A good day with a friend

Early last week one of my good friends called in need of someone to watch her daughter while her husband had emergency surgery. It was luckily one of my days off and we jumped at the chance. Her daughter, Emily, and Ella are only 3 wks apart in age. They are just now getting to where they are starting to have a lot of fun together. Brad and I really enjoyed having her over and watching the girls play together. Other than a few issues with Ella not wanting to "share" her toys, they did great. They played outside a lot together. Here's some good parenting supervision of them swinging sticks and golf clubs while I just sit back and take pics. :)
Then they ran to the back of the yard and tried to escape over the fence. I didn't think we were that bad or embarrassing yet!!
This was the best "posed" picture I could get of them. They wouldn't get any closer than a tomato plant's width from each other.
Then we fed the girls dinner. As you can see Ella doesn't take eating lightly. Keeps shoving it in even during a photo op.
After dinner, we took a walk and the girls rode in the wagon. I didn't get any pics of that because I decided it may not be too smart to bring the camera along with the kids and dog. After a long and hard afternoon of playing outside, they were rewarded with a bath because they were filthy! They weren't quite sure what to think with both of them in there at the same time.
They had a great time together, and Emily's dad came out of surgery fine. :) Hopefully the girls will get to play together more often!!

Wordle

Check out my wordle. title="Wordle: Untitled"> src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/1022486/Untitled"
alt="Wordle: Untitled"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"> I thought this was pretty cool. You can enter any text or your own blog url and it will generate a "word picture" to go along with your blog or theme. It was kinda fun to play around with. You can check it out here if you're interested. :)

Bookworms

My two favorite people! This is almost a nightly occurrence. (I'm usually over in the corner on Facebook...) ;)

A day at the Lake

Last Monday we were invited to spend the day up at a lake around Fremont with some friends. Brad opted to stay home to enjoy the peace and quiet he rarely gets anymore. (Can't blame him!) We had such a fun day, Ella was in heaven with a huge sand pile and nice, shallow beach area. Not to mention all the kids that were there. It was a great day, minus THE incident.....
Toward the late afternoon, Ella was playing around in the water and decided she wanted to get up and down off of the pier, repeatedly. I didn't mind at first because she wasn't going far, but she soon started pressing her luck and trying to go further and further out onto the pier. I was standing with my feet just in the water snapping some pictures of her. To make a long story short, after one of her jaunts on the pier I scolded her and told her not to do it again or she would have to get out of the water. She played around on the beach for a few minutes after that, until she thought I wasn't looking. She got back on the pier and just as I turned my head to look at her, she looked back over her shoulder to see if I was looking and took off running down the pier at the same time. Well, needless to say, she lost her balance and slid right into the water! I, of course, went diving right in after her. As I was running toward her, my sandal got stuck in the wet sand and broke and everything happened so fast I completely forgot I had my camera around my wrist as I'm pulling her out of the water.....ugh!!!
I was thankful she was OK, but still wanting to ring her neck for not listening to me! My camera suffered the most damage. It would not work at all after taking one last picture there. I was not happy and laid everything out to dry. Lucky for us (and Ella) about 24 hours later it works perfectly. Everything survived in the end...other than my (favorite) sandal....Brad tried gluing it for me, but it didn't work too well. I still can't bring myself to throw the things away though!! :)I am definitely glad Ella was ok, though, and hoped she has learned a lesson from this!!
Here's some pics from the day



The last pic before the camera took a swim. Notice she's on the pier.
And, the last picture before my camera died. Ella's drowning her sorrows with food. Pun intended.

Random

We've been out and about quite a bit this summer enjoying a lot of "cheap or free entertainment." We've had so much fun, and we've still got a lot of Summer left! We hit the zoo again a week or so ago, and this time I let Ella do two things that I've been trying to keep her away from...must've been having a good day! ha She always wants to wants to play in the fountain that's strategically placed where you can't miss it....so I finally gave in! She had a blast, and would've stayed in there forever, but Brad finally lured her out with ice cream. A girl after my own heart. :)

She's digging her sunglasses lately. Whenever I have mine on, she always has to have hers.


I also let her go in the pen with the goats, which I've always tried to avoid. For some reason, I just think it's so gross. They're always biting at you, and you have to watch where you step....yuck. Just not for me..I'm more of a look, don't touch type of girl. Well, obviously Ella didn't get that trait from me. She's running around trying to touch every goat, while they're about bowling her over, but she didn't care. I'm glad she had such a good time, but I think it's Brad's turn to go in there next time. ;)

We went to the splash pad at one of the local parks recently, and this is a pic of Ella on the way home....a pooped girl who decided to put her own hat on....

