Life With Ella

Two of Sunny and Phyllis’ closest friends from childhood, Faye and Debi are visiting us in SF. We had everyone over for dinner tonight and it was a lot of fun. Debi and Faye ate Ella up! Ella loved all of the attention, love, excitement and of course cool presents. We had a delicious dinner cooked by Sunny – brisket, rice pilaf, broccoli and carrots. Ella is not a huge meat eater, but she loves her mommy’s brisket. Michael, Hannah and Naomi were also at dinner. Ella had so much fun with everyone.

Ella was dancing around the house waiting for our guests to come.

Crest Sisters. Sunny, Phyllis, Faye and Debi made this “crest face” when they were kids. It’s that thing that they are doing with their mouths. Not everyone can do it – Ella is certainly trying to do the crest.

Blessing over the candles.

Reading a new book with Hannah, Michael and Naomi.

Almost ready for bed – just finishing up the Wizard of Oz.

We started this morning at Children’s Day School. We had a parent-teacher conference with Ella’s teachers. We took Ella with us to the school because she had her last My Gym class right afterwards. While we were in the conference, Ella was happily playing on the playground. She was the smallest kid out there and we were both a little nervous leaving her alone with so many other kids running around, but, according to the teacher who was keeping an eye on her, she was great! Whew, what a relief. I realize that this doesn’t mean that things are going to be smooth on Tuesday when Ella has her first day of school, but at least today’s 1/2 hour was a success. I took Ella to My Gym and mommy went to work. Ella had a great time as usual at My Gym, but it’s time to say goodbye to My Gym. There is going to be too much going on this year and My Gym just has to go. Maybe we’ll have her birthday party there again. After My Gym we had lunch and then we went downtown to shop for socks. Ella doesn’t like socks at all, but today when she was playing at CDS, wood chips kept getting in her shoes and I told her that one way to avoid this was to wear socks so she said that she wanted socks. We bought some really cute ones (cute for Ella, not me!). Some have sparkles, some have stars, hearts, polka dots etc. We also rode on the carousel and had a lot of fun. Tonight, we had dinner with Helen, Ron, Stella and Juliet. All the girls are starting school on Tuesday. We are taking the to Great America on Sunday as a special treat.

Having a blast on the last day of My Gym.

Riding on the carousel with Genevieve (the little ballerina doll that is on the mane of the horse).

Ella is very happy here. I just had given her a quarter to throw in the water. I told her to make a wish. I asked her what her wish was and she told me that she wished that she had another quarter so of course, I gave her one.

I gave Ella my shades to wear after I caught her wearing Sunny’s reading glasses.

Tonight there was a HOA board meeting and Sunny is president. Another member of the board has 2 young kids. Ella and I went upstairs to play with the other kids while the moms were serving their board duty. Right before we went up, Ella shot a video for uncle Jesse’s birthday. A while back, Sunny bought Ella a Mickey Mouse costume but we never gave it to her. I thought it would be more than appropriate to break out the costume to sing happy birthday to Jesse.

On the way to Hannah and Max’s house.

Hannah also enjoyed playing with the Mickey Mouse costume.

Max accompanying Ella on “ABC”.

Today, Sunny, Ella and I volunteered to help the Giant’s Community Fund raise money for the Junior Giants. We told Ella that we were going to go to the ballpark and try to get people to give money to help kids. We told her that there were some people in the world who needed help from other people and that it was really good to try to help people whenever we could. Ella said something like, “So we will go and get money for kids so that they can buy toys and computers.” It blew us away that she even understood the concept. Ella is a natural for helping others. Here are some pictures from today.

By far, Ella was the cutest volunteer today!

Mommy and Ella waiting for them to let us into the ballpark.

Snoopy and Charlie Brown helped us raise money today.

This is Toby. He helped us collect money today. Ella and Toby really hit it off. He was terrific with her.

Ella and Toby playing around.

Learning a new skill.

It wasn’t all work today. We had a lot of fun running all around the ballpark.

And of course we had strawberries and whipped cream.

New buddies – Ella really had a blast with Toby today.

Today, we went to a birthday party of a child who just turned one. The parents were really smart and had the party at a really sweet playground so that the older kids played hard and the little ones were held and played with and everyone had a great time. Ella played for about 3 hours straight. We came home and Ella was pretty wiped out. We tried to keep her awake until bedtime but she passed out at around 5:30. She woke up at about 7:00 and ate like an animal. We had a fun family day.

Ella came downstairs this morning in her pajama tops and underwear. She said that she wanted to put on a robe because she was a little cold. Here is Ella in her “Champ” robe that KK brought Ella from Las Vegas. She’s too cute.

Actually playing in the sandbox!

Ella was on this platform thing with a little boy and they were taking turns “flying the plane”.

On the merry go round with her buddy Ava.

Here is Ella trying out something new. Mommy is helping her climb the ropes.

Ella taking a pretend nap on this spider web structure.

Going down the curly slide all by herself.

Today, we had a special treat. Heather is in town for the weekend and Ella and I hung out with her for a few hours today. Ella was really excited to see her. She kept asking me when she was going to come (I told her this morning that Heather was coming). Ella also asked if Jesse was coming too but I told her that Jesse had to stay home with their doggies. We had a sweet time together, Heather and Ella had a great conversation about things that they liked and realized that they had a lot of things in common. Ella really liked that. Tonight, we went to Acme for dinner. Ella insisted on wearing her purple tutu to dinner. She is so much fun.

A picture from earlier this afternoon. Ella was watching Sunny take a bandage off of Towby’s leg. (A little mishap at the groomer with one of his nails)

So happy to see Heather.

Running around at the crossroads cafe.

Hanging out.

Getting a ride home.

Running down the hallway after dinner. Ella loves it when we hide from her and pop out of nowhere. I was hiding and caught these pictures of Ella running towards me.

Who is really blowing the bubbles…Ella or mommy?

You’ll notice in the pictures that Ella hasn’t been insisting on wearing sun dresses every second of every day. She has been pretty cool about wearing long sleeved shirts and really loves leggings which she calls tights. We took Ella swimming tonight. It had been a month or so since she was in the pool and she got freaked out about walking on her tippy toes. We asked her why she was crying and she said, “I’m scared, I’m afraid to walk on my tippy toes.” We asked her why she was afraid and she said, “Because I might sink.” We told her that we would be with her and that we wouldn’t let her sink. We got her to jump into the pool (she loves jumping so much) and after she had the confidence from jumping in, she gradually started to tippy toe. By the end, she said that she was happy that she went on her tippy toes and that she was brave. It’s incredible to watch her, be with her and listen to her thought process.

Say cheese!

Going down the slide at My Gym.

Walking to the car like an old lady after My Gym.