Apparently construction parties are painful for Keith...

Zeb the Zebra

We were in Target the other day and I found a little kid's tent that I would have loved to have as a little girl. I was so into building forts and tents with chairs and blankets. So we got it and brought it home for Ella to check out. She thinks it's pretty cool and we've affectionately named it "Zeb". What's funny is that whenever Keith or I walk past the playroom, we see it out of the corner of our eye and get startled thinking somebody is in there! :-)

(sorry for the yucky quality of pictures...had to really crank up the ISO)

Construction Time!

We went to a construction themed birthday party this past weekend...so much fun! It actually should have been a hurricane party because we went through some yucky weather to get there and get home. But it was worth it! Major props to Meredith for letting kids (15 months - 5 years) paint in her house, eat messy brownies, and use crayons and stickers. Huge potential for a big mess, but the kids LOVED it! Ella just was so tickled to play with the big kids. :-)

Super Suppers

On Friday night the girls from our Sunday School class got together for a girls dinner out and a trip to Super Suppers. If you're located in Montgomery and are interested, Super Suppers in located in Peppertree shopping center. It's really cool...you go and either prepare meals yourself to take home and freeze for later or you can pick up already prepared meals. Really comes in handy on those busy days when dinnertime just kind of sneaks up on you and you have no idea what to make! So, anyways, it was a lot of fun...kind of like cooking on the food network. All the ingredients are laid out for you...you just dump them in! Here's some pictures:

One More...

...or 3...

(click to view bigger)

Family Portraits

We got together with my good photographer friend Lori Mercer (you've seen her pictures on my blog numerous times before) yesterday to get a few family pictures because the most recent formal picture we have doesn't have Ella in it. The lighting was beautiful and even though it was hot, we had a good time and got some great pictures. Thanks so much Lori...you're the best! Here's just some that we got...I may share more later.

15 Month Portraits

I've been trying, unsuccesfully due to weather, to take Ella's 15 month portraits for a few weeks now. We had a nice and sunny morning today so I decided to take her to the Shakespeare Festival by myself. Wow! That was so much harder than I thought it would be. I had all these great poses I wanted to do and I brought my bubble maker (which wouldn't work) and none of it panned out. However, I got a few good pictures, but might give it another go later this week.

Hello!

This has been a whirlwind of a week! Lots of painting activity at our house and fun social events as well. Here's a quick view of what it was like at our house this week:

Yep...me with a paint brush and Ella trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I'm pretty sure she is so sick of me painting everyday. But...the good news is only 3 more rooms and we're done!

I worked on the den Friday and then Keith and I finished it up that night. Vaulted ceilings are great...until it comes to painting them.

We made a little corral for Ella to play in while I painted. It worked out really well until she figured out how to try to climb over the back of the couches and do a high dive onto the floor where I was painting. Little daredevil.

And here's some cute ones from her daily breakfast of cereal bar and milk.

Gosh I love those feet! :-) Hope everyone had a great weekend!

15 Month Check-up

Ella had her check-up today with Dr. Trumbull. She had to get 2 shots which was sad. She's been handling shots very well, but I think today she was about ready for a nap so when they stuck her, it really hurt her feelings! She weighed in at 20lbs 8oz...Dr. Trumbull told me that's the 15th percentile, but he wrote 40th percentile on our take away sheet. I looked it up at home and it's really the 25th or 30th. She was 31 1/4 inches tall which is the 80th percentile. So she's growing well and still remaining slender and tall. I found out today that having a 15 month old in the doctor's office is much more challenging than a 12 month old. She was a busy bee!

I took Ella's doctor picture today with my little camera (a Kodak to replace my Canon *tear*) and I realized that I haven't downloaded pictures from it in a while. So I wanted to share some images that were on it.

We had a fun playdate with Taylor and Tinsley at Looney's Skating Rink a couple of weeks ago. Ella kept getting confused and riding her car backwards.

We went and ate lunch with Keith at Frazer the other day and Ella was really intrigued with thisscripture in the ground. She wanted to trace the words with her stick.

Ella likes to take ALL the toys out of her basket and then climb in. Fun! :-)

Happy to be alive! :-)

Painting, painting, and more painting

Yep...it's true. Keith and I are re-painting the entire house. Well...not entire. The kitchen (because I loooove the paint job in there), our bedroom, and Ella's room will stay the same. The rest is changing to a neutral "khaki". We're doing this for a couple of reasons (well I should say I am...Keith is doing it for 1 reason; because I begged).



1. As much as I love the dark, rich colors, my house is just too small for all that and it makes it look too dark inside. We don't have a lot of natural light so anything I can do to brighten things up is great.
2. The colored walls are horrible for pictures (obviously very important!)
3. Incase we decide to sell sometime in the future, neutral colors are obviously much better for re-sale.

So anyways, I painted our bathroom today just to try out the paint color and make sure it's good (because most of you probably know that I had some serious paint mistakes the first time we painted the entire house...when figuring out how many rooms we'll be doing, Keith actually added 2 because he figured there would be that many re-paints because I wouldn't like the color). But, luckily it's great and I love it. What I learned today is that painting with a toddler is a lot harder than painting without a toddler, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Ella was really interested in what I was doing and wanted to be "involved." Her big contribution was putting her hands in the wet paint on the wall and then smearing them around (see picture). I will post pictures of before and afters later. The change in the bathroom wasn't huge so it isn't showing up well in pictures. Once we hit the den you'll be able to tell a huge difference.



So, thanks if you made it through that wordy post and are still reading. :-) I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Lots of Fun

We had so much fun yesterday. We played peek-a-boo with some pajamas Ella found and afterwards she enjoyed twirling around and around. It's so much fun to be a little girl. :-)

15 Months

So Ella is 15 months today. I think she recently had a growth spurt because she can now reach a million more things than she could a month ago. She's constantly grabbing things that I thought were out of her grasp. Time to move everything up a little bit higher! :-) Ella is learning new words daily and surprises me all the time with words that she knows that I didn't think she knew. She's not intentionally speaking more than a handful of words, but understands a huge vocabulary and is mimicking my sounds much more often. She is also imitating my actions more often which is adorable and hilarious. I really have to watch the things I do and say around her now! :-) We go to see Dr. Trumbull next week so I'll report back then with weight and length. We had so much fun taking her 15 month snapshot today. She was super smiley and apparently I was being just hilarious which made for some cute pictures. Afterwards we had a great time playing in her in BIG room (big because I moved her rocker out for the pictures). She had a blast twirling around and pulling clothes out of her hamper. Check back tomorrow to see images of that fun time.

One more quick picture...Ella loves Mr. Charlie...he's not so sure about her: