Ella's 1st Birthday!

We can't believe that Ella turned 1 on Sunday! Mary and Betsy were our special guests in town to visit for the weekend and help us celebrate with Ella...they made it much more of a party! The huge banner you see in the pics is thanks to Betsy!

And since there have been quite a few complaints about the lack of posting lately, here are a few other recent pics...

Ella has been busy!

Here are some new pictures and videos of Ella. She is on the move all the time now which keeps us busy and tired. Ella has been cheering on the Wolverines and has even perfected her own "hike" pose. And we had a nice visit from Uncle Howard, Aunt Ellen, Rachel, and David!

I guess this is what Ella thought of the food we offered to her...

And here she is practicing the "hike" again...

Ella's First Trip to Michigan!

We made a quick trip to Michigan so that Ella could meet more of our family. We were only home for a few days, but as you can see from the pictures Ella got to see a lot of people during a very short visit!

Our trip started out in Port Huron (Andrea's hometown)...

And then we moved to Royal Oak (Aaron's hometown) for the second half of the trip...

Recent pics

Early this morning we heard Ella laughing and when we went in to check on her this is what we saw:

Ella is really liking Des, who knows how to stay just

out of her reach...

This weekend Ella got to meet Aunt Paulette for the first time, while she was visiting a friend in Raleigh.

Sitting

Ella has started sitting on her own, but wasn't too excited about us taking pictures. We'll try for some better ones this week.

Funny Video

Apparently Ella finds her own blog very funny...

but she's still not too happy after bathtime...

Ella's 1st Playdate

Ella had fun on Friday when she got to play with Lidia. We're hoping that Lidia shows Ella how fun tummy time can be...she only lasted about 2 min before crying, but that's an improvement!