{weekly update} week 29

We have completed our first FULL week of December and the Christmas season!!  So many things have gone on and our sweet little Ellie Faith has grown and changed so much.  My love for her grows more each and every day.  I so enjoy writing up these weekly updates and know how much fun they will be when I go to look back.

Diet: Formula, Rice Cereal and homemade baby food: broccoli, peas, and yams.  I will try the sweet potato again, just not mix it with formula.  I am hoping to make some beans and zucchini this week for her to try as well.  I also saw organic butternut squash already cubed at Costco in the vegetable section so I might purchase that to try something new.

Sleep: Girlfriend is an amazing sleeper.  While we have had a few weird days she is a pro.  She came to visit me at work yesterday (during her nap time) and slept the whole time even though we were passing her from person to person!  She just has the best temperament and we can tell when its time to put her down because she rubs her eyes! We are starting to transition her to sleeping her naps in her crib.  Though she is still sleeping through the night in the bassinet in our room.

Crying: Again not too bad!  Her teeth are starting to come in so she is experiencing some discomfort but generally she is a happy baby.

Clothes: Still wearing the 3-6 months size.  I have purchased a few more items but I am starting to buy up for the next size.  Its hard right now with where the seasons are, I don't want a bunch of Christmas stuff for 6-9 month so its kinda hit or miss, especially since I am shopping the clearance racks.

Baby Gear Love: This week we were in love with the ergo, walker and exersaucer.  Ellie also loves to play with spatula's and measuring cups.  The puppies are a HUGE hit, she loves to watch them and pinch pet them but isn't a huge fan of face kisses.  Her Christmas tree in her room (its silver so more shiny than our green one in the living room)

Social: Baby girl had a big week.  Nanny's on Friday and part of Saturday, the church nursery, out to Dim Sum and a U-Cut Tree Farm on Sunday then to the church nursery and mama's work on Monday.  She absolutely loves being with other kids "her age" and gets sad when they crawl or walk away (hopefully she will start moving here soon!)

Milestones: Ellie cut her first tooth on Friday, her right central incisor and the left one is following closely.  She loves to stand and can hold herself up with a prop (coffee table, exersaucer, or crib rails) she can also pull herself to a standing if she squats down!  She has also been very brave and able to balance herself with only holding on with one hand!  She also got to go to her first tree farm.  She has also gotten more vocal this week and is loving her hands in her mouth.  This morning Ellie made her first attempt to move her arm while on all fours!! Crawling may be in our near future. 

Mama: I am doing well.  I enjoyed celebrating our 7th engagementiversary on Friday and getting closer to our first Christmas with Ellie.  I am also busy planning and preparing for the Ladies Christmas Tea I host every year this coming Saturday.

Sweet sweet Ellie you are such a sweetheart and I love you so much.  I love how interactive you are and that you love to "sing" in the morning.  Sometimes you make such a throaty noise that it makes you cough!  It is just the cutest thing!  

♥ Ashley

Recap of the Weekend

Wow we had a SUPER cold weekend here in the greater Seattle area, with temps below freezing. 

There are good things and bad things about freezing temperatures on a farm.  The nice part is that the ground is frozen back where our horses are so they aren't walking and standing around in a bunch of ankle deep mud.  The bad thing is that water troughs are freezing (and our chicken water does too).  So each morning we are hand carting buckets of hot water to thaw for the daytime.  Also we can't really scoop up any muck (poop) since it is frozen to the ground as well.  We do have a water heater for our Horses water but the goats and chickens need hot water brought out to them.  I think that we will invest in a water heater for the goats here pretty soon. 

Talking about the farm animals, I have had to purchase 3 cartons of chicken eggs the past couple of months, our chickens have stopped laying.  I am hoping they will pick up again in the spring time otherwise we are going to have to bring in a new flock (we will keep the old girls too, so no worries there!)

