July Update

It's been a long time since I've posted. Our summer has been pretty lazy, which is a good thing. I got hurt at the end of May (broken toe and tail bone) so it was really hard for me to get around and take Ella places, so we stayed home a lot. We did, however, do a lot of swimming. It was one of the only activities I could so without pain, plus Ella is a natural fish.

We got Ella a little swim vest this summer and she has be doing really well. At the start of the summer she could kick and move her arms, but as long as we held on to her. Now she is doggy paddling pretty much by herself. She knows how to get in and out of the pool, including the deep end, by herself, and she loves swimming the whole length of the pool.

For the 4th of July we went and stayed with Grandma and Papa for a few days and got to see Aunt Kelly and the boys. Ella had a good time playing in the kiddie pool and sand box with her cousins and eating smores. We then went to Liam's gym to watch the fireworks. His gym is just a few blocks away from where the fireworks were being set off, so it was nice a close, but not too close. They had a tumble mat out for the kids to play on and Liam did a great job showing off his tricks. Ella did try a few summer salts while the teens cheered her on, I think a gymnastics class will be in her future.

This summer we've been trying to introduce the idea of potty training. We tried to do that last year and it didn't take. This year I borrowed every DVD and book on potty training that I could find. Ella loves them. We read and watch them all the time, which is good because I think it is starting to take an affect. We've been trying the naked method a little bit, mostly because it's so hot, and that seems to work well. She isn't thrilled and gets quite upset going poopy on the potty, but tonight she went pee pee and did great. She wasn't scared or upset, and she sang the potty song all the way up to bed time. It's ok if poopy takes awhile, but if we can make some progress going pee pee, hopefully she'll learn going poopy isn't that much different. We are very proud of her for the progress she is making, and hopefully she is too.

Other news, Ella's language skills are really starting to take off. She is telling us more of what she wants and needs. She is also answering questions better, and asking them as well. She is still reading the same sight words, but that is great. She is starting to draw shapes and telling us what her pictures are about. This week I am starting her on Japanese. Tonight she learned a new word: Astui, which means "it's hot." She's at the right age to learn and it will force me to stay rooted in the language. So we are excited to see how this goes, I think teaching her via song will work the best, because she loves music so much.

So that is what we've been up to, here are some pictures from our summer so far.

At a birthday party with all of her little friends.

Playing at the play ground during the party.

4th of July picnic in the park.

Being silly with cousins.

Sweet smiles.

Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day. I can't believe that this is my third Mother's Day.

We had a pretty good day. Since we go to church on Saturday night, Ella and I got to sleep in, but Chris had to work this morning. So the day started out a little crazy; first the cat threw up and Ella stepped in it, so I had to clean that up. Then Chris came home around lunch time and tried to make me an omelet for lunch, but Ella knocked the eggs off the counter by accident, normally she is great with the eggs, but once everything got cleaned up things got much better.

Daises, my favorite flowers

Chris had already stopped off at the store to pick up stuff for dinner tonight so I didn't have to cook. He also go me flowers, vegan chocolates, and I got cards from him and Ella. Then they tided up the house and went out to the Garden of the Gods and enjoyed the nice weather and did the grocery shopping for me. I'm very thankful that he offered to do the shopping because of my broken toe (yes, I broke my toe this week). So I got to spend some time to myself while there were away. When Chris and Ella got back, Chris made me pizza and we had some lovely cantaloupe too. Then we watched a movie of my choice, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." So in the end it was good Mother's Day: beautiful weather, nice gifts, good dinner, and a loving family. What more could a mommy ask for.

My cards. One handmade by Ella, the other from Chris

Easter weekend

Now that the dust has settled I can share with everyone about our Easter weekend. It's been a long a crazy week leading up to Easter, at least for mommy that is. Our church did some major up grades to its sounds and lights and even the stage got a bit of a face lift. I work the lights for our church. So with new lights installed and Easter fast approaching I had the fun task of getting them all programed into our services. We have 4 services for our church, 3 of which are at the main campus. So when I say Easter weekend, I really do mean it was a weekend. We were at church Saturday afternoon for hot dogs and the Easter service, then again on Sunday morning, at least Ella and I, for the other 2 services. Once I was done with my church duties, we had a nice Easter dinner with Grandma and Papa. They drove down just for the day and we had a lovely time. We had a simple, but elegant dinner of ham, asparagus, deviled eggs and carrot cake. Ella got a zhu zhu pet, a new quilt, and clothes from her grandparent. The Easter bunny brought her two veggie tale dvd's, some bath tub flash cards, and a plush puppy.

