Say Cheese!

Okay, so I have lots of pictures finally posted. I apologize for the delay. You'd think since I work less I would have more time to do this, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Anyway, here are photos from December. I don't really have too many others after that. I never seem to have the camera around lately for those perfect moments.

Ella in her grass skirt-a Xmas gift from the Gomes'

Celebrating the New Year!

We let Maddie and Taylor have Sparkling Grape Juice in REAL champagne glasses to ring in the New Year! Don't those bathrobes crack you up!?

Going shopping with her new cart-a Xmas gift from Patrick and Kelly. She put the baby in there all by herself.

Maddie and Ella coloring.

Ella taking a rest in the cool play tunnel that Papa got her for Xmas.

Figuring out how to use the spoon!

Connor and Ella playing at the diner that Boo Boo got Ella for Xmas. It's a kitchen on one side and the diner on the other. It even has a little jukebox that plays music and a bell to ring for service. Ella loves this! She plays with it all the time!

I felt like Ms. Hannigan this day! My floors were shining like the top of the Chrysler building! They all wanted to play with the mops and brooms. Who am I to argue....heheh

Maddie handing out presents on Xmas morning.

Blake and Ella in the tent that came with the play tunnel.

Roasting marshmallows using the handy electric marshmallow roaster turny thingy that Santa brought for Peter and Blake.

Eating marshmallows!

Showing off the jewels that Tina got her for XMas. The earrings (which she loves) and the pretty heart necklace that matched her outfit perfectly!

Blake's itchy fingers just dying to open that present on Christmas Eve

So that's that. It was a ton of fun to have the Gomes' stay with us. I loved spending so much time with them. Maddie and Taylor are wonderful nieces. I love them so much!!!

Ella is a little chatterbox these days. She just goes on and on. She's fairly easy to understand, but there are still a few things that I don't quite understand.

As of last week she started sleeping in a twin bed that we bought her. It's been so nice to get her out of our bed! She seems to be doing fine with it so far. At most I have to go in twice a night and just sit with her for a few minutes until she falls back asleep. No complaints from me!

She's rolling up on two pretty quickly. I can hardly believe it!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. (Seeing as how this didn't take me that long to update, I should hopefully be better about updating it more frequently! heeh...yeah right).

Latest(news) and Greatest(cat)

Okay, finally. Here are some more pics. Unfortunately they are not the most recent. My camera is still not working so I haven't been taking any pictures. Need to get it fixed before Jenn and Francis get here though, so hopefully there will more pics soon. She is getting sooo big!

Playin' in the leaves

Kathy sent Blake some popcorn balls for Halloween that you could decorate with all these different edible candies. So Blake and I built them....

and then we ate them...



She loves our IPods

Okay so there's your baby fix.

The big news that I wanted to update everyone on is that I am leaving my current job to take a job as a Paraeducator at Aurora Frontier K-8!! I will be the library assistant. (Actually, assistant to my friend Elizabeth!) My last day at the credit union is December 10th. I can hardly believe it as I have been there for 7 1/2 years. But this opportunity presented itself and I really didn't want to pass it up. It's actually a part-time position. I will be working five hours a day. This will free up time for me to spend with Ella and to also go back to school to get my teaching certificate. And once I have been at the school for a year, they will pay for me to complete my certificate!!

Ella has such a personality now it's so much fun to "hang out" with her. She talks up a storm and moves her arms and hands like she's really concerned and having a serious conversation. When she laughs, sometimes she bends over and slaps her knee like it's just sooo hilarious! Anytime she sees a napkin or tissue she will ball it up and pretend to blow her nose. And she's devious! You'll tell her no, and either she'll cry (which is the usual response), or she'll wait, and then do whatever it was she was doing before with a little evil grin and then look up at you and just wait to see what you're going to do!!

Anyway, she's a ball of fun and I am looking forward to spending more time with her as she gets closer to turning 2!

I have already applied to Metro State and will be attending the Teacher Licensure meeting in a few weeks. I'll be registering for a class for Spring and then I'm on my way!!!!

I'm really excited about this new chapter in my life (even though Peter is a bit nervous).

The other good thing to come out of this is that I will be off the whole time the Gomes' are visiting!! I can't wait to see them all!

On a sad note, our cat Hobbes got really sick over the weekend and my mom and I had to put him down. I got a call from my mom on Saturday afternoon, the vet had just told her that he was pretty bad and that there wasn't really anything they could do. The vet is only 5 minutes away so I left right away. As I walked in to the office it hit me.....Wait....I don't want to do this. I've never had to do this before.

