1st Birthday Bash!

First of all, I can't believe I have a one year old. After all the waiting and struggle to have a baby, it's surreal that she's been with us for a year already! And we've been able to keep her alive and thriving at that!
A lot of this post will be for 'journaling' purposes, so it may not be too entertaining, but the cute pictures can keep you entertained!
For Ella's birthday we had a family party at Jer's parents house. We decorated with some cute balloons outside and inside (clear and purple w/white polka dots and pearl pink) and some pink and white streamers.

Luckily we had more people come than we thought. Both of our parents were there, all but one of the families of Jer's siblings was there (Justin's family), my oldest brother, Chris, and his oldest 2 kids came (Lorie just had Jefferson 9 days ago so they didn't come! Rich's family was sick and Andy's family lives in AZ). We had water, fruit, little deli sandwiches, cupcakes, and ice cream. I made 2 kinds of cupcakes: chocolate w/vanilla almond cream cheese frosting (dyed pink and used neufchatel instead of cream cheese) and white cake w/chocolate frosting (I was going to dye the cake pink, but forgot to, oops).

For Ella's 'smash cake' I marbled the chocolate and white cake and put chocolate frosting on it.
She was a little overwhelmed by all the attention, but she got over it I think.

She didn't know what to think of it at first, but really got into it after a couple minutes. Her little cousin who's 3 weeks older than her came up and was eating her crumbs that had fallen to the seat of the high chair, it was so cute and funny.

She got lots of fun presents from everyone, she really is super spoiled. I feel so lucky to have the family that we do, they're so loving and supportive to Ella (and us).

The presents she got:
From RaKell: Winnie the Pooh toy chest full of assorted books, activity books and paintbrushes, Goldfish shaped snack box, a cute knit hat, 2 outfits, a swimsuit, a pair of super cute sandals, and a couple of little stuffed animals and finger puppets
From us: 2 pairs of gripper feet pajamas, block sorting box, 4 pack of princess books, and Jer made her a DVD slide-show to music of her 1st year
From my parents: pillow bag w/4 Suzie's Zoo books and a handmade kitty
From Jer's parents: life jacket, swim suit, sun hat, Little People house
From Chris's family: VTech my first laptop
From Rich's family (they sent a gift w/my parents): B. You linking rings
From Jenny's family: a bunch of different books, touch and feel, peek-a-boo, etc
From Josh's family: Princess Activity Hut
From Jake's family: little shopping cart full of little boxes w/different foods on the front

I was serious when I said she was spoiled, that's a pretty big list. It took a couple of days to find homes in our house for all her fun stuff.

On another exciting note, she took her first half-step that night. She hasn't done anymore by-herself walking since, but that's still pretty big news to me!

I love her so much. It's crazy to look at the pictures through the last year and how much she's changed. She's starting to look like a little girl now and it makes me so sad and excited at the same time.


Here's to the next amazing year of your life, little miss, can't wait to see what's in store!

New Dinner Plan

So, if you know me, you know I'm really indecisive. This is very evident around dinner time in our house. Usually around 4:30 the conversation goes something like this:

Me: Jer, what do you want for dinner?
Jer: I don't care.
Me: What are you in the mood for?
Jer: Whatever you feel like making.
Me: I don't know what to make, that's why I'm asking you.

And around and around we go. I don't even remember what we eat half the time, and we probably eat out more than we should (though part of that is because the nights Jer has class and Ella and I go with him, we're in such a hurry to get going that there isn't time to make something).

Well, this isn't really a problem anymore. Yay! I've tried meal planning before, but it never stuck or worked and I couldn't stay motivated, but awhile ago I saw a cooking segment on Studio 5 where the guest said something about a theme night every night (different genres). I thought to myself, that might work, and what will it hurt to try? So I worked up a list of something different every night (crock pot, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, etc), and wouldn't you know it actually works?! We're on our 3rd week and it's made life so much easier. I just look at my chart to see what kind of food we're supposed to have that night and then narrow it down from there; example: Wed is Italian night, last week we had chicken tetrazzini, tonight we'll probably have spaghetti). I've made allowances for left-overs (pulled pork one night, pulled pork tacos the next) and random nights where we can have sandwiches or breakfast for dinner (or something else), but I'm so happy to say THIS IS WORKING!
Just wanted to throw this out there in case anyone else could benefit from this idea!

