It's the most wonderful time of the year...

As you can tell from the tons of pictures in this post, I got my camera back from Nikon this past week! Ella probably wishes it was still in the repair shop because I've had it in her face 24/7 since I got it back. I had to make up for lost time :) We have been extremely busy trying to finish up our Christmas shopping, going to Christmas parties, and keeping up with Ella.

We were so busy around Thanksgiving I didn't get a chance to update everyone about what Ella's doing at 17 months. So, since we didn't have any other exciting news I thought I would give you the update in this post! Ella is talking non-stop these days. She can repeat just about anything we say. This could get us all in trouble! :) Some of her newest words are star, moon, ants, dance, jump, light, peas, train, truck, giraffe...I could go on and on because she's learning new words everyday. She started putting words together into simple sentences about a month ago. Her first sentence was "It's a baby cat" and then "It's the baby's da-da." Everything these days is about the "Baby's Da-da." She's such a Daddy's girl! My little cousins nicknamed her "Ella Baby" so Ella refers to herself as Baby. When she's hungry she'll say "baby eat." It's too cute! Ella can also say and identify her ears, eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, toes, hands, and "button." She has also figured out how to get attention for all her bumps and bruises :) She had a bruise on her knee the other day and she would walk around the house with this pitiful look on her face saying "boo-boo." Of course, it melted our hearts and we made a big deal about it! She would laugh when we would kiss it to make it feel better! Most recently, Ella learned to identify and say several letters in the alphabet, as well as, several numbers. Her favorite is "R." She pronounces it "R-R-aaaah." It's the cutest thing! Today in church during prayer, she yelled out several times "It's a NINE!" I'm just thankful that's all she said! I keep telling myself it could have been worse! :) Her brain is like a little sponge taking in everything around her. I constantly have to watch what I say or do around her! Not that I would ever say or do anything bad ;)

Here are just a few of the GAZILLION pictures I took this week! I had to consolidate them into collages because it would take forever to upload all the ones I wanted to publish!

She LOVED this peppermint lollipop! I shouldn't have given it to her at 8:00pm because she was jacked up on sugar and didn't go to sleep until after 11:00pm! Cory could have killed me!

We had this lollipop everywhere! I say "we" because I had as much on me as she did! I had to take her dress off because she was making such a mess!