The vet and the techs were very nice and allowed us some time with him. He looked so frail and thin and my mom noticed that he wasn't even purring. And he always had the loudest purrer! It was like an engine!! I really think he was ready to go. But it didn't make it any easier. Once the vet administered the drug, I think I was mostly surprised at how fast he went. In the movies it's always such a slow process. As mom said though, now he can go chase all of the balled up paper and rubber bands that he wants to! What a fun cat he was!! He will be missed.

Okay...

I promise to have a camera fixed by the time all the festivities roll around.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season.

See all of you soon, I'm sure.

It's November!?

Yikes! How time flies. I'll try to do a quick run down of the last few months. And before I forget, can you believe Ella turned 18 months yesterday!? Yay!! She's so much fun. But more about her later.

My camera is being dumb and it won't turn on. I don't know if I need a whole new battery but I feel like I just bought one, so I'm not sure. Anway, there are no Halloween pics yet because I had to use a disposable camera and I've yet to get those developed. Hopefully this weekend.

Anyway, so the last time I think I mentioned our wasp infestation. Well here are some pics.

Peter armed and ready. You can see where we (actually just Peter) cut a whole in the ceiling to get to the nest so that we could finally get rid of them.
Here is what he pulled out from inside the ceiling. You can kind of see the comb like stuff that's the next. The bright yellow spots are the wasps (dead).

The window sill in our bedroom. AHHHHH!!!

Close up of the hole he cut. To the left you can see a tiny little hole. That's the hole that they originally made themselves and got into the house. We had taped over that and sprayed hoping they would just leave, but as you could tell, they had a pretty nice nest going so we had to do a bit more work. So we've patched the hole and caulked all of the little openings on the outside of the house. Hopefully that should do the trick and we won't have any little visitors next summer.
About a month ago, Tina was housesitting for a friend who owns a boxer. Her name is Karma. She's about 8. Tina brought her over one night so Koa and she could play. They got along really well. It was fun to see Koa with a friend.

We had just thrown some chicken bones away and they were over there scouting out the goods. Karma's in the red collar.

How silly! Karma's on the right. Ella was pretty funny. She would have to do a double take to figure out who was who.

This was taken quite a while ago, but I've been wanting to get it on here so everyone could see how cute they are! Connor just cracks me up.

Ella has started to use the walker now more than she ever did when she actually needed it! Look at those long legs! Ha. She looks so silly in it, but she just tools around upstairs like it makes perfect sense for her to be using it!

Blake played another season of baseball this summer. They were the Purple Dragons this year (even though Blake voted for the Rockies). He was awesome! He was the talk of the team for awhile after he hit a monster triple in to center field!! It was way cool. He's also going to sign up for basketball this fall. This will be his first season playing. Hopefully he likes it as much as he likes baseball.

The last pics are just random ones of Ella. She loves to sit at the computer and play. For some reason this day she wanted to wear this hat, which is actually an infant hat so we really had to squeeze it on her head. But she would freak out if it came off, so we just kept putting it back on her!

Out in the backyard leaves.

Squishy, puffy cheeks

Doin' a puzzle

More crazy hat time.

She has gotten so big over the last few months and has started doing and saying tons of big kid things! It's crazy. She says mommy, daddy, Blake, Koa, Gramma, Papa, doggy, milk, blankie, shoes, socks, more, cat, balloon. And of course if she can't say it she just screams! She follows instructions really well and is very concerned about things being in the right place or with the right person. So if she sees one of our cell phones she has to bring it to us and we can't just set it back down or she'll had it back to us until we put it in our pocket. She will also take Peter's wallet and try to put it in her pocket! She can figure out how things work pretty quickly as well. I brought a laptop home from work and it took her about two seconds to figure out where the power button was.

Her 18 month appointment is next week. I'm guessing she'll be a tad skinny for her age, but we'll see. I'm not too worried about it, she's an eating machine!

I'll try to post this weekend if I get Halloween pictures.

Pics from the last few months...

I was putting together a bookcase for Ella and before I put the final touches on (adding in the shelf) Ella decided to make it a book nook...literally.

The Pooh couch is not just Ella's favorite.

Found this cute little chair at Big Lots and Gramma had to buy it for her. She loves to sit in it.

Was trying to get some cute pics to submit for this baby contest. She used to wrinkle her nose and make this funny face, she hasn't really done it lately though. Guess that's just a 13 month old thing, she's too old for that silliness now.

Love this pic...

The whole gang after the New Kids concert. Posin' in front of the limo.

Here's all the babies at the zoo, in front of the sea lions. Connor, Ella, Lorelei.

Oh oh oh, you're my cover girl, oh oh oh,

oh oh oh

My squishy.

My sister's awesome tattoo!

Me and Ella right before getting in the limo and hittin the road

Jenn and I showin' the love.

