The Big 3-0

Happy 30th Birthday to my favorite guy!!!  I can't imagine sharing this life with any other!  

Here are a few of my favorite summer pictures of you being the best Dada a little girl could ever dream of! 

 Splashing around at our neighborhood pool!

 Michael and his mini me :)

 Sweet kisses 

 Daddy daughter fun!

I love this picture :)

Ok, and maaaaybe just a few old favorites, too :)

Knoxville Christmas Parade 2012

Halloween 2012 family photo!

We love you higher than the sky,

Your girls

Summer Trip to PA

So backing up a bit (only a couple of weeks, not bad!), we just got back last week from a long weekend trip to PA to visit all of our Goldsborough family and friends.  It's so nice to go up when it's not for a specific holiday or event so we can just enjoy catching up with everyone.  We had a such a wonderful visit, but of course it's never long enough.

All of our nieces and nephews grow what seems like inches and all seem so much more grown up every time we see them!  This time it had only been 6 weeks or so since we were all at the beach together, so it wasn't as long of a stretch as usual.  The visit before that everyone (minus the Megan's family due to the unexpected passing of Jim's mom) came down for Ellie's 1st birthday and Easter (which was amazing...maybe I'll blog about that someday!), so we hadn't actually been to PA since Christmas and New Years!!  Anyway, it felt SO good to be back.

Friday night, Megan and Jim hosted a summer birthday party for the 5 summer birthdays.  Since Michael will be the big 3-0 this month, Amy made him a special cake, and we all had a blast grilling out, swimming, and dancing the night away!  Here are some pictures from the party:

Headed to the party with balloons in tow

 Ellie all decked out ready for the party, with baby of course!

 Alex was so sweet coming out to the car to greet us!  He escorted Ellie hand-in-hand :)

 Ellie even sat at the kids table since we forgot her booster seat---HUGE big girl moment!  She did great!!!  I was so proud :)

 Family photo with our little chocolate face busy stealing M & Ms :)

 My handsome man is ALMOST 30....time flies!  Look at that cake!!  Amy is so talented!

Dance party!!!

Saturday we took a day trip to the beach (or "the shore" as they call it up there), and we had an awesome day in Ocean City, NJ!!  Ellie was all about it--she loved playing in the sand, splashing in the ocean, and playing in the waves.  From what I hear about myself as a little tot on the beach, I thank my lucky starts that my daughter loves the beach, unlike I did apparently!  Although we didn't take advantage of it as much as we should have, we reallly miss being an hour and a half away from the beach!  

After a fun afternoon on the beach, we were able to take quick showers and get dressed to spend the evening on the boardwalk.  Let me tell ya (for those of you who don't already know), what.a.place.  The sights, the sounds, the smells....no description can do it justice.  Being there seems to evoke all sorts of sappy feelings in me.  It doesn't completely make sense to me.  It's not like I grew up going there like most of the Goldsboroughs did, but I just love that little beach town.  Part of the emotion was definitely related to all of the memories I have in Ocean City with Betsy.  We went on too many trips there with her and Dennis there to count, and I was lucky enough to be included in a couple of girls weekends there with Betsy and my 3 amazing sister-in-laws.  Aside from missing Betsy, the whole atmosphere there just fills my soul with an overwhelming feeling of childlike nostalgia.  I was so excited to see Ellie experience it all for the first time, and I look forward to visiting Ocean City with her for many more summers to come!

My new favorite picture

The rest of our trip was spent catching up with more family, family friends, and old friends of ours.  Here are a few pictures from visiting with Grandmom Alice.  Now there's a lady who loves the Lord with all her heart and soul.  Her devotion and trust in God is like no other.  She writes out what she calls "Thoughts to Ponder" in little handmade books filled with Bible verses and encouraging spiritual notes...She then gives them out to complete strangers just to share the love of God.  For instance, she leaves them with her tip at a restaurant or gives them to the toll collector in the booths on the highways.  How sweet is that?!?  One of her other trademarks is cutting up old milk containers and writing out Bible versus and "Jesus loves you" type of messages on them.  She sends these in birthday cards, has them on mirrors all over her house, and they also adorn her mulch beds sticking up on little stakes :)  I am proud to be a Kimberly Alice and share a name with this wonderful woman, and I certainly have a lot to learn from her.  

