Copy Cat

Ella has recently started copying things that Aaron and I do. For instance, I currently have a cold and every time I cough so does Ella. Well, the other night. Aaron was feeding Ella dinner and he yawned this great big yawn and Ella copied him, sound and all. Here is a video of her doing it. She doesn't hold out the sound as long as Aaron, but you get the point.

Christmas 2008

Hey everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Aaron, Ella, and I stayed home this year and had our own little Christmas. It was amazing. It was really relaxed and it was great to spend time with Aaron and Ella. Here are some pictures of Ella with Santa and some of her opening presents as well.
I thought that Ella might be scared of Santa. But when we placed her on his lap, she just stared at him in quizzically. She just wanted to know who he was. She tried pulling off his beard, too. But she never cried. She really didn't have any interest in opening up presents, but she did enjoy the presents that she got. All in all I think it was a successful Christmas.


Yes, Larah... she wakes up grouchy like her mom.





This is a video of Ella playing in her new toy that she got for Christmas. She really likes it.

Videos of Ella

Here are some more videos for your enjoyment. I was able to get Ella to talk for the camera. Sometimes she likes to yell and sometimes I can get her to use her inside voice.

This is where she is yelling at me. Apparently it starts early in life!


This next video is of Ella waving. I think that she just does this because Aaron and I get so excited. But we are going to assume it is because we have the most intellectually advanced 8 month old out there. :-)



In this one, Ella was just talking nicely. I wanted to prove that she does have a some what quiet volume. She is trying to buzz her lips like I am. You can kind of see her trying. She usually goes red in the face trying to push the air through her lips. We think its pretty funny. But she is a pretty talkative baby. Our house is NEVER quiet anymore. We absolutely love everything about it!!!

Butterfly Museum

We recently took a trip to the Butterfly Museum with Ella. She had so much fun. She really loves to be outside and was not frightened by all these "things" flying around here. These are some pictures of our adventure. The video if of Ella trying to grab a butterfly off the tree.

Halloween and then Some

Here are some Halloween pictures from our ward party. We had a lot of fun. Ella was an angel and Aaron and I were devils. No one recognized us because they have never seen me with dark hair, and Aaron was just too scary to look at.

There is also some pictures of where Aaron fell through the ceiling of our office. Luckily is was not in a high traffic area... and Aaron is safe. :-)

Growing up Ella

Hey everyone. I just wanted to post some more updates of our blossoming little girl. She amazes me every day. At her 6 mo. appointment Ella weighed 15 lbs. 5 oz and was in the 25-50% for her weight and height. She is so petite. But as most of you know she has been crawling since she was 5 1/2 months. Now she likes to walk along the furniture and pull her self up on anything she can get her hands on. I am most certain that it won't be too long before she starts walking. Ahh!! That's a little scary.

But she has been nothing but a joy. We had a little hiccup in her sleeping routine when our air conditioner went out and then it didn't help that we traveled across the country for the next two weeks after that. Now that we are home and getting settled back into our routine, she is starting to sleep better at night. THANK YOU!!! If any of you know me at all, you know I don't do too well with lack of sleep. So now we have a happy baby and a happy mommy. Can't get much better than that. Aaron is always a happy daddy because 1. he doesn't require as much sleep as I do, and 2. I usually get up with Ella anyway. (Although, in his defense, he does offer to do the night sift quite often)

This is Ella's new trick. Pulling her self up on everything


Ella is trying to get buff like Daddy.

Hurrican Ike

Aaron, Ella, and I just survived hurricane Ike. I think that it was the scariest thing that I have ever been through. We decided to stay because we thought that by the time the storm reached us it would be a tropical storm which I have witnessed on more that one occasion growing up in Houston. But little did we know that the storm was still a category 2 hurricane as it approached and passed directly over our house.
Our electricity went out around 2 in the morning and the wind was howling like crazy. I tried to get into bed and sleep but at about 4 am I heard a load groaning sound near our house. I literally jumped out of bed and grabbed Aaron and the baby and we headed to our only room in the house without any windows. We had put our candles in there with some other provisions like food so that we could survive that night. At about 7 ish the storm had calmed down enough that we could check the damage from our windows. In our back yard, our one lone tree had been completely up rooted and toppled over. Thankfully the bulk of the tree missed the house and just some side branches scraped the roof. But that was the load noise I had heard early in the morning. Some reports say that winds at that time had reach 112 mph.
We decided to head out to San Antonio to stay with Aaron's uncle Sheldon, since we did not want Ella to stay in an un-air conditioned house. Just getting there was an adventure. The roads were flooding and we didn't know if, at some points in the road, our car would float away with the rest of the debris. But we made it safe and sound. Now we are comfortably staying with Aaron's parents in Salt Lake City while we await our electricity being turned on. The reports say it could take up to 4 weeks to get it all up and running. Hopefully it does not take that long. But either way we will try to enjoy our spontaneous vacation.