Photo Shoot

For Ella's 1st Birthday, I decided to attempt to take her pictures. Partly because I'm cheap, but mostly because I don't have a car just waiting around to be used and my job can be inconsistent through the day, which makes scheduling things really frustrating and difficult. So I dressed her in her cute "Introducing ME!" shirt and the tutu I made her and set her up in her room (she gets really great natural light in there).
These are some of the resulting pics (I took a bunch, but she's a mover and most of them didn't turn out), along w/some other fun ones I had to throw in for your viewing pleasure.


"The Queen"

Deep in thought

Giggly girl

Goofy smiler

Adorable

Precious smile

Busy w/her toys

Busy-body

Snuggling w/daddy

Reading a book

Lovin' ice cream

I sure love my babe! I can't believe she's gonna be 1 in less than 2 weeks! Time is a crazy crazy thing.

Strange

I realized the other day that I've been admitted (not including the testing, etc) to the hospital in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. This seems like a lot of time in the hospital for a relatively healthy younger person. 2010 was the only 'happy' reason I was in. I'm really hoping that 2011 won't be following that trend. It's expensive and annoying and depressing!

In case you were wondering why:
2007- first laporoscopy hysteroscopy w/lysis of the intra-uterine septum (to get rid of the strip of tissue in my uterus so a baby could grow there)
2008- second "
2009- D&C
2010- labor and delivery (yay!) :)

I'm only a month late..

Better late than never, right?
Christmas was a little different this year for us, mostly because of Ella, though I'm sure she didn't know what was going on. Sometimes she was interested in pulling the wrapping paper off the presents, sometimes she just wanted to get moving again (since she started crawling at the beginning of Dec.)
We put the tree up on our old T.V. stand to keep her away from it, as well as the presents. She was pretty good about staying away from it all though.

Some of what we did was:

Have a visit with Auntie Clause (Aunt RaKell) and getting fun presents:

(Ella got a snowsuit, little teddy bear, and wooden ornaments-Thanks Kell!)

We made a gingerbread family:
We went ice skating with the Thornes and Ella got to ride in her cousin's little sled:
Had a Polar Express party in our P.J.s with the Thorne side:

(Playing with Gracie and Kai)

(Crawling with Oliver and Kai on the table after dinner.)

Helped mommy shovel the driveway in the cute snowsuit from Auntie Claus:
Dressed like and elf and got a cute Christmas tutu from Aunt Amy at the Berrett Christmas party:
Went to see Santa at the mall with Aunt Erika and cousin Kai, as well as see him at Aunt Shirley's Christmas party:(She was happy as a clam sitting there with Kai, she was giggling and even tugged on Santa's beard a bit, but when she looked him strait in the face, she lost it. They even had a sequence of pictures of her face clouding up. It was so funny and cute, but sad too. I, of course, rescued her while Kai just chilled, nothing phased him. Hopefully we'll have many more cousin outings as they grow up, it's fun to be out and about with them.)


Got cute boots from cousin Kai in the cousin gift exchange:
Ella got lots of other fun presents: a cute flower picture to hang in her room, cute butterfly and flower stickers to decorate her room with, a curiosity cube toy, and some fun new outfits from Grandma and Grandpa Thorne. From my parents she got a handmade teddy bear with a pocket for a rice bag (you can heat or freeze). From Santa she got some new pajamas and a dolly. From us she got some new clothes and a couple of toys. I think she had a pretty good 1st Christmas, and I know we were pretty happy to finally be able to share our Christmas with a little one.

More about Ella lately: she pulls herself up on pretty much anything she can find. Her 2 bottom teeth finally came in- to stay this time (I never knew teeth could pop up and go back down-talk about torture!) She jabbers and giggles, loves to feed herself her snacks and loves to pinch. She'll be 10 months old tomorrow!!! She's so perfect and so wonderful and I love her SO much, I can't imagine not having her.

I won!

A couple of weeks ago, I won a contest for emailing the show "Good Things Utah" on channel 4. The contest they've been running all month (there's a winner every day) is "The Greatest Gift You Ever Gave". I wrote in about a gift I gave my mom:

GTU,

For as long as I could remember, my mom NEVER wore her diamond engagement ring, just her plain wedding band. She always kept it in it's box in her jewelry drawer, and as I got older I became curious as to why she never wore it (it's simple but very pretty). She told me it was because the prongs had worn down and she was afraid the diamond would get lost. I felt so bad about this that when I had the money to, I snuck it out of her room, and took it to the jewelry store to have it re-pronged and cleaned. I almost didn't recognize it when I went to pick it up. I could hardly wait to give her her ring back, and when she opened the gift, she was so touched that she started to cry a little. It made me so happy to have given her so much joy and I love to see her wearing her ring again after so long (my parents have been married 40 years now)!

