Little Cutie

I really should be going to bed, but I am just so happy to have a computer back that I wanted to do something. Our hard drive crashed a week ago and it has been quite the experience living without a computer for a week--try it and see for yourself how much you get the itch to go sit down at the computer and check email, the news, look up a recipe, blogs, whatever. We never got the hard drive back and everything on it is gone forever (unless we want to pay $1000 at some "clean" extraction lab.) Luckily most of the important stuff was backed up--not all though. I think we lost some itunes purchases and documents like talks, and who knows what else (hopefully some viruses.) Apparently, it is stuff we can live without as I found out during the week. Oh well. I wanted to just post some pictures, it has been such a long time. I will add a bunch (in phases) now that life is settling down somewhat back to the usual.

Ella went though a hat stage for awhile and loved putting things on her head. So here are some cute pictures of her with "hats." She has such a fun personality that is fun to discover as she is older. She is also talking surprisingly well now and the older girls love to interact with her. She used to call both of them Maggie because it was easier to say, but we worked on Abigail and she can say some version of that too. She has to have a binkie for bed and one day she decided she will only take a green binkie--no more orange, pink or yellow. We have only 2 greens and while Joseph says that can't last long, she is pretty stubborn and when it is time for a nap I don't want to argue with her. Kids are such a riot starting at about 2

A few more things about Ella: She is a climber. If she wants something, she will get it. The other day I found her downstairs eating a banana. She had climbed on the table, took one bite out of every apple in the fruit bowl, then tore a banana off the bunch, and peeled it herself. She is a thrill seeker. The steeper and faster the slide the better, and the more dangerous or advanced the apparatus at the park the better. And she is a tough cookie. She can tumble, fall, get kicked, bleed, spray herself in the face with bathroom freshener and still not cry. She will only say, "It hurts."

Joseph bought her this dress in India on a b-trip in September and it is a size 6. I think she already out grew it. She is a very tall girl (and the clothes there are really small.) She kept tugging on it at church like she wanted it off because it was cutting under her arms.