Merry Christmas Eve!!

Wow, the last couple days have not been so much fun in the Grivna house. We had so much fun and Ella was so good visiting with all the family at mom & dad's house this past weekend. Here is a picture of Ella playing with her cousin Livie. They look so sweet in their Christmas dresses.

The ride back was not so much fun for mommy. All I could think of as I tried not to get sick on the ride back to the Ville was the story of mom getting car sick during vacation one year. I will never forget Scott running across the backyard screaming "my mom pucked in the car" and Andy replying "my cat pooped in your sandbox." So if Ella could only talk. I lasted until we got off the ramp at Cannon's Lane less than 5 miles from the house. I left a little surprise on the side of the road. Then the surprises came every 30 minutes until midnight (not so much fun). Mark started at 3:30 am.

Monday night was the hardest night of my life. Ella stayed at Elaine's which was so nice of her to even offer and they insisted she stay so she didn't get sick but this was the first night my baby wasn't with me. It was an awful ride home and when I got home I medicated myself with nausia medicine so I could sleep. Felt much better yesterday so I disinfected the house and washed sheets and went and picked up my little angel early. Mark seems to be back to normal which isn't fair because I'm still having problems with sick soup and saltines.

Hoping to be able to eat by Christmas Day - Stinks not to be able to eat all of this yummy food during Christmas time. I came into work today and there are all kinds of goodies on my desk and I just sighed and thought maybe Mark can eat yet. Merry Christmas Eve!!!

December 11 - 14, 2008

We have had a marathon party weekend. My company's Christmas Party was on Thursday, Mark's Company Party was on Friday, we had a white elephant gift party Saturday night, and then we were invited for dinner on Sunday at a co-workers house. Friday night Ella had her first babysitter that was not a relative or friend. Amanda did a great job, she is Elaine's daughter, that is the lady that watches Ella during the week. Saturday night the McBarnette's watched her for us and we took her on Sunday. She was such the trooper this weekend especially even after we took her Christmas shopping at the mall yesterday but she did get to see Santa. You would think by looking at this picture she was the sweetest angel and have you ever seen a more perfect child sitting on Santa's lap but there were several takes of the picture. She started to turn and Santa and his helpers started screaming her name, jumping around and ringing bells to keep her attention. When I sat Ella on Santa' s lap she looked up at me and looked at him and the expression on her face was priceless. Kind of one of those looks like "I don't know this man - mommy & daddy help me!" Where did the weekend go, it wasn't long enough, needed a couple of extra days to rest after all those parties. That's just part of the fun of holidays.

The Christmas Tree

The Christmas Tree this year has gone up in stages. The box got damaged during the great flood at the Grivna House in April so the tree has been set up in the garage ever since. Mark and his sister Teresa set the tree up during the Thanksgiving holiday. A week later Mark put the lights on and then this past week we went shopping for new ornaments. See that's the only good thing about having a flood, it ruins all of your ornaments and you have to buy new. Now we actually have a themed tree until Ella is old enough to start making us our stash of homeade ornaments. She doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to the tree. She'll just sit there and stare at it. One of her toys went over by it the other night and she went to go and get and she stopped and thought about going over to get it and decided, hmmm no.

Oh no...she loves the phone!

When people call the house Ella loves to hold the phone up to her ear and listen to the person calling talk to hear. If your lucky she will jabber back or you may even get some heavy breathing. This is a picture of Ella talking to her Gam Ma on Sunday. The hard part is taking it away...she throws a fit!

Jackson's Birthday Party

Ella had such a good time at Jackson's 2nd birthday party. Jason & Kate had the party at Gymboree, which I'm sure we are to become members. Ella loved it! She wasn't such much into playing with the other kids but she was all over the place crawling and playing with toys (of course putting them all in her mouth). When Jackson opened his gifts Ella was right there but wasn't interested in his toys just the bows on the gifts.

The First Blog

Yes, hello all!! I am finally becoming modern. I have started a blog after some pushing and some realizing that it will be much easier to keep up with then the journal. I will still do Ella's journal but probably just some of the stories.