A smorgisboard of pictures...

I have seriously been trying to finish this post for a good week or so here goes...

This has got to be one of my most favorite faces of the many faces Ella Bear makes.

I caught her playing and this is the reaction I got...

A couple weeks ago Ella and I met up with my good ole friends Rei rei and Kat (from my days at IKEA) for lunch at Mission Burrito. I hadn't seen Rei since I think our wedding so it was really nice catching up and he finally got to meet Ella! I hadn't seen Kathryn in several years...I can't even remember when. Rei is still living in New York (Brooklyn) and is a manager at Room & Board and Kathryn is an EMT here in Houston. Here are a couple of pics from lunch...

Ella's first 4th of July was spent hanging out at the pool with Grandma and Pawpaw and then Granny & Poppa came over Sunday night and brought us dinner and we watched a movie.

Ella had her little flip flops on for the first time...

We had dinner (brisket and beans) at Grandma's after a day at the pool.

Sofia and Ella playing. I know Sofia can't wait until Ella gets a little bigger so she can play with her more.

These are all a little backwards but this is after I got her out of the pool and was drying her off.

We matched!

We got Ella a new little float and she LOVED it! Her little legs were kicking up a storm underneath there!

She played with the floaties the whole time.

Smiling at Grandma!

As for our new house, we have been working on something every day. Chris has been working on a custom basketball goal. Poppa Lowry got him started on it and he recently painted it and has been working on it at night because it's so hot during the day. He has also been trying to get someone out to the house to clean and service our hot tub with no luck. One guy did come out and try cleaning it and said it had a leak and that he would be back to check the pumps and never came back. The electrician finally came back yesterday to finish the gas line after calling him numerous time with no answers! Needless to say, we have a lot of work to do on the house but we are definitely glad that we have it! I have been painting Ella's room for what seems like a month now. I have been back to the paint store 5 times already!

On to other news...Ella is starting to like her solids! We started her off with Avocado about a month ago then sweet potatoes, oatmeal, bananas, and most recently butternut squash. In the last couple days she has started to actually swallow the food without our help or without chasing it with water. Most of the food before would be on her bib or her face but now she is getting the hang of it and eating it better. I've been making all of her food so far and it has been really fun and kindof rewarding to see her eating it. I thought it was going to be hard or time consuming but it isn't at all. I have the

"so easy baby food trays" and it seriously takes me maybe 30 minutes a week to prepare her food.

This was her first taste of sweet taters...most of it ended up on her face. LOL

We've also just started using "gdiapers" and we love those too! We are only really using them when we are at home with Ella. I think I may have turned into a hippy...hey but anything I can do to help save the earth, I'm down for!

Ella is almost crawling...she's doing some form of crawling at least like scooting on her tummy and moving one hand and one knee and then face planting. She's been sitting up really good without support for the past month or so and she jumps in her jumperoo like crazy! She loves that thing! This is from my phone so please excuse the quality...and my loud and goofy voice.

We can put her in there and she'll be content for a while.

We took her to the movies for the second time last Friday (she took her Daddy the night before Father's day to see Star Trek) to see Tranformers but it was sold out so we saw Public Enemy with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. It was pretty good but I would wait to see it on DVD if I had a choice. Anyways, Ella was such a good girl! She sat there and watched the movie and then fell asleep for the most part of it. I was a little nervous taking her into a movie but chris said she does really good so I just went with it. We got ice cream afterwards of course :-)

We had a busy weekend with 3 birthday parties and a baby shower but it was really fun!

These are also from my cell phone but I loved them so please excuse the grainy quality again.

Moving into a new area means getting to try new restaurants which is very exciting to us...you'd think we like to eat or something...LOL

We've tried a couple new places (La Parmigiana's, Locatelli's Pizzeria, Pot Belly Sandwich shop, Fresh Berries Yogurt, Piccomolo Italian Ice Cream, Peli Peli and Shogun Habachi Grill) and they have all been so GOOD! We've still got a couple Sushi places to try but...

There's a place over in the Vintage Park area (249 & Louetta) just minutes from our house called CheeburgerCheeburger. It's a 50's style hamburger place and holy cow it's wonderful! Their hamburgers are made fresh daily never frozen and you can add whatever toppings/condiments you can think of without being charged for it (grilled onions, guaco, jalapenos, whatever!). The burger that we get is called the semi-serious burger and it's plenty big and it's only $6.99. They also have the BEST milk shakes and TONS of different flavors and/or toppings. I had oreo cheesecake last time and it was heavenly! (Obviously, my cookies n cream/anything oreo craving has not gone away from being pregnant!)

Chris & Ella took Grandma there a couple weeks ago and here is a picture from Grandma's cell phone...

This weekend we'll be getting all of Ella's furniture set-up in her room after painting so she can start playing in there and sleeping in her crib again. I'll have some more pictures up soon from last weekend but for now, I hope everyone has a wonderful week and hopefully we'll get some rain soon!!! God Bless!