The Gift of Bees

via

For Christmas this year, our Little Bee gave lots of her family a donation in their name towards Honeybees from The Heifer Project. Here's what The Heifer Project has to say about Honeybees:
"From Uganda to El Salvador, bees from Heifer International help struggling families earn income through the sale of honey, beeswax and pollen." You can read more about how the Honeybees help the families on the Heifer International website . We love this site and hope you check it out! Love you, Elizabeth

Mini Me!

My Little Bee is always by my side trying to help with whatever I am working on. During the holidays it was wrapping presents. She thought this was great fun! Her favorite way of helping was to unravel the cotton twine and try to catch it with her tongue. Her second task involved crinkling up all the wrapping paper. What a big help! Now that Christmas is long gone she has resumed her other tasks, like helping mommy make dinner or fold the laundry. Oh Bee! Thanks for all the help but why does it take mommy so much longer when you are around... Love, Elizabeth

Complete

How can one small picture of such a tiny moment capture my whole world.... I love y'all so much, Elizabeth

Tubby Time Fun

At night before Ellen goes to sleep she takes a bath in her whale shaped tub. She loves her bath time and this is really precious to watch but I feel funny about posting a tub picture. She has little rubber duckies and puppies that she plays with in the tub. I have to be quick with the washcloth because if she gets it from me she will use it to drink the bath water! She dips it in the water and then sucks the water out of it. She will repeat this until I take it away. Now that I have gotten better about keeping the washcloth away from her she has learned to use her hand like a cup to drink the water. You are too smart for me, Little Bee. Love, Elizabeth

Happy 8th Month Birthday, Little Bee

Today the Little Bee turned eight months old! Happy Birthday, Angel. Tonight as I was rocking her to sleep she melted my heart. Our night time ritual starts with eating a veggie for dinner and then taking a bath. Ellen loves her bath time! After putting on her jammies, we head for her room where we turn on her lamby that makes wave sounds, her humidifier and lullaby CD. We sit in the same rocker my mom used to rock me and have a bottle. After her bottle Ellen likes to suck her thumb and rub her blankie on her face on in her hands. Tonight as I was rocking her she offered me her thumb and rubbed her blankie on my face. What a sweet girl to share with her mommy! I love these special moments so much! Love, Elizabeth

via

Ellen's Jams

via

I have to tell y'all about Little Bee's favorite CD! It is a personalized lullabye CD that her good friend, Caroline, gave her. Mommy first heard it when babysitting sweet Caroline one night and loved it. I remember rocking that sweet girl to sleep and listening to her CD as part of her night time ritual. When we began to expect our own sweet girl I knew I wanted my own copy of this great CD and Caroline and her mommy bought one for Ellen. Our Little Bee loves music so much and loves to rock rock with Mommy or Daddy while listening to these sweet songs. My favorite it "All the Pretty Little Ponies". I highly recommend this for Ellen's friends! It also makes such a thoughtful personalized gift for new mommies. Follow this link to type in your own Bee's name to see how it would sound on the CD. Happy Listening, Elizabeth

My date with Grandma!

In October, Little Bee and Mommy and Daddy met Grandmother at the pottery painting store. Above is a plate that I painted for the Little Bee when I went to the same store with my Junior League friends. I liked that the plate had dividers. As a kiddo, Aunt Muffy and I like these plates and didn't like our food touching.

This is the plate that I painted for the Little Bee when we spent the day with her Grandmother.

This is the bowl that Little Bee's Grandmother painted. Can you tell that she is an artist? Don't you love the bees on the bowl?

Here is the Little Bee's footprint that Mommy, Daddy and Bee worked on together. I love it so much and can't wait to do more of these as she grows!

Bee had such a fun afternoon with her family. She loved getting hugs from her Grandmother! Love you, Elizabeth

My Other Gown

I am so loved that I have two baptism gowns! One was made by my Cece and the other was made my by Grandmother. This is the one that Grandmother made me. She made it for my Daddy when he was a baptised. These are some portraits that Mommy had taken of me for my Grandmother. I am so lucky to have two grandmothers who love me so much! Love, Little Bee

My Robe!

I love the robe that my good friend, Davis, gave me at one of my baby showers. His mommy even had it monogrammed for me!

In these pictures I am crawling around on my Mommy and Daddy's bed after my bath.

I am such a cuddly and sweet girl!

Mommy and Daddy love you so much, Little Bee! Love, Elizabeth

My First Playdate!

Here are some shots of Ellen and her best friend, Betsy. We had a play date in Galveston. Betsy is in Ellen's class and also has a house one block away from our house at Tiki Island.

Ellen and Betsy love to play together and share laughs, toys, and germs! They recently shared a cold with each other!

Don't they share well together!

