Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Friday, October 26, 2012

Family

We just got back from a whirlwind trip to SoFla to see our wonderful-funderful family. Mike was stateside for his best man's wedding, so we had to go down to see him, but conveniently, this wedding happened about 10 days after darling little nephew Jakey was born. It was such a fun time. We got some great photos at the beginning of the week, and then ran out of camera memory at the end, which means that Mike, who is our least often enjoyed family member, was also practically our least photographed. Doh! I always goof up that photo documentation thing. Meg can you help me out? : )

Anyway, we arrived in style . . .



The fun of wearing sunglasses and purses in the airport could only be overshadowed by the arrival of . . . Gramma! to pick us up. The flight went great on the way down too. It was not so great on the way back. But let's not dwell on that.

Later that day we got to snuggle little Jacob for the first time, and ohmygoodness what a sweet little guy. He is so cuddly and makes all this adorable little newborn chatter. We love him.




The pretty proud mama:



On Sunday, we had an AWESOME time planting flowers with Granddaddy, while Uncle Joe worked on his car.










Have I mentioned before that my Mom is setting the psalms to music? Which ones? Oh, all of them. Yeah, she is on 138 and they are ALL memorized. Her mind must be glowing and reverberating with glory on the inside. We love to hear her music and let's be real here, a piano is a great thing to play with under any circumstance when you are two.


More Jakey love (and Aunt Megan love, sorry Meg, it's totally true, your own cuteness becomes practically invisible to the world once you reproduce. ; ) ).


See anything funny in this picture?


Ella's hiding spot was WAY more obvious in real life, but boy did she have a great time playing hide and seek with Uncle Mike. The next picture is of her bursting out of her spot in excitement, after having also been excitedly pointed out by Nora, all before Mike could even get around the corner from counting. What fun! : )


We spent a lot of time just hanging out and discussing things. And watching our kiddos play and rescuing them from terrifying (to greater and lesser degrees) doggies.



It was a great time. Wish I also had photos of our insanely windy day at the beach, our game of questions after dinner, Ella's first time getting her nails painted, and our fun brunch at a new breakfast place in town (we love breakfast places), among other things. But it was a happy week! 

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Fair

We went to the state fair yesterday! I have previously blogged about my ambivalence toward the fair, but how it started to grow on me. Well it is still growing on me! I had the best time I've ever had there this year. It was a combination of experience teaching us how to do it right and seeing it with some of Ella's (and even some of Nora's) wonder. You could say my appreciation for the fair this year was almost as big as this tree-guy. . .

What a cool costume! I am not a big costume girl. I tend to take the whole thing far too seriously. But I really really wish I could wear this tree costume. Is that weird? It was awesome.




Ella's take on the situarion:


Anyway all that excitement was only in the first five minutes or so of our trip. There was much more fun to be had. Nora took it all in while assuming her best observation pose:


And resting when needed.


We saw all kinds of hobbyists, gigantic produce, mother and baby cows, lots of slicer/dicer thingy demos, and Ella was positively plastered in free stickers by the time we left.



Everywhere we'd turn she'd shout, "Woook!" There was a lot to see.


The last thing we did was watch Daddy throw darts at balloons to win a monkey. Ella looks a bit bewildered in this photo, and I think she kind of was, but today she correctly recapped where the monkey came from. And her full summary about the fair . . . "That was fun!"


Monday, October 08, 2012

Outfits

 I have two girls, and am so incredibly blessed by that situation. One of the little things that makes it really fun is, being honest here, getting them dressed. There are many days when they wind up in whatever happens to be clean, or when Ella begs to wear polka dots with polka dots with polka dots. But some days, it just works out. I loved this outfit day. (Thanks so much Auntie Nic and Uncle Mike for the dresses! Too bad Isobel couldn't participate in the look as well.) And, also fun, Ella chose her own hat! What fashion insight!




About 1 hour into our day, Ella sat in some muffin, which made a really gross looking brown spot in an unfortunate location on her bottom. I didn't worry about it for most of the day until we were getting together with some friends in a public place in the evening. (Even they admitted, the stain looked really bad.) So we changed her into another pair of grey leggings, but with, wait for it, rainbow polka dots.

Thursday, October 04, 2012

What happens when you have 20 minutes to kill at Target

Also file under, why we can't hang out at Target to kill time very often.

Results: two pairs of funny glasses, hello kitty/pumpkin stickers, and, (not pictured) magnets and a bathrobe. The only necessary item we came home with was paper towels. Sometimes you just have to celebrate life. And Target. : )