December 31, 2007

This is most likely going to be Miller's birthday. Unless Miller comes on his own before tomorrow morning at 6:30, I am going to be induced in the morning. I do not know what it is about my children, but they like to stay in Mommy as long as possible! We will keep you all posted about the arrival of our baby boy!!!!!

I will ask for you all to pray about the health of our entire family, especially Miller. Right now everyone, including me, has serious colds. Please pray that the Lord would protect Miller and keep him healthy! Thank you!!!!

Oh, where to begin...
We had a wonderful Christmas! Ella had a blast! She definitely loves getting presents!!!! Here are a few pictures to highlight Ella's Christmas.



Loving her new dress up clothes.

Baby Jesus' Birthday Party

Two posts in one day...I know I am very impressed with myself.

Today a great friend Fran and baby Hannah were very courageous to host a Birthday Party for Baby Jesus. I think there were probably 15 kids 3 and under there! Needless to say there was not a quiet moment! It was so fun to see all the kids (who were old enough to know that you get cake at a birthday party) get so excited! Of course they really did not know what was going on, but it was so great to start teaching our kids the real meaning of Christmas and to celebrate the birth of Christ.

I had my hands full today because I took Ella and Knox to the party. Knox's little sister was sick so his mommy could not go. Ella and Knox are 17 months apart. They are great friends and play together all the time which helped me bc they played together the entire time. But as I was trying to keep an eye on both of them at the party I got a quick glance into my future of life with Ella and Miller!

Sweetest moment of the party... Knox (3 yrs old) looked at me, before he started to eat his cupcake, and asked, "But where is Baby Jesus?"

Here are some pictures from the party. I tried to get pictures with more of the kids because they were all having so much fun, but my attention was very focused on Ella and Knox.

Blogging to the speed of Life!

For some time now, Murray and I have been very unhappy with our internet service! It was very slow and ALWAYS went out! So about a week ago we made the switch to Charter. I switched hoping to have a much more reliable service but found out we would also be getting a much faster service! It took about a week for us to actually switch and get our internet up and running (which is why there have been no updates lately, sorry), but it is awesome!!!! SOOOOO much faster! Totally worth the hassel of changing everything!

But how does that help us Blog to the Speed of "Life"? Well, Santa visited me early this year and brought me a new camera!!!!! Check out the beauty!



I cannot say enough wonderful things about it!!!! The only bad thing is we take soooo many pictures and it is hard to narrow them down. We are definitely not missing any moments with this camera! And it is so fun bc Ella is just getting into posing for the camera and loving it. Here are a few of the pictures where she is loving the camera...

A Few of my Favorite Words....

Ella is quite the little talker these days. There is definitely not a quiet moment in our house. She can actually pronounce most words pretty good for a 20 month old, but some are very funny...

moomie = movie (which is her very favorite thing, usually first words in the morning and she does not quit asking to watch a moomie until she goes to bed)

boop = book

Granina = Granna

chachiss = chocolate (Ella loves her chachiss!)

se pia = christmas tree (this is our favorit for now because it is not even close! Granna sent Ella a dancing "se pia" the other day so we play with the crazy se pia all the time!)

Santa!!!!

Ella has really gotten into all of the Christmas decorations this year! She loves Santa!!! So, we were very excited about taking her to see the "real" Santa this year. When she saw him from afar she was so excited. But when we got up close she was not so sure about sitting on his lap. Here are a few pictures capturing the moment. Of course the minute we left all she could say was "Santa, Santa, Santa!"

Pigtails and Tutus

Oh to be a little girl again! This morning the first thing Ella wanted to do was put in her pigtails! We had fun playing dress up in her tutu and favorite necklaces that she got from Knox's birthday party. She looked so cute I wanted to take her picture. Usually it is very hard to get a picture of Ella standing still because she loves the camera and runs straight for it. But this morning she was loving the camera and loving smiling for the camera! Here are some pictures of Ella hamming it up!






Ella loves playing with her "Princess Ella" Build-A-Bear from Grandaddy!!! In the pictures below Ella is putting pigtails on Princess Ella like her own.

It's not a dress...

It's a gown.

If you are from the south, you know the difference between a dress and a gown, a day gown, for children. A dress is something that little girls wear. A day gown is something that babies, boys and girls, wear. I know, I know some of you may not agree, but while Miller is a baby baby and gets his diaper changed 15 times a day, he will proudly wear beautiful day gowns.

I just finished the outfit that Miller will come home from the hospital in (the white day gown), which I think is one of my biggest sewing accomplishments! Since Ella was born, I have really gotten into sewing and have made a lot of her clothes. But these two day gowns are definitely my biggest accomplishments! I will have to agree with all of the contestants on Project Runway this past week that it is definitely more difficul to sew for a boy than a girl (even though I am sewing on a much smaller scale than they did). Normally I would not display pictures of our children's clothes, but it was a huge accomplishment!!! And, I am just getting really excited about Miller entering into our world!

