Ella is 6!!

Our Ella is SIX!!! Can hardly believe it.  She is such a sweet, thoughtful, creative, super-smart girl.

We started the day off with Daddy's pancakes before school.

And a couple presents from Mom and Dad...

After school we opened a couple more presents and then headed to Family Dinner (or famdin as we affectionately call it).  Chris' mom hosts this every Tuesday and Ella's birthday happened to fall on a Tuesday so she got a 22 person party with all the fam!

An idea of the set up for each Tuesday.  My mother-in-law is a saint for doing this very week! (and dealing with the clean up when we all rush off to put our kids to bed)

Ella enjoys hullabaloo like this.  She's certainly our extrovert.  My parents are in the background-they'd never been to famdin but came to celebrate Ella.

Ella chose Make your own Sundaes as the dessert and enjoyed getting a candle in hers.

 

One more present from Mom before bed...

Part two of her birthday was a little dinner with her school friends and cousin.  She chose breakfast for dinner so we went to Mimi's Cafe and had fun with a small, "big kid" restaurant dinner.

Since we didn't have a big party I offered to make a cake for this dinner. You'll have to check out my next post for how that turned out.  Overall though, GREAT sixth birthday.  I'm LOVING this phase where Ella is a fun kid to chat with and discipline is taking a backseat to being able to reason through things (sometimes).  It's fun to see her interests (dogs, art, and reading right now) emerge and her compassion blossom.  She is so often so sweet and thoughtful with Sadie, me, Chris and her friends.  In love with my Ella Bella.

A "Gwowling" Tummy

The other morning I awoke to the daily, sing-songy voice of my toddler yelling "Mommmmmyyyy, I have to go potty!"  I was especially groggy and not feeling well so I woke Chris up and asked him if he could get her and I'd be there in a minute.  Being a super-loving husband, he obliged and I rolled over for another minute of rest.

A minute or two later I hear them in the hallway
Ella: Daddy, I'm really hungry for breakfast.  My tummy is gwowling!!
Chris: Ok! What would you like?
Ella: How about pancakes?

***I interrupt this story to tell you my thoughts at this moment "ugghhh, I'm going to have to get up now because it's a work morning and we never cook hot breakfasts on weekdays...Chris is going to say "Well, how about we get mommy"  Not because I'm the pancake maker (that's Chris' specialty) but because then I could break it to her that her choices were cereal or a frozen waffle." I took a deep breath and listened to the rest of the conversation...***

Chris: Sure!

That's it.  No "we don't have time" or "Daddy has to work" or "how about a waffle, that's like a pancake!" or even "let's wake mommy up to help us."  I totally underestimated the complete sweetness and devoutely loving nature of my husband.

And it gets even better.  Here's what I came out to find about 15 minutes later.

I live with the best two people in the world.