Easter

Happy Easter from Ellie!!!!

We had a lovely Easter - we hope you did as well! 

The girls are so sweet in their matching dresses. And Daddy's tie coordinates too!  (I wish I could say that was planned, lol!)

A fun day of Easter egg hunts and so much candy - a welcomed indulgence.  We take our Lent very seriously around here!

We even had a visit from the Easter Bunny!!!!

The kids did a great job decorating the cake - a carrot cake because the Easter Bunny likes carrots!

Ellie likes to find her way "into" things - whatever it is!  😉

  She has certainly found her way "into" our hearts - especially with that cute new haircut of hers!  💖

2018

Hello friends!  2018 has gotten into somewhat of a rhythm.  Sort of  :).  Here are a few old pictures and some new...

Here's one I forgot from Christmas...Ellie about to doze off in the van next to her big sister.

Then on the way home from our holiday trip,  Ellie had an eye appointment at Emory.  The outcome of the appointment was that she would still wear glasses to hopefully correct her eye crossing issue.  Here she is in the van on the way to the doctor.  

And here we are waiting for the appointment. Jeff was either blinking or....nodding off :).

The doctor was very thorough and made a slight change to her glasses prescription.  Since last summer when she first got glasses, I have discovered these fabulous glasses that don't break and are very comfortable.  I found a way to get them at no cost to our family (praise the Lord) and they are great!  She loves them!

I was tucking Ellie in the night of the Super Bowl and took a picture - her team didn't win but isn't she the cutest?!

We can't easily attend things like a pro-life march downtown so we made up our own signs and walked around the house for a little while in silence.  

 Mommy's birthday - the kids all made me special drawings.

This is a really sweet picture of Ellie and her Grandma ♥.


Mommy and Daddy go on a date - a play we saw back in 1998 in Athens was at a local theater.  A 20 year college graduation anniversary!  We had alot of fun.

The next morning we were having a slow start when our family had a little emergency.  On the day of Xavier's 11th birthday party, he sustained a minor injury in the kitchen that caused him to faint and hit his head on the kitchen floor.  Pretty traumatic for everyone. I am beyond relieved to say tests didn't show anything too serious and even though we had to stay in the hospital for a night (very tough for him), he is perfectly fine.

Here he is the next day taking it easy having a fun dinner while watching basketball.  

Ellie enjoying a popcorn snack while watching a show.

On a walk - she is getting so big that her legs are filling up her big girl stroller!

I found this picture on my phone from the last time we had a time change.  Ellie fell asleep around 6:00 p.m. those first few days!  We'll see how she does with "spring forward".  I'm reminded of the months of October - December being a little challenging with a couple things Ellie was doing. She went through a phase where she absolutely hated being left at the house with anyone - me, Jeff, Grandma.  It didn't matter - she wanted to go with whoever left the house!  When Jeff left with the older three - that was the worst. She'd cry for the entire time, sometimes 3 hours!  Nothing would console her. It was so painful!  But, that is alllllll over and now she says, "bye" and is off to play or resume her show or dump out all her matchbox cars.  Glad that ended.

I had to put this picture on here.  Xavier is following concussion protocol and can't do any physical activity for 2 weeks.  Very hard for an 11 year old boy!  So he's watching his soccer games from the bench.  Yesterday, Julia wore his jersey for her game - his number 18. She scored two goals for Xavier!  It was very neat.

Georgia, oh Georgia

We sure were pumped for the National Championship game last week!  We had a great time watching.  Do I have to mention the ending?  

We got Ellie to bed a smidge past her normal bedtime and let the rest stay up until the very (bitter) end!  Notice how Ellie is saying, "Umm...it's a little late isn't it Mommy?"

I'm not that experienced with selfies but this one was so funny because of Ellie's reaction.  Maybe she saw early signs of what was to come. Oh no!!!

Happy New Year!

December is always special!  We have some memories to share...

Here are the kids opening their "last day of school" presents. Clothes!

A trip to the grandparent's house.  Julia started developing a cold and ultimately could not sing in the choir for mass the next day.  We hated that but she smiled at Mommy up there helping out with the other singers.

Ellie did great through mass and liked watching Mommy in the choir as well!

Christmas Morning!!!!

The girls in the ball pit Santa brought!!!!

