Life With Ella

I’m already behind!  Where does the time go?  Grandma and papa were here last week and we had such a beautiful time with them.  The love was perfect, the weather was perfect, the crab was perfect – even the movie Frozen was pretty perfect.  Ella and her grandparents are so in love with each other and it brings us such great joy to watch all of the love.

 First night of Chanukah selfie.  Good job Sunny!

 Ella blowing bubbles around a cool sculpture down town.

 Waiting to go bungee jumping.

Watch Ella fly!

 Ella and her cool motorcycle skills.

 Second night of Chanukah.

 Papa did really well during our heated game of dreidel.  He just kept hitting gimel, gimel, gimel…

 Third night of Chanukah.

 We fought the crowds on Saturday and did a little shopping.

 So much love – Happy Chanukah!  Thanks so much for being with us grandma and papa.  We love you.

We spent last weekend in Disney Land with Jesse and Heather.  It was a fantastic weekend.  We loved being with Jesse and Heather and loved conquering so many rides at Disney.  Here is the ride list for the two days we were there.

11/15

Jungle Cruise

Indiana Jones

Haunted Mansion

Splash Mountain (Lauren and Jesse)

Winnie the Pooh (Sunny and Ella)

Pinocchio

Matterhorn (Lauren and Sunny)

Alice in Wonderland (Jesse and Ella)

Snow White

Star Tours

Pirates of the Caribbean

Peter Pan

Fantasmic

Disney Train

11/16

Monsters Inc

Soarin’

Little Mermaid

Goofy’s Flight School

Jumping Jellyfish (Sunny and Ella)

Toy Stor Mania

Arcade

Mickey’s Fun Wheel

Radiator Springs Racers

Luigi’s Tires

Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree

Tuck and Roll

Redwood Creek Challenge Trail

Buzz Lightyear (Sunny, Ella and Jesse)

Space Mountain (Lauren and Heather)

Small World

Here are some shots from the weekend…

 Here we are at the airport getting ready to head off to LA.

 A little fruit with some whipped cream.

 First line of the day…Jungle Cruies.

So much of the weekend looked like this…such sweetness.

 Me on Splash Mountain with an Australian family.

 Ella and Jesse about to go and get Ella’s birthday pin.

Heading into the Star Tours ride.

 On line for the Peter Pan ride.

 Family shot in front of It’s A Small World.  LOVE!

Watching Fantasmic – absolute sweetness.

Heather joined us on day 2!  So great to get to spend time with her.

 The Little Mermaid Ride – one of Ella’s favorites.

Ella overcame her small fear of Goofy’s Sky School.  She had a lot of fun.

 Toy Story Mania fun!

 Love on the giant Ferris Wheel.

Radiator Springs Racers…Jesse decided that Dumbo needed to experience the ride.  Heather and Ella held hands and Sunny was in another car that won.

 Heather and I went on a little detour to Space Mountain while Jesse, Ella and Sunny went on the Buzz Lightyear ride.

 Panda wearing his new kermit bandana – a gift from Jesse and Heather.

Thank you Jesse and Heather for making this incredible weekend possible.  Love you guys.

We all had a great day on Ella’s birthday.  Ella had school and Sunny and I had the day off from work.  We spent the last hour of Ella’s school day in her classroom.  It was so wonderful to be able to spend time with Ella and her Octopus class.  We were going to go with Ella to get her ears pierced after school but she decided that she didn’t want to.  We are not going to push her into getting her ears pierced.  She’ll do it when she’s ready.  At night, we had dinner at Nama with Phyllis and Naomi and then the Kim/Arenas came over for the best cake in the world.  Check out the photos below – Sunny outdid herself with a Minion Cake!

Ella’s first picture as an 8 year old.

This was on the board in Ella’s classroom.  Ella answered a bunch of questions and her teacher Colette put it up on the board as a graphic organizer.  Ella’s classmates used this graphic organizer to make individual pages in Ella’s amazing birthday book.

 We brought in a mash-up of madelines and brownies for Ella’s birthday treat.

 Mommy – the pastry chef began her masterpiece by making minions out of twinkles…

 The amazing minion cake!  It was delicious as well as gorgeous.

 Ella had her dinner presented to her with dry ice.

 Happy Birthday Ella.  We love you so much!

Dear Ella –  Happy Birthday!  We love you so much.  We are in awe of you.  You are a beautiful, amazing person with the kindest heart.  We love getting to know you more and more, every moment of every day.  Can’t wait to celebrate with you in your class and at Disney!  We love you forever.  Mama and Mommy

Now that Ella can read, we hope she’ll get into checking out her blog.