A Season of Firsts

As many of you know, Murray is the pastor of a brand new church plant Cahaba Park Church. Our first service was September 9 and it has been so exciting! It is hard to believe how fast the time has gone by and it has been amazing to watch the Lord work! We had our first New Members Class three weeks ago. And as of today, December 2, 2007, Cahaba Park Church has members! Here is a picture from the class.


Another first was our staff Christmas Party! I think that we had the first Christmas Party of the season, but we wanted to have it as early as possible just in cas Miller decides to come early.

Starting from the Left are Tom and Mary Saxon. Tom and Mary are the newest members to Cahaba Park Staff. Tom is the Executive Director of Ministries. Tom and Mary have been serving in Ukraine and just moved back to Birmingham this summer. They are the very best!!! Next are Katie and Lee Caldwell. Katie is the Office Manager. Katie can do anything and everything! She is awesome. Katie is expecting a baby in February and sadly will be leaving Cahaba Park. We are very, very sad!!!! She cannot be replaced! Then Murray and me. As you can tell Miller is growing fast in my belly!

These are very exciting times for Cahaba Park and we love sharing them with you all!

Only a few days late!

Christmas usually begins at our house the day after Thanksgiving. We put in the first Chrismas cd early in the morning, we all go and pick out the perfect Christmas Tree, on the way home we stop and buy eggnog and then spend the rest of the day decorating the tree and the house. Because we were not here the week of Thanksgiving our tradition was pushed back a little this year, but not too much. Last night we went and bought our Christmas Tree!!! This is always one of the most exciting days of the year for us!




We started off the Christmas festivities last night with our eggnog. Ella absolutely loved it!!! She could not get enough (for some reason I could not rotate the picture). But she was not about to leave a drop in her cup!

The lighting of the tree is usually a very big deal, one that Murray has declared to have no part in because he says I always complain that he does not do it right (I cannot help it if I like it just right!). Last year I think it took me 4 hours to put the light on the tree and about 20 strands! I know it is a little absurd, but it does look so beautiful! Well this year I decided to relax a little bit about the lights for two reasons. One, being 8 months pregnant it is not quite as easy to maneuver around the tree and stand up and sit down all the time. Two, we are having a Christmas party at our house tonight and we did not get home with the Christmas tree until 6:00 and get it inside until 7:00. I really did not want to stay up past midnight. All that to say our tree has a few less strands this year, I think only 8, but it is still very beautiful!



Ella loved helping with the lights!!! It is too bad the picture is blurry. However, this year she only got to help for about 20 minutes. It was too late for her and too much for us to handle.



Murray putting on the angle (which is always his job).


The finished product!

Thanksgiving Pictures

My learning curve right now is very steep on blogging! I think I have figured out a way to share multiple pictures. Those of you who know me well know that it is so hard for me to narrow pictures down to just one or two. So now you can see a quick slideshow of our Thanksgiving festivities.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have not started out my blogging very strong, but with a good excuse. Murray took the week off and we spent the week at the lake. It was a great time of relaxing before the holiday festivities begin and before Baby Miller arrives.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday it was just Mommy, Daddy and Ella. Ella has always really like being at the lake but this week she LOVED it! This past summer Papa, Murray's dad, bought a golf cart "for Ella." Oh, she loved it this week. Every time we went outside she ran to the garage and banged on the doors saying "golp cart ide, golp cart ide, golp cart ide." We rode the golf cart every day to the new playground where Ella "payed and payed."

Ella quickly learned how to walk up the rope bridge to the slide.

Thursday morning we woke up and it was freezing. Well, not really freezing, just Alabama freezing which was probably about 45 or 50 degrees. But it was very windy! By Thursday all of Ella's grandparents had arrived so she was throughly entertained and did not miss the golf cart rides too much.

This was one successful vacation! Thank you Papa and EG for letting us have time away at the lake house!

(I was going to add more pictures but I think there is a problem with blogspot because it is taking forever!!!!! Hopefully I can add them later.)

Never Say Never

I know that some of you are in shock right now. I said I would never do it, but I have finally caved and entered into the blogging world. It all started with my good friend Whitney. Whitney recently moved to Boston and created her blog. I looked forward to her updates every few days to see what new and excited was going on in her life. Then another good friend quickly joined the blogging world and I added her Blog to my BookMark page. After that it seemed like all of our friends started blogging.

For some time now I have been enjoying keeping up with all of my friends, especially those out of town, through their blogs. In the last couple of months I have been feeling the pressure to start The Lee Family Blog but have resisted the temptation. However, recently I started to feel bad, I was enjoying everyone else's life but not sharing ours. We have so many out of town friends and family who we do not get to talk to as much as we would like and there is a lot going on that we would love to share.

Now I am not making any promises about how often I will add new posts, but I will try to be consistent.

Welcome to The Lee Family Blog!