Thankful

We had a great Thanksgiving this year. We are ever aware of the countless blessings in our lives, and so this year seemed even more special. Wonderful family and friends, a beautiful, healthy daughter, and a sweet little man on the way. Here are some pictures leading up to Thanksgiving, and a few from the day's festivities.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM THE VEO'S!

I love this picture, so I had to include it. Look how big she looks! She loves riding this little princess four wheeler.

A couple of weeks ago, Ella and I made a turkey out of her hands and feet. She had a great time doing it, and he turned out so cute! I love coming up with fun arts and crafts to do with her.

Ella's little turkey! (the feathers are her hands, the body is the outline of her feet).

A shot of my happy girl on Thanksgiving, hanging out with family and ready for the yummy meal!

Tom even helped with dinner! He is a master potato peeler. Good thing, too. I HATE peeling potatoes.

Family pic on Thanksgiving!

Hope you all had an equally blessed and happy Thanksgiving. Let us all remember the many things we have to be thankful for! Have a great weekend everyone. As for us....we will be doing some Christmas shopping tomorrow (just Tom and I...what a treat!) and putting the Christmas tree/outside lights up on Sunday. What a fun time!

LEAVES!

Last weekend, we went to Tom's parents house to help them rake leaves. They have a very big yard and TONS of leaves. We figured Ella would really enjoy it, and she did! She "helped" with her own pail/shovel, and her favorite part was when Tom would load the tarp with leaves and drag it to the burn pile. She would ride along amongst the leaves....she's so little and there were so many leaves, sometimes you could barely spot her in there! Anyway, here are the pictures from the day:

Ready to help!

Riding along in the tarp....this is the best part!

Doing her part by loading some leaves into her Dora bucket. :)

This picture is a little washed out, but still so cute. She had so much fun!

Happy girl....

Getting ready to go over the "bump" on the driveway....she really liked that part.

Enjoying the ride....

Giggle, giggle :)

The view as Tom pulled the tarp away...can you find Ella? :)

It was a really fun Fall day. At least we know we'll always have a "helper" when it comes time to rake leaves each year!

Baby update: Had my 30 week appointment yesterday, and everything is looking great! I am measuring right on time, and I can already tell (or at least I think) that this little guy is going to be bigger than Ella was. He is a mover and a shaker, that's for sure! We'll keep you posted. My next appointment isn't until December 3rd, which is 3 weeks from now, but my 2 week would have fallen on Thanksgiving, so we just put it off a week. It is all going by so fast! We are gearing up for Thanksgiving, and I am even trying to be good about getting some Christmas shopping done early since we'll have so much going on the next few months. Just ordered the baby's bedding online, so as soon as it comes in and we get the new room decorated, I'll post some pics. Have a great weekend everyone!

HALLOWEEN 2009!

This was by far the best Halloween yet! Ella was so excited, which made US so excited too. She talked about it all last week and we were counting down the days until it was finally here. I won't bore you too much with text....the pictures are the best part! So, here they are!


Ella in her Halloween shirt before heading to the sitter on Wednesday. Love the little skull and cross bones with the bow in it's hair. Too cute. I also made Halloween cupcakes to send with her that day which she was super stoked about :)

Next came pumpkin carving on Friday night. Again, so fun to see how much Ella enjoyed it.

Here's my girl and I getting ready for the carving.

Tom and Ella....ready to cut the top open and get messy!

That's my girl....digging right in and not too afraid to get messy! Although she was a little apprehensive at first, she got over it pretty quickly and wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty.

This is so fun!

With a handful of pumpkin guts :)

The 3 Veo's with our pumpkin family :) Funny to think that next year, we'll have a 9 month old baby boy celebrating with us...and another pumpkin of course!

This year, Ella dressed up as Princess Jasmine for Halloween. She has been asking for the costume for months now. When it was actually time to get all dressed up, she was so excited she couldn't stop smiling. It was so cute. Here she is folks.....Princess Jasmine!

I know I am a biased Mommy, but come on. Have you ever laid eyes on anything so beautiful? :)

On our front porch, ready to go to both grandparents houses and then back to our neighborhood for trick-or-treating!

