Sweet Miss Ellie!

So many of you have heard me talk about our wonderful sitter, Miss Ellie, so I decided to post some pictures. She has been a life saver for me more times than I can count. I can use her on an as needed basis which is perfect for my line of work. When I entered into real estate, I thought it would be perfect for having a family. Little did I know that having a "flexible" schedule is not so easy with a little one. Especially since I cannot say no to people, my day could change at the drop of a hat and I would have to pick up and go. I could literally call Miss Ellie on my way up to let her know I was bringing Lila. Since Real Esate could keep me slammed one week and not so much the next, I did not want to put Lila in daycare if I could just stay home with her. As usual, I am making this a really long story. The point is, this is Miss Ellie and she is WONDERFUL! She loves Lila and Lila loves her! Lila even starts dancing and squealing as soon as we pull into her driveway. We were even able to call Miss Ellie from the hosptial when I had Graham to have her keep Lila, since she desperately needed a nap.
I kept telling Michael that I wanted to get a picture of Lila and Miss Ellie so Lila would know who took such good care of her! Well, today was the perfect opportunity. I was talking with Miss Ellie and she was holding Lila. I noticed they were both sporting their pink so I asked to snap a picture. Too bad Lila is teething and would not get her hands out of her mouth.
We love Miss Ellie and hope and pray that she is always able to help us out. Right now Lila is the only one she watches, but I just found out that that is about to change. Since I only send Lila sporadically, I obviously wouldn't want to take anyone's spot if they would be going full time to her. Let's all just pray she can still watch her for me.

Oh, and a special thanks to Alana for this precious outfit she gave to Lila. You all will be seeing lots of pictures with her in it because it is just too cute!

This is why....

I still don't have a lot of good pictures of brother and sister!

Harrell Thanksgiving

On Saturday, we packed up and got ready to head home from a long, but fun filled week with the fam. Michael and Clint broke down the crib and loaded up Michael's truck. Since Lila climbed out of her crib(or should I say JUMP), she has been sleeping in her pack n play. Kim and Clint so graciously have lent us their crib, which looks beautiful in Lila's room. Graham will be sleeping in Lila's old crib until he too climbs out of it. (Let's hope not!!)
Anyway, we celebrated Thanksgiving with the Harrell side of the family on Saturday afternnon. It is never quite long enough, as the girls only got to stay a few hours. :( We did get to eat lots of yummy cookie cake for Carrie's 11th birthday!! I still cannot believe how fast she has grown. I remember going to her 4th birthday that was Santa Claus themed and Baylee was just a baby! Time flies. Carrie got a fun dancing game for her birthday and I totally got my tail kicked in a dance off with her. Yes, I said it. I LOST at DANCING!! I am still blaming it on the stupid mat because I was totally stepping on the arrows when it showed me too. The girls sure put me in my place and I realized I am way older than I think I am in my head. Lila and Rileigh had a lot of fun together. Lila was exhausted from not having a nap. We tried laying her down so she would be in a good mood for her cousins, but she just wasn't having it. She just knew they were out there and she wanted to join! We can't wait until Christmas so we get to see them again soon! Here are some pictures from our day:

I can't help but laugh at this face!


Lila and Rileigh had a lot of fun together. (I know it doesn't look quite that way here, but they were in a trance watching Carrie dance.) We are super jealous of Rileigh's cute pigtails! Here she is all ready for Christmas.

All the girls!

BayBay and Graham. Both her and Carrie are so good with the babies. I think they actually enjoy fighting over who gets to hold him. :)

We tried really hard to get a picture of all the Harrell grand kids, but it isn't easy with 2 1 1/2 year olds and a baby.


One of my absolute favorites! I love these girls!!!


Since the girls had to go home earlier than we expected, we went ahead and decided to leave thinking we could get home at a decent hour. Let me just say...it was NOT a pleasant trip. Just a reminder for you, we were in seperate vehicles. I think we stopped 3 times before we had gone 1 mile to make sure the crib was ok in the back of the truck. We then proceeded to stop another 3 times before determining that all was ok with the crib. Oh yeah...it is POURING down rain! All week my contact had been bothering me, but as we roll in to Knoxville I thought I was going to have to rip it out of my socket in order for it to feel better. Here it was pouring rain, dark, lots of detour traffic, my eye is pouring water, and Graham has woken up screaming hungry! Not fun. I will spare you all the other details, but lets just say it was a LONG trip home. But you know what? It felt so good to get here!
Even Graham was exhausted from the trip and glad to be home. :) Speaking of...he did not do real well nursing this week. It makes me nervous and I just know that something is going on. He screams and cries right after he eats and constantly sounds like he needs to clear his throat.

But you know what? Even with all the drama of trying to get home, I couldn't help but think of all the starving,cold people out there. The fact that I have my family and we have full bellies and plenty of shelter reminded me of just what this season is about. Happy Thanksgiving All!

Going on a Hayride!

For some reason, I kept saying this all day to the rhythm of "Going on a bear hunt", which by the way I cannot remember. If any of you do, I would be so happy to know, because repeating "going on a bear hunt" over and over and not actually knowing where we are going just isn't that much fun. :)
Back to the reason for this post...every few years, Kim and Clint invite us out to their family property and we do a hayride and ride 4 wheelers over Thanksgiving... SO MUCH FUN! It has become one of my favorite family traditions. This year, we got to ride out and get up close and personal with the moo cows and the deer.

Jayboy LOVED the cows, and Ella wanted nothing to do with them. We were excited to see a little tiny baby one and kept pointing at it, but all Jay kept saying was how he liked the "Big one!" I assumed that being so close to the cows would either freak Lila out or she would want to touch them. Actually, she didn't react either way. She could have cared less about them. We had a great time roasting smores, riding the 4 wheelers, checking out the old cemetery on the land, and Michael and I even went and collected old cow bones for the dogs. Speaking of, poor Chloe tried her hardest to follow along behind us, but when we got to the cows we figured we should put her up with us in case one got after her. We knew she wouldn't be able to get away with her old legs. :(
I don't have a picture of 4 wheel ridin' this year, but here is a picture of me and Michael 2 years ago. I was about 13/14 weeks pregnant with Lila in this picture.


We had a great time and we look forward to the one next year!
Here is part of the gang ready to ride.


Note Jay and Lila fighting over the football!

Gdog doing what he does best: SLEEPING!





Grandmother and her 2 youngest grand kids

I couldn't help but laugh at this:


After a long day out playing, we headed back to visit with Michael's parents. Lila fell asleep about oh, point 5 seconds after we got in the car. After we put Lila to bed, Mamaw and Papaw were kind enough to watch BG while My mom, Karen, Michael and me went to SEE A MOVIE!! I must say, that is one perk for us to go home...FREE BABYSITTER! We don't feel too guilty about it because we know it gives the grandparents time to visit with the younguns. The other perk is that movies are cheaper in Morristown too! We saw Four Christmas's. It was cute and it was nice to get out. Michael LOVES to go watch movies and now that we have 2 small children it just doesn't happen very often. :( Tomorrow we have another day of family eating with Michael's parents. We get to see Rileigh, who we haven't seen in almost a year, and Graham gets to meet her for the first time. I am also anxious to see her and Lila play together now that they are both up running around and into everything!

I'm STUFFED!!

As usual, we ate WAY too much over the Thanksgiving holiday. We enjoyed a great time with the family and for the first time in forever, we actually felt like we got to spend some quality time with everyone while home. I was anxious for Michael to arrive late Wednesday night. We missed him so much since we went on ahead early.
Thanks to Kim and Clint for hosting us at their home. This also seemed to be one of the first years we actually had the meal ready to go on time and were not running around like chickens with our heads cut off. We even had some downtime before eating...AMAZING!
Lila LOVED sitting next to Jay and they just had their own little conversation during the meal. I, as usual, had to scarf down my food because Graham was ready to eat as soon as we sat down. The kids had the best time playing. I am so glad they get to experience this time together growing up. I took a gazillion pictures, but here are a few from our day.

Meeting More Cousins

This was also the first time for Krista, David, Laura, and Elizabeth to meet Graham. I can't wait until Laura can come spend summers with me and babysit...hint hint. She loves the babies and is so good with them. Elizabeth likes them when they get a little bit older. She was so wonderful following Lila up and down and up and down the stairs. I must say, Lila got really good and turning herself and around and crawling down the stairs at moms house.




We had a nice dinner and enjoyed visiting and doing the "turkey pokey" before gearing up for "Turkey Day!!"
Here are the kids and Aunt Karen shaking their tail feathers! :)

I don't think the boys in our family will ever outnumber the girls, but here are two of the Rose girls and their boys. (Excuse my appearance...it had been a long day)

All through dinner Lila kept doing this: reaching WAY up high! So....

in order to try and get her to cooperate for a grandkids photo, they all did it too. Too bad Lila just looked at them like they were crazy. But lo and behold, she raised her arms right after the picture was taken.

I love these 2 brown headed beauties. This picture was too cute not to post.

I still don't know where this hoodie came from, but Lila was cracking me up in it.

Aunt Karen lovin' on Graham