What A Difference A Year Makes

One year ago today I got the best Valentines gift ever! One year ago today our lives changed forever. All because one year ago today, our beautiful baby girl was born. Ella Darlene Riley I can't believe that you are already a year old. I'm still trying to figure out how in the world this....

 becomes this...

in one short year. This year has gone by so fast. There is already so much that I miss about Ella being little but, I am really enjoying watching her grow. I can't imagine life without her. She is everything that we could have ever wanted. Happy Birthday Bean!

Bye Bye Bottle

This crazy haired little girl is completely 100% off of the bottle. It's sippy cups only in our house now. I had decided that we were going to try to get rid of the bottle when Ella turned one. I thought this was going to be quite the challenge because Ella loved to have her bottle. She has a very strict bed time routine. She gets a bath, then her bottle, a story and bed. Ella knew after bath came the bottle and would start to cry when you put her jammies on because she wanted it so bad. All of a sudden one day last week she started to play around with the bottle and didn't really hold much interest in it. For 3 nights it took about a half an hour to feed her the bed time bottle. Taylor got frustrated and said "since we are almost out of formula anyway, let's just try putting her down with out a bottle." I decided we could try it. The first night she cried for literally 2 minutes and that was it. We just cut her off cold turkey and have been bottle free for almost a week now with out any problems. Now if the binky could be this easy. I doubt it though. While she did love her bottle she is way more attached to the bink. Oh well, one thing at a time. I will say that no more bottle makes me feel like I'm losing my baby. She's growing up so fast. She's becoming this little lady over night.

Ella Bean I'm so proud of you! You kicked the bottle before your first birthday! You're getting to be such a big girl!

Hello 2012

We are 23 days in to 2012 and it has already been an insane year. Already this year we have..

1. Celebrated Jackie's 50th Birthday
2. Taylor started his final semester of school
3. Celebrated Taylor's Birthday
4. Kelsey got married
5. Celebrate my Birthday
6. Ella got an upper respiratory infection.
7. I got an upper respiratory infection.
8. I broke out in a lovely rash cause by the upper respiratory infection that will not go away for 6-8 weeks!

All of this 23 days into the year. I don't see things slowing down for a while either. We still have Kelsey's Birthday, Super Bowl and Ella's Birthday all in the next couple weeks. I have a feeling it's just going to be another crazy year. Bring it on!

Fine Childrens Programing

Ella loves to watch Sesame Street and since we stream Netfix she can watch it any time. The newer episodes have a segment called Burt and Ernie's Adventures and it is all claymation. Ella was watching it the other day and I told Taylor to pause it so we could feed Ella her lunch. Next thing I know I'm hearing hysterical laughter from the living room. When I walked in I saw this.

Taylor was rolling and I couldn't stop laughing. He just happened to pause it at this awkward moment in the show. Looks like Burt and Ernie were having a little too much fun on their little adventure. I know that we are totally immature but come on... you can't tell me you aren't laughing too.

Christmas 2011

Christmas this year was a huge success!! It was so much fun to see Ella getting new toys. She was a great age to have her first Christmas. While she didn't understand it at all, she really enjoyed getting to play with new things. This year was especially neat because Taylor and I got to play Santa for the first time. Something so simple turned out to be quite the argument. Does Santa wrap or not? How many presents should Santa leave and how many should be from Mom and Dad? Who knew it could be so complicated? We ended up working out how Santa would do things for our family and it was tons of fun. We made the rounds as usual and all 4 of us, yes Moxley included, got completely spoiled! We spent Christmas Eve with the Fowler family at my Grandma Colleen's and then went and spent the night at my mom's house. We spent Christmas morning with my family, went to my Dad's, my Aunt Michelle's and finished out the night having fondue and spending the night at Taylor's parent's house. Here are some of the pictures of our special day as a family. This is literally just a small sampling. We took over 200 pictures of Christmas this year! Enjoy!

 Ella unwrapping her very first Christmas gift. She was pretty into it!

 She knew just what to do with this cell phone toy. Kinda scary considering she is only 10 months old!

 The new hat that Grandma and Grandpa Riley got Ella

 Last stop, end of the day. Looking exhausted but hangin in there.

 Opening presents with Grandma Riley

 Grandma Riley and Trouble

 Cooper and Mandy

 Grandpa Riley and his new shoes

 Daddy and Ella the day after Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Riley's house

 Taylor and Melody on Christmas Eve

 Melody and Toria

 Thomas and Toria on Christmas morning

 Matt on Christmas morning

 Nolan/Grandpa Sunshine on Christmas morning

 Kelsey and Andy on Christmas morning

 Me and my honey on Christmas morning

 Thomas and Melody

 Ella's reaction to her new Elmo doll on Christmas morning. This was by far the best picture of the day. Ella loves Elmo and was so excited about her new toy.

 Holding the Elmo doll

 Ella with her loot

 Ella on her new princess car

 Ella and Grandma Kathy

 More pics on the princess car

 Mommy and Ella with the adorable little lamb hat that I got her.

 Wearing Uncle Matt's glasses

 Ella, Abigail (my cousin Laura's baby) and Melody at Great Grandma Fowler's house on Christmas Eve

 3 of the cutest babes you will ever see. Just missing little Lauryn

 Abigail giving Melody kisses

 Ella and her soon to be Uncle Andy. Andy is amazing with Ella.

 Ella in her Colts jammies on Christmas day

 At Grandma and Grandpa Fowler's house on Christmas day

 Grandma Kelly and Lauryn

 The Riley Family. Christmas Eve 2011

At our house in front of the tree before taking off for 2 days.

Second cutest baby in the world! (mine of course is first). My beautiful niece Melody.

Counting Down

As Taylor would say.... Only two more sleeps til Christmas!!

Cousins

Last night we went to my Dad and Kelly's for a second Thanksgiving dinner and to help them decorate their Christmas tree. While we were there I was able to get a glimpse into what the future holds with 3 little girls all growing up together. I can not wait!! Ella and Laurin are already so cute with each other and I before you know it, Melody will be right there with them. Who would have thought that in 18 short months my dad would have 3 granddaughters. He is absolutely loving it.

 The Fam. Darci, Grandma, Melody, Toria, Andy and Kelsey

 Lauryn and Ella giving each other loves

Ella and Lauryn playing together. Lauryn kept crawling up to Ella and it would make Ella laugh so hard. It was so cute to see these two interact.

Sitting on Aunt Darci's lap