Ella Crawling some more

It has only been a week since I last videoed Ella crawling. This is her now! It's crazy how fast they catch on to things!!

Video of Ella

Here is a new video of Ella. I hope you all enjoy.

Hot and Humid

We have been with out air conditioning for almost two weeks now. This is why... Our A/C stopped working on Saturday so we called an a/c repair man to come look at it. He informed us that our compressor had been blown. So we called our home warranty insurance company to come and fix it since that is what we paid them to do. Since it went on a weekend, and a holiday weekend at that, the home warranty people had to decide whether or not this was deemed as an emergency. The lady on the phone then proceeded to inform me that our a/c not working was NOT an emergency because and I quote, " It's only 90 degrees outside". I then informed her that it was ONLY 95 degrees in my house with a 5 month old baby. She would not budge.

Now with our home warranty people, we have to use their specified vendors to come out and take a look at our a/c unit. The soonest these people could come out was Wednesday. We now have been without a/c for five days. Nuair comes out to inspect and diagnosis the problem. They tell us that is is because the wiring from the house to the a/c was not done properly and that is was caused the compressor to blow out. We already knew that there was problem with the way it was wired from our home inspection, but was told that it should work just fine.

We were denied our claim. Now, we already had some one come out on Sunday from a different company not affiliated with our home warranty insurance and they told us it was just a faulty compressor. That is had nothing to do with the way the unit was installed. So we tried to find out when and by whom the unit was installed by so we could see if it was still under warranty. Our real estate agent tried to get a hold of the previous owners to no avail. And I told her about the care we were given by the insurance company and she got right on top of it. In the meantime, we had a family friend come out and inspect the a/c as well. He is the business. He also told me that it was just a faulty compressor. The insurance agency re-opened our claim and sent out a new guy to come at look at the compressor. We are now 7 days with out a/c. He told us that there are many things that could have contributed to the compressor blowing out and that yes, the wiring could have had an affect on it. He told the insurance company this .... and I am sure you guessed it.. we were denied again.

You would think that unless they absolutely new for sure the cause of the damage, they would cover the cost. For $395 you can have peace of mind. Well what you really pay for is two weeks with our air conditions and incompetent insurance people. We are still hoping to resolve this issue. And hopefully it will all have a happy ending, at least for us. So as you sit in cool houses and read this blog, I hope you don't forget about us in Hot and Humid Texas.

Here is a video of Ella starting to crawl!!!!

Here are some more pictures of the house!!! The top two are of the master bathroom. I just love the tile work the was done in there. The next one is of Ella's room. It was painted that color when we moved in. You really can't get a feel for how bright it is in this picture. But I love it. It matches the other colors in her room just perfectly so we decided not to change the color. We are still getting settled and trying to get things organized. But we are loving every minute of our new house. It just feels like home.

Kitchen after we painted

Living room after

Back wall of living room

This is our kitchen before we painted.

New Blog

Ella eating her toes.

This is Ella trying to crawl.

Mommy tickling the baby!

Hey everyone!!

Aaron and I decided to start a blog and join the rest of America in sharing our life through the internet. This allows me to post more pictures and send it out to everyone than through an email. I just wanted to give everyone a quick update on what is going on in our lives. We recently just bought a house and we are loving every minute of it. Everything thing worked out so well that there is no doubt in our mind that we made the right decision (no matter how terrifying it was to signing our life away!) . It has been very enjoyable finally making something completely our own.

Ella is getting so big. She is now five months and practically running. Okay not really, but sometimes it feels like it. She can roll over and she gets up on all fours and rocks and falls. She is so close to crawling. Ella gets really frustrated when she sees something she wants and she can't quite get to it. Especially when she tries to get closer and she just ends up farther away than where she started. She laughs now too. She doesn't do it as often as we would like because apparently Mommy and Daddy just aren't funny enough. But she does give us plenty of "These people really are my parents? WOW" looks.