Easter egg hunt!

Visit from Mah-maw and Pee-paw

We spent the last week and a half hosting Paul's parents while the girls enjoyed some sweet grandparent time. They got their first look at our little cafe and helped us around the house. They are in between houses right now, moving to Austin (which is great!-because Paul's sister lives there too and it will make visits so much easier (second side-note, thank you to all my stateside family for all living in the same town as well. Mike, well, at least where you live is exciting and exotic, but work on that proximity thing. ; ) ) ). The girls were delighted to have so much time with them, and as is their fashion after a beloved guest leaves, are continuing to look for them in the magical guest room that is normally shut, but every so often opens to reveal that a super exciting family member or friend is sleeping inside. "Mah-maw?" Nora asks and points to the door. : ( Nora christened Vovo and Granddaddy McCall as "Mah-maw and Pee-paw" while they were here. I'm sure she will call them by their right names someday soon, but I thought this was extremely cute. My mom was "Bah-maw" for a while when Ella was learning to talk.

Here are some photos from their visit.

Ella is 3!

After naptime

 Naptime can be so lovely. But it is also wonderful to come up and find these sweet little rosy cheeked and rested ones with their bedhead and cuddly little bodies when it is over.

Last month

Well, so February was a silent month on the blog. You know that little saying, "if you don't have anything nice to say . . . "? There may have been some of that thinking involved in my lack of posts. But let me just sing one note in praise of the month of February, it is the shortest of the whole year.

I do have a couple of photos to highlight the month.

Grandma came to visit! (And arrived roughly the same time as Nora's (thankfully short-lived) stomach flu. Oh February, how you tested me!)

Here is the only other post-worthy photo of last month. Ella and I went to church just the two of us, since Nora AND Daddy were sick that weekend. I just thought I should snap her being almost 3 in her carseat, since she is there so often. Just a little glimpse of what we see quite a bit of day to day

But thankfully, March has roared in, and I am disregarding the still chilly wind and wearing a dress today. This weekend they are calling for the 70s and I am SO excited!

Snapshots

I believe I already mentioned in my last post that our life has gotten extremely crazy in the last month with Stay & Play opening up. But here are some sweet little glimpses of these beautiful girls having fun in the midst of it all.

Snow

Oyy it has been sooo crazy around here with the opening of our little cafe. But still, it's winter, it snowed one day, and we played in it. It was about 5 minutes 'til poor little hands had had enough of holding icy snow-chunks. We live in North Carolina so we just don't need mittens that often and (sheepish) don't actually have them. (We did have a pair, but at that age our little misses would not keep them on no matter what we did. They are older now so we should probably buy some. Does this sound like a plea for someone to gift us mittens? That is not what I intended.) Anyway, here are some shots of the girls enjoying our meager snow.

Happy Christmas!

 We had our first Christmas as a family at home this year! It was really nice. Some snaphots of the happy day are below. First, the quietly pleased expression on Ella's face as she first laid eyes on the presents, "Ha. It actually happened." : )

Nora wanted to celebrate the true spirit of Christmas pretty much exclusively at first. I had a very hard time getting her to come downstairs, she only wanted to read the little yellow Bible she is holding here. I finally convinced her to come if she could bring it. She kept returning to read it even in the midst of opening all the presents. She has her priorities in place people.

One of the biggest hits of the day, light-up fancy pens.

Opening these adorable ladybug and turtle riding toys sent by Aunt Donna. They do 360s!

Later that day, Grandma and Granddaddy arrived to hugs, kisses and much adoration. They brought more presents too! We had a ball, reading,

dancing,

wrestling,

and making music!

What a happy, festive day! Happy birthday Jesus! Thank you for coming to our world and giving us a reason to be so joyful!

Remember December

 It's going by in a flash, but here are a few shots to remember it by!

Fire truck

We have been getting a lot of boxes around here lately. They are chock full of toys for the cafe and that is so fun! But even after the new toys have been spirited off to the guest room to await their new life at Stay & Play, we have a great time with the boxes. Normally we just climb in them and on them and use them for houses and boats. But yesterday was special.

Yesterday was dear Daddy's birthday! When I asked Ella what we should give Daddy, she said she wanted him to have a fire truck to go inside. And I realized, we actually had the materials on hand to make that happen. First I (in an oh-so-Martha-Stewart fashion . . . or not) cut and taped some of our boxes together into a fire truck shape. Ella got to use one of her latest favorite phrases for that part, "It's hard to wait." She keeps telling us that "____ takes a wong time" and then, "it's hard to wait." Anyway, then we colored it. and THEN, we climbed in it to test it out. It worked great.

(Oh to have had a better angle for this picture! I took it blind reaching my hand in and almost caught such a cute moment. Sigh.)

 Here is Ella showing our masterpiece to Daddy! He loved it and got right inside.

In the next photo, take a long meaningful look at that green vase to Daddy's right. It will be your last.

Unfortunately, Daddy doesn't have a lot of experience driving fire trucks.

Oh well. We had a fun memory to replace that vase with, which I call a win. : )