Ellen and Betsy would love you to come and play with them! Love you, Sweet Bee! Elizabeth

Christmas Morning

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year! We feel so blessed to have such a sweet baby. I really couldn't think of anything else I wanted this year (well, maybe a little purse that I got...). Ellen has been the answer to prayers for both Lloyd and I and we love being her parents. I think she had a great Christmas too! Here she is crawling towards the Christmas tree at about 6:30 AM Christmas morning. Can you see the excitement on her face as she crawls towards her Santa presents? We put her down and let her crawl across the room to the tree and boy did she make it snappy!





The first thing she went to was this big bag of balls for a ball pit. She got two of these bags and loved playing with the balls. Santa did a great job with these!

Ellen proved to be quite skilled at helping us to unwrap presents. She loved the tissue paper and would shake a piece in each hand like pom poms.

Aren't her Christmas PJs cute? Cece got those for her. Here she is after she explored everything that Santa had left for her. She kept going back to the balls. She loved to chase them under the table.

Little Bee, Daddy and Mommy love you so much and had so much fun creating Christmas traditions with you this year. We look forward to all the years of Christmas that you have to look forward to! We love you, Elizabeth

My Two Bees

Lately I have been catching up on events that I was unable to post while Little Bee was recovering from her ear infection. Here we are all dressed up and ready to go trick or treating with our friends. Mama Bee and her two Baby Bees. Ellen thought it was pretty funny to see Muffy in a bee costume. She is crazy about dogs! When she sees one she just cracks up laughing at it. Right now she is most fascinated by their paws. She tries to grab them but this makes the dogs pretty nervous. She is also obsessed with their food and water bowls. She heads straight for them and tries to pour their water all over the floor. This week she crawled over to King's bowl and before I could stop her popped a piece of his kibble in her mouth. I got it out pretty quickly but she really looked like she was enjoying it. Little Bee you are too fast for mommy now! Love you, Elizabeth

Trick or Treat!

Ellen and her little buddies had a great time on Halloween. This is Charlie Pumpkin, Caroline Peacock, Ellen Bee, and Garrett Lion. Aren't they cute! It was pretty difficult to get a shot of all them together and looking the same direction. We went over to Miss Peacock's house for pizza and then hit the streets for a bit of trick or treating. She was so sweet, as always, to Ellen and I think enjoys having the role of the big girl of the group. Our Little Bee had an ear infection and was ready for bed pretty quickly so we didn't stick around too late but we still had a great Halloween with our friends. Ellen and Caroline were more into taking pictures than the other two. Must be a girl thing! We love all these babies so much! Elizabeth

Applesauce

Here is a look at making applesauce with our BabyCook. Ellen really likes applesauce now but the first tiem she tried it she was less sure about it. When she tries a new food for the first time she scrunches up her nose while she tastes it. We started with organic apples and learned that certain apples make better sauce than others. You really want to use the sweet ones!

First you peel them and then chop them up. We fed the apple peels to King and he thought this was a good treat!

Here they are all ready to go in the steamer.

Here is the final product. When Ellen is a bit older I will spice it up with some cinnamon and sugar but for now it is just fruit and water. Yum, yum. Ellen would be happy to share with her friends. Love y'all, Elizabeth

Baby Food Making!

Our Little Bee started eating solid food right before she turned 6 months old. Originally I was not going to make her baby food but Betsy's mom convinced me that it was easy with the BabyCook by Beaba. I ordered ours online from The Right Start and have loved it! We invited Aunt Muffy over and she and I got to work cooking for our Angel. Here we are reading the instructions. Aunt Muffy is a very good cook so I knew we were in good hands.

The first thing we made was organic carrots. It is a good idea to start with foods in the yellow/orange category and then work your way to green. It is also good to start with veggies instead of fruit. First step in baby food making is to start with organic produce. Here are the carrots being chopped up.

Next water into the steam chamber. The BabyCook steams and purees the food in one machine.

Here are the carrots taking a nice steam bath. You can see that they are in a steam basket. After they are cooked you dump them from the steam basket into the thing that looks like a measuring cup. This has a blade at the bottom and purees them nicely. We started with more liquid for her first venture into eating and as she has gotten the hang of it I leave them a bit more coarse and with less water.

Here is the final product. Yum! These little containers are from Juvenile Solutions and are carried at The Right Start. They have worked really well for us. They go in the freezer and dishwasher and are really easy to pack for school. Lately I have even used frozen veggies for her food and that works really well too. This could not be easier! Little Bee is such a good eater and we love feeding her! Love y'all, Elizabeth

Team Preston

via

Please take a moment today to pray for our sweet friends, Tony and Tiffanie, who will be having baby Preston tomorrow at 9:3o AM. Pray that the delivery goes well and that they feel strong and confident as the doctors treat sweet Preston. Give thanks that they have each other to lean on and friends who will love them through this. Above all, pray that his little heart is healed and that he can join our Little Bee for many years of play dates and beyond. Love y'all and can't wait to meet Preston, Elizabeth