When they said they were going to announce the winner, I figured it probably wouldn't be me. Then they said my name and I thought....maybe it's a different Julianna Thorne (yeah right, I'm pretty sure there aren't that many of us in the world), then they read my email. I was in shock and kind of giddy! Anyway, I won this:Left to right: "Mickey's Magical Christmas", "Mickey Saves Santa: and other Mouseketales", "Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving", "The Muppet Christmas Carol", "A Muppets Christmas", "Santa Buddies", "Snow Buddies", "Phineas and Ferb: A Very Perry Christmas", "Mickey's Christmas Carol", and "The Nightmare Before Christmas".
Over $200 worth of Christmas Disney DVDs! We've only heard of a couple of them, but they'll be great for when Ella's a little older, and for our future kiddos.

THANK YOU, "GOOD THINGS UTAH"!!


Oh, and by the way, has anyone else noticed how much more the word 'Christmas' is being said on T.V? I'm loving it! For awhile there they wanted to be PC or whatever and wouldn't say Christmas, but now people are saying it again! Yay!

Hawaiian Thanksgiving

This year we went to Maui for Thanksgiving with Jer's family. It was a much needed vacation for us because it's been such a stressful year.

I almost wished we hadn't gone at the beginning of the trip because of how rough the trip to get there was. Our flight to San Francisco was delayed, then when we got there, our flight was delayed, then delayed again, then delayed again, then they had to switch out planes so it was delayed again. We were in that airport at that gate for about 8 hours I think. Because of all the delays, we missed our next flight out of Honolulu to Maui, so after the 6 + hour flight out of San Fran (Ella had a REALLY rough time, meaning we didn't really sleep on that flight-yes, ours was the crying baby on the long airplane ride-though Jer slept through most of it, lucky for him), we got to hang out in the Honolulu airport (which was basically closed since it was the middle of the night) for another few hours before we could re-check-in and fly to our final destination. I felt so bad for Ella, she was SO SO tired, and so out of her element in all these new, unknown places; on top of that she had a grouchy mom who was trying to take care of her the best she could under the circumstances.

Anyway, I hate to complain, I mean we were going to Hawaii, so we should have been happier. I kept thinking that, but it was hard when all I could think was-we wouldn't be having these problems if we were home.

We FINALLY made it to our destination, packed in the rentals and headed to the Marriott Ocean Club. After bathing the baby, ourselves, and settling in, we took a nap that made all the difference. The vacation had *officially* begun.

We spent a lot of time on the beach and the kiddie pool, though Ella wasn't a fan of the ocean. Every time the waves rolled in she'd start to whimper, poor thing. Hopefully the next time she sees the ocean, she'll love it and the beach as much as I do.

We also spent a lot of time in Lahaina enjoying THE BEST shave ice in the world....Ululani's. SO delicious! We got shave ice from there nearly every night. I wish I had a picture of the tastiness.

For Thanksgiving, we went to a Luau. It was fun, but I missed the traditional food and pies.

Every time we went anywhere, people would see Ella and smile. I swear she brought so much happiness to people. We didn't go a day without someone saying something to us about how adorable she is. A group of people who were about to leave a restaurant we were at had to stop and tell us how cute she is and that they couldn't leave without telling us what a cute, sweet baby we had. At the luau, there was a man sitting across the way from us and he kept talking to Ella. He was obviously a little tipsy, so it was kind of funny to watch him make faces at her. One of Ella's cousins, Jonah, is so protective of her that he was a little upset that this guy was talking to her. At the end of the luau, the man came over to say goodbye to her, and after he left, Jonah came over a little perturbed. He asked if it bugged us when people talked to her, I told him no and that it was nice to hear that she was cute from other people. He said, "Of course she's cute, we don't need other people to come tell us that!".

We ate a lot of good food, had a lot of good family time, and relaxed quite a bit. It was a much-needed vacation.

Our trip back was uneventful and it was very nice to be back home.
We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving too!
Now onto Christmas, hopefully we'll be able to start some fun traditions now that we have Ella!