to will you to talk and play with her.  Then she'll babble, blow raspberries, and coo at you.  If that doesn't do the trick she takes to making a high pitched squeal that says "play with me, talk to me, hello!"  She loves it when Luke talks to her, especially in the car.  He tells her where we're going and asks her if she's excited.  He always squints his eyes, gives her big smiles, and shakes his head back and forth when he talks to her with and exaggerated expressive voice.  It's priceless.

This month we had lots of celebrations, including my birthday, Uncle Dave's birthday, and still to come Nana's birthday and Halloween.  The most precious celebration to us, though, was when we dedicated Ella to God on October 18th.  We were so blessed to have tons of family and friends in attendance with us and there to support Ella.  She was dressed up like a little church lady :) and loved the attention.  She really liked Pastor Jeff and did pretty well throughout the prayer.  She's been a little funny about non-mama or dada people holding her, but hung in there the best she could!  We are so thankful to have family and friends who love and support our girl and we can't wait to see her grow up and learn about Jesus and His love for her. 

Here are some pictures of the dedication and birthdays.  Enjoy!

We didn't make her wear the coat to church as it was 100 degrees outside.

Manns, Brannans, and Ellisons

Uncle Dave, Briggs, Luke and Ella

Kevin gave Briggs a haircut

Eric and Luke

October birthdays!

Luke and Dylan

Ella...the cutest pumpkin!

Some new pictures!

Liam licking Ella's arm at Mom's Group....her eyes say it all!

Luke and Ali at the Children's Museum. We have an annual pass now so we'll be going back often!

Ali and Ella.  Go Dodgers!

Luke loved the balls and contraptions at the museum!

Playtime with Dada!

Mama loves this one!

PJ time!

Monroe, Dwight, Luke and Briggs at the zoo, checking out the turtles!

Auntie Nessa taking the boys to see the monkeys

That's a lot of kiddos for our little group!

Sweet as cherries!

Luke likes to drink the milk after he eats his cereal.  So cute!

Getting goofy with the Mr. Potato Head set

Ella fell asleep right in the middle of the floor. She is finding it comfy to sleep on her tummy!

Cabela's Tour!

This week we got to take a tour of Cabela's with our Mom's Group!  We had a blast looking at all the animals and seeing our friends! 

Luke getting ready to go! Awww, shucks!

All the kiddos checking out the fish tank

Wil and Zach rollin'

Luke and Ben: BFFs

Also, they look like a mini-Chuck and mini-Kevin!

Real stuffed elephant

Ben, Luke, Ava, Gabby, and Preston

Checking out a mountain lion attacking a bull elk.  Nice!

Luke and Gabby playing at the splash pad at Westgate

Gotta love the swimmie diaper hiked up to his armpits!

Refreshing!

4 months old!

Little Ella is 4 months old already!  At four months, Ella is able to roll over in both directions but doesn't do it very often yet.  She is super strong and very very wiggly!  We're pretty sure that she's gonna skip crawling and walking and just take off running someday!  Ella is very interested in the world around her and loves her big brother.  She is going to give Luke a run for his money as soon as she is able! Thankfully, Luke loves her dearly and keeps trying to play with her.  He doesn't understand why she can't play catch with him yet.  I will sometimes ask Luke to bring Ella a toy to hold and about 80% of the time he'll bring her a football or baseball!  It is sweet to see him share his toys with her willingly.  The only one he really does not want to share is his little Elmo that he sleeps with.  This happens to be the toy that Ella is most interested in!  He will bring her his bigger Elmo instead and go hide little Elmo safely in his crib.  Oh, the fun we'll have when she starts to have an opinion too! 

Ella is a happy little girl. She is very social and smiles easily when people talk to her.  She is just starting to get a little "stranger anxiety" when someone other than mama or dada is holding her.  As long as we're within sight and earshot she generally does ok.  Ella loves to interact with us and demands attention when she's not getting it!  She's got these very high pitch squeals to remind us, "Hey, I'm over here!  Play with me!"  Luke has started talking to her in the car and tells her all about where we're going and what we're going to see there.  He's a good big brother for sure!

At Ella's four month check up she weighed 16 pounds and 1/2 ounce, and was 26.5 inches long.  She is going to be tall!!!  I'm so happy for her because I always wished I was taller for volleyball growing up!  Ella will have a great coach in her Auntie Laura!  At her doctor's visit, Ella received two of the four shots in her first real round of immunizations and will get the other two in the next couple of weeks.  I wanted to see how she'd handle her first real shots since she had a hard time after her Hepatitus B vaccine at 1 and 2 months.  So far, so good! 

We love our sweet, sweet Ella.  She cracks us up, wears us out, and brings great big smiles to our faces everyday!

This is how she likes to sleep!

oooh. Look at Luke's eyes in this one.  Don't touch my stuff!