Another first: Our mall has a merry-go-round in the food court (how convenient), and Ella got to have her first ride recently. I gave in and finally promised her one if she was good while we were there. She's starting to not forget these things! It's time to start living up to my promises....haha

And one last thing. My friend Jacki and her little girl Emily went with us to the TRF parade last Saturday. It was my first time going and it was pretty fun. We didn't know if it was going to stop raining so we could go, but it did just in time. We had VIP seats from Jacki's boss at work so we didn't have to try and find seating with two toddlers, which was nice. Emily and Ella are only 3 wks apart in age, and starting to have lots of fun and play together pretty well. We had a good time at the parade, and afterward the girls got some balloon animals too. Ella is so into balloons right now, we seem to have 4 or 5 half-inflated ones laying around right now, a couple that used to be shaped like animals, but no longer are. whatever makes 'em happy!! I find that to be true more every day!! ha

Here's Jacki holding Ella with Emily in the background.

Ella doesn't always like to pose for pictures.


Towards the end of the parade, she was more interested in a toothbrush she got.


jacki waiting on a balloon for Em.


Ella with her balloon "mouse." She wasn't quite sure about it at first.


I'd say that's enough pics for now!

4th of July

This is probably going to be a pretty long post, so be prepared. :) We packed quite a bit into our extended holiday weekend. We had a lot of fun, though! I was fortunate enough to have Friday off of work, so we were able to go to Warsaw to visit aunts, uncles, and grandparents before going to the Columbia City fireworks. My aunt baby-sits a little one and has borrowed some of our "gear" that we do not need any longer (for now). Well, Ella spotted her old exersaucer and wanted to get in it....doesn't quite fit her any longer, but she sure had a good time with it! It really put into perspective how much she's grown! After spending some time there, we headed to a get-together at one of Brad's friend's who lives really close to the park where they were letting of the fireworks. I wasn't quite sure what to expect with El and how she would react to the fireworks. But, once they started, her eyes were glued to the sky! She really liked them...after about every one, she'd say "cool!" It was cute.

One of the reasons we really like where we live is all the activities they plan throughout the year. For every 4th of July they have a bike parade where children can decorate whatever they're riding in or on and they have a contest to see who has the best decorations in certain age groups. The local firemen are the judges, and they lead the "parade" through the neighborhood and over to a park where we then have a picnic all together. We have done the picnic in the past, the park happens to be right across the street from where we live, but this was our first year participating in the parade. We decided to decorate her wagon, and she had a ball riding in it!

After that was through, we went to a pool party across town. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't the greatest for being in a pool. Ella did sucker one of the teenagers there to take her swimming, so Brad and I gotta stay dry. :) I knew I liked those teenagers for some reason....ha We had a good time there, and then came home. We let a few fireworks off with the neighbors, but it didn't last long with the rain, and Ella wasn't quite so sure about those, since they were a LOT closer than the ones the night before. She didn't cry, but she held on to me VERY tightly and held her ears.

Sunday afternoon/evening we went to the farm to see Brad's brother and his family and have a cookout and one more night of fireworks. (I think I've had enough for the year now!) They have a pool and it was a much nicer day to swim! Here's Ella and her cousin Justin getting a head start out to the pool. Doesn't she look cute in her little patriotic suit??
She's having a blast!
Just chillin'
Well, I guess that wraps up the weekend! It was busy, but it's always fun to spend time with family and friends, especially when it involves an extra day or two off work! :)

Randi Graduated!!

Last weekend our family headed north of Grand Rapids, MI for my cousin's graduation party. It's always a lot of fun to go up and visit; we don't seem to get to do it often enough. This was, unfortunately, a pretty quick trip as we had to get back to Brads niece's birthday party in Ohio the next afternoon. Whew! A lot of traveling, but worth it! This is a pic of Ella on the way there...conked out, but still stylin' in the sunglasses! :) Ella had a great time in Michigan, thoroughly entertaining everyone. She LOVED all the balloons, and even got in on a badminton game or two.
My aunt and uncle even surprised Randi with a 10 foot long banana split for dessert! A local ice cream shop comes and sets it up, it is so cool to watch. They had the same thing for her at her 1st birthday party, and decided to do it again for her graduation. I remember it the last time they did it, and I can't believe it was that long ago.....I feel old!!
Here's Randi getting first dibs on the ice cream!Here's just one more pic of me, my grandma, and my cousin Meg enjoying our time together.
It was a lot of fun and my aunt outdid herself as always!

On Sunday morning, after saying all our goodbyes, we headed on our way over to Ohio for Addie's birthday party. Ella did pretty good with all the traveling, but was VERY ready to get out and run around once we finally made it to the party. She had a great time playing with her cousins, as always. They have a toy tractor that she was having a lot of fun with!
Brad and I thought Addie needed her "own" make-up kit for her 4th birthday, and it proved to be a good choice! She was making sure everyone she could persuade got a little blush, or eyeshadow, or lipgloss....or all 3! One of the little boys at the party wanted to get in on the make-up, and Addie was happy to oblige. The next two pictures crack me up...it seems at first Ella is very concerned with the idea, and then decides she might as well join in and make sure he looks nice! lol

All in all, it was a very busy, but great weekend. Ella got a great night sleep after all that, and so did we!