Beary Merry Christmas To You!!

Well, I skipped a Thanksgiving blog, so I'm going to give you a brief ongoing of that event at the Bruner's house in Tennessee.  The celebration occurred with my brother, grandmother, mom, dad, Ella, and I.  Mom cooked a huge feast with everything made from scratch; even fresh vegetables from my parents massive garden this recent summer. We basically did what everyone does on Thanksgiving, stuff yourselves so full that you have to lay down and take a nap for the stomach pain to go away.  A year ago, my brother & I started a little "Walmart Tradition" where we get up at the butt crack of dawn on Black Friday and shop with a million other people to get some of those (as my father-in-law calls them) "steals" of a deal.  Yes, we did get up this year again around 4:45AM and went to the one store (and only store) Walmart.  The sad thing is that we're supposed to be going to buy presents for other people, but we pretty much go to get the $2 DVDs. Haha. I know my husband will be proud. :) However, I did realize this year what great deals they have for toys, so I'm thinking this might have to be a yearly event with all the young generations that are coming into the world. :) So, that was our Thanksgiving and my Walmart promotion for you all.  I look forward to next years celebration with my husband, however, I'm pretty sure him & Ella will be sleeping in the day after. 

Now onto Christmas... we're getting into the holiday festivities around the house.  Ella has done an excellent job with helping with the ornaments.  I'll have to upload more photos b/c our tree looks much different now; the top of the tree is fill with decorations and below it's looking a little scarce.  You pretty much have to check your shoes around here for ornaments before putting them on. ;) While decorating, I'll have to say that she was getting the ornaments off quicker than we could get them on. We've also been doing a lot of baking and making lots of packages and sending them off to Daddy and his fellow buddies.  I'll have to say that having Christmas so soon is exciting to the 3 of us because we know it means a closer reunion to finally being home together in 3 months. I try not to get too excited because I know those last 3 weeks are going to be very slow. :) Less than 100 days to go though and we'll all be home together!! Well, in a motel working on getting a home together. LOL, but that's fine with me!!

Here's an Ella update... she learns new words constantly. We've been working on sign language a little together because she's been learning them off of her Baby Einstein dvds.  She pretty much will say anything you ask her to, most of the words are sounded out correctly but sometimes aren't finished completely. A lot of her sentences are one to two words which I read is quite normal for her age. She's a little chatter box though and loves to explore everything. I've finally gotten her into music; she loves to dance at the beat and shakes her little booty. Her favorite toy right now is a bear that I had when I was younger. (The first photo is of Ella with him.) In the photo you can see he has a diaper on him because Ella decided the other day that he needed a changing, so with a little help from Mommy, he got one. ;) 

I'll try and get another post out soon of more photos from this month; especially during present openings. :) Lots of Love to you All. ~E,J,&I