Around the House

We've pretty much been up to nothing the past two weekends. A little fall clothes shopping, celebrating Daddy's 29th birthday, a mani/pedi for me and my friend, Aly, a late lunch at yummy Bakery Nouveau, an evening visit to a new ice cream place (Ella had pear and I have birthday cake complete with sprinkles and cake in the ice cream + a scoop of lemon lavendar), messing around the house, that's about it. For once, being bored has been good!

Off to Florida on Thursday!

Like her new hoodie?

Ok, daddy. This is how you put this together....oh look, there's the moon! (she loves pointing to the moon)

Loving her new bike trailer. Let's just say that I can't ride around on these hills and have to figure out how to get my bike and this trailer in the car so we can ride on flat land by the beach.

Birthday dinner I made for Brian - it was yummy!

Pulling her little cowboy...so cute!

Ella Update - 16 months

Ella Grace is such a little toddler now!

Updates:
- We bought her 18-24 month clothes today. For some clothes I want to order for her, she's in a 2T due to her height. So big!
- Her vocabulary has expanded so much that I can't keep up anymore. Her first sentence: "All gone, bye bye." She said this while on a walk at school as a firetruck went by.
- She read her first book to us a few weeks ago. We were shocked! She has this book called "Baby Faces" that shows a baby face showing an emotion on the right hand side and the word for the emotion on the left. Brian started flipping through it and she knew every single word on every page. It was one of those that we hardly read to her but she knew it. So smart!
- Elmo, "melmo," is her favorite cartoon character these days.
- She has a new dance move. She bends her knees, puts her hands on her knees, and shakes her booty back and forth. She learned this at daycare and it's hilarious! We sing "shake, shake, shake...shake, shake, shake...shake your booty" to her and she does it. It's funny.
- She knows how to say a lot of her colors - red, green, blue, yellow, and white to name a few.
- She knows her animal noises - lion, sheep, duck, dog, monkey, and cow to name a few.
- She counted to 4 the other day.
- She knows her body parts and points to them as you say them.
- Her bathtime ritual includes rubbing her belly, arms, face, whatever she feels like getting clean over and over with her Aveeno wash and brushing her teeth. She LOVES brushing her teeth (lucky us!). We usually sing the brushing teeth song "you brush your teeth ch, ch, ch, ch...ch, ch, ch, ch, ch" (I just know you all know that song:).
- She can say "thank you." Every time I give her something, I say "say thank you." So now when she gives me something she says "thank you." She's a little confused but we're getting there with teaching manners.
- As she eats, if she has a napkin nearby, every few bites she wipes her mouth. It's so cute!
- She is such a lover. She always gives huge hugs when you ask for one and her kisses are the best! She puckers her lips and plants one on you going "mmmuah." We love it (and so do her teachers)!
- Her favorite song: "Old McDonald" At home and at school, she is frequently caught singing "E-i, E-i, ooooooo (with a very drawn out "ooooooo"). Right now, she is doing the motions to "If you're happy and you know it." I caught her stomping her feet to the respective part and shouting "hooray" with her arms up for that part of the song.

Yesterday, I finally went through all of her toys and got rid of everything under her development level. It was fun for me because I can now see the corner of our living room again but I realized she needed more age-appropriate toys so we went to Target and got her some puzzles.

Oh, and I have to stress how much I love her daycare. 99.5% of the stuff above was taught to her by her teachers, not us. They are so great with the kids and Ella has learned so much. She's even learning songs and words in other languages due to the diversity of the classroom. What I love the most is how often they are outside and get to discover their surroundings. With the center being 1 block from the water, they go to the waterfront almost every day, visit and eat lunch on the piers, lunch at the nearby park, visit the aquarium, Seattle Art Museum, Pioneer Square (historic district of downtown), and Pike Place Market where they picked out fresh fruit for their picnics. They get to play on the center's playground too when it's nice out. They also walk around downtown on a rope. How cute is that! Ella is the youngest but is such a good rope holder that she once was the rope leader:)

That's all I can think of right now.

Last Weekend...

We went to Kady's 1st birthday...

Kady was so adorable and it was nice to see her parents, Frank and Lynn, again.



And we went to the beach...

Putting ice in the mini cooler

Sooo tired. She hadn't had a nap all weekend until late Sun.

And someone decided to help herself to some cereal...

Lake Chelan

Last Friday, we left the Seattle gloom and headed to Lake Chelan. It's amazing how much the weather and scenery changes just 3 hours away. What a great getaway!

The main drag of the town was about 3 blocks and super cute - think eclectic stores, a few restaurants, and cute coffee/wine bars. When we arrived Friday night, we were pretty hungry. We walked from our hotel to the the little town and ate at a pub. After dinner, we walked around. One block was blocked off for country line dancing and there was a horse there that everyone could pet. We stopped outside of a super cute coffee and wine bar because Ella was loving the live band playing there. She danced, twirled around in circles, and pretty much caught everyone's eye. She was adorable!

Our hotel was brand new and super nice! We secured the very last room available in the entire town. We ended up with a 1 bedroom suite which slept up to 6. It came complete with a huge living area, flat screen TV, full kitchen with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances, washer and dryer, and a really cute bedroom. We were impressed and kept saying "why haven't we come here before?" What was even cooler was every room had a huge balcony and all faced the lake. If you were on the bottom level, you could literally jump out into the water. Boats could drive right up and park outside their room, which many did. There was a nice pool with slide, huge hot tub, a large dock to lay out on with another slide, planks out in the water you could lay out on, nice grassy areas to lay out on and just pull up your cooler and camp out for the day, and of course, plenty of grills. You really didn't have to leave the hotel if you didn't want to. I felt like I was back in the Southeast! Low key and really nice people.

Saturday was overcast due to smoke from the wildfires but warm. We enjoyed the pool and just walked around town. Sunday was BEAUTIFUL! We had to leave around 1:30 to get Otis out of the dog lounge before it closed. I didn't want to leave! But we did get a few hours of sun before we left. We actually got a little burned because neither of us wore sunscreen:)

So, hopefully we can go back at the end of September for one more warm weekend. There are about 15 wineries there so I'd like to check those out next time around.

It was a great weekend!

Brian trying to block Ella from going to the dock. She is fearless around water. Next time, she will wear a life jacket the whole time.

Naptime outside = no go!

See Ya Late Sunday

We're getting out of here this weekend - going to Lake Chelan for the weekend. Heading out tomorrow afternoon and coming back Sunday night. I might post pics Sunday night - we'll see:) You will find us here.

http://www.grandviewonthelake.com/

Tata (as my Dad would say)!

Weekend Randomness

This was Monday so not technically the weekend, but she insisted (and looked so cute) sitting in Daddy's seat at the table.

Eating tomatoes

At the park

Boo!

At Alki a few weekends ago

I guess she thought it was her birthday again. Of course, we sang to her.

Now we're pondering what to do for this weekend. Of course, it's beautiful all week and then supposed to rain and be a high of 65 this weekend (and it's Seafair!). We're looking at going to Lake Chelan where we know it will be at least 80.