Happy Easter!

It's my favorite holiday and we did all sorts of things to celebrate. Friday we made sugar cookies. I rarely make sugar cookies, and when I do, I remember why I do it so rarely. I hate all the flour and rolling and sticking... my cookies came out looking more like squiggle lines and circles than chicks and eggs. Ellen had fun with the cookie cutter until she figured out that raw cookie dough is delicious, and I had visions of salmonila poisening and made her stop. It was a looooong 10 minutes before that first batch of cookies were done.

She had a much better time with the sprinkles. I had a lot of fun cleaning them up afterward...

Saturday we dyed Easter eggs. This was a great activity for Ellen!

Sunday morning finally came, and Ellen was a lot more interested in her Easter basket than breakfast....

She had lots of fun with all the empty eggs. I'm mean and only filled 2 eggs with a couple jelly beans.

Then we finally put on the pretty new dress. It is still really hard to get a normal picture of Ellen, but we managed to get this one of her stricking a pose.

She did NOT want to leave her new eggs for church, but we finally got out of the house.

And we made it to grandma and grandpa's for ham....where Ellen found grandma's giant pink bunny. So glad we got to leave this at grandma's.

New Neice and other stuff

We have another new niece! Amelia is such a cutie!

Our little one is learning something new all the time. Here's her new naptime routine (that's a sock in her mouth):

She gets too worked up sometimes and has to take a quiet break:

And she loves brushing my hair:

3-0

I don't know how I let it happen, but I turned 30 last week. We did all sorts of things to celebrate, which made being officially old seem a little less terrible. I decided my new decade also needed a new hairdo....

Nicholas took these pictures of Ellen and I playing with her favorite toy (and my least favorite).

And here she is reading her first library book..

The days are flying by

It's already March. Summer is just around the corner (and I know this because I can feel that Spring is in the air at school... fun time of year, let me tell ya).

Ellen's been getting harder to photograph lately. She wants to see the camera the second you take it out so by the time you have it ready to take a picture, she's already stopped what she was doing and crying about not being able to have the camera. It's fun...

Here she was playing with an oven mitt like it was a giant claw. By the time I got the camera powered up, I got this shot and then this one...

This one I tried to catch her kissing the glass door...

Oh... and she got another round of school photos. This is the one we decided to keep.

It's been awhile

I guess we've been busy since we haven't posted anything in awhile. Not sure what we've been busy doing, other than the same old stuff.

Ellen is really turning into a little person. She runs all over the place, screams when she doesn't get her way, pushes kids out of her way to get their toys....she definitely has a big personality. But she's also turning into my little helper. She's learned how to throw things away for me, put things in the washer/dryer, get tupperware out of the cabinet...it's cute.

Oh, she really wants that camera!

She loves playing with blankets these days.

Nicholas says she looks like a chalk outline when she sleeps....

My chunky-monkey. She learned how to shrug her shoulders, so I haven't been able to get a normal picture in awhile. I think this picture was taken just before she ate half a crayon. Yum.

She's also learned how to squat.

A day in the life...

Hahaha - we love to laugh!



















"Up, Up" Sometimes we just need a hug























So sleepy...

Just thinking a little

Does anyone else sleep like this?

The World of the Working

Erika and I made it back to work this week. It's hard getting back into working mode after 3 weeks off. I forgot how to teach, I had forgotten a couple of my students names (luckily the finger pointing to call on a kid worked for a day or two...), but it was nice to be out of the house. My only complaint was that after two weeks of being locked in our house, I felt like I was finally enjoying my vacation when we had to get back to the real world. Oh well... thus is parenthood.

Ellen's been running around like crazy. She's stopped keeping her hands at ready while walking around, and she's even starting to get the "toddler" body shape. She's getting so big... she's even got her own purse now!

Erika had taken a series of photos with Ellen on Saturday. There were ones that turned out better than this one, but I thought this one looked like she's annoyed with mom, a look that we might be seeing more of when she's a teenager.

And finally Ellen has discovered that she fits into this ottoman that was Erika's Christmas present from me. She likes to be picked up in it and flown around the room like it's a carnival ride. We tried to get her to duck down and hide in it. That didn't go too well.

I just realized that she's in our least favorite outfit in every one of these pictures (not all taken on the same day). Soooo... here's one more random one where she's not in the same clothes.