Ella's Birthday Party!

Ella had a joint party with her cousin Christopher who just turned 4 at a giant warehouse full of inflatables. It was SO MUCH FUN! The kids had a blast and I went down the big inflatable slide about 8 times so I certainly enjoyed myself too. I really wish we could rent that place out for an adult party. Anyway, here are a bunch of the pictures from our super-special celebration of Ella turning THREE!!


I love this picture-some of my favorite people of all time!

Hanna, Hannah, and Hannah

My dad getting one of the last slices of pizza (we ran out toward the end! there were SO many people!)

"Uncle" Carl shooting up the deuce (as Daddy would say)

A rare picture of Ella eating! (This warms my heart-she ate at least a half a piece of pizza! that's a lot for her!)

the cousins in their throne blowing out their candles

Happy Birthday Christopher and Ella!

My girly-girl

I just put Ella to bed and she initiated an entire conversation where she was about 3 inches from my face most of the time and gently patting different parts of my face and making requests. She started with my ears and wanted to know why I wasn't wearing pink earrings. She said I should wear pink earrings for her every day (like I did on her birthday). Then she patted my nose ring and said "this should be pink too, can you do that for me?" I told her I didn't have a pink nose ring but I'd try to wear the pink earrings. Then she started patting my lips and said "I think you need pink sparkly lipstick mom!" She moved on the nail polish (also pink and sparkly) before starting again with earrings. We literally talked about this for 10 minutes. She went on and on about how beautiful everything would be in pink. When I asked her if she wanted to get her ears and nose pierced and wear sparkly pink things she sighed and said "I will, I'm just waiting to grow up."

ELLA IS THREEEEE!!!!!

We're SO excited! Ella is three years old! I can't believe it and spent a lot of friday tearing up about it but I got that out of my system (I hope) and we were able to have a great celebration yesterday. Her birthday party is next weekend so there will be lots more festive birthday pictures to come :-)


Our mommy-daughter breakfast trip to Starbucks :-)

My wild child down in the city for her first trip to the IMAX!

We met up with Marissa and laughed A LOT at Madagascar 2. Ella liked it a lot (and couldn't understand the kind of obscene things that had the adults laughing).

Opening a couple gifts-thanks Aunt Marissa!

Then we were off to the Rainforest Cafe for her birthday dinner. I'm sad to say that she was NOT a fan of the moving animals and simulated thrunderstorms that happened every ten minutes. She spent most of the meal on Chris' lap. However, she tried (and liked!) steak, ribs, and tilapia-which is COMPLETELY unlike her so we were pretty excited about that.

She recovered from her fears in time to blow out the candle on her sundae and eat gummy worms dipped in ice cream to finish of a great Birthday!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELLA!
You are an amazing daughter and SO kind, loving, and affectionate. You spent a lot of your birthday saying things like "Mama? I really love you. I really love you a lot. You're so beautiful." Well, I can't say it back to you enough. You are the biggest blessing in my life, I love you SO much it hurts, and you are certainly beautiful inside and out. I'll love you always Ella Bella.

Mama

Squeezing in some milestones...

Maybe in a rush to show off her skills before she turns 3 (in two days) Ella BLEW me away tonight. All within an hour or so she did three things I've never seen her do and didn't know she could do!

1. She pulled out my Bible and said to a group of friends we were with "Want to know what this says?" We all nodded and with no pauses between letters she shockingly quickly said "H-O-L-Y B-I-B-L-E" I knew she knew her letters but when I ask her to "read" letters it usually involves long pauses, loss of interest, and lots of "ummm...what's that one called again?" It was pretty awesome.

2. She wrote her name!!! We have not been working on this much at all and certainly not recently (she's still so young!). I was shocked! And it was totally legible!!

3. She drew a face with all of the correct parts! Generally Ella prefers painting or stickers over coloring or drawing so I have yet to see her draw much that actually resembles what it's supposed to be. I'm very impressed.

Guess she just wanted to squeeze a few things in to give us some bragging rights so we can say she did each of these things when she was still two :-) Yay Ella!

SCORE!

Today Ella and I met some friends for story time at the library and then had lunch at a yummy restaurant. That is not the remarkable part of the story. After our morning out, I was feeling strangely brave and compelled by my long to-do-list to run some errands. Errands and Ella generally are not a good combination. She doesn't like sitting in carts for very long, she gets bored, and whiny, and when it gets bad, she'll do that limp body thing that every mother of a toddler knows. Basically, it's infuriating. So, I usually run errands alone (thank God I have that luxury-yay for husbands who work at home!). That said, I haven't attempted many errands with Ella recently (like the last 2 1/2 years). But today, I decided to see what would happen. We went to FIVE different places! We were out for THREE hours. And NO meltdowns!!! By either of us! It was amazing! She wasn't angelic per se but she did VERY well. What a wonderful surprise to not come home ready to sell her. Who knows when this will happen again so I thought it was worth documenting. Way to go Ella and praise the Lord!

PS-If you're reading this in a reader or email, go check out my actual blog-I have some fun new thanksgiving decor :-)