Friday Five

Its Friday already??? We have had an incredibly fun week and I feel like this month is going by so quickly already!!  I had all sorts of plans on doing another Toddler Outfit Challenge for the 25 days of Christmas, while I have dressed Ellie up each day I haven't been very good about taking her daily photo.  I have captured a couple of them and I am just loving all the festiveness that is out there right now!  I am really drawn to wearing Red this season and I am sure you will see that in Ellie's clothes! 

This time of year is really so special (and difficult at the same time) for us and we try to focus on all our happy memories together.  Tomorrow (Dec 6th) is our 8 year Engagementiversary!!  (as well as the day we officially lost our first baby in 2010) We got engaged at my parents house, in the presence of all four of our parents.  My mom was crying (happy tears) our dad's were smiling, and his mom was happy too.  We were all meeting to go on our annual Christmas season outing to the 5th Ave to see "A White Christmas" when he got down on one knee and popped the question.  I was in shock and a little embarrassed to have my parents watching that I just kind of stood there.  My mom was crying and yelling at me and answered "YES YES YES YES YES" for me and then proceeded to hit me in the shoulder and ask me what my problem was! So, since my mom already committed me to the acceptance of his proposal, I answered "Yes, I will marry you" and then I couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the night!!  So we have a tradition of watching "A White Christmas" on DVD every year on December 6th to commemorate this day!  We even watched it together in the hospital after my ectopic pregnancy surgery in 2010.  Additionally two weeks after our baby loss my mom was admitted to the hospital with a large brain tumor which turned out to be Stage IV Glioblastoma brain cancer, she fought for 15 months before going to be home with the Lord. 

okay, now lets get onto this week's FIVE!!!

ONE

First up, I think that some of these PJ separates are just TOO cute to save for just the bedroom. So Ellie is rocking them during the day as we are out and about!! 

I love the scarf and seriously how cute is this reindeer top?

and these bottoms are right up my reindeer alley!!  I think that with the vest they totally look like leggings!

TWO

Second up, I am really enjoying my new job/career as a Nanny.  The best part is getting to be with Ellie all day and the bonuses are her getting to socialize and interact with other kiddos similar to her age and that she gets to play with all sorts of toys (and we don't have to junk up our house with all of them!!)

one of the houses has this awesome train table!  Ellie rarely gets the trains on the tracks but she has a blast nonetheless! and can we also please talk about these pigtails?  I posted a few weeks back a picture of her in "pigtails" but we needed three rubberbands to keep them in and they still fell out.  Her hair is now completely long enough to make it into two!! LOVE

and then the other house has the best floors!! oh how I dream of wood floors in my home!!  They have this super fun tricycle.  Ellie is loving this thing. She doesn't use the pedals but does skootch herself around using her feet.  Luckily she hasn't been daredevil enough to try and stand on this one like her little push car at home! 

THREE

Third up, I finally decided to rearrange a few things in the kitchen so that Ellie can have her own drawer and have access to it.  Before her dishes were in an upper cabinet and all her sippy's were on the counter.  I am loving the extra space on our counter (we haven't seen that in over 18 months!) and more importantly SHE LOVES being able to get into at least on drawer in the kitchen without getting in trouble.  This is pure novelty right now and is her new fave hangout! (I run a tight ship at our house and there are many things that are "Off Limits", we do have locks on all the cabinet doors, many things in the living room, no bathroom visits unattended, and she definitely is NOT ALLOWED to touch our tree!!)

She is so incredibly happy to get to play in here and I am so glad that I made a fun little space for her!

FOUR

Fourth up, we finally made it into the doctor for Ellie's 18 month check up.  I can't believe that the next time (fingers crossed) we see the doctor my little gingerbread will be 2 years old!!!  Girlfriend was a total champ in the waiting room, sitting like an angel on the chair next to me (and following my directions pretty well), she smiled and waved at the nurse when we got called back but then it all went downhill when she wanted Ellie to stand on the scale!!! Lu started having a meltdown, I guess somewhere along the line someone told Ellie that she should never disclose her weight and the nurse checking her weight was a clear violation of her rights! For the rest of the visit the nurse only got a sideways glance with the "hairy eyeball"!!  Of course Lu hammed it up for the doctor and he said that all is well.  I didn't get a print up of E's percentiles but her weight was in the 40th and her head in the 75th, I am assuming she is still around the 10th for her height - my little shortcake!

FIVE

Fifth and last, Thomas and I went on a date night on Wednesday.  We have only had two other date nights since bringing our babe home.  We went out to dinner at The Rock Bottom, walked around our favorite Hotel to look at all the decorated Christmas trees, and then to see "A Christmas Story" at The 5th Ave Theatre.  We saw this musical when it originally premiered 4 years ago and it was so good.  Super Cool fact: Thomas went to high school with the actress who played Ralphie's mom!!  We had such a great time talking and enjoying each other's company.  We talked a lot about possibly home schooling Ellie, something I am seriously interested in doing, about how much we love Ellie and plan on taking her on 98% of the vacations we plan to go on - we just want to share everything with her,  about the adoption process and how different it is going to be the second time around, and just about our life together! I truly see so much value in date nights and believe they are important but we just love our little family and we missed our little Ellie so much!

♥ Ashley

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