I got interrupted from my blogging yesterday, and ended up posting without pictures. Here are some recent pictures of Ms. Ellie :)

I haven't had much luck getting her to smile for the camera lately. But here's a cute one. Notice the wet spot on bottom of her dress... she LOVES to put her dresses in her mouth!! :)

She started eating cereal shortly after her 4 month dr. appt. We were planning to wait awhile, but she started waking up in the middle of the night (which she hadn't done in a long  time). So we added a tiny bit of cereal with her evening feeding. It worked! She took the spoon very well from the get go. She doesn't eat much, but she likes it.

We're helping Ellie cheer for the red team (despite the sea of orange she is surrounded by). GO BADGERS! The Illini are actually doing well this year too... first 4-0 start in 60 years!! Should be a good game coming up in November. Badgers vs. Illini. What shall Ellie wear then?? :)

Ellie laying in the back of our new van! Mommy and Ellie hung out in the back while Daddy put the bike rack on top :)

(See, she cheers for the Illini too ;))

It has gotten cool here the past few weeks. Ellie is happy to sit in her highchair and look outside, talk to us as we are in the kitchen, or sit outside as we do a little yard work. Love this picture!

Ellie is 5 months old! Notice her fun expressions, dark hair, chubby legs, and tiny feet. We love you Ellie Marie!!!!!

I mentioned this in a previous post (but didn't do a good job of explaining!)... It's amazing how OUR baby is so much like US!!!

As the title says...

Ellie's a lot like me.... She has dark hair (obviously!) like her mama (It has yet to get curly :)) Ellie LOVES her sleep, (to clarify, she loves to sleep in her crib!) She is a little clock... she'll starting getting fussy, and I look at the clock and I see it's about the time she normally goes down for her nap. She cries (almost) every time you lay her down, but within 3 seconds to 3 minutes she is sucking her thumb, holding her blanket and fast asleep. This will be interesting as we fly out Thursday morning and spend 4 days away. She used to sleep in her car seat or our arms, but I don't think that's going to work this time!

She is also very social. We have lots of people in and out of our house and Ellie is very attentive to look at their faces and take it all in. If she's laying on the floor and starts to fuss, all I have to do is look at her and she smiles. Where does she get that from?! :)

But Ellie is a lot like her daddy... she has the brightest most beautiful eyes like her daddy. She's very laid back and often happy laying on a blanket on the floor with a toy or blanket or someone or something to look at. She rarely cries as long as she gets her food and naps :) Once she wakes up she's happy to squeak and talk for a few minutes until I go get her. Just takin' it as it comes....

And she LOVES her food! She has never been too picky about the temperature of her bottle. We always heat it up (except the one time in the car where she drank a totally cold bottle straight out of the cooler. oops) But she has yet to refuse milk. And often she drinks too much as she doesn't know when to stop. Who does that sound like?? (If you can recall a time when Noah has rejected food, I want to hear about it! Seriously!)

We love our sweet and (not so little anymore) baby! The only thing that's growing faster than her is our love for her :) 

Oh, and she's 5 months old! Can you believe that?? Wow!

Hard to believe that students are already finishing their 4th week of classes! It has been an incredibly encouraging fall launch!

As a part of fall launch we have had lots of "first" -- things to get started at the beginning of the year.

Tuesday night marked the last of the "firsts" :) All of the freshmen had been meeting together for the first few weeks for a mini-large group called Freshmen Connection. On Tuesday, we divided them into small group Bible studies and they had orientation meetings with the older students who will be leading their Bible Studies. Which means-- Freshmen Bible studies have launched!!

We have more freshmen Bible studies (5) this year than we had number of freshmen in Bible studies at this point last year. Wow! Praise the Lord!!  Please be praying for the 25+ freshmen who are in these studies. Many of them are studying the Bible for the first time!

Thank you for your prayers!

I don't know what's more surprising- to see myself turning into my mother or to see how much Ellie is already just like me!

I find myself doing things I remember my mom doing throughout my life. Things like leaving an inch of milk in my glass after a meal, and then expecting it to be saved for me and not cleared away with the other dishes, for that little cookie or bite of dessert I may want 30 minutes after my meal.... That or sitting down to a meal and immediately getting up if I don't have a napkin or a "heavy" fork

Hard to believe that Ellie is already following in her mama's footsteps. If you know me, you know I loveee blankets. Even if its 90*, I can't sleep without a blanket. A few weeks ago we found Ellie in her crib with a little corner of her swaddle blanket pulled up by her face. She had worked hard to get it un-velcroed so she could have a little blanket. We started giving her a blanket when she goes down for naps/bed and ever since she has been so thrilled!! I often find her with the blanket covering her neck/chin (just like her mama!)