Snuggling under her new quilt made by grandma with her new zhu zhu pet and puppy

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of Ella in her Easter dress or of her Easter basket. With all the craziness at church, I just didn't have the time to take pictures before church. I was going to do it after church, but then Ella fell and hit her cheek and got a nice bruise, so I didn't want to get pictures of her all banged up. I did, however, get pictures of her dying eggs. This year was the first year we dyed eggs and Ella did a great job. She told me when the tablets stopped fizzing so I could add the water and she told me which egg should go into which color. She also seemed to know when it was just the right time to take the eggs out and put more in. She did a great job of not making a mess and the only spill we had was at the end and no damage was done to any clothing. So here are some pictures that we have of our Easter.

The Bike

We just had our Just Between Friends sale, it's the best place to buy things for kids without spending an arm and a leg. It's a giant consignment sale. People sell their stuff and other people can buy it for a good price. Everything is used, but it's the best way to get hand me down items. This year I volunteered at the sale, because I ran out of things to sell. Volunteers get to shop first at the sale and I worked the volunteer sale, so I got to see everything before the sale opened.

My main goal was to get Ella a bike. We figured a bike would be a good 6 months birthday present (can't believe she is going to be 2 1/2 soon).  She is at that age where she is ready to learn how to ride a bike, also she ogles over them every where we go.  If we are at the store or the park and sees them, she wants one. We took her to Walmart just to look at bikes and too see what size of bike she could ride and to test out how well she would do. She did great, but she only wanted the pretty pink princess bikes. Lucky for her I got the last princess bike at the sale for well under what a new one costs.

So far she is doing great. She never had a trike so this is all new to her. She starting to get the hang of the pedaling thing, we just need more sunny weather to practice. She has been going on the patio and practicing there, and she can get three rations in before she has to be turned around, which is pretty good for just learning. She does a great job of getting on and off the bike, and of course, she has the horn honking down real well.  Here are some pictures of her on her new bike.

Daddy showing her how to pedal

That is a happy girl

Spring Break Fun

It is finally starting to feel like spring around here. Which is a good thing, because the cousins come down during their spring break for some fun...ok, a lot of fun! They came down and spent the night and boy did they have fun with that. The kids love playing together and picking on each other, you would think they were more like siblings than cousins who hardly see each other. Then at bed time they all had to get in the hide-a-bed and be silly during story time.

The next day we took the boys to Canon City to see the Dinosaur Depot Museum. I guess at one point it use to be the depot for the Royal Gorge train, but now it's a dino museum. It's a very small, but cute museum. It is just perfect for little kids, and it is supper affordable. They had a stegosaurus that was found near Canon City that was fully intact. They also had some bones from some other dinosaurs like a T-rex, but not a full skeleton, just parts. The kids didnt' care, they all thought it was cool. The upstairs part of the museum was all hands on stuff: toys, activities, and bones they could touch.

Then we went behind the museum to the Royal Gorge train station. The trains weren't running that day so we could wonder around the yard and look at them. Then we went across the street to a park and watched the ducks for a bit. It was so nice that everything was right there in walking distance. The museum is even just down the street from my aunts house, and it was great that she came along with us.

After lunch we went to the Royal Gorge itself. My cousin got free tickets from her work, so we went and walked across the bridge. It was really windy so the bridge was swaying back and forth and going up and down. It was almost as bad as being on a boat, good thing it wasn't because I get sea sick. Ella loved the bridge moving. She was sitting in her stroller (no way I let her walk) and she kept saying "bump, bump, bump," all away across the bridge. She didn't mind looking over the edge of the bridge either. On the other side was a ghost town set up, not much to do but it gave the kids the opportunity to burn of some energy before the long drive home.

It was a short and busy visit, but we enjoyed it all the same. Here are some pictures of our adventures.

