Silver Dollar City

The Friday after we celebrated Christmas with my mom's family, we all went to Silver Dollar City in Branson. Okay, if haven't been you must! It is definitely one of my favorite places to spend the holidays. Here's a few reasons why it is so fabulous!

*The thousands of lights they put up everywhere!
*The Wassail, the best in the world. Amanda, it was perfect! I brought some back for us to enjoy!
*The hot chocolate. You can get "The Works". That's when they load it up with marshmallows, chocolate chips and whip cream!
*The rides.
*The Kettle Corn!
*The cold weather!













































This was Ella's first ride. It made for some cute pictures and fun memories for Heath and I, but Ella was not so sure about it. The first few times around, her face would turn bright red, but she never actually cried. She did hold on to Heath as hard as she could. But after she realized this wasn't her death, she got used to it, but I don't know if I could go as far as to say she enjoyed it.



This is me clapping and laughing trying to convince her this was fun, not scary.

This one was a little slower, therefore more enjoyable for the punkin.

Christmas Numero Uno

If you read my previous post, you know that we had a jam packed Christmas! 3 cites, 2 states, 3 Christmases all in 5 days! It was a huge success! By the end of Christmas day, Ella almost got past the excitement of the wrapping paper and tissue paper to realize there was a toy inside. Almost! Having a child on Christmas day certainly adds a new pespective on Christmas and what it is truly about.

There are much pictures, so I will try to practice some self control on the amount that I post.

So on to our first Christmas celebration in Branson, Missouri!

Thursday night was spent at my cousin's cute home in Branson opening presents and celebrating with my mom's side of the family.

We're Off!!

Tonight at 3:00 A.M. we will depart for our Christmas marathon! We are driving to Arkansas to spend Wednesday with Heath's dad. Thursday morning we then driving to one of my favorite places to spend Christmas...Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri! That place is like a winter wonderland! If you've never been, you must! We are spending Christmas there with my mom's family. On Saturday we leave Branson and drive straight into Mansfield to do Christmas with my dad's family on Saturday and Christmas Eve. And then Christmas day we will be at my parent's house with our immediate family and Heath's immediate family. Neither Grandmas could imagine Ella's first Christmas without them with her. Thankfully we all get along well enough to spend that special day all together under one roof! I have about 5 hours to finish packing. So I guess I should actually get started.

I really do hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!! Please let me know what you are doing and how your Christmas holiday was!!!!

Heath decided that we needed to do an early Christmas Sunday night and open a few of our gifst because he got Ella and I a few things that we would need for our trip! Heath loves to give on Christmas and now he spoils two girls!


Our stockings. I don't have those cute little stocking hangers, so I put my on the floor in front of the tree. Is that ghetto?


Heath surprised me with this present. It was labeled To: Mommy For: Ella because I fell in love with this coat! It's from my favorite baby boutique called Janie and Jack!








































We got each other our favorite perfume and cologne. 8 from Abercrombie and Pleasures for Men.


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Ella chewing on my new movie The Notebook.













My new Juicy Couture that Heath picked out himself!

New Developments

It's a tooth! It's a tooth! Hooray! Let me explain why I am so excited over this. Obviously, every parent gets excited over every new development, but this one is especially exciting to me. Ella has a regular playgroup that consists of Jackson, Ava, Joshua and Gage. Ella is the oldest of the 5. However, all the other babies have had teeth for at least a month, a couple of them have had teeth for probably 3 months. I definitely never felt for a second that she was behind in her development because getting a first tooth at 10 months is perfectly normal and I would never doubt my precious daughter's perfection! But I have been waiting for the day that she could join in those tooth filled pictures! Welcome to the club Ella! Puffs, Cheerios, Crackers, oh my!

The second exciting development is Ella is officially crawling. Last Wednesday, I was sitting on the couch, Ella was playing on the floor and all of the sudden she took off and crawled all the way across the living room!! I was all by myself jumping up and down and calling family to tell them. The Lord was so sweet to me because that night I got to babysit Joshua. Peter decided to take Melissa out on a surprise date! Don't tell Meliss and Peter but I was extremely nervous! 2 Babies?! I've never been in a room by myself with 2 babies! But everything was great! Sweet Joshua was perfect. Him and Ella kept each other entertained on the floor together for a couple hours. I was even able to put up my Christmas tree. The sweet part was that I was desperate to share the crawling moment with somebody! So because it worked out for me to watch Joshua, I was able to share the moment with Peter and Melissa when they came to pick him up!

Crawling and a tooth all in one week!!







Working as a team to get the fabric off of the basket.

Victory!

White Rock Marathon

No I did not run a marathon this morning. I wish I could proudly say that I did because believe me if I had just run 26.2 miles I would be proudly saying I ran a marathon. In fact, I am totally the opposite of a marathon runner. I am offically pathetic. But I will get back to that in a minute.

Today my sweet friend Kristin, ran her first marathon!! Melissa and I stood at the 25th mile marker and waited for our sweet friend to run by. That's right the 25th mile marker. Sorry I still can't even fathom that. As we waited for her, hundreds of these runners kept running by us and I just kept thinking to myself...these people have already been running for TWENTY FIVE MILES!!! 25! And some of them looked like they had only been running one mile previously to passing us. But it was an incredible experience. I was so inspired by my precious friend. I was so proud of her. I cried as if it was my own child passing by me. When we saw her coming, we jumped up and down, screamed and held our posters proudly. We even got to run with her for just a minute. I have a new respect for these marathon runners.


Kristin seeing us and our sign!

A quick hug on the run!!












So after they passed us, Melissa and I decided we wanted to walk the last mile so we could spend some time with Kristin at the finish line. As we started walking, it started to drizzle, but we made it and ran right into her after she finished!! It was so fun to be able to really give her a hug, not just one on the run and tell her how proud we are of her.


Suzy, in the pink, is another one of our friends. This was her second marathon to run. Her and Kristin trained together for this one and ran the whole time together. These are two strong women!!!


She definitely looks better than me.










This is the pathetic part:
After we talked with Suzy and Kristin for a while, it really started to rain and it was only 48 degrees. We had sweet Joshua with us, Melissa's son, and so we decided because we were wet and cold we better run back to the car and get there as quickly as possible. So we ran the mile back to our car. I was exhausted, totally out of breath, legs felt like jello. I felt like the most pathetic person on the face of this earth. Here we are running past all these people who are wearing their medals for finishing a marathon and I am almost passing out from my mile run. And my legs are sore tonight. Absolutely pathetic. Melissa said it best while we were passing the smiling faces of accomplished marathon runners when she said "We are not worthy to be running in their presence."

How Popular is My Name?!

I stole this from my friend Alicia's blog! I thought it was very interesting and fun. Apparently the name Janelle is incredibly popular. It is the 941st most popular name in the United States! haha My last name is even more popular. It is the 6569th most popular last name!

HowManyOfMe.com

There is: 1 person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?