Christmas Cookies

After some shopping on Friday, Ella and I decided to make our first batch of Christmas cookies. One of her favorite things to do is to get the rolling pin out and pretend she is making cookies, so I thought it was time to let her try it for real! She did really well (except for the flour everywhere) and our cookies turned out tasty! This is the best time of year! Notice the grin in the second picture. This is the smile I get when I tell her to say, "cheese".

Dress Up

Ella loves to pull everything out of her "accessories" drawer and put them all on. I went to check my email for a few minutes and came back to find this. Quite the fashion sense, don't you think?

The Fair

Each fall we enjoy taking Ella to the fair. She loves the rides...especially the race cars. We had to ride them 3 times! Check out her new bubble gun. She used the whole bottle of bubbles in minutes!

Fall Fun

This past weekend we spent a day at the pumpkin patch. Aidan and the grandparents came to join us. We went on a hayride, picked pumpkins and enjoyed apple cider. There are so many fun things to do in the fall! Wishing all of you a Happy Fall!

Afternoon at Biltmore

Last Sunday we had a fun afternoon at Biltmore. If you have not been there are so many things to do on the grounds! We went to the petting zoo, saw all kinds of neat things growing in the garden and played lots of yard games. There are also great hiking trails. There was a chill in the air and it really got us in the mood for fall!

Labor Day Weekend

We enjoyed a nice long weekend at the lake with Grammy and PopPop for Labor Day. Mimi and Grandaddy got to come and visit us too! We enjoyed fishing, riding the boat, swimming in Ella's kiddie pool and playing with the neighbor's puppy, Scooter. We had a great weekend spending time with our family and being lazy!

Gymnastics

So I have to tell you about our experience with gymnastics. Two weeks ago Ella had her first class. She was really excited but when we got there, things fell apart. She would scream and cry any time her teacher came near her, she refused to sit on her mat and she would not go in the order her teacher told the class to. All the moms were just looking at me as my child was refusing to do anything I wanted her to. I was brokenhearted because I had this vision in my mind of her loving it but it was not as I had hoped! The teacher encouraged me to keep bringing her that she would warm up. I bought her a leotard after the first class and brought it home for her to try on and we had another meltdown. I managed to get her to put it on but she cried the whole time saying, "I not like it, take off my 'unicard'". I got so tickled I couldn't even be upset! This was our first episode of the infamous terrible twos. The next week when we went back, she still refused to wear the "unicard" but she did have a better experience. Her teacher let her jump in the foam pit and she warmed up to her in there. We have been practicing our handstands and saying "presentation!" She seems to enjoy it at home so I am hoping she will warm up to it!!

Football kickoff

Gamecock football kicked off this past Thursday night and Ella got us in the mood with some of her cheers! She is really into this year...I think it has something to do with the pom-poms. We went to have lunch with Mimi on the day of the game and we were sitting in the restaurant, not even talking about the game, and she just yelled out, "Go Gamecocks" as loud as she could. We're so proud!

Candy at the playground

One of Ella's favorite things to do is to visit the playground in our neighborhood. It is just right up the street from our house. After naptime, she likes to take her snack and eat it at the playground before she slides down the "curly" slide.

Children's Museum

We went last Thursday to visit the new children's museum before school started back. We went with my cousin Kelly and Gabriel and had the best time. Ella was so excited. I could hardly get her to stay at one exhibit for 5 seconds before she was off to the next one. Her favorite areas were the farm and the hospital. She loved the stomach because it had a slide of course (and it came with sound effects...I'll let you think about that one...) and for some reason she liked putting her hands in the pig trough (which had plastic slop in it). Go figure! We could have spent all day there!

Little Diva

One of Ella's favorite things to do is to play with my makeup bag in the mornings while we are getting ready. She takes each article of makeup and every brush out and examines it and pretends she is putting it on her face. The cutest is when she pretends to curl her eyelashes. I am usually pretty fast with taking the things away that she can "do some damage with" but I don't know what happened on this particular morning. Before I knew it, she had drawn all over herself with my eyeliner. I had to snap a pic! Then she started crying and saying "Get it off, get it off"!

Fun with Daddy

Scott had to work out of town this week so Ella and I decided to go with him. We found lots of fun things to do. We went swimming and shopping and then we found a cute park downtown that had rides we could enjoy. We rode the train, carousel, cars and boats. She was not too thrilled with the boat as you can see from the picture. We went to dinner and dessert every night once Scott got off. It was really a vacation for me! No cleaning or cooking and I took a nap almost every day!! Nap? What is that? I haven't had one of those in...2 years! We really did have fun and enjoyed our time with Daddy.

Emma Cate turns 4!

Emma Cate had her 4th Birthday party yesterday and we had so much fun! We bounced and slide down the slide and danced. The theme was popsicle, since Emma loves them so much and we had our own individual cakes in the shape of popsicles. Too cute! Then we had real popsicles to go along with our cake. Happy Birthday to you, Emma Cate!

4th of July

We had a nice July 4th holiday weekend. We had a Lowcountry Boil and Oyster roast with my family on Friday. We got to play with Aidan's new puppy, a Chocolate Lab. Her name is Shayla (which he named himself), but he calls her Shay. She is so sweet and very calm and Ella just loved her. She loved playing catch with her. Scott was on call so Ella and I headed to the lake for the day on Saturday at his parent's place. Then we came to have dinner with Scott and we had hash...our favorite!