A fun weekend with Grandma Jones

We were thrilled to have Jeff's mom come visit us in our new home for a long weekend. It was great to spend time with her and a lot of fun to show her around our new city (although we are still learning it as well!). Eliana loved having her here. :) A few highlights:

Eating dinner at the North Market, which features various food vendors selling yummy ethnic cuisine; I had Polish food, Momma J and Jeff had bbq

Spending time reading and playing

Taking Eliana to the zoo for the first time - she loved it!

Watching the monkey

Posing with the monkey

With Mommy and Penguins
With Daddy and ... hmmm ... some animal

Huge bats -- The coolest but grossest thing we saw

Playing mini golf with Daddy and Grandma (Ellie has some hat hair going on here)

I love this expression
And taking some family pics:



We love you Mom/Grandma! Please come back again soon! :)

Happy Birthday!

Hello - this is Jeff, jumping in and creating my first blog post. I wanted to take a moment to celebrate a special day: today, August 30, is Elizabeth's birthday!

Elizabeth is a fun, creative, and beautiful young woman. She is such a great Mom to Eliana. Eliana lights up with joy every time Elizabeth enters the room. In the next month, Elizabeth will start her PhD program at Ohio State. And while that will present challenges, I know without a doubt she will succeed.

Happy Birthday Elizabeth / Mommy!

Pulling Up

Since right before she turned eight months old, Eliana has been pulling herself up to standing. She grips the edge of the coffee table with her tiny little hands and pulls herself up with sheer determination. I caught this on video, along with some of her newer "tricks" like waving. She is not wearing pants in this video because she is so thin that some of them -- like the ones she was wearing today -- just fall down (size 3-6 month). Jeff and I have nicknamed her "Skinny-Butt Jones" and we love her like crazy. :)

Wedding Weekend

This past weekend we celebrated the wedding of my college roommate Natalie to a wonderful guy named Dallas, who also went to our school. Here are Nat and I our Junior year:

I am so thankful that our friendship has continued since graduation. Natalie and Dallas's wedding ceremony was beautiful and their reception was so much fun. Natalie of course looked stunning:

And it was wonderful to see Nat's family as well as many Grove City friends, including two of my friends who are expecting. They are definitely two of the cutest pregnant women I've ever seen and they were both rocking high heels ... way to go, ladies! :)

Last, we were excited to spend the night after the wedding with our great friends the Sanders, who have a beautiful little girl (Chloe) just four months older than Eliana. It was so much fun watching the girls interact.

Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Martin!

Eight Months

Eliana is now eight months old! Each day she is learning new things and delights us with how proud she is of herself. She is verbalizing more and more, saying 'ba,' 'da,' and 'ma,' along with other noises. She blows raspberries all the time.
I feel that she has started doing so many new things in just the past week and a half. Her two bottom middle teeth came through, and she began feeding herself. She loves banana chunks, "puffs," and cheerios. The day before she turned eight months she also floored me by pulling herself up to the coffee table. I was just sitting on the couch and looked down to see her clutching onto the top of the coffee table, lifting her little body up to standing with sheer determination. I know life will never be the same! :)
She is not crawling yet, but rocks onto all fours from sitting. She still likes to roll to get from point a to point b. We love our girl so much!

All done

Move

We are now moved into our new home! Well ... we are at least getting settled in ... unpacking and arranging takes a little time when you have to entertain a baby at the same time! :)
We love our new home ... it has a great yard for Eliana to eventually run in, and is very close to a park. We felt so blessed to have so much help with the actual move. Many Muncie friends helped us load the U Haul and some amazing college friends as well as friends of my Dad's helped us on the Ohio end. We were and are so, so grateful for the help!

"Driving" the truck with Papaw

Eliana loves playing with/in the moving boxes

Peekaboo!

Ellie also enjoys the swings at the nearby park. I love this picture of her tiny little legs dangling.

Last, the day before our move was me and Jeff's fourth wedding anniversary. We both agreed that with everything we had going on it would be best to postpone our celebration. I loved Jeff like crazy when we were married, and I love him even more now. I think that's a good sign. ;-)

Muncie Memories

It is hard for me to believe that we will be moving away from Muncie tomorrow - our home for the last five years. During those five years we have shared many experiences – most joyful and some sorrowful. Like everyone else, we have been living life. As we look forward to a new chapter, I have been enjoying looking back as well, which is what I will briefly do here. A short recap of our Muncie years:

• Grad School – Jeff and I moved to Muncie the summer after graduating from Grove City College. We were not married or engaged; Jeff lived in a one-bedroom apartment; I shared a very, very dilapidated old mansion (the Baptist House) with 10 housemates. Jeff found a job in his field at Ontario Systems. My time in Ball State’s Digital Storytelling program fostered my passion for communication studies and introduced me to some of my best friends today.
• Engagement – We were engaged November 20^th 2005 at the pond in Jeff’s apartment complex – he did a fabulous job popping the question. :)
• Marriage – We were married August 5, 2006 at my hometown church in Indiana. We moved into our first home together -- a duplex where we had a fabulous time arranging our house and beginning those first family traditions (like Christmas, a weekly trip to the farmers market, Sunday afternoon bike rides).
• Church Family – We were so blessed to find an amazing church where we have grown in our faith and enjoyed the fellowship and support of great friends. We especially enjoyed our Marriage Mentors group and walking through life with our small group friends. It was so wonderful to have our church family bring us meals after the birth of Eliana and support us in countless ways during Allan's illness.
• Loss – While in Muncie, Jeff and I walked through the grief of losing a friend, my great-grandmother, and Jeff’s grandfather, father and grandmother. Each of these people were believers, so we only grieve for our loss, knowing they are with the Lord. God has grown Jeff and I closer to one another through each of these sad times.
• Baby Girl – Muncie is where our precious Eliana came into the world. We prepared her nursery in this town, went to the prenatal classes at the hospital (like those can prepare you for labor or life with a baby … haha!), and brought her home here. She has totally changed our lives (for the better!).

So, we are grateful to God for his blessing in the past five years, and we look forward to what he has in store for us next. To our friends in Muncie – thank you for your love and support, we will miss you but are glad Columbus isn’t far away!

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Toy Basket

Eliana has a new favorite activity: emptying out a basket of toys. She reaches into the box, pulls out a toy, plays with it for a few seconds and then promptly throws it onto the floor. The process repeats itself until the container is empty. This buys me about 10 minutes to do something productive -- always a good thing for a mom! :) Before and after:

In Loving Memory : Mom Mom

Jeff's Grandmother, Edith Jones (Mom Mom), went to be with her Lord Friday evening. She joined her son Allan in heaven and is survived by her husband, four children, twelve grandchildren, and one-great grandchild. She will be missed very much.
We are so glad Eliana was able to meet her Great-Mom Mom, and was able to spend some special time with her just two weeks ago. We hope to continue Mom Mom's legacy by raising Eliana to know and love the Lord.