Ness and I showin the love...

Ella loves to play at the computer.

Ella in her "Future Astronaut" bib that she got from Great Uncle Dave who works...eh hem...worked, for NASA. (He retired this year!)

Ella outside picking off the dead flowers.

Ain't she cute?

Busy as a...Wasp?

As you have probably already guessed, we have been pretty busy here at the Hanley household.

Unfortunately I can not locate my USB cord for my camera so I can't post any pics tonight. I'm sure Ella has run off with it somewhere, so once I find it I will get some pictures up.

My sister Jennifer and my friend Whitney came out to visit in July. It was for the New Kids on the Block concert and boy did we have fun!!

The concert was a blast and it was so great to have people in town and to spend time with family and friends. It went by so quickly though, and I really miss them.

We have a picture of Lorelei on the fridge and Ella will point to it and say "baby" and get a big smile!

It was right around that time that I applied for the Accounting manager position. And I finally found out on July 31st that I got the job! Yay!!!! They are requiring me to take some Accounting courses (apparently they think my English degree "doesn't count") so it has been a busy month for me learning tons of stuff at work and registering for class.

My class officially starts next week. It is an online course which I am thankful for. I wouldn't want to be away from Ella two nights a week. I feel like I hardly see her as it is!!

About two weeks ago, Peter and I were hearing this weird noise in our bedroom. It sounded like something up in the attic but it was always in the same place. At first I chalked it up to the vents creaking when the dryer was running. But then we realized it was still happening when the dryer was off.

Well, that Saturday I had put Ella down for a nap and had gone to catch some Z's myself, I woke up to about thirty wasps in our bedroom!!! They had eaten a whole in our ceiling and were coming out. I actually opened my eyes when I heard some buzzing and then saw about two or three wasps flying over by the window, so I grabbed Koa and ran out the room, shutting the door behind me. I got Peter and when he went in he saw all the wasps on our window. Later we guessed there were close to a hundred in our room!

We tried to reach a pest control place but they are all closed on the weekend. Can you believe that!!? I was so annoyed. I guess you're not supposed to have pest problems on the weekend! Ugh! So I called my friend Elizabeth and her brother suggested that we make the room as dark as possible to get the wasps to fly back up in their nest and then to spray up in the hole.

Well we kind of did it backwards and Peter sprayed the hole before we made the room dark, so now the wasps were not going to go back to the nest! So he just went in the bedroom and sprayed all of the ones on the window. We could see where they were getting in from the outside so we sprayed there too.

It got rid of most of them, but over the past few days we have seen them flying back into the house and today we could here them up there again. So, we'll (actually Peter) will have to go up in the attic and spray the actual nest. I hope he's okay, cause I ain't going up there!!! I'll keep you posted on the wasp invasion.

Unfortunately, about four weeks ago I started getting a cough. I didn't think it was anything serious because I felt fine otherwise. I waited until the third week (last week) to see a doctor. She diagnosed me with Bronchitis and gave me some antibiotics and an inhaler. They also did a chest x-ray to rule out pneumonia. After a couple of days I thought I was getting better. But over this past weekend I really started to feel sick again. So I went back to the doctor yesterday and they diagnosed me with pneumonia. They have given me steroids and another antibiotic. I stayed home from work one day last week, and today.

This came at an awful time for work. I'm hoping I am feeling better though before class starts.

Blake started the 4th grade in July! I'm excited for him because 4th grade was one of my favorites. You learn the state capitals! I remember my mom used to quiz me over breakfast every morning. He got a bike over the weekend and has already had his first spill. He scrapped his elbow and knee pretty badly, but Boo Boo fixed him up pretty good. It was a good thing I had some bandages and medical tape...I guess I better stay stocked up on that stuff!!

He's really into baseball now and stays up on all of the stats just like Peter. Go Rockies!!

Ella is getting so big! I realized when I was going to update the blog that I really haven't taken that many pictures lately. I have to get better about that. But I do have some cute ones that I need to put up here.

She motors all over the house now. Upstairs, downstairs, she climbs up on the furniture and loves to sit in her little Pooh couch (a hand me down from Madeline and Taylor).

She talks a ton and is really good at letting us know what she wants. She says baby, ball, balloon, blankie, doggie, shoes, milk, Koa and Blake. Mommy and Daddy are an iffy thing. We can never tell if she is just making sounds or if she understands that we are Mommy and Daddy. If anything, she gets Daddy more than Mommy. If you tell her to take something to Daddy she will go to Peter, not so much with the Mommy....eventually I'm sure she'll be driving me crazy though, so I won't complain!!!

Anyway as soon as I find the cord I will put up some pics.

Just wanted to get an update on here....finally!

!!Happy 4th of July!!