 Grandmom Alice's house has a huge tree swing that goes really high- super fun!

We also spent a fun morning at Ridley Creek State Park with Pop-Pop and the Steinmetz cousins.  We love that place!  

 Little monkeys, that aren't so little anymore :)

 Ellie loved cruising around the edges of the playground.

 Ellie's first time on a see-saw!

 We are truly blessed by all of our family and "framily" back in PA, and we can't wait to see everyone again at Thanksgiving!!!

Ellie: 17 Months

17 months seems like such a random ago to start, and oh my gosh, how do I start?!?!  I started this post last Tuesday, preparing for her to turn 17 months on Wednesday, but these posts are proving to take me a while as a beginner :)

First of all, I must say that I love this age.  Ellie is of course still a baby in so many ways (well she always will be my baby, but you know what I mean, right?), but on the other hand, she is a playful, busy, chatty little girl transforming more and more into a toddler every single day.  She mastered walking once and for all right around 15 months, and ever since she checked that off her list, she is onto her next big developmental task- talking!  Now I know these developmental milestones do not happen in isolation, but it really does seem like 15 months was a huge transition point for Ellie---she took off walking, dropped her last night-time feeding and was finished nursing once and for all (pat myself on the back...I never thought I would make it that long!), dropped the 1-2 bottles a day of whole milk, and began the 6 week long transition to dropping her morning nap and going to 1 nap a day....oh yeah, and started talking our ears off!  She really seems to learn a new word almost every day, which is SO fun as a parent (Wow. Parent? That word still catches me off guard every time. I am pretty used to being "mama", but something about the word parent jolts me a little!)  It really just amazes me and brings me so much joy every day to hear her clearly say words in her sweet little voice that enable her to actually communicate with us mixed in with series of jibberish that are clearly not jibberish to her :)  What a privilege to raise our sweet angel.  I am so very, very thankful.

Tid bits from 17 months:

• Ellie went on her 1st family bike ride!  I got a bike with a baby seat for my birthday, which is seriously a child hood fantasy of mine.  This was (and still is) a HUGE hit.  We went shopping for a new special "hat", and we came home with a Winnie the Pooh helmet.  She immediately learned to say "bike" in the cutest little accent possible, and she loves the wind blowing in her face.  Every time we leave or enter the house through the garage, she points out the bikes and says "bike, bike, bike, bike...", you get the idea :) 
  
  
  
• Ellie has always loved to be tickled, but recently she learned to say "tickle, tickle, tickle" in the same way her Daddy always does it to her!  She says it when we tickle her, and she also enjoys to tickle herself and her babies!
• Ellie loves being in the water and points out every body of water calling it a "pool".  We visited the splash pad several times this month, and she got more and more brave every time.  Now, she wanders all over the splash pad filling up buckets, bringing them back to show mama, and enjoying toting them around spilling water all over the place.  She seems more independent in this setting than any other, walking around with little care of where I am being surrounded by strangers and lots of big kids---that's really neat to see from a girly who may normally be described as a clingy.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On the note of "pools", one day after grocery shopping, she so quietly snunk into her baby pool at home while I was unloading groceries in the kitchen.  She played with all her water toys squeaking around in her wet shoes and soaking wet clothes for an hour and a half with the biggest smile on her face.  I asked her several times if she wanted to change clothes or get her bathing suit on, but she very adamantly shook her head and told me "no", haha :) 
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Picking up the phone in her play house saying "hi"