Okay back to the title of this post:

Friday we celebrated our 7 engagement day anniversary (or engagementiversary).  We went out for Mexican food with Thomas' parents (only fitting as they were present when he proposed) and then headed home to watch "White Christmas" we went to the musical the night Thomas proposed so it is a tradition of ours (I fell asleep for the last 10 minutes, oops!).  You might also know (if you have read my infertility journey page) that this day also marks the day that we officially "lost" our first pregnancy by way of an ectopic rupture repair surgery.  So this day is bittersweet for us, we CHOOSE to focus on our engagementiversary on December 6th but that doesn't mean we forget our loss.

Saturday I had a great time with my soon to be sister-in-law heading out to a cute little tea place/gift shop and having some much needed bonding time.  While I was out, Thomas took advantage of the clear weather (freezing as it was) to put up our Christmas lights on the outside of our house.  I got some red lights on clearance after Christmas last year to go on our 3 trees out front and we got those up as well.  We have a pair of light up reindeer for our yard that we got as hand me downs, and this year the lights on the body of one have gone out so we have a floating reindeer head!  Then for dinner we headed over to Thomas' parents for dinner.

Sunday we volunteered in the church nursery then headed up to Seattle for some Dim Sum with my dad, sister and her husband.  We love to go to House of Hong for this.  Dim Sum is like Chinese hors d'oeuvres that they bring around on little carts.  There are some strange things that you can eat but we pretty much get the same stuff each time.  If you haven't been before I really recommend it.  Try the shumai, shrimp ball, and the vegetable noodle.  They might look a little strange but they are SO GOOD.  After Dim Sum we went to Trinity Tree Farm so that Ellie could experience going to pick out and cut down your own tree.  It was a lovely place with a cute gift shop and not too far out of town, but we did have to go up a big winding hill that was only about a car and a half wide so we were THANKFUL it wasn't snowing or icy.  We got all bundled up but were still freezing, I had to take Ellie into the shop to warm up a bit and when I came back out to meet up with the family they were coming back with a tree that my dad picked out for his house.  So Ellie and I missed the whole tree cutting experience. BOO!!!!  Hopefully she will get to see it next year.  (Yes I know she is only 6 months old but I want to show her that she got to do these types of things).  Then we headed home and had a nice relaxing evening.

via



How was your weekend?  Did you do anything exciting?

♥ Ashley

Nursery Tour

Okay I totally recognize that this post is a long time coming considering Ellie  is already six months old! Sorry for the delay but I just had a few projects that I wanted to make sure were complete before I gave the preliminary tour. 

In a way we were fortunate for the adoption process to be able to take our time in creating and to put together Ellie's  room. However due to the fact that we were adopting I was a little hesitant in completing the nursery for that "just in case". I wanted to make sure that the nursery was going to be fairly gender-neutral since we weren't exactly sure if we were going to get a boy or girl when we started the whole process. When we  found out that Ellie was a girl, then I decided it was okay to start adding a few touches of pink. It is my hope that this room will be able to transition from baby to toddler to child if at all possible without a whole lot redecorating. Yellow and grey have always been a favorite color combination of mine. I actually painted this room when we first moved in, this yellow color, thinking it would be nice as a guestroom and then hopefully eventually as a nursery color.  Luckily Thomas was on board with my color inspiration. He helped paint a second coat and do the trimwork white.  I originally got the curtains thinking they would be perfect for a baby room with being fairly gender-neutral and a transitional fabric pattern. I love the colors that were in these curtains and use them as inspiration throughout the room.

I was introduced to the Jenny Lind crib from Jessica's blog Little Baby Garvin and fell in love knowing that that was what I had to get!!  I love that it has a vintage look that meets today's safety standards. I also am a huge fan that it's white. 

There are a few hand-me-down pieces of furniture in Ellies room.  I also got a bunch of the picture ledges that I have seen in a lot of nurseries, from IKEA, that holds all of Ellie's books.

My favorite thing in this nursery is the chandelier.  I got it a few years ago with my mom before she passed away at a junk show that we attended. Originally it  was a purple color and I spray-painted it grey to match the dresser in her room. Hobnail, especially white hobnail, is one of my most favorite things.  I almost always purchase a piece when I am out shopping at vintage stores.

