David's 1st Father's Day

This year was David's 1st father's day and I have to say it was pretty great. David is by far the most amazing father that I could ever hope for for our children. He loves to spend as much time with Ella as possible and really enjoys being with her and teaching her new things. Although Ella is only 9 months old, I could not imagine our lives without her. She has brought the best out of both David and I. I whole-heartedly believed that I had married the most amazing man before, but now I am even more amazed at the depth of love he has for Ella and I. We are truely blessed to have such an wonderful and loving man in our lives.

I made David a photo book for Father's Day of all the pictures of him and Ella. He loved it!!!

Sunday morning we went out to breakfast with our friends Brandon and Darlyn who were visiting for the weekend. It was nice to get to celebrate David's 1st Father's day with them.


In the afternoon David took Ella outside to swim. She loves her little pool and having her daddy there to feed her grass!

Family Time

The past few weeks we have been enjoying spending time with a lot of our extended family. Most of David's brothers and sisters and their families came down for Memorial day weekend. My mom was in town for a week in the beginning of June. And David's sister, Janet, along with his mom and other sister, Bet, came to visit last week. It has been so much fun spending time with everyone and for them all to get to know Ella a little bit more.

We set up the pool for all the kids over Memorial Day weekend. They had a blast splashing around. Notice David is the only adult in the pool, the rest of us are safely watching from the porch.
After swimming all day the girls needed a bath. Ella, Sidney and Mackenzie all took a bath together, it was pretty funny!

Here is my mom and Ella at the Japanese Tea Garden. Having my mom here for a week was great. I love it when Ella gets to spend time with her grandmother. It will be wonderful when we move to OH and she will get to see her grandparents and the rest of my family more often.

We had a lot of fun last week when Janet, Bet and David's mom came to visit us for the day. Ella had not seen her Aunt Janet since October since Janet was living in Canada. Hopefully we will get to see her more often once we move to OH.

Finally....a blog!

After many comments from friend and family about wanting updates on Ella and our lives in general, David and I finally decided to join the 21st century and start a blog. We can now keep everyone updated on what is going on in our lives and post pictures and stories about Ella's continued growth and accomplishments.

I also put a bunch of pictures of Ella on here so everyone can be updated on her birth and the first 9 months of her life.

So , if you want to stay updated on what is going on in the Merritt household, than please bookmark this page and check back often. We look forward to sharing our lives with you all.

Pictures of Ella (her 1st 9 months)!

Here are a bunch of pictures of Ella over the first 9 months of her life. Since we are just starting this blog I wanted to have all the pictures of her in one spot. I probably should have started this blog 9 months ago, but I guess this will have to do. Enjoy!

Here is Ella minutes after she was born. I don't think she likes that cold stethoscope on her chest.
Ella Rayne Merritt: 6 lbs. 10 oz., 19 1/2 inches long, born Sept. 3, 2008 @ 4:10 a.m.
Our first family picture!!!

Ella got to meet lots of family and friends in the hospital. Thank you to everyone who came to visit us and meet Ella for the first time.

Taking Ella home. The excitement begins!

Our neighbors decorated the outside of our house for when we came home from the hospital with Ella. It was so nice to come home to that.
Finally home and having a great time hanging out with Ella. Here are some pictures of our first few days at home.

My parents got to spend 2 weeks with us after Ella was born. It was great having them here for awhile to get to know Ella and to help David and I out.
For Ella's 1st Halloween we dressed her as an Elephant. We didn't really go trick-or-treating, but we had fun hanging out with her in her costume.

In November we headed to Alabama for David to attend SOS (Squadron Officer School). We were there for 6 weeks, and actually had a lot of fun. We meet a lot of great people that were in David's class. Ella was great for being in a different place for so long. She actually started sleeping threw the night (9 hours) while we were there.

For Thanksgiving we met up with our friend Ben White and spent Thanksgiving with him and his family. It was great to have a family Thanksgiving even though we were not able to be with our family. Thanks Ben!

Ella's 1st Christmas was great! We spent a week in PA and Ella got to meet her Aunts, Uncles and cousins for the first time. It was so much fun.

Random Pictures of Ella and family!

Ella loves to eat!

BATH TIME!