Long time no seee

Oops, I have neglected this blog for a while. Well, Ella is fast approaching 11 months now! I can not believe she will be a year old so soon! We just celebrated 4th of July with her. We went to a friend's house in our church who had a huge get together with fireworks. I surely thought Ella would be afraid of the fireworks, but she actually was interested in them. She did flinch every time they set off, but after that she enjoyed the show. We were able to swim, which of course was a lot of fun for her. There were a lot of our friends at the party with their babies, so all the "mama's" got in the pool with the chicks and played. Man, I'm getting old. It's funny and shocking to think that I'm in the "mom group" now. Weird, very VERY weird.

Anyway, Ella LOVES the water. We have been teaching her to get more and more comfortable with the water, so we spend a lot of time in the pool. I read somewhere on how to do that and they said to say "one, two, three, POUR!" in the bathtub and pour water on their face. This teaches them to expect the water. We've been doing that since she was small and now she knows to close her eyes and get ready. Just last week we started putting her under water in the pool and she actually in holding her breath. It still shocks her, but there are no tears and no coughing up water...well most of the time. Hopefully we can keep doing it to see how long it takes for her to swim underwater. This all may change when we move into our new house that does not have a pool.

Also, in the pictures you may notice a teenage boy in them. This is Chris and he is living with us this summer. He is a guy from our last youth group that wanted to come down and work here and live with us this summer. He has been so much fun and Ella is very sweet on him!

Alright on with the pictures because I know that's what everyone is wanting.