Visiting family and cheering for the Georgia Bulldogs!!!  A great win that night!

Freezing cold outside with Daddy and a very patient Aunt Louise who came all the way from New Jersey to see everyone!

Ready to go in yet are we, Ellie???  :)

Here's one of the many times Aunt Louise sat and visited with Ellie.  For those of you who may have forgotten - Ellie is named Eleanor Louise after her great-grandmother, Eleanor and great-aunt, Louise!

Ellie loves being read to!!

The 4 in their NFL team pajamas!!!  Ellie's team was chosen by her beloved Aunt Colleen who looooooves the New England Patriots and looooooves Ellie!

Heading back in after another play session!

Sister hug!

Happy New Year!!!

We had an early celebration after dinner!  Ellie showed us her lung strength for the duration of our little party!

Ellie and Papa!

Happy 2018 Ellie friends!!!

Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!  We have so much to be thankful for, we decided we had to have Thanksgiving #1 and then Thanksgiving #2! ☺

#1 was with grandparents.

#2 was a quiet, low-key evening at home.

We had SO many leftovers!  It was a lot of fun.  Ellie was pretty choosy about what she ate but she tried it at least.

Our girl did not like the time change this year!  The "fall back" made her "fall out" at about 6:00 every night!  She would get whiny/weepy and kind of walk around the house in slow motion in tears.  Of course she only had to take about 3 steps around here before someone rushed to pick her up and comfort her! One night, I was all alone with her (Jeff took the other three to the golf course) and she had a mix of sadness about not going with them and tiredness.  She was clutching paint brushes when I sat down with her and before I knew it, she was asleep in my arms.  I gingerly transitioned her out of my lap and she did not move!  I had to wake her up because I had not fed her dinner yet!  It was not easy - I ended up being happy with her taking a few bites of pancakes and some fruit before she readily went back to sleep at 8:30!

Here she is sleeping in a little in the mornings.  It's so funny when I check on her and she's at the "foot" of the bed.  I think she likes the pressure of the netting against her head.  She flops around quite a bit at night - she's usually all over the place.  She still loves her bed very much and runs and dives into it at night.  We read some books in there and then she has a little light up aquarium that she turns off herself when she's had enough talking to her stuffed animals. 

Our weekly trips to speech and physical therapy have wrapped up until January.  The kids are great about taking their school along with them! But we have an ambitious load ahead these next two weeks before Christmas so we won't be taking our school on the road for a while.

Ellie's "school".  She loves Mr. Gary and works very hard to say the things he asks her to say and sometimes they just "chat". 

Ellie made it through her third mass ever in the pews with the family! This one was just the 5 of us at the Immaculate Conception mass last Friday.  Luckily she was happy with the supply of books we brought.  There was one time she started pointing to something and saying "Ma" which means I have to guess what she's trying to show me.  Luckily I got it before she got too loud!

All dressed in blue for Mary!

Happy Halloween!!

Raise your hand if you loved "The Wizard of Oz" growing up.  Me too!!!!

For years (5), I've been wanting to do a family costume to honor the movie. There's alot you can do with 6 people, you know!

  

I'm extremely grateful they all agreed to participate and we planned and schemed for months!

Behold - Dorothy, Lion, Tinman, Scarecrow, Wicked Witch of the West and our leader...The Yellow Brick Road!  We were all "following" him around :).

We had a great time and got lots of attention from our neighbors.  It was super fun.

 Xavier and Julia taught Ellie the ropes of "candy trading".

 She was pretty eager to accept their offers and has not shown a lot of interest in eating much which turns out good for a certain witch in the house.



The day after Halloween, we had a lovely experience at mass for All-Saints Day. Ellie stayed in the pew the entire mass - a first!  She was not able to repeat that accomplishment at this morning's mass but, we'll keep trying.  After that mass on Wednesday we ran in the grocery store for a couple items.  I don't normally take all four shopping with me but this seemed easy.  Ellie was obviously in quite an agreeable mood that day because she got in the cart with no problem and was happy to just take a ride while we zipped in and out of the aisles. I found myself grateful that I can have a 13-year-old and at the same time, I'm not done getting that "feeling" every mom gets when those sliding doors open and you know buying Triscuits is not going to be as simple as it sounds.  But in that moment Wednesday, I was grateful to be hustling through the store with my four little saints.