I have a lot of catching up to do so I’ll do it in photos.

 This was from a Black Widows game a few weeks ago.  Ella was an amazing goalie.  She was a bit like a human wall and didn’t let anything go by.  She did get hit in the face with the ball, cried a tiny bit but stayed out there!

 Last weekend we were so lucky to have papa come stay with us for two nights and a day.  We loved having him here.  Ella and papa had a lot of fun at the Exploratorium together.  Can’t wait to see grandma and papa for Thanksgiving.

 Ella has been celebrating all weekend with her buddies.  She had a sleepover on Friday night movie night with Emmi, Cecilia, Stella and Juliet (Emmi and Cecilia slept over) and then a Saturday night sleepover with Stella, Juliet and Rosie.  Tonight, we went to Benihana with the girls, Debby and Toby.

The Black Widows won their final game on Saturday.  The Black Widows remained undefeated during the whole season!  These girls are one tough team of girls who have such sweet hearts.  Go Black Widows!

Ella had an amazing Halloween.  It started at CDS with the Halloween parade, followed by a trip to ACC to hang out with Becca and her first mate Pineapple and then we ended up going to 18th Street with the Kim/Arena clan.  Everyone had fun and all the kids scored a lot of candy!  I am just going to post pictures now because I have no more time to write!

Later on in the evening, Becca became Ella’s “Matey”!

Here are some pictures from Ella’s adventures over the past 2 weeks.  On Columbus Day, we went to the Aquarium with Hannah and one of her friends, and they went bungee jumping afterwards.  Last Saturday, we took Ella and her friend Emilia to a fund raiser for ACC.  The girls spent some amazing time with Pineapple.  Ella’s soccer team, the Black Widows are undefeated.  They one five games and have tied two.  Ella is one of the goalies and usually plays 1/2 game.  She said that she doesn’t like being goalie because of the pressure, but she is terrific and we are encouraging her to stick with it.

 Fun at the aquarium!

 Ella did front and back flips.

 Pineapple and Ella have a great relationship.

 Ella highlighting her Mary Poppins script during breakfast the other day.  Ella got the role of Mary Poppins.

 Ella and some of her knitting buddies made it into the CDS online newsletter.

 The kids goofing around tonight after dinner.  Friday night movie night is the best!

Ella is doing great!  I have been so jammed up with school and work that I have not had time to even take a picture of Ella!  I put my mind to it, decided to make a change and here we are.  Here are some pics of Ella over the weekend.  Life is busy and beautiful.  The pic at the end is a surprise from Sunny to me…Ella actually presented it to me.  Hmmm.

 Ella and I took a fun scooter ride today.  We went up and down the little ramps.

 Ella after her game on Saturday.  The Black Widows are still undefeated!  The game on Sunday was against this team that is hard core.  The score was 0 – 0.  Ella played goalie for one of the halves.  She said that she feels a lot of pressure playing goalie.  I think a little pressure is good for her!

 Gifts from Panda.  We come home to some type of shoe configuration every day by Panda our love puppy.

 Our beautiful goalie.

 So…what should I say?

Grandma and Papa arrived on Thursday night and we loved every minute of having them here!  As usual, we didn’t want the weekend to end.  Grandma and Papa got to see Ella play soccer (the Black Widows are still undefeated), we hung around and had fun, grandma and Ella took a great 4 mile walk today, we saw Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs Part 2 and mommy and papa played golf!  On Saturday night, Sunny and I went to see the Carole King show Beautiful.  It was great.  Thanks grandma and papa for the date night!  We love you guys and can’t wait for Thanksgiving.

Ella teaching grandma the Cups song.

 Cool sculpture downtown by Roy’s where we had a great dinner.

Love on the soccer field!

 Having too much fun.

 A little more serious.

 Best cheerleader for the Black Widows.

 Happy papa – serious grandma.  Must have been a serious play going on.

 Cutest goalie in the world.

 Fun at the movies!

Sunny and I went to Ella’s back to school night this evening.  It was terrific!  Her teachers are terrific and I think that Ella is going to learn A LOT this year.  Here is a letter that we received from Ella when we sat down at her table spot…

 Ella is beautiful and has a lot of courage.

 Here’a a shot of a poster in the classroom.  ELla can recite and explain many parts of the brain.  She blows me away!