So without further ado I present Ellie's nursery!!!

-Ashley 

5 on Friday

How is it Friday already?!!!??!?!?

Linking up with Darci from "The Good Life" for:

[ONE]

 Little Miss Ellie is 28 weeks!!!  Read all about it here.

[TWO]

Most of my Christmas decorations are up in the house. We are hoping to get our lights up this weekend on the outside of our house. It's so fun going through all of our Christmas boxes to see all the things we have. It's like Christmas because I often forget all the great goodies I picked up at the after Christmas sales!!

[THREE]

Each year I host a Ladies Christmas Tea at our farm. It's been slow going but I am finally starting to get a good following for it. Even though I don't have a lot of ladies show up I have so much fun planning and hosting. 

{FOUR}

I have done some of my Christmas shopping already. We pretty much have Ellie done and I have just one more thing for Thomas then it's picking out stocking stuffers and getting gifts for other family members!!

[FIVE]

Today is my 7 year engagementiversary with my dear husband.  I came home a day early from college and we were preparing to go to see "White Christmas" at the 5th Ave Theatre in Seattle with our parents. All of us were meeting at my parents house when Thomas proposed in front of everyone by the tree!  After a pause from the shock and my mom answering "Yes" for me I answered as well with a "ok, yes I'll marry you!"

♥ Ashley

{weekly update} week 28

Oh me, oh my another week has gone by!  What a sweet little blessing our darling Ellie Faith is!  We had a fantastic week and thoroughly enjoyed our Thanksgiving with our sweetie.  This past week was SUPER busy and our baby girl was a total trooper and just went along for the ride!!

Diet: Girlfriend tried sweet potatoes on Wednesday and HATED them!  I tried again on Thanksgiving just to make sure it wasn't because she had just had FIVE shots at the doctors.  Nope, she thought they were so bad she gagged!  But she still loves her peas, broccoli, and rice cereal.  She totally knows what a bottle is now and will try to grab it from our hands to put in her mouth when we are carrying the two together.  It really is the cutest thing.  She also watches us eat now and is pretty excited about the whole idea.  She is eating on average 28 ounces a day.

Sleep: Actually our little one is a great sleeper. She goes for about 8-10 hours at night with her usual 2 1/2-3 hour morning nap and then a few cat naps in the late afternoon.  The best thing about her is she is an excellent sleeper.  She sleeps in the car, during worship music at church, in restaurants and out shopping!!  I am so thankful that she can fall asleep anywhere because I didn't want to be one of those families that are tied to being home during nap time because their kids can't sleep anywhere else.  We are so fortunate that she has such a great personality!

Crying: Again not too bad.  Obviously she gets upset when super tired or hungry.  We have had a few whimper moments but she is easily distracted at this point.  Ellie is truly a joy.

Clothes: We are pulling out all of our stocked up Christmas apparel in sizes 3-6 month.  A few of her things are the 6-12 or the 9-12 that sort of fit.  I am so excited to get her ready for Santa pictures, just need to find some festive headbands - off to etsy.com I go!!

Social: Busy busy girl.  Ellie Faith had her 6 month check up (doctor said she has thighs of thunder and can probably kick us across the room!!) with 5 shots - poor thing.  She gained weight but didn't grow at all in her height/length.  Our little shortie and I love it! EF went to Thanksgiving at Thomas' parents house and sat at the table with us in her high chair.  I think she loved being a part of the table.  We are going to start working/practicing that this week!  Then we went on a mini overnight vaca to Vancouver, BC with my MIL.  We had a great time shopping and seeing the sights and going to our fave places (we try to make it there once a year).  It was so fun taking her on a trip with us and she was AMAZING.  She didn't get too fussy with our "on the go" schedule and ate wherever she needed to.  Most of her time was spend in the Ergo and she slept quite a bit in there.  I just love that special time we get to have when I carry her.  When we got home we got to relax for a bit and then the next day we were up in Seattle for a Surprise Birthday dinner!!

