Ellie 9 months

9 months has come and past! Can't believe we are creeping up on Ellie's first birthday! Ellie is crawling EVERYWHERE, and trying to climb the stairs. She's gotten up to the 3rd step by herself. The vacuum is currently blocking the stairs until we can get a baby gate. She likes to crawl around behind the couch where the toys are and just play. She loves that she can move on her own now. She also likes to crawl up and down the hall when we are upstairs. While i'm making dinner, she'll crawl around in each room just to have a little look before she comes back to the kitchen. She has 3 teeth, the front two on the bottom and one on the top. The second one on the top will be following any day now. Her hair is long enough to put in a little ponytail at the top of her head. It doesn't look too good haha. I can't say i'm a big fan of the top of the head ponytails, but maybe it will grow on me. Looking forward to the first Christmas with this cute baby of mine!

Once Upon a Time - Young Women in Excellence

This past summer I was put in as the Young Women's President in our ward. It is a wonderful calling that totally stresses me out, yet is so rewarding. I had my first big YW event last night in our YW In Excellence event. Boy do I have a greater appreciation for everything my leaders did for me! Its a lot of work! But I think it turned out great. I only had 6 girls show up (I was hoping for ten, but had a few girls cancel, some last minute :( bummer) so that had me down a bit, but a few of the girls came up to give me a big hug after it was over thanking me for everything. Turned my frown upside down. One thing i've learned in this calling so far, is that with every negative thing that happens, I'm rewarded with at least one really positive thing. Some prayers were answered with some of the girls who did show up, and left me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

Our theme for the night was "Once Upon A Time." We started out the night with a picture slideshow to the songs "Happily Ever After" and "Daughter of a King" to showcase their pictures throughout the year, and also to present the pictures from our temple photo shoot. (They all got wedding dresses and we took them to the temple for pictures, SO fun!) They loved seeing their pictures. I followed with a talk based on President Uchtdorf's talk "Your Happily Ever After." Following that, I had my class presidency present the values with this poem (I changed it up a bit to shorten it) that presents each value with a different princess object, i.e. crown, pearls, wand etc. They had a volunteer come to the front and as they read the poem, they dressed her in the values. It was really neat! The girls and leaders then sang "Walk Tall You're A Daughter of God," while I accompanied them. We presented a few awards, and ended the night with an amazing talk by the first counselor in the Bishopric. He read a poem about our Heavenly Father's Garden, and replaced the names of the flowers with the names of each of the girls, and replaced the names of the tree's with the leaders names. He ended the list of leaders with the "Megan" tree, and everyone laughed, because, well, that's pretty funny.

I got most of our printables and a few idea's here, which is awesome because it was all free! Most of the decorations I had just sitting around the house. The glitter pumpkins I made from styrofoam dollar store pumpkins, and the cute garlands are made out of tissue paper. The wine bottle vases (actually Torino syrup bottles;)) I had already painted, I just filled them with dead branches from my backyard and then of course added glitter to them. 

I'm so grateful for wonderful women to serve with, and amazing young women. It was a great night. I'm so glad its over! :-)

Values - each had a "princess" representation

Presentation of the Values

My awesome leaders!

                                     

                                     

                                     

                                     

                                     

 

Ellie 8 months

Ellie is now clapping, and waving! She is the funniest little baby, and makes the goofiest faces. She cracks us up! She loves to eat. She gets mad when we give her baby food and not the same food we're eating. She hasn't officially started crawling yet (thank goodness) but gets around very efficiently by army crawl. She is such a ray of sunshine in our home. Always pleasant and happy. We love our little Ellie Bean!

Check out this cheeser!