I forgot my camera today so I don't have any pictures. Ugh! But we spent the day at Grandma's going through old photo albums and watching tributes to Michael Jackson on CNN. It was kind of drizzly outside so we didn't do many fireworks. We did some sparklers and Ella liked those!

I have a lot of pictures from Texas that I wanted to put on here. They are totally out of order and I don't feel like rearranging them so bear with me.

This pic I took the other day from our bedroom window so there is a screen in front of me, but I thought it was cute. Peter and Ella out weeding...


One of the days in Texas, Peter, Ella, Blake, Paul, Lisa, and I drove to South Padre Island. On the way we stopped at this lighthouse. They were charging $3.00 to go to the top so just Blake and I went. It was pretty cool to see the view, but it was windy...and hot.



Here's Blake going up the last few steps...

And here's us at the top!! Yay!!


Another day, Kathy, Peter, Blake, and I went to Mexico. We parked on the US side of the border and just walked over. If anyone is wondering, it's just a $.60 toll. Going there was pretty easy. Just walked right in. Coming back there was a bit more security! Checked our passports, asked Peter and I whether Ella was our daughter, whether Kathy was Blake's grandmother....weird. But it was an interesting experience. We walked around in what seemed to be the Mexican version of 16th St. Mall. It was very very hot. We ate at a restaraunt that our shuttle driver recommened. It was pretty good. Definitely different than what we are used to though. Two things I noticed. 1. No one had a stoller except Peter and I. Everyone was carrying their kids. The sidewalks were pretty run down so you couldn't really push a stroller very well, but man...it was way too hot to be carrying around those little heat generators!! 2. At the restaraunt there was another little boy and he was just walking around and playing. We let Ella get down and play with him. The boy would go over by the cooks as well. This made me nervous, because here people freak out and want you to "control your kid", but there the cooks would play with the boy and say hi and the waiters seemed fine with Ella and the boy walking around. Peter's brother made the observation that Mexico has much more of a "it takes a village" mentality than the US. Just from that one experience, I'd have to agree. And I have to say that it was a bit refreshing to not be so worried about what other people thought about your kid when really they're just doing stuff that kids do.....walk around and explore.
But that stroller thing totally bothered me!!! I'm thinking...business opportunity anyone?! hehe

One morning Blake and Peter went out on kayaks that the neighbors had so graciously offered to us. Peter and I went out when they were done. It was really fun. Blake and Peter just stayed in the harbor. At first when Blake got in he was a little nervous...I was nervous just watching him. But once he steadied himself, he was great. He figured out how to steer pretty quickly and then he and Peter were off! Peter and I went out to the ocean, we sat for awhile and just took in the view, but when I turned around and realized we had drifted pretty far, I freaked and headed back to the harbor!!

I finally got to meet Blake's and Ella's cousins, Colin and Ciara. How cute they are!! They are the sweetest kids. Colin is so smart and kind. And Ciara is so sweet and funny.
Here's Ella and Colin playing together.

Here's the whole gang.

And of course we had to go the beach. Ella and I only went once. I can't stand all the sand that gets everywhere! But Peter went back a few times with his brother and Blake.

This is a good shot of everyone just hanging out and playing in the sand.

Blake riding some waves.

Ella was very bold. She would just run right out into the water! Kinda scary. And you'd think as much as she dislikes bath time she would have nothing to do with the pool or ocean, but she loved both. Within the first ten minutes of being in the pool Peter had taught her how to put her face in the water!! Crazy kid.

We had a great time in Texas. It was so good to spend time with the whole family. I hope we can all do it again soon.

We had a busy month in June with the trip to Texas and a lot of birthdays. July will be even busier.

While we started off the month on a sad note (a co-worker and friend of Peter's was killed two weeks ago and we attended her funeral last Thursday) we are looking forward to Blake returning from Texas next week!! More birthdays (Venessa, Anna, and Peter), and my sister and Whitney coming in from out of town for the New Kids on the Block concert!!!

Ella was officially 14 months old yesterday. Yay! She is so much fun. She says hi and bye. She kind of says bottle and blankie, but they both sounds the same, it is just whatever she is pointing at. She can also give high fives, and claps when she is excited or if the Rockies are on. She loves to chase us or play hide and seek. She is still not a huge fan of bathtime, or getting her hair combed. She now has seven teeth! All of a sudden three came in at the same time. She wasn't very happy about that, and neither was I! But she's trooper, it was only about two or three days that we would notice that she was unusually fussy. She is still a huge fan of any kind of fruit, except cantaloupe and will pretty much try anything we give her.

She has another check up at 15 months, and that's just right around the corner! Crazy!!

Hope everyone is having a great summer!!