Cousin love

Three not-so-sleepy monkeys

Making faces for the camera

T-Rex foot print

The stegosaurus as it was found

A future in palaeontology?

How long is a T-Rex leg?

The old Royal Gorge train with the new one behind it.

The Royal Gorge Bridge

We did it!

I think we wore them out.

A little update

It's been awhile since I last updated. Things have been kinda slow around here, so not much to report.

In February, Grandma and  Papa came down on Valentine's Day. We had fun making dinner in their tiny hotel kitchen and watching Ponyo. Ella loved it a lot, because their hotel room was right next to the play ground, and of course she loves her grandparents too.

Our church started doing Saturday night services and that has been quite the change for our family schedule, but much needed now that Chris is working on the weekends. We had some trouble with the nursery staff understanding what gluten is and what snacks Ella can have. Most of the people in the children's area know of her food issues, but with the new service there were new volunteers that didn't know the situation. After voicing my concerns that problem was taken care of and now Ella can enjoy snacks again at church.

We've been very lucky this winter and haven't had any major sickness. We just all finished having a bad 24-48 hour stomach bug, praise God that it didn't last as long as last years. This has been the first year that Ella and I have been gluten (and other food allergy free) all winter long. I think that might of had something to do with the fact we hardly got sick.

Other news is that we've been looking into preschools for Ella. We want to home-school and nothing has changed our mind about that, but Ella is so smart that we thought she might get more out of a preschool then what we can do for her right now. Her brain is about a year ahead, but her body and attention spans is still of a 2 year old. We thought that maybe going to school 2 times a week might help her. We did find one school that we really liked, but it's a private school. They don't cost as much as some other preschools, but it would still be a pretty penny in the end. They said if we could get Ella potty trained by fall they would move her up a level to the 3 year old class, instead of keeping her in with the toddlers because she will be 3 after the semester starts. We like that idea and it gives us some motivation for potty training, but we are exploring other ideas.

One idea is doing a dance or gymnastics class. She loves to dance and she is such a little monkey that she would enjoy doing either. We just have to find the right one and for the right price. We did find one gym that teaches some basic life and community skill lessons with their gym lessons. They also offer home-schooling pricing which is a plus!  So much to think and pray about over the summer as we try to find what is the best thing for our smart little Ella. She has plenty of time before we need to get really serious about school, maybe one more year. We did put her on a waiting list of a home-schooling group that works with the best charter school in town. It is so good that even for the home-schooling program you need to be on a list. For the normal school you need to get your kids on the waiting list on the day they were born. So we will see if we even have a change of getting in.

So that is all from our family.

January Fun

Ella has been doing a lot of growing lately. She looks taller, even though she wont stand still long enough for me to measure her. I assume her weight is about the same, but growing is growing. Her hair has grown a lot and it is finally long enough to put in pig tales. She has also dropped her nap. So things are little more challenging for mom and dad, but if she is ready than so be it. We have been using that time for learning and crafts.

Her vocabulary is growing everyday. She is always asking what something is called. She is really learning her nouns. She is starting to understand that something might have more than one name like kitty is also be called Sophia.  Her clarity in her speech is really improving. She is saying more full sentences as well. She is always making two things talk to each other, it could be her own hands, two toys, the salt and pepper shakers, or anything that is in her reach. She has most of the alphabet down in sign language and she knows the sounds that most of the letters make too. She is always counting.  She loves wearing her costumes and playing dress up. She recently discovered our stethoscope and is having lots of fun listening to everything.

With winter finally hitting our part of the world we've been able to do some sledding. There are lots of little hills around our house which are just Ella size. She loves the snow and doesn't mind the cold at all.

We got a chance to go to the zoo too. Gotta love winter here, 70's one day and -29 the next. We went to the zoo with some of Ella's little friends. We had a great time, even though it was kinda cold for some of the animals and we didn't some of them.

We got to have lunch with Ella's Great-aunt Janice. This was Ella's and mine, second time seeing her. We all had a great time talking and spending the little bit of time we had together. Ella really likes her great-aunt. She enjoyed playing with her jewelry and didn't want her to leave when it was time to go.