Brief update:

Okay, I know how I have been a terrible blogger recently, so I am apologizing to all my faithful readers (whoever you are!) and am giving a brief update:

Christmas: Everyone in my entire immediate family was at my parents for Christmas and it was super fabulous! You should have seen that ginormous pile of presents under our Christmas palm tree! Yes, Christmas palm tree. Every year, my parents do two trees: a beautiful, real, flocked tree in the front entryway, and then a little decorated, fake palm tree that the presents go under. It is really fun :) Anyway, being that there were five siblings, four babies, three in-laws, two parents, a dog, and a partridge in a pear tree, there were soooo many presents under that little palm tree! It was really fun to see :) It was all Ella could do to keep from attacking them all! Ha! She was good, though, and didn't unwrap any of them.

So our Christmas trip consisted of airsofting, paintballing, a helicopter ride, and other various activities. It was super fun :) Also, it was kind of crazy with so many people in the house, but luckily my parents house is GINORMOUS so it didn't even really seem that crowded. It was just funny when we all tried to eat at the dinner table at the same time! Haha!

Christmas was also super fun this year because this si the first year Ella has really gotten the concept of Santa Claus. We made cookies and she put out juice, not milk, for him. In the morning when she saw that they were all gone. She was quite astounded!! She kept asking where Santa was - she thought he was still going to be in the house somewhere. It was pretty cute :)

So that was Christmas - after Christmas, we headed back to Chicago and started packing. Yep, we were moving again. So we packed everything up and we were off - kind of. Because my husband is AWESOME, he decided it would be okay if Tommy and I flew to California for the weekend to the NAMM show, while he and Ella DROVE with everything from Chicago to Salt Lake! Yes, my husband is awesome. So Tommy and I flew to California, where I got to attend the NAMM show for the second year in a row! IT WAS SO AWESOME AGAIN!! We will save that for a later post though :) Heheheh....love the NAMM show.

Anyway, after the NAMM show, I flew to Salt Lake, where Tom picked me up. They had already unloaded everything from the trailer and it was just up to us to unpack everything. Well, that was a week ago, and we are still unpacking. Yes, it is a slow process. This is the first time in three years that we have actually had our own stuff to use! It is really nice :) I'm opening boxes thinking, "oh yeah! I forgot we had this!!"

We are living in Salt Lake at the condo my dad owns, because my parents are super awesome and are letting us stay here, even though it has just been completely renovated! It is really nice! Ella and Tommy share a bedroom and so far it seems to be working out. The only bad thing about that, is when one of them wakes up crying - it wakes the other up. Oh well, I guess it will teach them to be deep sleepers?

Other big changes in our life - Tom has decided that the Medical School route isn't for him. So, right now he is getting his MBA though Cal Lutheran in an online program. After that, he is thinking about law school to practice medical law. We will cross that bridge when it comes. Needless to say, it has been a difficult concept for me to grasp...and we'll just leave it at that. But things seem to be going well and Tom is a lot happier with this new decision, so that makes me happy.

Baby Tommy is getting bigger every day, of course, right? He is on the verge of crawling and does that rocking back and forth thing. He also just cut his first tooth! So cute! So cranky, too, though. He also got shots, which has made him a terror the past couple days. Sheesh! Poor thing, though: teething, and shots. But he seems to be doing better now.

Ella and Tommy seem to have made the adjustment pretty well to our new place. It is a lot smaller than anywhere else Ella has lived, so she gets a little hyper sometimes and I'm not quite sure how to calm her down when it is FREEZING outside. I think I will take her to the little playground in the mall or something...I'm not sure.

Anyway, Tom is working full time at my dads lab, so that means I don't have to work, which is nice. I'm having a hard time readjusting to being a full-time mom, though. This is the first time since Tommy was born that we are living on our own...so I'm a new "two-baby" mom. It is exhausting. It makes me not want to have any more kids...at least not for ten years! Haha! :)

Well, that's about all. Again, sorry there are no pictures. if you want to see pictures, go on my facebook, I guess. :)