A very proud Daddy with Princess Jasmine.

My Mom and Dad had a special treat bag (of course) for Ella filled with candy and toys. She thought that was pretty great.

Us with our (not so) baby girl at my parents house.

After all the stops we had to make, we came back to our neighborhood so Ella could trick-or-treat! At first she was a little shy, but by the time we had hit several houses, she had the program down and would walk right up to the door and say "Trick-or-Treat!" We had such a fun time walking around with her. It was neat to look around and see kids everywhere dressed up, and to see how many of the houses in our neighborhood went all out to make it special for the kids. I can't wait until next year. We are lucky to live where we do. Several of the people handing out candy at their houses were even dressed up! Ella got a TON of candy...I couldn't believe how fast it piled up!

After trick-or-treating, we walked home, got our pumpkins lit, and opened up our house to hand out candy....which is another one of my favorite parts of Halloween. Ella liked to help pass out the candy, too :)

Here are our pumpkins, all lit up on Halloween night!

The candy heaping out of Ella's bucket. She made out like a bandit!

It was such a great time! We had a very tired little girl on our hands that night. It's hard work looking so gorgeous and getting all that candy, folks! :) Hope you all had a Happy Halloween as well. Next up, Thanksgiving....in just a few short weeks! I can't wait!!

A Fun Fall So Far

This Fall is shaping up to be a great one. It is my favorite time of year, with cool weather, falling leaves, mums and pumpkins. I love all of the fun festivities that come with it. What's not to love about beautiful changing leaves, Fall festivals, trips to the pumpkin patch and Halloween? And the best part? Then comes Thanksgiving (yum-yum!)....and then CHRISTMAS! :) Anyway, needless to say, I have been very happy with all the goings-on this time of year brings.

We had a blast at the pumpkin patch this year. It seems that each year, it gets more and more fun, probably because Ella is getting older and is able to enjoy it more each time. It was a chilly, perfect Fall day!

Every year, we have Ella stand in front of this height scale.....check out the difference from last year...

To this year!! What happened to my baby? :(


A little blurry, but the whole family at the pumpkin patch :)
Tom and Ella in the corn maze.

Me and my best girl.

Look at that happy girl.....gosh I could just eat her right up!

On the hayride, headed to pick out the perfect pumpkins.

2 down, 1 to go! Still trying to find the perfect one for Ella. She did a good job keeping an eye on the pumpkins in the wagon :)

A little out of order....this was before we picked out the pumpkins. Sweet smile.

They have this cow/wagon thing that Ella likes to ride. Her face started to become a little unsure....somewhere between "This is fun!" and "Um, get me out of here!"

Ella loved this part....the cornbox. She dug around in there forever.

Trying to decide if we should jump off the hay into the soft landing......hmmm....maybe not. I'll just stand here and look cute instead.

A few weekends ago, we were also able to enjoy our church's annual Oktoberfest....which is our biggest fundraiser for the church each year. We had a great time. They have tons of stuff there for kids, a big home cooked meal and lots of fun :)

The fam.

Ella getting a pumpkin painted on her face. She thought she was SUCH hot stuff with a "tattoo" on her cheek, as she called it. Oh Lord.
Ella in the jumpy-house thing. They also had the BIG slides, which she went down as well.

Another great part of Fall.....decorating the house! I always like to make the outside of the house look harvesty (is that a word?) and festive :) We've got lots of mums, our pumpkins, our hay bails and our scarecrows. LOVE Fall!

A close-up of our little scarecrow men. Cute, aren't they?

The front porch (our cat, Bella would NOT get out of the picture...).


Our pumpkins! Starting at the top step, Tom's, mine and Ella's! Such a cute little pumpkin family, don't you think? ;)

Alright folks, as requested.....a belly pic. Here I am at 26 weeks. Things are moving right along!

Well, now we are just counting down to Halloween! Ella is going to be Princess Jasmine. She's totally pumped, and her outfit is adorable. We'll definitley have some more pics up then, if not before. Happy Fall everyone!!