Baby Gear Love: This week is was definitely the Ergo, car seat and our umbrella stroller.  She also loves mirrors and Sofie, and this crinkly tag toy we got at Sugar Babies.

Milestones: Celebrated her first Thanksgiving.  Went on her first trip out of state and country.  She is starting to be able to balance on all fours! Loves to help self feed and is really good at moving her arms.  She also stands with slight assistance and stood for about 5 seconds all on her own yesterday!!

Mama:  I am doing good.  I had a great time on vacation and sight seeing/shopping.  This season really is getting me so excited for Christmas!  I feel like I am in a really good place right now and am super happy!

I have enjoyed this week so much.  I loved spending time with my little one and taking her on a vacation! She is so much fun and super interactive.  Ellie has the best little personality and is the light of my life.

♥ Ashley

Thanksgiving Weekend Recap

Happy belated Thanksgiving!! We had the most spectacular time this past weekend! I hope you all had a fabulous time and have bellies full of turkey and pie.

On Wednesday, I had a half day at work and then it was straight to Ellie's dr. appt. she is doing well and is a healthy girl. When we got home I started making pies for Thanksgiving dessert (I'm kinda the dessert girl in my married family). I made a Vanilla Maple Pumpkin Pie and a Cranpple Crumb Pie. My pie crusts were a success.  Pie crusts are tricky but the more you make them the better you get, so I make pies often. (Actually it was my New Years resolution to make Thomas a pie each month-I think I only missed one month!)

Thursday we had a lovely morning at home enjoying our little nugget and relaxing before the "storm" of our soon to be whirlwind weekend. Dinner was at the in-laws this year and boy was it yummy. I have a hard time choosing between green bean casserole and stuffing or do you call it dressing? We had some great family time and just conversing with each other.   Ellie sat at the table in her high chair and I think fully enjoyed the holiday (minus sweet potatoes-she gagged). 

Friday we were up and at 'em early to head up to Vancouver, BC. Ellie's first trip out of the country, and state for that matter. We arrived around 10am and went straight to Granville Island to check out the market. From there we had lunch at our fave Italian restaurant Trattoria Italian Kitchen and Ellie slept through the meal. 

     Off for more shopping on Granville Street to check out some fave shops, Peridot and Chapters bookstore among others. We got free parking in the garage because a lady gave us her paid ticket as she left to take her spot!! They pay it forward in Canada too. 

     Once we were done shopping we headed to our hotel, the Executive Hotel Vintage Park to check in, give Ellie some play time and get ready for dinner. The hotel was lovely and Ellie was so happy to be out of the ergo and stroller. She ate and played for about 2 hours and then it was time to head out to dinner. We ate at Red Robin and the place was packed. Once again Ellie slept through the meal. Back to the hotel to stay in for the night. 

Saturday morning was a little later than the day before, thank goodness.  We made a stop at our fave coffee place, Delany's.  Then shopping on Robson. Roots is a must stop as are Zara and TNA. Then we also spent some time at Saje, a natural store. I am in love with this store and the sweet people who work there. They are so kind a knowledgeable, I wish they had a store in the US, preferably next to my house. We got some great products from there and I am looking into getting more online. 

   Once we made our purchases on Robson we decided it was time to head back home. The weather was raining so we really weren't interested in being outside much longer.  We made it through the border in record time. Ate lunner at Bobs Burgers in Birch Bay and were home by 7pm!!

On Sunday we headed up to Seattle to go to a Surprise Birthday party for Thomas' Aunt at The Spaghetti Factory. Boy was she surprised. She got all teary and was so happy we all came out to celebrate her. It was another great excuse to all get together during the holiday season!

All in all we had a great holiday and Ellie was a STAR traveler. Just the sweetest and best girl. I will have more info on what to bring for an overnight road trip for a 6 month old. As well as a funny story about the elevators in the hotel. Stay tuned you won't want to miss this! 

-Ashley