Life With Ella

Today, we marched with some families from Ella’s school in the Pride parade.  It was a sweet, fun, festive day full of love.  When we were leaving to go to the parade, Sunny asked Ella if she knew what the parade was all about.  Ella said, “It’s about pride”.  Sunny asked if she thought it was about anything else and Ella said, “Peace and love”.  Ella has it right!  We had to wait a really long time to march and some of the kids couldn’t handle it so they left with their parents.  Ella and a few others hung in there and were amazing.  At one point, Ella was walking down Market Street, right along the divider and was giving high fives to the crowd.  She has such amazing confidence and loves to have fun.

Getting ready to catch the train for the parade.

 Arriving at the parade.

 HOoking up with friends.  Ella immediately took a hold of the banner.

 Fantastic kids.

 Love makes a family

 Yay Children’s Day School!

 Ella and Julietta.

 Ella giving high fives to the crowd.

Maybe it was the pink-eye, maybe Ella got super busy, maybe I have a lot of things to do, but I will not be such a blog slacker.  Here are some pictures of the lambs that Ella is learning about during lamb camp this week.  Ella said that it was fun but that she was expecting to learn how to train the lambs.  I’m not sure what she was planning on training them… the does get to walk them on a leash, brush them, feed them and clean their hooves.   Ella has been having a lot of fun at camp playing with friends, both old and new.  The first 3 days had amazing weather and now the weather is freezing!  Time to go back east for a real summer.  The Kim/Arenas come home from NY and the Caribbean tonight and we are going to have Friday night movie night as scheduled.  Ella can’t wait for her next door family to be home.  Me too!  Sunny is almost finished with her second week of work.  It’s been challenging, but she is slowly getting into a good groove.  Tonight we all had dinner with Kristen and Emmi to celebrate Ella and Emmi’s kindergarten graduation.

 Ella’s first day at lamb camp in a very empty redwood room!

 Here are the sweet new lambs.  They are like puppies.

Crazy Ella after having some Rocky Road Ice Cream.  Check out her crazy shark tooth in the front.

 Shooting hoops at camp.

 Ella and Emmi at Benihana.  They had such a great time together.

Sunny and I have been a little under the weather – I am getting over pink eye and Sunny has some respiratory infection.  Because of this, we didn’t do anything wild over the beautiful weekend.  On Friday, before I saw the eye doctor, I took Ella to Pier 39 at her request.  Ella bungee jumped, we had a little lunch and then we went to the aquarium.  Ella was most excited about touching the rays.  She was also mesmerized by the octopus.  We all stayed home and watched TV on Friday night.  My eyes were killing me, Sunny was zonked out and Ella is always happy to relax and watch TV.   On Saturday, it was a beautiful day.  We decided to take a walk to mission creek where they were having a kid’s event.  It was a kite making/flying day.  I hung back in the park with Panda while Ella and Sunny made a kite.  Not only did they make a beautiful kite, they actually flew it!  It was really cool.  I’ll download the video another time.  Later in the day, we met up with Becca and Ru and all the dogs for some brunch.  We did a lot of walking with the dogs and by the time we got to the dog run, the dogs all wanted to lay down under the bench.  We finally got home and had a great dinner and just chilled.  We watched the Giants game hoping it would be a good one but it wasn’t.  On Sunday, we woke up, all feeling a little better but not perfect and decided to go to Golden Gate Park.  It was beautiful there but it was cold and windy.  We were going to do a paddle boat but it was too cold.  Instead, we fed giant koi fish challah from Friday night.  We came home, watched the game, played a few board games, played the Wii and had a perfectly sweet, easy, lazy mellow weekend.

One more thing before I post the pics.  A few weeks ago, Ella told me that she knew the best present for Sunny for her birthday.  I asked her what it was and she said, “Matt Cain is mommy’s favorite player so let’s get her an autographed Matt Cain ball.”  I thought that was a terrific idea so I did.  I also thought it was so incredible that Ella was actually thinking about Sunny – listening to the things that are her favorite things.  Ella give it to her on her birthday and Sunny was so out of her mind happy.  That night, during dinner, we were all following our phones at the table.  We were watching Matt Cain be on his way of pitching a perfect game.  That’s exactly what happened  that night.  It was a perfect night (Sunny’s birthday) with a perfect gift and a perfect amount of love and then Matt Cain pitched the perfect one!  Brilliant.

Now for the pics.

Ella loves this thing.  She’s not quite fready to flip,

Ella and her amazing kite.  It caught some air and flew!

 Road dogs in the back seat.  We went to Golden Gate Park today and walked around Lake Stow.It was pretty cold but really sweet to be outside.  We had a treally sweet today and if we were all feeling better I bet it would have been an amazing weekend.  Goodnight!

Happy Father’s day Dad.  I love you

Happy Father’s Day Dad.  I love you so much.  You’re an amazing dad!  I can’t wait to see you.  Here are some pictures from the past week ending with another milestone for Ella…her 3rd tooth came out today.  It was the one of the ones on the bottom.  Her upper one should be out in the next few weeks. Ella was a little freaked out because the tooth that came out today was kind of bloody.  We noticed her taking deep breaths.  This week was the last week of ballet for the summer and the class was doing Swan Lake.  Ella decided that she wanted to wear the Tutu that she wore last year for the little performance.  She looked sweet and beautiful.  After the class, Hannah’s mom and I took Ella and Hannah to the Rainforest Cafe.  I had never been there before.  It felt like being at Disney.  Ella loved it so much and said that she wanted to live there.  I guess you have to see it to believe it.

 Our beautiful swan.

 Ella, Miss Laura and Hannah.  Cuteness!

 The cooky girls on the way to the Rainforest Cafe.

 Ella couldn’t get enough of this elephant.  She kept running to it and touching it and talking to it.

 Some giant stuffed animals running around.

 The fish tank right next to our table.

 The tooth.

Our beauty without her tooth!

Saturday was the last Asteroids game of the season.  It was a great season.  Ella really improved so much this year.  She loved playing catcher and was able to get the ball back to the pitcher, she had some great hits, and even tried to make some plays out in the field.  The kids on the team were great and we all had a lot of fun.

 Serious concentration.

 A sweet smile.

 Such a cool little catcher.

 Stepping into the hit!

 Getting her trophy from coach Brooke.

 Ella and her trophy (the player has a ponytail just like Ella).

Today was Ella’s last day of kindergarten.  She had a great day and a great year.  They had a very busy day today and we ended it at Bi-Rite for ice cream and then we hung out at Dolores Park for a few hours with a bunch of Ella’s friends.  Let the summer begin!

 Ella and of her teachers, Kay.

 Ella after the passing the torch ceremony.  She is now a 1st grader.

 Ella and Emmi at Dolores park looking a little like two street urchins.