• We got to go on a few fun boat rides with Ashley and David, the Hutcheson and Slatery crews, and the Panella and Moneyhun crews.  Ellie loved riding on the boats and even went on her first tube ride with her friend Hensley and respective parents---super exciting!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Ellie has never been a baby that you could really rock to sleep or drive around so she falls asleep.  Since she was 6 months old, we have laid her down awake in her crib, and she puts herself to sleep (eventually).  Well, one night over at Megan in Jims on our trip to PA (blog post coming soon!), it got really late, but we failed to bring all over her goodies to get her to sleep (sound machine, bunny, video monitor.)  We thought it was worth a try, so we put her in Megan's pack-n-play with a regular monitor on her.  Well, that didn't quite work out.  She screamed her head off for several minutes before Pop-Pop came to the rescue and offered to go rock her to sleep.  We sent him off and said "good luck" saying "that won't ever happen."  Pop-Pop is an amazing grandfather and definitely has a special touch.  Needless to say, he was able to rock and sing Ellie to sleep in a couple of minutes.  We came into the house whispering that it was time to head back to his house, so he gingerly stood up from the glider trying to be super careful not to wake Ellie.  He leaned forward a little too far, and the whole glider slipped out from under him, and he crashed to the floor!  Ellie woke up from a dead sleep and said, "Whoa!"  Not a fuss, not a tear, just a "whoa" :)  We were all 3 cracking up.  This is one of her new favorite words.  She says it in the car when you go over a bump, go around a sharp curve, or stop or accelerate too fast.  Hilarious.  
• Ellie has a new fascination with her diaper and all bathroom-related activities.  Several of her new words fall into this category: diaper, poop, bath, shower, and trash.  She thinks every time we sit on the potty, it means we are going #2.  When we stopped at Wendy's on our trip back to TN, she was in the stall with me pointing into the potty repeating, "Mama, poop? Mama, poop? Mama, poop?" over and over again very loudly....oh boy!  I guess I should have known all modesty is out-the-door the day you get pregnant!
• This month, Ellie learned to say a lot of family members names, which has been really exciting!  Dada, Mama, and Darla were some of her first words.  Now she can also say Ashes (for Aunt Ashley), Nana (for my mom), Papa (for my step-dad Papa Jay), Daisy (their dog), Pop (for Pop-Pop), and she is pretty close at saying all 3 of her PA aunts names, Jill, Megan, and Amy.  She has also affectionately named her bunny that she is super attached to, "night night".
• Some of her favorite activities: all of her water toys (especially her cupcake set), drawing on her magnadoodle and playing pictionary naming what we attempt to draw, playing with her babies, playing play-doh, reading books, playing with her dishes while we cook/clean in the kitchen, and learning to feed herself with a fork and her own bowl/plate instead of eating right off the tray (BIG deal right now, let me tell ya!)

I could go on and on, but I think that's a good stopping point that pretty well describes that current happenings of Miss Ellie.  I just couldn't love her more.

I'm BACK....

....even though no one ever knew I was here to begin with!  I started this little blog over 3 1/2 years ago, wrote one short post, and never told a soul outside my household of 2 about it.  I always think and talk about writing things down, doing a better job about printing pictures and making photo books, finishing Ellie's baby book (I actually did better than I expected I would, but it's empty past 10 months, for now), journaling, blogging of course, and the list could go on, but I just am not naturally inclined to do all of these wonderful things.  I am tired of regretting that I don't keep better records, especially now that we are infinitely blessed with a precious little life in Elizabeth Reece that is growing, changing, and learning every single day, and time is just flying by before my eyes.

Alas, I have decided once and for all to BLOG!  I think I am hesitant about the public nature of blogging...feeling like my life should look a certain way, but I have decided to put those shallow ideas aside and to just do it for myself and my family.  I am much less likely to pick up pen and paper and write then to nestle into my corner of the couch with my cozy brown blanket and my sweet Darla curled up on my lap and type away about the ramblings of my heart and mind and post pictures of our recent happenings.  

So here I am.  Blogging.  I don't have a clue how to do this, but hopefully I will figure out soon how to post pictures with captions and update my About Me that describes me as a newlywed new to Pennsylvania.  Wow.  How times have changed.  For the better.  Life is busier than ever, more stressful than ever, but sweeter than ever.