The last few days she's started whining a bit while on her play mat if I'm busy looking at something else.. as soon as I look at her she gets a huge grin and starts squealing with delight. :) (Where does she get that love of people from?)

And the funniest one is this... when I was little, the story goes that if we had a babysitter, I would just go to sleep. It didn't matter what time it was )4 pm, just after dinner, whatever) I just didn't want to deal with something new (I've always hated change!!) and so I would just go to sleep. The last two nights we have had lots of people over and she has gone to bed way earlier than normal. It seems to me she was just overwhelmed, and wanted her crib. My mom says I've always loved by bed... thatta girl Ellie!!! :)

This is a bonus... just for fun... and because I think Ellie gets more beautiful every day!

Hard to believe how quickly time has flown! I remember thinking and planning and preparing for this fall since before Ellie was even born! We were so grateful for the timing of her arrival, knowing that I could take the summer off to adjust to life with a baby, and then by the time students returned Ellie would be almost 4 months old. Well, this time came way sooner than I anticipated!! I'm so grateful that we had the summer to adjust. Ellie is on a great schedule, sleeping through the night, taking some good naps, and really making it possible for me to still be involved in ministry to some degree. We're so grateful and we love her SO much!!

In the past we have found that new students are hesitant to come to events off campus or with a new organization during their first weekend at school, for some reason, this simply wasn't the case this year.

We had over 80 people at our house- including LOTS of freshmen, transfer students, and international students!

We had students in every corner of our house- games in the basement, a campfire, Kubb outside, a living room, kitchen and dining room full of students, students on the deck, and get this, 15+ students in our basement storage room! Some students were looking for a place to play Hillarium (a charades type game) and this was the only corner of space left!

Oh, and the amazing thing is Ellie slept through it all... even though it was SO, SO loud!! Thank you Lord!

This Fall Launch has been the absolute best. We are so incredible grateful. Over the past years of ministering here, the Lord has raised up a great group of student leaders. Two years ago, we pulled off the Fall Launch with just our staff team. Last year we had a handful of students joining our staff team. This year we had so many students helping that we had to ask each student to only work a 30 minute slot at the Quad Day table. (Two years ago all of us were there in 98* heat for 5 long hours!) Quad Day is absolutely incredible, and also ridiculously exhausting!

We spent three days with our returning student leaders praying, planning and preparing for Quad Day/Fall Launch. After Quad Day, we divided up the new contacts and spent some time personally following them up. It has been a total joy to see the many new people come around the Navs!

Quad Day- Thousands of students, hundreds of organizations.

The Navs table

Ellie laying in the shade. We're so grateful my parents were able to come watch Ellie for 3 days as we met with students. It would have been way too much for her (or for us) without their help!

If you've been following my blog, you've noticed I like to go in order and not miss things! So in order to start updating you, I have to start at the very beginning... a very good place to start... (Do you hear the tune in your head yet? Thanks Sound of Music!)

We celebrated Noah's birthday with the Hubbards. All he had been wanting was a typical WI fish fry. We weren't able to fulfill his request while in WI, but the Hubbards had fish from when they were in WI AND a deep fryer.  This + Boston Cream Pie = Noah's birthday!

Boston Cream Pie is another story.. it was a first for me (I'd never had it nor eaten it). The cream layer seemed super granulated, thick, and weird, but I looked over the recipe multiple times and couldn't figure out where I went wrong so I brought it to the Hubbards anyway.

Turned out I served Boston Cream Pie with 9x the amount of sugar it was supposed to have. Major fail. Noah's mom had photocopied the recipe for me and instead of saying 1/3 c. sugar it said 3 c.

Woops!

Give me some credit, it didn't look so bad, eh?
Love you Noah! Thanks for being a great husband and a wonderful daddy!!

We have so much to update on from the last month! Since returning from Wisconsin at the beginning of August we have been busy preparing for the fall launch, hosting students for meetings for the fall launch, and then the actual FALL LAUNCH! It is by far the busiest time of year, and this year Noah added to it by taking 7 students on a road trip over Labor Day weekend. Typically Labor Day is when you can take a sigh of relief, a pause in the chaos, but this year Noah and 7 guys headed up to UW-Eau Claire and Rice Lake and Ellie and I also headed to WI (to be wi. We all got home last night, and look forward to filling you in on all that God is doing!