Me 'n L'Ella

So, we've been a little sicky. Not for long, but long enough. Today has been our recovery day and tomorrow we plan to have some play-date fun...and the next day, too. Here are some catch up pics from New Year's Eve and in between then and now:

This one was snapped while watching Austin's First Night Parade. Ella was dancing and she even yelled "Come Back!" to a hool-a-hooper who had been hooping in front of us until the parade started moving again. The parade was so cool because it was sooooo arsty-fartsy. None of my photos are ready because they are too dark and Zach is gonna have to work his photo-shop magic on them so they are visible to the human eye.


After the parade, across the street from the Paramount Theatre:


My beverage of choice for New Year's Eve was hot coffee poured over cold homemade vanilla Blue Bell ice cream. I think Juliette Binoche drank this in Bleu, one of the French Three Colours Trilogy films. I am no critic, but 'twas good. (Note: I'm sure the one in the movie used espresso and some other creamery besides our own local Blue Bell)


Ella feeding D-Bear her apple slices. According to Zach, Ella is also trying to teach "D" to walk by standing him up and telling him "Walk!". He, unfortunately, is a bit slow to pick up these fundamentals that Ella is teaching.


Ella and her "D".

Operation Organization '09

So, this process really did begin on January 1. This is the best, scratch that, ONLY time we could do it since Zach is home and we'd be wresting a 1.5 year old while tearing apart the whole house. We are *thinking* about *planning* for another kiddo sometime in the *future*. I added the *'s to slow you down so you won't get too excited because we are still in the *planning* stages. Since we have been thinking about things, we knew that our current set up of Ella in the tiny-est.room.ever. was not going to work since she will eventually have to SHARE her space. That being said, we have transposed our office (previously the most spacious room out of the three) and Ella's room. This means we crammed ALL OF OUR JUNK from the giant room into the 10'x10' middle bedroom. We had to make some sacrifices...I mean that I had to make some sacrifices and currently my entire craft station is boxed up in the garage...boo-hoo! This meant we had to clean out the garage!!!! Now, if you know me at all you would understand the magnitude of this situation. I have junk...ALOT OF JUNK. We are clearing out and currently have stacks and stacks of things: some to post on craigslist, books to take to half-priced books, CD's to take to cheapos, clothes to take to Buffalo (most to Goodwill), items that belong to others that are in need of return and just a lot of other misc. that will go straight to goodwill. Eek! In all of the chaos..and yes, there was CHAOS, we managed to keep Ella happy and fed and not go completely insane. We did hit a bump when we realized we would have to have our internet provider come and do some "reinstallation" into the new office, but even that has been sorted out...though we are without internet until next Tuesday.

I have even taken to clearing out some of the kitchen cabinets...since we will be hauling stuff away anyway. I have not resolved to become an organized person because it is totally against my nature, but things are looking bright for 2009! Pictures to come when the internet is back up and running...