Ellie's Birthday and One Room down

We celebrated Ellie's birthday! A year has flown by for us with Ellie. She started out a bit high maintenance :) but thankfully is now in the "grubbing-into-everything" stage. I can't watch her close enough. She's putting things in her mouth, figuring out how to take things apart, and she is VERY vocal. She makes me laugh all the time and is trying so hard to learn how to walk.

Emmett and the big Z are sharing a room again. It's a little smaller but it was fun for them to pic out their favorite picture to put on the wall and decorate their own shelf.

Ellie bellie's bday party. We made pumpkin cake and vanilla pudding. She LOVED it. Although at the beginning she was just yelling that she wanted my camera.
What a squishy baby!

Adjustment

‎"No Misfortune is so bad that whining about it won't make it worse." Jeffrey R Holland

I've learned a few things over the past week of travelling and moving my family to N.Dakota.

- Kids don't mind moving as long as adults make it sound fun and exciting.

- Ellie hates the water even in a swimming pool. But the adage "just pull off the bandaid" is so true. We took off Z's life jacket at the pool. After months of unsuccessful swimming lessons and after 5 minutes she was swimming around!
- Kids can make you laugh even when you feel like crap and are having a nervous meltdown!

- Siblings are better than anything money can buy. Especially on long car rides.

- Kids don't need practically any toys. Emmett played with his little cars with paper roads that I made for him for two days straight.

- We have WAY too much crap.

- AND: After whining a little to a lady I met about being stuffed in our apartment, she kindly told me that she has been in a FEMA trailer with three small children since June. That's only about 600-700 sq ft...in the winter. Oh - and they are living there because their home is destroyed. Zing. Life is all in how you look at it. Let me tell you it humbled me up pretty dang fast!! Even the cable guy who came to the apartment said he was surprised at how much "space" I had in this apartment compared to others.