A Month!?!?

I cannot believe it has been over A MONTH since I last "blogged"!! What a bad Mommy. :)

We had a great month leading up to the Holidays and an even better time enjoying them once they were here. Ellie's First Christmas. My First Christmas in Charlotte with Thomas' family. Ellie's First New Year. The list goes on.

I'll quickly go through the month of December in this blog leading up to Christmas Eve. My apologies for taking so long but we were just having too much fun to sit at the computer. And I've been working on real estate, too. This week I got my first contract since getting back into it "the game". Woo hoo!

Ellie is appx 4 months here. Time flies. And look how those cheeks are growing, too! :) She's still an angel.

A look at the view from my office.

It's a great view isn't it: Ellie, coffee, Christmas tree, laptop, view out to the sunny days. We only stay this way for a few mintues before Ellie plays on her mat on the floor next to me. She can only sit in the Bumbo for a few minutes before wiggling. And I don't let her wiggle since she's on top of the table. Never fear--I'm always within an arms length to grab her!

Around 4 months, Ellie was practically weaned from sleeping swaddled in a blanket. Here she is in a little sleep gown with her cute "feetsies" hanging out.  Her freedom from the swaddling blanket was completely undone around Christmas when Ellie had a growth spurt causing her to wake up every 2 hours at night even hungrier and more grumpy than before. The swaddle was back in full force to insure as much sleep as possible. Two steps forward, one step back, right?

Update on the nursery: a bookshelf!

Great Uncle Greg and Great Aunt Dawn gave Ellie this wonderful bookshelf that is now home to books, toys, and dolls. It has put the finishing touch on her room.

Thomas, Ellie, and I went to McAdenville (about 30 min from Charlotte) to see their Christmas lights. The city becomes "Christmas Town USA" (this is literally how they advertise) for the month of Dec. It was a great time and the weather cooperated by being clear & cold!

We parked the car in front of the downtown Post Office and walked part of the route so we could enjoy the lights and the homes up close and personal.

The line of cars was unreal...it took us about 20 minutes waiting in line before we could even get to the main road. It was fun to see all the kids so excited!

Mommy & Ellie outside. It was FREEZING but, darn it, it was sunny. We had been couped up for at least 5 days with cold rain and this day was sunny and we took our play time outside. We only lasted about 20 minutes but it was refreshing nonetheless.

All the presents wrapped and ready to go to Aunt Regina's for Christmas morning!

The week before Christmas Thomas, Ellie, and I went to Isabella & Emma's Holiday Recital at their school. It was raining so Daddy protected Ellie since we were sans umbrella.

Here's Isabella, one of the recital stars, signing autographs for Ellie.

"Mom, I want to dance and sing with my older cousins!"

Proud Cousin Isabella after her show.

This was an interesting night. No, Ellie didn't blink for the picture. She is sleeping. This bath was given at about 10pm one night because Ellie had "spit up" all over herself. The sheets, her outfit, her HAIR! Poor angel. You can't imagine my guilt and need to cuddle her once I found that she had spit up and then fallen asleep in it!

She had had such a rough night she couldn't even stay up for her bath.

Wrapping final stocking stuffers and enjoying a cocoa drink with homemade whip cream by Santa's favorite Chef Elf. It was late and we were obviously a little silly.

Christmas, here we come!